TNG I Survived Real Estate Legacy Series with Ward Hanigan #716

The Norris Group's Legacy Series is interviews with I Survived Real Estate Rohny Award winners.  Next up in the 2020 series is foreclosure specialist and educator Ward Hanigan.  The Rohny Award is given every year to a real estate educator or mentor that has impacted the real estate investment market and many careers along the way.

Ward Hanigan is a full-time foreclosure specialist and trainer in San Diego County. He brings you over 37 years of real estate experience, with a degree in Economics and a Doctorate in Law. He has worked in California’s foreclosure market exclusively since 1982, and as a consequence he has extensive experience finding cash, researching title, handling evictions, rehabbing, reselling, consulting, and is a “one-on-one” trainer and mentor to some of the most successful foreclosure practitioners in the Western United States.

Bruce and Ward talk about how Ward got started md shares some heart felt stories that shaped his life and decisions.

The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669.  For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.


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Transcript

Narrator: 0:00

This is the Norris group's real estate investor radio show, the award winning show dedicated to thought leaders shaping the real estate industry and local experts revealing their insider tips to succeed in an ever changing real estate market hosted by author, investor and hard money lender, Bruce Norris.

Joey Romero: 0:21

Hello everyone, it's Joey Romero back again with another installment of the I Survived Real Estate Legacy Series. The I Survived Real Estate Legacy Series is a series of interviews with Rohny award recipients. The Rohny award is given every year at I Survived Real Estate to a real estate educator or mentor that has impacted the real estate investor market or investors along the way. Hope you enjoy.

Bruce Norris: 0:40

Alright, thanks for joining us. My name is Bruce Norris and today our special guest is Ward Hannigan. The Rohny award was created because a man named Jim Rohn changed my life in three hours one night in 1980 and sent it in a completely different direction. And Ward received the Rohny award to recognize his contribution to the real estate investment business and the many lives who he changed because he took the time to teach what he knew was a full time foreclosure specialist and trainer in San Diego County. He brings over 37 years of real estate experience with a degree in economics and a doctorate in law. He has worked in California foreclosure market exclusively since 1982. And as a consequence, he has extensive experience finding cash, researching title handling evictions, rehabbing selling consulting, and is a one on one trainer and mentor to some of the most successful foreclosure practitioners in the western United States and award. That's probably an understatement. I think I'll just say this one on my own, that if you made a million dollars a year, in the last 20 years doing the foreclosure business you do took Warren Hannigan training, it's probably just that simple. So thanks for joining us appreciate it very much.

Ward Hanigan: 1:54

Sure. Happy to do so.

Bruce Norris: 1:56

When my son Greg was going to go and pursue foreclosures, I insisted he take your training. He said to me since Well, you have a foreclosure course. I said, Yeah, I do. And I think it's, it's good. But for whatever reason, I I'll pay five grand for you to take Ward's course, just so you can pick up the phone and talk to him about the stuff that might happen. Because he's already seen it. And I have not just so you know, Greg was successful enough where he's now retired. He just turned 50. And he's going to he got his four year degree in going to law school.

Ward Hanigan: 2:25

Oh, wow. I was school. Yes, I graduated. I got a doctorate in it and then didn't do a damn thing with it. So except it enhanced my ability, my fearlessness to get into dicey transaction transactions, just about every foreclosure deal you get into if you turn a half a degree all of a sudden becomes really problematic.

Bruce Norris: 2:52

Yeah, that's that's a really cool have hair on them. That's right. How did you get involved in it? How did you get involved in the real estate investing and then foreclosures specifically,

Ward Hanigan: 3:00

I got on the stock market years ago shearson Hammill because I had an economics degree from the University of Cal, Riverside, and I thought it was right up my alley. And while I was in the neophyte stage, I loved it. I made tons of money at it. Starting green, I was there fair haired, Wonderboy, Ed Shearson, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then when I found out the underbelly of the business and where you really had to fabricate stories, or hypotheticals that you really didn't believe, and, and it was aided by the company itself come up with these hypotheticals from New York. So I felt after a while of that, it bothered me tremendously then, because I had pretty good image that I didn't want to do any harm. And I was quite certain, at the end of every day, when I looked at what I was doing, that I wasn't happy with Ward Hannigan. And when you get to shame to yourself, you just got to quit out of care how much money you making. And so I did quit. And I got into real estate because there was a cattle call ad in the paper saying, Hey, we're a new real estate company in San Diego and we've got an open house and come on down and see what we're all about. Maybe join us and so we'll be I I went on down here with my IBM suit, and I'll Florsheim shoes. And the oddball your room. I remember bill reilly, what a fabulous guy. He had an overflow crowd. He says, gee, this is fantastic. He says, Let me ask you a question. How many people in this room have a real estate license and everybody is same except Ward Hannigan ready? Oh Shit self taught, you know, God always had license and he said this could you all stand up and Come to the front of the room and meet Charlene. And so they all got up and went to the front of the room and is about, you know, maybe easy. Only about a third of the group is left seated. And she said, Hi. And she said, Follow me out this door and follow them out the door when the door closed, right? he rubs his hands. He says, Okay, now they can get down to work.

Bruce Norris: 5:29

He didn't want anybody else

Ward Hanigan: 5:30

They were ecorted out of the building. No, he said, I don't want to untrained people. It's hard enough to train you guys. He said, But my god is impossible to untrain and train. So I'm not doing it. Oh, man that he can see the roar or laughter and the guy says. So I went from Yang the Yang very quickly, you know, from Oh moon, until Hallelujah, I made a lot of money selling apartment houses was a Chula Vista Commercial Realty. And I took it to like a duck takes to water I I re-fied an 17 and a half, couldn't look more forward coming to work every day than I did. I just could hardly wait to get and open up the door. And I made lots of money. As a consequence, Well, imagine there was 10 years, from 72 to 82 and in 82 the market went to shi who's gonna buy investment property and pay the atrocious interest rate that killed every investment deal. And so all of a sudden, the unthinkable happen. And in the you know, I thought I found my, my nest. You know, number two, I thought IBM was number one out that didn't work, guys. But I had been curious about foreclosures, because sometimes we would try to take advantage of a building in foreclosure. And I was a rank. Nobody as far as understanding what the hell that was, since I went to law school, I decided that I was going to bone up on foreclosures. And I did, and I got, personally very interested in it, and tried to do it on the side. There's no way you can do foreclosures and make, you know, millions of dollars doing it part time, I waited until I could round up some money. And so then I had to become an expert learning how to raise cash, and get people to, you know, invest in me, because I didn't have enough money to do it by myself. So that's how I got into foreclosures. And I was deathly afraid. Because I was using other people's money. I was deathly afraid I'd lose their money, I was more afraid I lose their money than I was. If I was gonna lose my money. I don't know why, but I just couldn't.

Bruce Norris: 7:46

I agree with that wholeheartedly. Man,

Ward Hanigan: 7:48

I read every book in the library. I'm California foreclosures, went to every carpetbagger that was coming down to San Diego and talking about foreclosures, it was all nonsense that didn't match the code at the time and stuff like that. And so I decided I had to train myself. So I just was looking at the sales every single day, from about eight o'clock. And then when the sales were over, then I went on down to the recorders office. And I spent the rest of the day down at the recorders office, researching the deals that people were enthusiastically bidding on that morning. And I figured there got to be some reason that they're bidding at it so much. And so that's how I taught myself the business of foreclosures and looking at hundreds of deals. And I would take weekends and go over those deals, stuff like that. I even made a little mini recorders office in my office I bought persuaded the recorder to sell me five years of their recorded record, and microfilm, and had special cases I bought from LA truck on down. And so I could research five, seven days a week I was at passionate about because I was at three. And you know what happens is if you work out of fear doesn't matter. You work out of fear work out of love doesn't matter. After a while you become so used to be driven not to make mistakes and look at every single remote possibility of how you could screw up and on and on. At some point. It just turns into passion. Now I couldn't get enough.

Bruce Norris: 9:29

What's really interesting, you kind of already touched on it. There's a lot of people teach real estate that don't do it. There's a lot of people maybe do the business that would never teach it. What motivated you to teach it.

Ward Hanigan: 9:40

Because I discovered a couple of things late in life. I was around 45, something like that. And I discovered I love public speaking. I mean, how do you not know that you might like speaking most people are petrified from speaking. I just love the accolades. You must too.

Bruce Norris: 9:58

Yeah Oh course

Ward Hanigan: 10:00

I'm very first talk I ever gave was Jack Fullerton's. Club up as a sub I was a substitute speaker. And he had harangue and harangue and rain to like I said, Okay, you know, I have no experience, I never took a speech class. yada, yada, yada. Yeah, I tried to talk him out of it. And he said, Ward, you know, listen, if you stand there, like a wooden Indian is better than nothing. And it was about his club was about 20, some odd people strong at that time. And I gave this talk, I had figured out, I only got through about a third of what I really thought I would go cover. And but they didn't know that. And when the time was up, They all stood up, I couldn't believe it, and gave me a standing ovation. So first, and only when I forgot. I was absolutely hooked. I wanted to from that point, man, I wanted to do it, I would go out on a street corner, someone asked me and start talking about foreclosures and on stuff. I enjoyed the the thrill of converting simple questions into a more complex question that the audience didn't know enough to ask me a real question. They asked me a sort of a fringe question, say, Well, you know, blah, blah, blah, but you know, then you should also watch for this and watch for that. And I just got, I just had a ball. And I love it, when people got it, I'm sure you're there. That same way, when you see, almost like the lights turn on in their eyes, as they go, Ah, and they get it, and they get the answer. And then I love between talks in my office, try to figure out faster, easier ways I could explain something that the audience gets it quicker and better.

Bruce Norris: 11:52

Every year, you you held an annual meeting for the alumni, the people that you taught that had to be, I don't know, highlight of the year, I would think

Ward Hanigan: 12:01

it was it was fantastic, did it for 23 years straight into cost me a couple of grand every year to subsidize it. Because the grads paid some brought along their wives or partners or whatever. And then I learned from that experience, too, I learned that to give a great talk and keep the energy going, you had to do it at a resort of a remote location. So that they didn't take a lunch break and forget to come back, I started using Indian casinos, because they were relatively new at the time I started to do that. I didn't charge for parking, like some hotels, they were sort of remote, you know, they're on the edge of a reservation or something, and they're not going to scoot in the town. That was really great. I used to give a talk myself, we had two speakers, one in the morning, one of me in the afternoon. So we had a guest speaker, you know, like Mike and two, etc, etc, guest speaker in the morning. And then I would be the speaker at the beginning of the session in the afternoon to give updates on what's going on. As far as California foreclosures are concerned. Here's the up to date master forms that are changes throughout the year. And if you took the training in February, and it's now you know, October has been maybe you need these handouts, because then I wanted to have the most up to date material. One of the things when you teach. It's really interesting who succeeds, and I looked at your favorite book list. And one of the titles is talent is overrated. So how did you see that play out as a teacher of the business that could make people millionaires and some people chose to do it and others did not? Well, I always tried to when someone came down for the training, and then never did training in a big class like yours, I like to train one on one. And because money was no issue with me, I was making gobs of money in foreclosure. And I didn't need to subsidize my income from 30, 40, 50 people at same time. So one on one, and or the most one on two, and never ever train more than two people at one time, I would see them drive up in their car, and the fancier the car, the greater chance they're not going to do a damn thing with it. They come up with a number say, or Lexus, or some shit like that. They probably got it too easy. You got to be hungry, you got to be driven. You've got this has got to work, you know, that kind of attitude. They have no luxury to wait until it's, you know, warmer or colder. Or they're richer or whatever the hell no, they got to do it for a long time that bothered me and probably you have the same experience where you can see a person's got enough money to do this. He's got beaucoup brains. I mean, he His level brains and support and just everything is right, this guy is just bam, you know, and they never do a damn thing. Never, ever do a damn thing. Only about 3% of the people who I poured my heart into ever did anything with it, I was desperately looking for Telltales that would give me an idea of where that 3% is, I had some hobbyist misfits that I shouldn't teach, you know, and, and I turned them down, I had to do it gracefully. I didn't want to crush them. And this and that. I said, Guys, look, you gotta have a little bit more background in real estate. Here's a book, some suggestions. And why don't you sit up? Go on, and we'll reschedule your training. But why don't you go back home and get these books and when you're ready when you got them absorbed, or give me a call. And that's the way I will let them down gentle, but I didn't want to take $5,000 from somebody. And in my heart of hearts, I knew, I just knew they weren't going to do a damn thing with it.

Bruce Norris: 16:04

What would you do? If you were starting today? How would you approach the real estate business as far as a buyer? What would you do?

Ward Hanigan: 16:14

I would scour the real estate market. And I would look for that niche. And you remember I always told you I always threatened that someday I'm going to give a talk for you in a title is going to be sons of niches. Yeah, because you got you know, you got to zig and zag in real estate. And nothing's for sure. You know, you're on the west coast, then all of a sudden zag to the east coast if you're into real property is in your zigzag into office buildings or apartment houses or one bedroom, one bath dingbats or, or whatever, right? So there's nothing set in stone. And so when you're starting out, you want to start with something that's got some real potential. And it's not just a quiet backwater for people who don't have a lot of ambition, be a buyer, be a seller, be a developer, but a principal in a transaction, you've got to if you're going to make gobs of money, rather than somebody who's getting some kind of fee that won't make you rich in real estate, you got to get in, you got to get your hands dirty, you got to either be buying and selling something, but I would look for what's good, because the markets always either favors a buyer or it favors a seller. But don't get too satisfied. Because you know, it can fairly quickly segue into being just the opposite. So you got to be ambidextrous if you get in the real estate business, and you're a principal so right now what you got is you got a real dicey market. I mean, this market is you got super lopsided in favor of upper income or wealthy people and they're the ones that all these damn buildings around they got one right across the street I'm looking at all the time. It's just built for people who are fluent. And what about an entry level people and the mid level people My God, they can't afford the ranch if they're not buying and if they're buying how in the hell afford to buy something that's 678 hundred thousand dollars and as entry level. Come on, you got to have 20% down if it's a conventional loan, that's 100,000 or more. it's laughable because Coronavirus, he say the average person the United States doesn't have more than $400 saved up and yet we're making real estate where it takes$200,000 to get in.

Bruce Norris: 18:37

It's been a confusing thing for me. I mean, I look at the statistics a lot. We're in a what feels like a boom market after after the Coronavirus. You know is was around for three months, all of a sudden real estate got to be very hot. I'm a little baffled by that because there's to me, there's still a lot of uncertainty. So I look at all this stuff, because now the median price is like 700 grand and California up 10 or 12% in a year and I'm surprised

Ward Hanigan: 19:03

But we're in a W i don't think we're in a V shaped angria W. And I see it coming roaring back again. We got a big thing coming in right smack in the middle of our faces, you know, and that is whether or not we have a real big, incredible, unbelievable battle over who's the president after the election?

Bruce Norris: 19:24

Yeah, I absolutely

Ward Hanigan: 19:26

Are you crazy? Oh, that's amazing. And if you're in a stock market as heavy as I am, man, you know what the stock market hates is uncertainty. You know, it just sits there and quitters and goes down like hell. So I cashed everythingout.

Bruce Norris: 19:41

I just want to tell you, you know, one of the things about the Rohny award and this is, you know, a series of interviews that we're doing for people that received it. One of the things is that the reputation is absolutely spotless and man, that's yours. And that's you said a couple of things when you were a stockbroker. To have to keep going, you had to sort of tell stories that were in true. And you refuse to do it. Not everybody does that stuff. I mean, honestly, it's it's an honor to have you in a very small group of people that hold that award. There's a story that to me was very impactful. When you were very young, I think you had an aunt

Ward Hanigan: 20:19

It was Aunt May

Bruce Norris: 20:20

Your circumstance wasn't the brightest and yet that that day, she impacted your life forever.

Ward Hanigan: 20:27

What happened was a my, my mom and dad got married in the middle of the depression, because they met at some hotel that was having dance contests used to they used to in the depression had these marathon dance contests. And after three days, who's ever left standing wins and scrapped like that. And so, right, my mom and dad met at one of those kinds of shindigs, and they were great natural dancers and, and showed it in public and on and on, and they won contest after contest and stuff like that. And so I guess my mom thought that that's a good reason to get married is because you're great. And, but she found that she wasn't ready for marriage and kids, and the responsibilities that come with that, and the change in the lifestyle, she loved the adulation of being in clubs and drinking booze and entertaining and all this stuff. My set, my dad was the same sort of thing. He was little shyer than my mom. And so they broke up. And then because they were Catholic, they didn't get divorced when they should have. And so finally, they did, she got divorced. And she didn't know what to do is because she had three kids at the time, my older brother, no, excuse me, my oldest sister than my brother, and then me. And so the three of us so she put my brother and I and an orphanage, and the oldest sister went to live with Aunt Mae, a mysterious person that lived in New York City that was high on the totem pole of burls, head of their complete training department, etc, etc, childless, so she took my sister, and she went into a neat line, cocoon, and private schools, etc, etc. The boys so we really ended up in the orphanage, I landed there in the orphanage I was my brother was about two and a half. And I was four months old. That's when I went in the orphanage. So I didn't know anything other for the first 11 years of my life, other than the orphanage, you know, and so to me, it was just normal. It was I didn't miss anything. I did miss affection. I when I got Pat's on the back, especially when a man would ruffle my hair and pat me on the head or something like that. Boy, I didn't get water on and I hid for three days I wanted to keep feeling that feeling so or a pat on the shoulder my god I would just almost queer because your fingers run by nuns, there was the neria man around that I could model after the priests came in, you know, an hour before mass on Sunday and left that man was an unknown to me. And she all of a sudden I got a call from the office the orphanage and that my Aunt May is gonna come in the summer and she's gonna pick my brother Burke and I up and we're going to go for a trip along two months trip for summer vacation and then come back to the earth so I kept asking everybody I could is it summer yet? Is it summer yet? When is it summer? And this mystical person is going to come get me and it could have been the devil, you know, and what is it summer yet? You know, stuff like that. And so she did finally arrive. And she drove up parked right in the front of the orphanage was just no parking zone. And his big ass Packard convertible 1947 convertible brand new brand new convertible yellow color layer the banana bowls. And it was a yellow, bright yellow with red leather interior and the top down and she's out there honking the horn thinking a concierge is gonna send the two kids out. Anyways, but we went out my brother whispers to me being two and a half years older than me. He's growling at me says I get the god damned back seat. Yeah. Okay, fine. You know, that was his loss. I found that he got in the back seat. And so I sat in the front of see there's no seat belts in those days. And my little ass was swishing and and slappin around in that seat. You know, you almost had to sit there and hang on to the side cushion as it turned a corner or something. It was a convertible She really didn't. But we drove up to from Syracuse, I was a buffalo and Niagara Falls cross into Canada, and from Canada took a Canadian highway, all the way across to, I think it was Detroit and through the tunnel from Canada through the tunnel, and drove on into Illinois, where my aunt Ruth, which is the other sister my mother had, was and that we spent the balance of the summer but anyways, it may about the second day she and I didn't have anything to do except to be, you know, cabin mates and just talk and talk and talk to each other. And I had a million questions for her. So about, I don't know, four is mid day, or maybe, yeah, mid afternoon on the second day, I remember at may turning over and looking at me, but I'm keeping her eye on the road. She just had her hands on the steering wheel she had bent over and looked at me toward Hannigan. I've never gonna worry about you to get you again. You're going to be very wealthy someday. That was it. That was that was it? And I did not doubt her teeth. She was an adult and on and what she said was God's law, or something I don't know. And it went right into me. inexplicably years later, I used to wonder why I was so cocksure that no matter what my situation? how dire was it just on and on and on? This is just temporary, I'm gonna be doing okay, in life.

Bruce Norris: 26:38

Aunt May said that was gonna work out.

Ward Hanigan: 26:40

And it was Aunt May I didn't remember Aunt May until years later, later, I read a book I still have because it made such an impact on me. And the books called the gift of fear. I thought I got to buy that book. That's the damnedest this title I've ever heard the gift of fear, I can fear. Yeah. So when I read the book, he's basically a guy that owns became a multi millionaire, providing security services for high politicals movie stars, famous people. And he's writing on the subject of serial killers, and what motivates him and on and on. And so you are out driving, you go to a shopping center, and it's, it's turning from day into night and you're walking towards your car, you just have this gut feeling that something's wrong. He says, that's your, that's your warning. You know, that's the gift of fear, get the hell out of that parking lot. Go back into that shopping center, someway, somehow, your body's telling you something, you have a device and sensory organ, it's just not hearing, you know, it's all your other senses combined. You know, it's converging, telling you get the hell out of here. And anyone on to explain that what causes these monsters, and on and on. And he says that it's a feeling of unworthiness that they have never ever in their life have been treated as if they were worthy of anything. And so the lack of self worth, can manifest itself later, and to not feeling that anybody else is worthy. And everybody says that can't be the only reason. Because he says there's a lot of people that were abused in every way imaginable and still turned out to be great people. I know. And he says the reason I know that is he says I myself had been abused physically and verbally through when I was growing up. And yet I'm not a monster is basically there you have to during that formative period, likely when I was seven years old, you know, fortunately, I had an Aunt May who popped in on me. And I said this one thing that I took, I believe forever, and it was a positive thing and said, I'm not gonna worry about you. You're gonna be very rich someday.

Bruce Norris: 29:07

You're gonna drive your own Packard one day.

Ward Hanigan: 29:10

When this happened, I flashed in my mind, my God. Aunt May who I long ago completely forgot about what she told me about drop the book. My wife thought I had a heart attack because she said, What's the matter? What's my, I said nothing. I my God, I just, I just realized something. I put two and two together. See Aunt May made me feel whole for some reason.

Bruce Norris: 29:35

It wasn't like she was in your life from there on after it was that one

Ward Hanigan: 29:39

That's right? That one I thought it takes and the guy who wrote the book said is all about it's all it takes is is some adult tells you when when you're are impressionable enough, that pats you on the back gives you a competence tells you the great, you're smart, you're whatever, you know. And that's all it takes and It'll grab hold, like a virus, you know, and just never leave. And no matter what else happens. And so that was it. I also learned from my reading that you have whatever you want in life, you've got to give first you can't, you cannot hope to receive it before you give it to somebody else. And if that's compassion, you got to give it if that's respect, if that's being a friend, if that's wanting to be remembered, what ever whatever it is that you like, you got to give first. And so therefore, you got to think highly of yourself. And you got to congratulate yourself, you got to be your own best friend. You got to love you. You got to respect you. And yeah, and and the way I do another magical thing happened to me, and then I'll let you go. is, you know why things don't stary warthogs, right? Anyways, at 50 years old, my brother gave himself a birthday party. And up in Riverside, and he got the but is it the big golf course in Riverside? Where all the rich people go?

Joey Romero: 31:10

Victoria Club

Ward Hanigan: 31:11

Country Club. Yeah, it is Victoria. And I was in San Diego, he invited me and invited every all his buddies and friends, business friends and Riverside. He had the Hanigan Business Forms in in Riverside. And so the hospitals and the highway patrol and on and on all these multi page continuous forms, right in the entrance when we walked in. There are two photos blow up photos. And one of them is a picture of Burke, when he's about seven years old, six or seven years old, and is one of him present day. He said he's 50 years old. And the contrast between those two was really something it's really kind of I was going there sorry, grumbling on my brother showing off himself a birthday party ba ba ba, all that kind of stuff. And will up the interest. And I said, Wow, that is cool idea. Because it starts a buzz. Everybody that goes up, Marvels at the difference between here's this young boy. And here's a 50 year old man type thing, right? Yeah. So I went there, and it was fine birthday, blah, blah, blah. And months later, I get a package from my brother Burke, and in it, and it has a blown up photograph of me in a frame with the frosty glass. And on it. He's just got a little post Nick and it says thought you might like this. Busk does that I couldn't pronounce Burke as a little kid. So I called him Busk instead of fishes Bosque and I looked at him, I said, How am I gonna do with this, I mean, I, you know, I am really not a guy that is stuck on himself. And so if you walked into my living room, you wouldn't see a whole bunch of pictures with me with with famous people or trophies, or, hey, that's see a happy box of peanut brittle or something. He gives a nice picture, and I wasn't going to put it. I didn't know where to put it. I teased my wife so I'm gonna put it in the garage, and you're not gonna know you put it in a house has a really nice picture of you, yada, yada, yada, you're gonna appreciate it, all this kind of stuff. So finally, I found a space in our bedroom, where it's hangs right above a nightlight that I read by, because my wife goes to bed earlier night. And so the last thing I see at the end of the day, is that picture of me this buck tooth, little kid, I got a buzz job and a big space and feather my teeth, you know, it's still there. And smile, probably doesn't realize my baby smile. And so, all my life I was always looking for a hero. I never I didn't have a heroine in Northridge this one thing I I didn't have an uncle that I loved or a grandpa or someone who taught me how to fish or like to fix a flat tire. I just hungered for that kind of, kind of thing. And so I was always looking in books for my hero. And I would look for famous people like, you know, Benjamin Franklin, and you know what Ford, and Carnegie all these people I'm just hunting really basically for a hero, someone that I could pattern myself after. And so I found out years later, from that, that picture, that picture hanging on the wall that's really found my hero, my hero is me, my hero to cool. me. I so every night before I go to bed, I silently stand there and I talked to this little kid who has such unquestioning love for me, and looking and smiling at me inside talk to him mentally and say, well, champ, how'd they do today? Did I do the right thing? You know, and during sometimes in my business life, when I have, I can either choose this and take too much, or this and on and on when I get those kind of moral questions that are, yeah, you know, the nice, bad, but they're just kind of squishy, you know. And I just instantly think of that little guy that I'm going to be talking tonight. I know exactly what to choose. I want to make him proud

Bruce Norris: 35:49

I want to fantastic. That's a fantastic barometer for life, to be able to look at yourself, if it's a younger view, or if it's a picture that you want to be proud of your decisions. Absolutely. Ward I've really enjoyed this, I enjoyed and may story The first time I think I even enjoyed it better than second time, because we kind of extrapolated how it ended up affecting your entire life. And I got I got that more soundly or I understand it more this time. So thank you for your impact in our industry and I'm glad you're you seems like your health is doing great. You're you're worried about your stock portfolio, so that's a good thing.

Ward Hanigan: 36:32

No, I'm not worried about it.

Bruce Norris: 36:34

know, you don't even

Ward Hanigan: 36:37

No, I did, I sold it all out. And so and I bought it I got the cash because I'm gonna buy into down.

Bruce Norris: 36:45

There you go. All right, Ward. Hey, have a great day. Have a great afternoon. great talking to you.

Ward Hanigan: 36:52

All right, champ.

Narrator: 36:54

For more information on hard money, loans and upcoming events with The Norris Group, check out thenorrisgroup.com. For information on passive investing with trust deeds, visit tngtrustdeeds.com.

Aaron Norris: 37:08

The Norris group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE license 01219911. Florida mortgage lender license 1577 and NMLS license 1623669. For more information on hard money lending go to thenorrisgroup.com and click the hard money tab.