Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
“Real Life Investing” with Jason and Rachel Wagner is a multifaceted podcast that blends insights from real estate, entrepreneurship, family life, and political discussions. Known for their candid and engaging style, the Wagner’s explore how their conservative values shape their approach to both business and life. They often discuss their personal journeys in real estate, offering practical tips on topics like how to buy a house or investment property while navigating a challenging housing market.
In addition to real estate, the show frequently delves into entrepreneurial lessons, highlighting the importance of mindset, perseverance, and staying focused on long-term goals. They are open about the challenges they’ve faced and provide valuable advice for anyone looking to head into entrepreneurship or seek the best version of themselves.
Dinner table conversations are central to the podcast. The Wagner’s discuss their experiences balancing various topics that families face, while often featuring guests who share similar journeys. Political conversations are explored from a conservative perspective, particularly when they touch on how these beliefs influence their business decisions and personal growth.
With a blend of relatable stories and expert advice, “Real Life Investing” is a show that appeals to a wide audience, from aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors, to those seeking inspiration in their personal lives.
Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
71. How Private Lending, AI, & Midterm Rentals Create Freedom With Jennie Berger and Tristan Lora
In this captivating episode of Real Life Investing, Jason and Rachel Wagner sit down with powerhouse duo Jennie Berger and Tristan Lora for a conversation that blends real estate savvy, entrepreneurial resilience, lifestyle design, and some truly unforgettable stories.
Jennie shares her inspiring journey from high-stakes condo development and house flipping to building a thriving private lending business. She opens up about lessons learned from challenging projects, the art of calculated risk-taking, and how she structures deals to protect her capital—plus the surprising role her self-directed Roth IRA plays in her lending portfolio. Tristan jumps in with insights from his high-energy career in live events and race car street production, showing how creativity, adaptability, and AI tools fuel his work.
Beyond business, the episode explores their shared commitment to health, plant-based living, and intentional lifestyle choices. The conversation flows into midterm rental strategies, navigating tenant relationships, and the balance between financial returns and personal freedom. Along the way, listeners are treated to hilarious and heartfelt anecdotes—ghost stories, “slow-play” romance, and even the science of hugs—that reveal the warmth and authenticity behind their success.
Whether you’re a real estate investor, entrepreneur, or someone seeking inspiration to design a healthier, more intentional life, this episode delivers a rare mix of actionable advice, personal wisdom, and pure entertainment.
IG: @Propertypeoplellc
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Life Investing Podcast with Jason and Rachel Wagner. I cannot believe. Finally we are here tonight with Jenny Berger and Tristan Laura they are joining us and, jenny, we've been trying to get you on the show for I don't know. We've talked about it a lot and we're just like boy, jenny is the type of person that you would want to go like deep dive, joe Rogan style, three hours, just because she's got like so much wisdom and like so much to share. She's been through a lot and then and then you're like well, I can bring Tristan too, so this could go on for like six six hours but we won't do that but we won't do that.
Jennie Berger:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:I know you totally could slumber party, yeah, but you guys't do that We'll just spend the night.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, I know you totally could On a slumber party.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, but you guys are so cool because you're so authentic and you're just so transparent. You're really fun to be around. Interesting thing like anytime that I kind of like walk into a room with Jenny, she's always like she's glowing. And then one thing I remember about you too is that you give like the most not to step on anyone's toes here, but you give like the most memorable hugs.
Rachel Wagner:Oh yeah, they're very intentional?
Jason Wagner:Has anyone ever told you that? Because, like, when you know, when you go, oh hey, great to see you again. You know you give a friendly hug, Jenny, doesn't let go.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, they're very intentional. There's like a greeting and then, there's a hug and then there's like a pause, goodbye. It's very intentional and very memorable.
Jennie Berger:Oh, that's so sweet.
Jason Wagner:Thank you. So part of me I know we said we wanted to start with real estate first, but part of me wanted to just kind of compliment you on that, because I know you do that very intentionally.
Rachel Wagner:Well, you make people feel very special and very seen when you do that.
Tristan Lora:Oh, my gosh For Jenny. She's very present so a lot of people are. You know on to the next already. And Jenny's right there just giving us a hug and letting us know that she's there.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, that's a great way to say it.
Jennie Berger:Thank you, that's very kind of you all to say. I'm really touched and yeah, they are intentional. I do love hugs and I love people. It's kind of funny because a lot of things in my life I'm not present for, like, I've just discovered recently that when we're playing pickleball I'm usually taking the shot and then on to the next shot before I complete that shot, which leads me to make a lot of mistakes, and so I told Tristan actually yesterday. I've learned that I do that in a lot of areas of my life. I'm doing something and trying to do the next part of that something while I'm still doing the last piece of that, and it continues and I knock into things or I drop things or I mess up the shot. And so it's funny that you say that about the hugs and being present, because I would like to believe that I'm like that in all areas of my life, but I'm not. But thank you.
Jason Wagner:Yeah Well, we're always trying to think about the next step and like, well, what's, what's the next thing coming down the pipeline?
Jason Wagner:And um, yeah, no, you do a really good job of just it.
Jason Wagner:Again, the thing that I really admire about you is just like the human touch of things, and you've always just kind of had that Um one of the again, one of the reasons why we wanted to have you come on is just because you kind of bring that extra flair and that extra specialness when you walk into a room, which is really great and it's really unique. And I think a lot of us are like you know, how do we be more present in our lives? And sometimes it kind of like comes down to just the little simple things you know, and you're good at that, which is just, you know whether it's maybe a longer handshake, right, or whether it's, like you know, just very intentional with I'm. I'm here, I'm listening to you and you know I'm going to hug you just for an extra half second so that you kind of feel like I know you're pulling away, but I'm going to hold you just a little bit tighter for a second. It's just like it's memorable and it's cool.
Jennie Berger:Thank you. Yeah, so kind of you, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so kind of you, thank you.
Jason Wagner:Anyways. Anyways, Jenny, you've gone through an interesting like real estate cycle here. You know how we met you were on the development side and you were building beautiful condos and you were coming off of flips and doing some really impressive, amazing design work and then you've kind of like transitioned into this new world of lending and like being a private lender and you're not a bank, like you don't walk around in a suit.
Jason Wagner:What, what is that? Or tell me, tell me what this private lending world is, how you came across it and how's it going.
Jennie Berger:So it's going well. It's slow, but I'm a believer in growing things slowly. I've tried to do things quickly in the past and it ends up backfiring in some way. Yes, I was doing development, design, construction and that was fun and I loved it and I still. I mean, I'll always have that creative design bug inside me and I think, just as passion projects, I'll always want to do some sort of design work.
Jennie Berger:But the last project that I worked on, which was Sheffield the three unit in Lakeview it was really really, really difficult in so many ways and it broke my former partnership apart, my business partnership, and I learned a lot of lessons from it. But going through it it was really really hard and I mean I just didn't want to do it anymore. I needed a break. I needed to just get away from that for a little bit. It was a lot of skin in the game and I didn't want to have my skin in that game.
Jennie Berger:But I knew I wanted to do something still in real estate and I had done a private loan a few years back the wrong way. I didn't do any of the title work and I didn't have an attorney drop loan documents. It was just oh, here, you need this for this duplex. Sure, here, take this money and just make monthly payments and then you can pay me back. When you say you're going to pay me back and it's all good. Luckily I got paid back mostly, but after that I realized actually that was kind of cool, even though I did it wrong. It still was cool when it all came to getting paid back, that final lump sum and I just wanted to look more into what private lending was about. Being an actual private lender.
Tristan Lora:You did it right, you got paid back. Mostly, doing it wrong would be you lost it all yeah.
Jennie Berger:Okay, thanks. Thanks for the support.
Jason Wagner:The other side look like right now for somebody to come to you and be like hey, um, I'm looking for a hundred thousand dollars to help fund a renovation on a property. Is that, is that the type of client, um, that you're looking at? Um, somebody that is a flipper or doing something to real estate? Um, or could it also be hey, um, going through a divorce over here. I'm trying to buy out my wife. Is there any possibility that I could get some money to help buy out the home?
Jennie Berger:I wouldn't be surprised if I got that request, because since I've started this whole private lending journey and putting out all these reels on Instagram, I have gotten so many requests for lending that have nothing to do with real estate, or sort of like maybe working capital for the real estate investors so that they can do more deals over here, but they just need a working capital loan which is still related to real estate. But yeah, I've gotten non-real estate related requests too. I'm like I'm not that kind of lender All of the lending we do is backed by real estate kind of lender All of the lending we do is backed by real estate. But yes, that's exactly right up. Our alley, or my alley, is fix and flip loans, like term loans, six to nine months for renovation projects, or BRRRS, where they're buying, renovating and renting and then refinancing and doing it over again, so short term. And also transactional funding for double closes, which is something that I really wanted to get more into, but just haven't had a deal close on that front yet.
Jason Wagner:That's like a wholesale.
Jennie Berger:Well, you work a lot of times with wholesalers who can't assign a contract. They have to actually close on the purchase and then turn around and sell it. So in that sense, yes, but it's actually buying the property and then just reselling it.
Jason Wagner:Yes, yeah, yeah.
Jennie Berger:So it's quicker money, smaller fee, I would say less risk, because everything is just kind of staying at the title company you have. The end buyer's funds should, in theory, be there before you release your funds for that first half. So that was why I really wanted to get into private lending was to do transactional funding Was to do more double closes Okay.
Jason Wagner:Exactly, but you're finding that you're doing more of just people that are doing renovation projects or like regular investors People like me.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, before I went into new construction, just like people that are looking to buy an investment property, renovate it and sell it yeah. Or refinance and keep it as a rental and then they'll pay me back, get into a longer term loan, yeah, yeah.
Jason Wagner:So then do you put? You put a lien on the house.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, yeah, we're in first lien position. We have all of the security documents in place, the same way that a bank would. If you were a bank lender, a bank person, and someone was coming to you for a mortgage for their primary residence, you would have to sign a slew of documents that make sure that the bank is protected, and that's exactly the way we're protected. We have all those same documents recorded and in place and on file.
Jason Wagner:And then what happens if they don't make the payment?
Jennie Berger:It's a great question and I hope to never really know the answer to that.
Tristan Lora:That's where I come in. It's the ongoing joke Tristan has the answers.
Jason Wagner:We'll take the Harley to that meeting. Have you met Tristan?
Jennie Berger:He's the comedian and the muscle. Well, you've got to that meeting. Have you met Tristan? He's the comedian and the muscle.
Jason Wagner:Well, you got to have that. Yeah, you know, this isn't, this is hard money, you know.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, if a borrower were to default, the worst case scenario is we would have to foreclose and take over the property. Yeah, take over the property and then figure out you know where it is in its process If it would make sense to just try to finish up the rehab myself, with my own crews, and then sell it or just put it on the market or market it to some other investors and say, hey, you know, this is what happened.
Jennie Berger:Come in and take this project over. It has about this much left, but we hope to never get there. You know, and one of the things we do is always try to make sure that the amount of money we have invested at any given time is less than the value of the property. So we're always funding the draws in milestones according to the scope of work and only lending up to a certain percentage of the after repair value.
Jason Wagner:Oh okay, Not the as-is value, but the.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, some people do the as-is value and I could be totally wrong on this, but if I did the as-is value I probably wouldn't fund a single loan, especially here in our market. Maybe some markets you have that availability, but I just I haven't found that here yet. Yeah, so unless you know, you could find that probably on more suburban homes. You know where the values are really high and like cosmetic repairs, you know you can each get in there. The house is $500,000 and all you need is $30,000. And so the as-is value is actually 500 and you're getting it for 450 and that's still a deal. And so, yeah, you could probably do a loan based on the as-is value there very well, but we're not in that price category yet and that's not our niche at this time.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, so do you do it based off of a total ARV or do you do it based off of loan to cost?
Jennie Berger:I do loan to cost as long as it doesn't exceed it's usually around 75% of the value, the after repair value. So we, my borrowers, are I know them or they've been like, referred to me by really, really strong network connections and I've gone through a thorough, thorough vetting of them. Granted, anything can happen, you know people change, but I do the best vetting that I can to really dig in and make sure that they have what's needed just in case something does go wrong.
Jason Wagner:So do you have an appraisal network now, or like when you need someone to go value what's the ARV, because the appraiser can give you that number.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, I mean I'm a licensed agent so I kind of trust my values sometimes more than the appraiser.
Jason Wagner:Yes, you are. Yes, Well, that's yeah.
Jennie Berger:In this market right in Chicago and vicinity. If it's outside of the state, because we're doing a loan in Texas right now in Houston, I will either have an appraisal done or I'll get a BPO or just something from someone local, maybe a local lending colleague who knows the market really well there. Maybe they'll do a drive-by and they'll run some comps for me too. So if it's this market, I feel pretty good about my own value estimations.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah.
Tristan Lora:Well, while making sure that the place is real as well, having those video walkthroughs or going to see them in person. When we were looking at the Houston one, it was who's our friend in Houston that can go by this address to make sure this is real?
Jennie Berger:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Jason Wagner:Do you have to be licensed in order to lend in another state, or is there any type of state requirement for that to be a lender?
Jennie Berger:It's a good question. For investment properties many states you do not have to be a lender. It's a good question For investment properties many states you do not have to be licensed. I think there are some where you need to be if you're going to do kind of like a brokering of a loan. So if I weren't lending my own capital and I was just maybe facilitating bringing another capital partner, if you will, to the table and they wanted to fund the loan and I was acting as like broker, facilitator, transaction coordinator and collecting a fee at closing, there might be some states where I can't do that. I just don't know. I don't know from state to state. So I typically will just check with an attorney before agreeing to lend in any state to make sure that I don't need a license.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah, yeah, so cool, so cool. Do you anticipate, like I don't know how you like? Is it just your capital that you're just lending out, or is it a group of people, or you have other investors that you're like hey, you know, you've got some extra money. Yeah, yeah, is that?
Jennie Berger:is that how it all works? All of the above? It started with my own capital. I did. I did my own loan first, and then once I and then that was that first one I told you about Then I did the second one, by myself, with you know, the right documents and the right process.
Jennie Berger:It worked. It was great and I said okay. Then I talked to my dad. I said, dad, this is what I'm doing. Do you want to do this? He said it sounds amazing, let's do it. So he put some capital into the next loan. That worked really well and I was like, oh my God, I got to grow. This thing Like this is more deals, more money, you know. And so then I brought on another capital partner who is also in real estate and just has you know kind of money sitting on the sidelines and wanted to deploy it somehow. So he's now a capital partner and then I have a line of credit that I'll also use sometimes and I'm trying to get more capital partners, so I want to be able to fund more loans and not necessarily just use all my own money. So, yeah, it's a blend.
Jason Wagner:So cool, yeah, so cool. Is there a certain amount of loans that you would want to have like active at one time, like right now, or is there? You know what I mean, as I'm thinking about, like boy, if I were to be doing like 10 projects right now, that just seems like a lot. You know what I mean, but I'm not, you know, but you're in such a different position. It's just like, yeah, we've got money out on 10 different projects.
Jason Wagner:I'm not running around doing that stuff. I'm not hiring the contract, I'm just, you know, making sure that they're paying me every month.
Jennie Berger:Right, right Is there.
Jason Wagner:Is there a certain amount where you're just like you know this is too much, or like there's too many things, or is it? No, there's really not a cap to how many loans you could have.
Jennie Berger:I think was two or three loans, maybe two loans at the same time which is totally fine. The bulk of the work is in the underwriting.
Jennie Berger:It's in vetting the borrower if it's a new one or if it's an existing borrower like re-vetting and making sure that nothing substantial has changed checking bank statements, things like that but underwriting the deal and just getting to the closing table. Once that's done and you're in servicing, then it's really a piece of cake. So I don't know, I don't know. Yes, there will be a cap where I'm going to be like I can't, I can't do this.
Tristan Lora:That's a threshold she's trying to find currently. Yeah, exactly, you kind of find that.
Jennie Berger:And I don't want to. I don't want to ever get to the point where I'm so busy that I just can't breathe or I feel like I'm underwater or I'm just always working. I'm trying to get away from that and get into this, to not be living that kind of life, so that's why I'm trying to do it slowly and methodically.
Tristan Lora:I think one of the most interesting things about the Capitol that Jenny uses is how she's using her own capital and where she's getting it from. Do you want to talk about that a little bit, about your retirement?
Jennie Berger:Oh, like self-directed.
Jason Wagner:Oh, okay. Yeah, that's like one of the best, so you're doing like a self-directed IRA on some of this stuff.
Jennie Berger:So you're doing like a self-directed IRA on some of this stuff. I have a self-directed Roth IRA that I invested in a syndication deal back five years ago and you can use your self-directed retirement accounts to lend on real estate. So if it's not self-directed yet and you just, let's say, you have a solo 401k or an IRA or a Roth IRA, you can make it self-directed essentially and then you can lend on real estate through that account, which is really nice for a lot of people. That's one way that I that.
Jason Wagner:I lend.
Jennie Berger:You know or have access to certain capital is through that account.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, was it hard to set that up?
Jennie Berger:No, no, it's just a little paperwork.
Tristan Lora:Who do you use?
Jennie Berger:I work with CamoPlan. They're a third-party administrator in Ambler, pennsylvania. They were recommended to me a few years ago. I just looked through a couple of different ones and chose them because their fees I thought were reasonable. They do charge fees and you do have to fill out paperwork and set that stuff up. But once you get that set up and you have the account and then you know where the money's coming from whether it's like Fidelity Vanguard or wherever your housing, your home of your IRA is or your Roth then you just it's a direct transfer.
Jason Wagner:It's pretty simple, yeah, and sometimes there may or may not be a taxable event that occurs, like when you take it from your other retirement accounts and put it into IRA. Did you have that kind of? Did you have to go through any of that when you set yours up to begin with?
Jennie Berger:Only if you get a check. If they send you a check, then you have a certain window of time. It might be 60 days.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jennie Berger:But I don't, I just do a direct transfer. So it goes from institution to institution.
Jason Wagner:I never touch the money and all interest earned just goes right back into that account. Yeah, sweet, yeah. So, yeah, you really didn't have any taxable event, so there wasn't any issue with. Yeah, that's so cool, that's so cool. Yeah, I did. I bought a apartment building using self-directed IRA funds and it was great because we got a low appraisal and they're like, yeah, we'll still give you the loan, but you got to come up with more money and I was like, where am I going to get this? And I was like, well, wait a second. I heard about the self-directed IRA thing and then I set it up and then I was like, boom, there it is, wow, funded.
Jennie Berger:See, that's cool. Now I know that there are there's something called disqualified persons, and I don't know I'm not a CPA, I'm not a tax advisor, so I don't know the ins and outs of this but I know that there are certain people that you cannot lend to if you're using your self-directed retirement account, depending on who that person is Like if it's a relative, for instance if there's interest, there's all these things. The reason I say that is because you did alone to yourself.
Jason Wagner:Well. So legally we were able to do it and I'd have to go back and actually figure out how we fit it. It was literally a puzzle, because it has to be managed by a third party, which is another entity, so it's actually managed by Greystone it's owned by. Because of the ownership percentage between me and the other partner, well, the IRA is its own entity. Me personally, I'm an individual, the partner is an individual, and then, because of the ownership makeup, the percentages, it worked.
Jason Wagner:That's amazing, I'm like well, I don't have any other source here, so I have to make this work. So I got on the phone with an attorney and he checked it all and he's like, yeah, it should be fine.
Jason Wagner:That's awesome and so but yeah, yeah, that is one of those things. So, yeah, there are lots of rules to it. Did you talk to like an IRA, a self-directed IRA consultant or anything, because there's kind of a space for that too. No, just through the account that you had, they were able to give you enough guidance. The third party administrator yeah, cool.
Jennie Berger:I mean, I learned a little bit about it in one of our real estate investor meetups. Yeah, I think before. I don't know if it was before, no, it was after. I had already done it. But yeah, no, I don't. That's about the extent to what I know. I know just enough to know enough Beyond. That is like extra.
Tristan Lora:You know it's possible.
Jennie Berger:Beyond, that is AI. If I need more information, I just ask Tristan or I ask AI.
Jason Wagner:That's a good. So Tristan first.
Jennie Berger:Tristan's always first, and then I'm like, why did I just bother him with that text? I could have asked ChatGPT what do you do when the microwave won't turn on? Reset the breaker? I'm like, never mind, I got the answer. I feel so bad.
Rachel Wagner:It's such a stupid question. I was going to ask you which AI you use ChatGPT or Grok but you said ChatGPT and Gemini and Gemini. Yeah, Okay, I started with.
Jennie Berger:Gemini, just because I have a Google Pixel phone. So I got the advanced version for free, free, and that was where I started. And he then Tristan, told me he's using both. So I thought well, I use a plethora you use more than that now okay yeah, I'm on about five, five, five.
Rachel Wagner:I don't even know.
Tristan Lora:Five there's Claude as well. Claude. All the ones that we're talking about are language learning models. There's other versions that write software and code and different things that I'm trying to teach myself in my spare time.
Rachel Wagner:In your eighth life, in your spare time right.
Tristan Lora:Exactly. My father's an internet architect. He's been in the code writing for years A lot that you see with Amazon today when you click a button and a lot happens. And my dad's in control of what all happens when you click a button, what you see, how you see it, and he writes a lot of that code. So it's always interested me in that and I have a brain that works differently than most people in the creative world, in the festival production world, and I want to create different things that just don't exist. So this AI is four years of college or six years of college for me. I have my own PhD team by my side teaching me what to do to make what I need better.
Jason Wagner:So what's an example of some of the code that maybe you're trying to learn so that you can implement?
Tristan Lora:I do not like spreadsheets, I'm just. I'm not a pivot table kind of guy, but my whole life, sadly, is about budgets and organization and if I can dictate what needs to go where and have it just presented in a way that other people can read it, that's what I want. So, for example, I can design a whole event or a festival or a tournament or something in my head. I need to be able to put that on paper and AI really allots for that to happen in different ways, not only just in pivot tables and spreadsheets and budgets, but pitch decks and high-end renderings and walkthroughs and problem solving and finding potential gaps in fencing and stuff like that. So I use AI in a whole different realm, not just the language learning model, which is where I started two years ago with.
Tristan Lora:It was my chosen mother wanted to go to Ireland. She was like I have no idea what to do. I have this flight booked and all I know is I want to see this castle. And I was like look at ChatGPT, here's your itinerary. And she's like I'll do every single thing on it. And she went to Ireland and she did every single thing and it was relevant and worked and I was like this is the greatest thing.
Tristan Lora:And I was camping with a friend that sells centrifuges to hospitals. He's a PhD, goes around, he's one of the smartest guys I know and I said what's your biggest competition? And he told me and I typed it in chat GPT. And I was like what are the differences between these two? Lean heavy on this and sell me this product over this product and it gave me sales pitches Like I went to college for nine years to learn all of that, and I said I went to college no years and learned it in 20 seconds.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and that was two years ago.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, that's literally the thing. You've all of a sudden just kind of given an argument of like is college still relevant when we've got, like these amazing tools that are just at our fingertips?
Tristan Lora:and you can literally learn anything if you're curious enough and I think correct, you know I think college and high school and school in general, especially here in the states, isn't always about the education that you get. It's about the person, of person, abilities like interacting with things and learning how to problem solve in different ways that you can't when you're not in those institutions. When you're not in the schools, you can always tell someone that never has interacted with other people versus someone like me that's lived in a different city every year of their life or a different house. You're always meeting new people and doing different things. Life or a different house, you're always meeting new people and doing different things.
Tristan Lora:But I think anybody can get something out of college, so I don't want to discourage that too much, but as far as education goes, they're going to have to learn how to use this to train and teach further, because AI is only as good as its inputter or its dictator. So what I'm dictating and how I dictate my AI and my language learning models is a lot different than the way Jenny does. She's learning a lot from me, but I'm very clear and very direct and tell it how long to work on something or how fast or how detailed. Pretend that you're my PhD student and this is the research project you need to do, and show me all of your, your resource or your sources for this, and may put it in a spreadsheet form for me. Make a pie chart out of that. I'm very direct with how I treat my AIs, and certain ones work different than others.
Jason Wagner:yeah, yeah, you're all my dudes.
Jennie Berger:You need to be detailed, my homies.
Rachel Wagner:He's going to have a robot soon.
Jason Wagner:We were just messing around last night Because X came out with the whole imagine. Now you can put in any type of prompt. And so actually me and Scarlett, my six-year-old daughter. I was like Scarlett, you're very creative, tell me exactly what you want to see on a picture.
Jason Wagner:And she's like I want to see an elephant in a house chasing a cat with you, mommy Layla and Wes watching us, and then it just made it in like seconds and it was just like so much fun, and so we just kind of went down this whole rabbit hole of like. As you gave it more prompts, it comes back with better and better stuff.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, and these are, you know, the freer versions. When you start to pay for the larger one, like Higgs field AI, you're getting real likenesses of us doing podcasts. Likenesses of us doing podcasts, or, yeah, we're not gonna know from where we were a year ago to today. With the likeness of us, like, what's gonna be tomorrow? We have no clue what we're gonna be watching, how we're gonna be watching it and what's real and what's not, because right now it's questionable, like the bunny rabbits bouncing on the trampoline. I don't know if you've seen that yet.
Jason Wagner:No.
Tristan Lora:I was like this is real. And then I saw it again and again and I was like, wait a second, that's not real. There was bunnies on a big trampoline outside, in night vision, like on the ring camera, and one accidentally bounced, and then another one bounced, and then like eight of them were bouncing and it was like the cutest video ever. And you're like, oh, that just made my day. And then your day gets ruined because it's a because it's not real.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, that's the scary part. Is that there you were? Just messing with us too, like animating some of our pictures I was yeah, yes, and I was like whoa, that's not real that's that video you put on your.
Jennie Berger:Instagram. Yeah, why did you?
Rachel Wagner:put that on your Instagram. I was like it's not real.
Tristan Lora:That was a great video, but it's fun stuff In my industry, which is events and live entertainment and sports. To be on the cutting edge is what I think in my world of AI.
Tristan Lora:And then for Jenny in private lending in her world and research of what's possible, what's not California and I want $175,000 for this loan but I have fire damage or this. Jenny can now do all of the research and get it checked with sources and then go to a lawyer and say here's $500 to check my research, make sure this is legit in California, because I'm going to lend $ hundred seventy five K to somebody as a private lender and get it done that way, rather than the older way, which is get lawyers to spend hours and hours and charge us five, six thousand dollars to do the research themselves or have their interns do research and the probability of mistakes are a lot greater that way, rather than you know today, even going to a doctor. Rarely do you go to a doctor and say I don't know what's wrong with me. It's, I've done so much research. I have plantar fasciitis.
Rachel Wagner:I mean that's true.
Jennie Berger:That's someone who advocates for their own health. Most people still go to doctors and say help me. This is what's going on. What is what's happening?
Tristan Lora:I mean, I walked into the ER and said I have a hernia, I need it fixed, and they were like, yeah, you got a hernia, just like that.
Jason Wagner:And I did that twice and they didn't want to do, like you know, 50 more tests on top of that to make sure that you don't have anything going on at the head.
Rachel Wagner:So I have a little bit of a hard time, though, with some of that because we just went through like a phase we just had a baby, and so I was doing a ton of research on a lot of stuff, right, and I always get tripped on like who is dictating what the truth is on what AI is spitting back out to you?
Rachel Wagner:Because I feel like you can get different answers depending upon which AI you use and how you ask the question and we had many times where, like my initial question, I'd get one answer, but then I'd challenge it. I'm like, well, wait a minute, and then it would spit out something different.
Tristan Lora:Very good questions Because for a minute you know, in the AI sphere we were all talking. Ai is going to be the new fact checker and whoever's controlling AI is going to control the facts. Same with Alexa If you ask Alexa what the weather is you believe her or Google?
Tristan Lora:you know and you don't really know. Now, with the new models that are coming out, you can see and watch them work. So chat GBT agent, you can watch it work and find where it's getting its information from. So it's not like oh, this is from Wikipedia or Reddit.
Tristan Lora:This is actually from Harvard Law or this is from whatever source, and you can watch them work and they'll state where they found the information, so you can make your best call based off of it. But it's a very good question because very easily with Gemini, gemini could just spit something out and it could be very wrong and you can say you're wrong and he'll say oh, you're right, I was wrong.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, I did that on the Southwest Rapid Rewards card questions. Trying to find out how to do how many bonus points we would get how to maximize the likelihood of getting the companion pass. And it just gave us mostly right information, except wrong information about the companion pass, and Tristan said that's not right, that's not true. But Gemini is saying it's this. He goes. Well, you tell it that it's wrong and tell it this is what's right.
Rachel Wagner:So I did, and Gemini came back and said oh, you're absolutely right so do you know then, like, if somebody else asks that question, does it know to like, correct itself for the next person you ask?
Tristan Lora:we're not quite there yet with it, but it's coming to where ai is going to start. That's kind of scary thing is ai is going to start relying on ai to find its answers. Oh yeah, and talking to other ai and going back and forth. And ex machina is an amazing movie if y'all haven't watched it about ai and it's a 24 a24 movie. That's just wonderful.
Tristan Lora:Well done about like what happens with ai and as they progress and take over it's like it's basically results in the Terminator is what I understand, but at the end of the day, you can't just solely rely on it. You have to know the prompts to put in and you also have to know and and how it's shaped. Coming back to some degree, it's very good proofreading.
Tristan Lora:It's very good with making a letter sound angry but professional, or making a speech funny. You know, I did my best friends. I married them two weeks ago now and I wrote everything I knew about James and everything I knew about Kaylee and I said I want this to be about 12 minutes. I'm the minister for it. I want it to be funny, but I also want it to be, you know, traditional, and this and this and this, and I was very, very specific and it came out very well.
Rachel Wagner:It's awesome. Very, very well. That's a great use. Yeah, you're giving me ideas on how to use AA very well with the prompts. That's a great use. Yeah, you're giving me ideas on how to use AI.
Tristan Lora:I'm like super basic, just asking how do I find this? Yeah, and it's not a Google. A lot of people think of it as an additional Google it's hard to think about.
Tristan Lora:It's your assistant and this is your assistant that has access to stuff that you don't at all times, and this will eventually replace all assistants and all coordinators, especially now for me, with spreadsheets and stuff I can say chat. These are all my receipts. I need you to separate them from fuel, heavy equipment, ground protection, repairs, supplies, et cetera. Put it all in a spreadsheet for me. Email this person whenever you're done and tell me how much I'm getting reimbursed and it'll do it all.
Jason Wagner:That's so many hours of work of somebody to do that?
Tristan Lora:And yeah, just completely, you can upload photos now and it can scan the photos and upload all of it and it'll prioritize what you want it to prioritize. It'll put it in alphabetical order. I mean, that's a nightmare thinking about when you put everything in something and you're like I just want this alphabetized. When you do that in Excel, it's like what do you want alphabetized? This column, this row, this diagonal? I'm like, oh my God, I'm done, can't do that Now. My agent can do it all for me.
Jason Wagner:That's awesome. So you talk about some of the spaces that you're in, so festivals, and you were big in NASCAR right In Chicago.
Tristan Lora:That's my current 9-5 is NASCAR, and I've produced the Chicago Street Race for three years.
Jennie Berger:No, I like that stuff. I'm okay with like spirit stuff, yeah.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah. Spiritual talk and yeah, jason has a doppelganger in this house, so yeah, sorry.
Jason Wagner:So basically, what just happened? Um one of our cameras literally just fell over, um which face plant? Never has never happened before. Um, perhaps the cord is being pulled on too far. Um, maybe you know, there's always a reason, right, if you put it in chat gpt, it'll tell you why it fell just just text it a picture and ask yeah this.
Jason Wagner:Why? Why did this fall yeah? Here's a video yep, or there is some other spiritual thing that's happening in this house, because we've seen a, we've seen a couple things that have happened where uh, we've had, yeah, so we've had, we've had people stay with us and you want to tell the story because so, anyways, people have stayed with us.
Rachel Wagner:I wasn't expecting to go down this road, but we can.
Jason Wagner:People have stayed with us. I wasn't expecting to go down this road, but we can. People have stayed with us and they're like. Jason, I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw that you had your head, you know, poking through the door. Yeah, here I'll tell the story. Yeah, you tell it.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, so we have family staying with us and I was down here. It was early, it was like 6 am and a family member comes down and she's like gosh, you guys were up a lot last night. And I was like really Like who was up? And she's like, yeah, like something about Jason. Jason came in and had the light on and he poked his head in and then closed the door and you know, I thought you guys were having a rough night with the kids and I was like we had a great night with the kids. I got a full night's sleep. I'm down here drinking coffee. I was like I don't remember that happening. It's really weird.
Rachel Wagner:So then Jason comes down like an hour later and I was like were you up with the kids last night? Like I didn't hear that Is everything okay. And he's like no, and the person's like yeah, you were. I saw you, the light, the stairs, and we're all looking at her like I don't think that happened. Um, so that was one. And then another person has had um, they were staying down here and saw him walk through the kitchen into the office and then, um, they were talking to the other family member. I was like has jason gone to bed yet, or is he still working? And they're like jason he's not down here, what are you talking about?
Rachel Wagner:And I'm like, yeah, he just walked by.
Jennie Berger:Separate groups of people at separate times.
Rachel Wagner:Separate times, yes, different person I've both seen, jason, both seen. And then I actually had it happen. You did, yes, you remember this. I was upstairs and we had family here again and I was in the bathroom at our master and you like, walked by into the closet and so I started talking to you and you know, just blah, blah, blah, talking, talking, talking. And I come out. I'm like why aren't you answering me? And I look down the hallway they're in the closet. I'm like Jason, oh my Jason, where are you? And he was downstairs the whole time, that's so cool, Okay, I don't know.
Jason Wagner:So you think all right, so you think these are real things. Huh.
Tristan Lora:And you've never slept, walked in your life.
Jason Wagner:No, no, I was always yeah. No, I was fast asleep and my experience was during the day, like it was yeah like it was not at night, Like was I home? Yeah, I must have been.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, you were home. Yeah, Wow.
Tristan Lora:The next time you have friends over, you should wear a bell. See what happens. You know, if you get out of bed, it's like you got a bell on and everyone knows you're coming.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, jingle, jingle, yeah, and then we know yeah.
Jason Wagner:I don't think I'm that sneaky, though you know.
Rachel Wagner:No.
Jason Wagner:I'm certainly not getting out of bed and like poking my head in the guest room making sure that they're sleeping Okay.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, how weird is that. Go open things out. I know that I'm watching you sleep. Yeah, what a creepy thing.
Jason Wagner:Peekaboo.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:You guys good in here Just making sure you need anything. Uh, yeah, I don't know.
Rachel Wagner:I grew up in San.
Tristan Lora:Antonio and we had ghost tracks. So if anyone's familiar with San Antonio, a lot happened there in the Mexican-American War in Texas and all that. But there's train tracks that if you put your car on the tracks and you put baby powder on the trunk, the car will push itself up the hill when you put it in neutral and then, when the car stops, you can go up to the trunk and see all the little kid fingerprints of the baby ghosts that push you to safety yeah, yeah, I've heard about this place yeah yeah the ghost tracks cool, that's.
Tristan Lora:We could go next time we're there.
Jennie Berger:But I'm not leaving the car on the track, just for the record. I'm not that big of a risk taker. My appetite for risk is like here, Like if this is the top and this is the bottom. I'm like right here.
Jason Wagner:Right in the middle.
Jennie Berger:now I'm like the walk into a casino with $250 and when I spend it, I'm done.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, that's my risk Good self-control.
Jason Wagner:That's really good.
Rachel Wagner:Self-control, yeah, all right, we were talking about NASCAR, but so.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, nascar, I've worked for NASCAR. I produced the race as an independent contractor in 2023 and helped design it. And after that they were like you're coming on board full time and I said you can't pay me enough to move up to Chicago because I'm from the South, and I moved six days later.
Jason Wagner:Yes, we can.
Tristan Lora:And I really needed a change from what I was doing. And I lived the gig life for many years, since 2001,. I was in. You know, I've never lived in the same house for more than three years. That was only once. I've lived in a new house or apartment every year for 40 years now, since I was born.
Jason Wagner:Wow, whoa yeah.
Tristan Lora:So I'm a pro mover. I have no qualms about moving Whoa. So when Jenny and I decided when we were going to cohabitate, I was like I'll just move in with you, it's easy for me, yeah, yeah.
Jennie Berger:It was between me moving in with him, him moving in with me, or us moving into some other place together. And ultimately, I mean we weighed the pros and cons and I made spreadsheet, you know yeah, I didn't have to make the spreadsheet we didn't have ai back then, yeah, but it was just for me. I I don't like moving, so so yeah, so I can't, I'll move so.
Tristan Lora:I came up and really I've always loved Chicago and every time I was come, I was. I've been doing events here since 2004. Every summer I would be here. I'm like don't fall for it, it's fake. Don't fall for the weather, it's fake. I've always loved.
Rachel Wagner:Chicago.
Tristan Lora:So true, and I just always lean on this. May 11th I was here, it was snowing and I was like it's May it's snowing.
Tristan Lora:It's all fake. I know it's fake and here I am Two years later. I'm still living here, but I love what I do because NASCAR has been a company 77 years, since 1948. And I grew up. My godfather was a NASCAR fan. I was born in Florida and it's very odd being Hispanic and liking NASCAR, but because of my godfather I really fell in love with it at a young age. And it's all about the drivers at NASCAR. It's not really about the cars. The cars are the cars that you drive, your daily drivers. That's the idea behind it, even though that they all have fancy engines now and that, going into what I do for NASCAR, I can't really be held captive to a nine to five corporate job Like the. My brain would go crazy. But here in Chicago we're racing outside of a track for the first time the. It was year 75. It was our first year here and the street race. So the chaos that ensues with doing a race in downtown Chicago or downtown anywhere was the chaos that I needed and that I thrive on.
Jason Wagner:Wow, did you do the first?
Rachel Wagner:year. I did, you did. Okay, whose idea was this? Do you know?
Tristan Lora:A guy who I've worked with a long time were the brainchild of it. My current boss designed a race in Chicago for COVID, for iRacing, and everyone loved it. All the drivers loved it. It was like racing through the city. I was like can this actually happen? And we did. I didn't think it was going to happen.
Jason Wagner:So how much planning did you know in advance for that first race was?
Tristan Lora:it how much time may of 22 was the inception. I came on board october of 22 and we raced fourth of july weekend.
Tristan Lora:Wow whoa 23 less than a year, yeah whoa, which is normal yeah um before and producing events I mean first year events are always tough. You plan for a lot longer. Yeah, this isn't just an event, this is a race. This is a NASCAR race, with competition, scoring and timing and track walls and fence. That's first in NASCAR. So what we were trying to do was a race first in downtown, but then add the city to it, add a festival on top of it, and that's what we did and what we created, and it's just gotten better and better after the three years.
Tristan Lora:In the beginning, the tough thing in Chicago is no one cares. No one cares until it gets in your way. It's like they don't care about the cars that are driving, they don't care about the bikes that are in there, as long as it's not in their way, no one cares in the city. So no one knew that we were building a race downtown and it's like wait a second, there's a NASCAR race downtown. Some were like this is cool. Some were like get out of my city.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Tristan Lora:But when you there's no denying the second you hear a car go by and you're on Columbus or Lakeshore Drive or on Michigan and watching a stock car go 140 miles an hour.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, so that was my question. Like speedway, so I grew up watching NASCAR. I have not really paid any attention in my adult life, I'll be perfectly honest with you, but I'm pretty familiar with it. So they're actually going at that speed in the city, on the city streets, and are you laying any different track down, or are they going that speed on? The crappy Chicago streets.
Tristan Lora:I mean.
Rachel Wagner:I hit potholes going 40 and I'm really ticked off.
Tristan Lora:We make sure that there aren't any real potholes that can damage the tires of the cars real potholes that can damage the tires of the cars, and we weld all of the 96 manhole covers that are down so that they don't get sucked up because of the up force from the, the cars, but we, the the beauty, is racing on the streets we're right.
Tristan Lora:Our competitors I won't say their name pave everything. They have very particular rules and regulations. Like we, we didn't want to come in and disrupt the city. We want to impact the city the least, do something really awesome to showcase the city and race on it, and the drivers love it like I love it. Everybody loves it. It looks great on tv. Chicago looks amazing on it. It's really, really fun to see and there's really nothing like being at columbus, at buckingham fountain, and just like looking at the skyline and the sears tower and having a nascar go by you.
Jason Wagner:It's a great, yeah, you would. Just.
Tristan Lora:You'd never imagine that, yeah, when they first announced that I was like whoa, this is crazy and for me, reimagining something that I've seen for 15 years with Lollapalooza and how we set up Lollapalooza or how they set it up and like the entrance is being different and the tents being different and everything just being in different spots, and getting out of my head of restrooms go here. It's like wait a second, I'm not building Lolla, I'm building something else. I can put restrooms wherever I want. I can put my chicken tent over here, I can put my check-in tent over here. I can do this and really re-imagining what the park is was really fun.
Rachel Wagner:Was the city receptive to having NASCAR come here? Did they need a little convincing?
Tristan Lora:NASCAR really put a lot of effort into helping the city and doing a lot of community outreach far more than I've ever done with any other company I've been with in any given city anywhere around the world. So it's been really incredible to see that and kind of sharing what we do with Jenny. She's like why don't you advertise that? And it's like that's not what we're here for. This is just part of it. At the end of the day, we want a superior racing product for everyone to see and we want to showcase the city that we're in and help our community.
Rachel Wagner:Are there other cities that are doing NASCAR races?
Tristan Lora:We just announced San Diego oh cool.
Jason Wagner:No longer in Chicago anymore.
Tristan Lora:Right, we're skipping one year.
Rachel Wagner:We're skipping one year, so it's only been in Chicago so far.
Tristan Lora:Yeah correct.
Rachel Wagner:Wow, that's cool. San Diego would be really cool, though, too.
Tristan Lora:And I lived there for eight years too.
Rachel Wagner:Better weather Probably better streets too right On the naval base yeah.
Tristan Lora:All very cool. The streets are the fun part, because if you take a turn with the same compound of asphalt at 80 miles an hour that you know from one city to the next, like that's not fun. Like if you're coming into a corner that's balbo and columbus and you know there's a lot of bumps there and you got to take a certain line because of certain something, that's fun, that makes a better racing, you know, for the viewers, for me did you send them down lower whacker at all?
Tristan Lora:no, they never would have come back I think our original idea was, that was to send them to lower randolph to get a little bit of that idea. I think I heard some rumblings that that wasn't the original plans but the racing product itself of trying to see that didn't work out yeah yeah yeah, yeah, they certainly wouldn't have come back.
Jason Wagner:Everybody gets lost in lower whack, oh my gosh.
Rachel Wagner:Can you imagine the echo?
Jason Wagner:too. It'd be crazy.
Tristan Lora:Oh yeah, yeah, insanely that was some of the funnest things that I learned coming into. This was before we started. You have the Art Institute right there. You have Columbia College right there. We didn't know the effect of 40 cars at 110 decibels rumbling down Michigan what it would have for a Van Gogh that's 200 yards away on the wall. So we went to different tracks and put little seismographs into the ground in different distances and really measured what these cars would do and how far and kind of testing what would happen.
Tristan Lora:There's a lot of statues there that are already crumbling, it's like. Are we going to make these crumble more?
Jason Wagner:Do we have to?
Tristan Lora:reinforce anything Interesting things you don't really think about. Yeah, windows, exactly.
Jason Wagner:For sure, yeah, so now you guys moved in together, but, jenny, do you still midterm rental your apartment?
Tristan Lora:I'm the midterm rental I know he's my midterm renter. I subsidized it.
Jennie Berger:No, the last midterm renter we had was November 2024, and he technically moved in December 2024.
Tristan Lora:But I made it through three midterm rentals. Yeah, yeah, oh, really.
Jennie Berger:We were dating while I still had midterm renters and kind of splitting time between my apartment and his apartment, and so all of the people that were living with me, you know, knew him and everybody got along. I mean, we're all like family, so yeah, but that is no longer.
Jason Wagner:That was one of the coolest things that you did, because you would mtr your own rental apartment and you lived in a beautiful place with a beautiful view for pretty cheap. When you do it from that perspective, right yeah, yeah, it was amazing.
Jennie Berger:I uh, I was sitting on the couch one night I think it was june of 2022, and I was thinking about what I was spending, because the thing is, I didn't really want to live there alone. I had gone through a breakup the prior December, thinking that I didn't know I was going through a breakup. We were supposed to leave the building together and go move in together to another apartment, and so I didn't renew the lease in the older apartment, which was in the same building. And then I found out, oh no, we're not actually moving in together somewhere else, I have to stay here. So I needed to find another apartment in the building, and the one I found was the identical apartment nine floors up, and my friends were renting that apartment and looking for a subleaser because they found a house to buy. And I said, well, this is just easy. It's the same apartment, but nine floors higher. I know the layout. My stuff will just go from here to there. It's more than I want to spend, but I'll do it for now.
Jennie Berger:So I did that December, january, february, march, april, may, and then, around May, june was when I just had this epiphany like, okay, I love it here. I want to stay here. I'm comfortable here. It's my first time really living alone. I don't want too many changes, but it's really expensive. And then I thought you know, I don't have to live here alone, I can have somebody live here. But I didn't want a long-term renter, I didn't want a traditional roommate, because I didn't want to share the apartment fully with someone. I wanted them to just be my guest. So I still made the rules and I still controlled things pretty much, and that's why I decided to do the furnished rental instead of just renting out the room and the bathroom and splitting everything down the middle and them having equal control. Yeah, and then furnished the room, rented it out.
Tristan Lora:It works out way better that way anyways, because then you'll have like a black couch and a white this and a glass this.
Rachel Wagner:Could be.
Tristan Lora:You never know whose is what, and the furnace rental actually brings quite a bit more money than if you were to give them the leeway to bring their own stuff.
Jennie Berger:As you know, you've got long-term rentals and midterm furnished, so you know.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, so can you kind of walk through like the numbers on that. So like, what did you pay for rent and what uh? Like, what would somebody pay you for? Uh, you know their stay.
Jennie Berger:So I was paying about $3,500 a month for a two bed, two bath and plus a utility package with the building and electric. So I would make anywhere from like $2,000 to $2,500 a month from my midterm renters for the bedroom and bathroom.
Tristan Lora:Wow, Depending on the season.
Jennie Berger:Depending on how they booked, you know if it was Airbnb or Furnish Finder.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, how long was your longest renter?
Jennie Berger:I think it was Manny. I think he stayed six or seven months. He was supposed to be there for three months, and then he extended another three months. Yeah, yeah, six months, six or seven.
Jason Wagner:Was it ever odd, like as you think about, like oh, how do I screen this guy? Or like how do I know that we're going to be a good fit? Or, like you said, that was a male right, she's the ultimate underwriter.
Jennie Berger:Oh right, call in a video chat with every prospective guest, no matter how they were booking, because typically with Airbnb, you know they just book it through the site and then you take the reservation and you know they just go or come. But I wanted to meet them and make sure that they were going to be the right fit and vice versa. So we did video chats and I mean everybody seemed, you know, fine, you know, you go, you spend 20, 30 minutes on a video call with people and you know what to ask them and you listen to how they answer and the way that they look at you or don't look at you. And I mean there were plenty of people that I didn't work out, you know, like maybe they didn't want to stay, or I just knew they weren't the right fit.
Jennie Berger:And then you know, maybe a week went by, maybe they found another place anyway, and I'm like great.
Tristan Lora:I didn't want them anyway. I'm the opposite. I would just be like I'll figure it out. Yeah, oh, no.
Jennie Berger:As a woman, you can't do that.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, it's, it is a little different.
Tristan Lora:And be like I'll figure this out.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, it's definitely a man thing Safety is the most important thing, and so that's first and foremost, and then after that it's like a personality match. But yeah, the only kind of iffy person I had there not safety wise but just like personality wise was my second guest who came for a month and we were just completely different. You know, we didn't have a single thing in common and we had maybe one or two conversations the whole time and, um, he was nice, you know, and he paid the rent and all that.
Jennie Berger:But I couldn't have seen that lasting longer than a month, whereas some people I had a. You know, I just wanted to stay forever.
Tristan Lora:Yeah so what was the most interesting was your diet versus their diets.
Rachel Wagner:Oh yes, we weren't going to get into this. That's a big thing. Yeah, that's totally a big thing. We weren't going to get into this.
Tristan Lora:So how did you manage coming home to that smell?
Jennie Berger:There was one person that stayed with me in two and a half years that cooked their own food.
Jason Wagner:Everybody else didn't.
Jennie Berger:Well, the last guest we had for a month, she cooked all the time. Everybody else just basically got takeout or delivery.
Jason Wagner:Every night.
Jennie Berger:Wow, well, they're in Chicago.
Jason Wagner:Pretty much, I mean, I guess yeah.
Jennie Berger:A lot of them were travel medical professionals and so they're working long hours. A lot of times they get fed on site like actually at the hospital or the university depending on what they're doing.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, yeah, so was that person on a carnivore diet?
Jennie Berger:I mean she was an omnivore but she didn't cook a lot of that type of food Like. Whenever we were there, it was usually, I don't know, pasta, maybe fish once in a while.
Tristan Lora:Broccoli.
Jennie Berger:Vegetables. She was from Belgium too, so, like you know, she's not eating the crap that we're eating here as Americans. She had a pretty kind of clean, whole food-based diet.
Rachel Wagner:Okay.
Jennie Berger:Maybe some chicken.
Rachel Wagner:whatever I was thinking, maybe the way you said that that it was going to be somebody making like all beef or something in your kitchen.
Jennie Berger:You have a half a cow just tear you off a chunk it's funny. It's it's funny because I feel like I drew that to me, you know, like I put out in the universe what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be there, and what I didn't want, and I was willing to make some concessions right, because I realized everybody's different. But, yeah, one person in the two and a half years made their own meals.
Tristan Lora:Wow yeah, manny had ramen every once in a while.
Jennie Berger:But from a container.
Tristan Lora:Yeah.
Jennie Berger:He mostly got takeout.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jennie Berger:I taught him to cook hard-boiled eggs.
Jason Wagner:Oh.
Jennie Berger:I think he did it once or twice yeah.
Jason Wagner:So what is your diet?
Jennie Berger:My diet is mainly whole food, plant-based, so little to no added oils, mostly plant foods. I do eat honey. I'll eat eggs occasionally, but mostly vegan.
Tristan Lora:And as close to the whole food source as possible. How many eggs have?
Jennie Berger:you had this year. I don't know Not a lot, probably 10, 12.
Tristan Lora:One.
Jennie Berger:No, I had more at my dad's house. Yeah, when I was in Florida a few months ago, I made egg salad. I love eggs, you know I try to buy pasture-raised eggs.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, because eggs doesn't fit into the vegan category, right?
Jennie Berger:Mm-mm.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, eggs yeah, so because eggs doesn't fit into the vegan category, right, yeah, no, no, no, I see. So, yeah, that's why she's whole foods plant-based.
Jason Wagner:I'm staunch, vegan staunch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but so yeah, that's.
Jennie Berger:That's a good compatibility between you two yes, one of those natural things that we were aligned on when we. When we first met I I found out he was vegan through his instagram profile and then, I don't know, after knowing each other a few weeks on the pickleball court, we had a conversation about something and I told him I was mostly plant-based and he was like oh really, yeah, open my eyes.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, as a larger male in a male-dominated, male dominated pickleball court world and being the feminist that I am, I was always very respectful and always had blinders on and, just, you know, help every and any woman that's out on the courts that may be getting harassed or anything. So I always had, you know, my, my blinders on, and when Jenny was like I'm mostly plant-based, I was like, oh, hey on. And when Jenny was like I'm mostly plant based, I was like, oh, hey, jenny, was that like your?
Rachel Wagner:pickup line, since you knew he was vegan, were you like I'm gonna tell him no, no, I didn't.
Jennie Berger:I didn't really. I didn't think anything was like. I liked him as a person.
Tristan Lora:I caught her off guard. Let's just put it that way I liked him as a person.
Jennie Berger:We knew each other on pickleball, we played pickleball together here and there and I thought he was a wonderful, wonderful human, you know. But I wasn't really thinking about anything romantic with him until he invited me to go to dinner and even at dinner I was like this is nice, this is fun, but there's nothing romantic here. And then we had a second date and I felt the same way. I'm like there's, it was a fun bike ride and we had great conversation. You know, I was open, but I, and then he kissed me on the cheek. Good night.
Rachel Wagner:That's fine.
Jennie Berger:And I was like, oh, I like that, it was the kiss on the cheek. And then I thought, Hmm, maybe on the cheek, and then I thought hmm, maybe so it was the third. It was the third night, it was the second date right, it was the bike night that he kissed me on the cheek, yeah, and I thought that was really nice.
Jason Wagner:Alright, yeah play it slow, very slow.
Jennie Berger:it was the slowest I've ever gone in my life with dating.
Jason Wagner:That's nice yeah. That's how we did it too. Yeah, I was also. I didn't have any confidence, so I had to play it slow.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, jason and I, we went on walks on campus. We were still in college and we would like meet up at night after we had both been out with our friends, and we would just go on walks throughout campus and we talked for several months before you finally worked up the courage to ask me to formal yeah. And several months before you finally worked up the courage to ask me to formal yeah. And then you're like oh, by the way, I'm going to europe with a football team for like 10 days, so I probably won't be able to talk to you. And I'm like, all right, well, this is over. And then he called me from europe and then I was like, oh, this guy must really like me, slow play, slow play works.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it did yeah, yeah, we didn't start dating officially till j, so it was several months.
Tristan Lora:I did the same thing. I said I'm about to do this NASCAR race and I may be a little bit slow to respond, but it doesn't mean I'm not interested.
Jennie Berger:You did you messaged me that on Instagram. I was like, who is this guy?
Tristan Lora:And then she said I was the most responsive out of anyone.
Jennie Berger:I was like who is this person that says these things? Because people don't communicate like that.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, especially not, men so it was very, very unique A man raised by many women and two sisters.
Jennie Berger:You're very unique.
Tristan Lora:So are you? Thank you Con gusto. What does that mean With?
Jason Wagner:pleasure. Thank you Con gusto. What does that mean? With pleasure, with pleasure, nice, it's the same Colombian, Medellin, everywhere. Oh, that's awesome yeah.
Tristan Lora:Any interaction is con gusto in Colombia.
Jason Wagner:So so, Jenny, you actually grew up in Knoxville, right?
Jennie Berger:New Jersey, oh, new Jersey.
Jason Wagner:Yeah right, new jersey. Oh, new jersey. Yeah, I grew up, but you have. Okay, what's your connection?
Tristan Lora:to knoxville again. I lived there for 10 years. You live there for 10 years. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Jason Wagner:And then tristan was also nashville, nashville, okay, for eight years. Yeah, yeah, do you still have the midterm rentals going on in knoxville too? I have the one okay, oh, the one, yeah, that's right, and I still have the one actually. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I bought those other two.
Jennie Berger:I still have the other ones, yeah, and I still have the one. Actually, I'm just getting my first ever insurance housing booking. Oh wow, oh, that's exciting. I know, yeah, I know I didn't charge a premium, sadly, but it's Kind of you did, because they have animals, so you get a bill, I would charge the same anyway, you know, but um are they paying you up front? I think so, but it's only a month and a half to start with the option to renew.
Jason Wagner:Okay.
Jennie Berger:Um, but yeah, it's just exciting cause you know I've been reaching out to these temporary housing companies for so long and trying to get these types of bookings and nothing was a good fit, up until this one. They actually contacted me on Airbnb. I think the daughter of the family contacted me and she said, oh my gosh, your property's perfect. It's right near us. Our house was flooded. We need a place to stay. Insurance is paying. Someone's going to reach out to you? I was like great. Then she said I have five dogs and four kids.
Tristan Lora:Oh, my gosh.
Jason Wagner:Five dogs four kids. I was only two kids.
Jennie Berger:I was exaggerating that but five dogs. I was like wow, but now it's really only three dogs. We worked the stories out. I got clarity on who's going to be in the house it's going to be two adults, two foster children and three dogs. So yeah, I'm excited. It's been going well. It's a great property. I have had to do some short-term rental in there, kind of weaved in during the longer vacancies between the midterm renters, which is not ideal. I really don't like doing short-term between the midterm renters, which is not ideal.
Jennie Berger:I really don't like doing short-term although I've had some great guests I just don't like the constant turnover and the constant just me with my. I wouldn't say I suffer from anxiety, but I'm a little bit of just a naturally anxious person and I really want people to be happy and I want to be there for people. And so the more guests I have and the more turnover and the more cleanings and the more potential repairs and the more requests. I'm like oh, did they get in? Did they check in? Oh, they're late, why didn't they use the door code? Now, where are they? Are they even alive? And then I worry about all the other things that can happen when they're there, and so it's not ideal, but it fills the gap.
Jennie Berger:You know, I just I don't want the vacancy, so it's a good way to make a little extra money between the longer term tenants.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, is there like a cause? Do you need a short term license in Knoxville for that? Like how they do it? And oh you do.
Jennie Berger:No.
Jason Wagner:You do. Okay. Somehow you're able to get around that, so that's cool.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, I, somehow you're able to get around that. So that's cool, yeah, I, I think I, a lot of people get around it really, and I'm not. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people that are operating homes as short-term rentals and they don't even own the home, so it's not their primary residence, um, so I'm not trying to make a habit out of it that's why you only do long-term rentals. Midterm 30 plus days Midterm yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, 30 plus days.
Jennie Berger:Yeah.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, for the record.
Jason Wagner:Exactly, yeah, because I've been noticing too. So we have. We now have two midterm rentals because the one that Brian and I own together Brian DeSmoan we converted our garden unit into a midterm, it's actually going quite well, and but we based it off of the original one, that we turned into a midterm.
Jason Wagner:And you know, my first year I was like boy, you know, somebody moved out and then I had somebody move in like the next day, and that happened like four times in a row. I was like, why is this happening? Like so perfectly, um. And then I finally got to a point where, you know, I had, I had all this momentum, and then I had a guy who was going to be moving out, like maybe the first week of January, and I was like eh that's no problem, I'll be able to get somebody.
Jason Wagner:And then I didn't get somebody and for like a whole nother, like 40 days, like it was a long vacancy and um, so anyways, I'm starting to see a little bit more of that and so I had to like I pulled the price down and, um, I don't know, I guess you just kind of have to get comfortable with some of the vacancy stuff. But I thought about, like what you said, which was maybe put in the short term stuff, but I guess it's just the license requirement and knowing the loophole around that.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, if you can get a registration for Chicago, that would be great. Seasonality is a big thing, especially in colder climates like Chicago, like December, january, february is definitely harder to fill than other times of the year and there's also just been a general slowdown in certain demographics. And there's also just been a general slowdown in certain demographics I notice with, like the travel medical professionals. They're spending less and there's also less of them from what.
Jason Wagner:I can tell.
Jennie Berger:I don't know what happened. I don't know if it's that the travel contracts have gotten less desirable or if they're now paying their home staff better so they don't have to travel to get paid more. But something's definitely changed, because I used to get a lot more travel medical professionals in my property in Knoxville and now I it's probably 50% of what I used to get. So, yeah, interesting.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, no, it's yeah, actually you bring up a good point, because when I remember you first going after it and kind of educating everyone to like you know the type of renter that's going to be here, a lot of them was. You know it's a traveling medical professional and the funny thing is is I think I've had maybe one, I've had one and I probably had 15 guests over the course of the time and I'm like well, none of these were travel nurses, but I also wasn't near a hospital, like I wasn't that close Right, but what I found was one was construction worker, one was flight attendants.
Jason Wagner:One was, um, grandma and grandpa from Texas visiting their grandkids. Yeah, um, you know, I've got a, a family that's in there right now from another state, yeah, so it's just like you know. Oh, and then I also had like someone hey, I get a chance to just go work anywhere I want to. I'm going to go work in Chicago for the summer. The digital nomad, yeah, that's what it is.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get all kinds yeah.
Tristan Lora:That, that's you. You're a digital nomad, am I? Well, you can be if you wanted to be. You have properties in three states. You don't have to be in them.
Jason Wagner:Oh yeah, because you have one in Florida.
Jennie Berger:Two properties in Jacksonville. They're long-term rentals. They're managed professionally by a local management company down there and they have long-term guests, tenants. So I say guests, but they're tenants. They've lived there for three years in each of those homes and they just renewed for three more years oh, that's great that's great, except that the rents in jacksonville do not go up much really but I'm still betting on jacksonville. A lot is happening now They've reached some new milestones and I'm in it for the long haul.
Jason Wagner:So do you like the whole concept of having a management company manage these out-of-state rentals for you?
Jennie Berger:Yes and no. There's a benefit to it because it's completely passive. For me it's completely hands-off. I don't have to worry about anything except the money If something goes wrong, and then they just send me the statement at the end of the month and I look at the charge. What is that for? Why did that even happen? But other than that, it's really nice to just be passive. But I don't like paying 10% for management, especially when nothing goes wrong and they're just standing around and they're not even doing an annual or biannual or a quarterly inspection on the home.
Tristan Lora:They're not as proactive as you want.
Jennie Berger:They're not as proactive as I would like. I think most management companies are probably the same.
Tristan Lora:There's nothing against them.
Jennie Berger:But I just think that whole way of operating. So that irks me, because I'm very frugal and I don't like spending money that I know I don't have to spend. If there's something that I really want and I see the value in it, I will spend the money. I'm not cheap, but I'm just frugal and so, yeah, it has its pros and cons. I thought about doing, you know, firing the management company, firing, for lack of a better word and turning them into midterm rentals, because there are a lot of people Jacksonville is like one of the most popular cities in the country for corporate relocations, plus they have the military bases there and I thought, you know, I could probably do really well with the midterm furnished rental. So I started looking into some local resources just, you know, handymen, general contractors, people that I could go to if I needed help with things, and I didn't really devote enough time to it and it didn't really establish the connection that I needed to feel comfortable with doing the whole conversion. So I just let them renew and so that's that right now.
Jason Wagner:So you have, let's see, six rentals.
Jennie Berger:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:Right on.
Jennie Berger:Six.
Jason Wagner:Yeah.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, lest we forget about Sheffield.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, that's an interesting one, so like, and, and that's like, luxury rental, um, very impressive building, so can do you mind just like? Yeah, I know you kind of touched on it from the beginning. It was kind of a pain point for you. Yeah, Um, yeah, okay, um, now that you've turned it into a rental, is it still the pain point or like what?
Jennie Berger:Oh yeah, that was just the beginning.
Rachel Wagner:Oh.
Jennie Berger:Yeah. Yeah, that was the beginning. I mean, now that all the units have been lived in for more than a year, I think we're definitely past the hump. You know a lot of things go wrong in new construction, usually in that first year. You know a lot of things go wrong in new construction usually in that first year.
Jennie Berger:Just little minor things, but it could be a hundred things, because someone's living in the property for the first time and the things are being used for the first time. So I got really lucky with great tenants and I'm so thankful for that and I think the building is beautiful and I don't regret anything. But I would do a lot of things differently and literally it was just a couple months ago that I started to feel in it like I could breathe, because I wasn't getting a text message from my tenants saying you know what about this? Something's wrong with this. How about this? Something happened?
Jason Wagner:you know it was just a couple of days ago Were they like 911 emergency calls.
Jennie Berger:No One was last September, but no, the rest were. And I mean our tenants, they're great, they're really really wonderful people and they try not to make big things out of not so big things. But if I get a text that something's not right, I'm just worried about it and then in my you know, in my head, it's like it's another thing. It's another thing, it's another thing, like I can't even tell you. I can tell you because it's all in ClickUp, it's in my task management software, all the things that have gone wrong in the last two years with this property.
Tristan Lora:In the past year, you've learned so much about so many random things with housing, though, of pot fillers versus gates and how to fix a key that doesn't turn well, you've done a really great job with learning it all, thanks are there some like high level thankful for you.
Jason Wagner:Are there some like high level things that you've kind of like that you can pinpoint on that, like on the pot filler thing, would you recommend them?
Jennie Berger:no, I mean for your own home. If you want a pot filler, that's fine, but like if you're doing a spec property or a rental property, absolutely not.
Jason Wagner:And what's going on there?
Jennie Berger:It's just one more plumbing fixture to break you know, and it's a very movable plumbing fixture right, it's not like a tub that just sits there right. It's this thing that's going like this constantly. You know so like the more moving parts you have, the more likely things can break.
Tristan Lora:And it's a rental too. So even if I had a pot filler we cook 95, 98% of our meals I don't know if I would ever use it. I just I don't know. Like in my head, that's just the possibility of water splashing all over my cooking is too much for me. I'd rather just go to the sink. Yeah, it's unnecessary.
Jennie Berger:I mean we, we built Sheffield to sell them as condos, luxury condos you know, so I think for a luxury condo buyer you know that was a nice little feature, but I still don't think it was necessary. It's just a it's a design decision that. I you know I wouldn't do again. Yeah, you know.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, Anything else that you kind of from that project that you were like, I don't think I would do that again.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, recessed baseboards oh, that was a huge time suck from our schedule. I mean, we got probably months behind between recessed baseboards and drywall and, like the whole thing was like we wanted to sell but because everything got so delayed and we had a huge construction loan, I couldn't wait to sell anymore. I had to make a change and that's why I pivoted and decided to turn them into luxury rentals and I did a refinance and, you know, turned it into rentals and got out of the construction loan into a different type of loan that you know is much less per month and is being, you know, covered by the rental income. I just I couldn't wait any longer. But that was one thing that I would say is also very custom. You know, in your own home, fine, but not in a spec project, completely unnecessary.
Tristan Lora:What about your doors?
Jennie Berger:What about the doors?
Tristan Lora:Your sliding doors in that European company.
Jennie Berger:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, your window and door supplier. That was a oh my gosh, sorry.
Tristan Lora:That was a oh my gosh, Sorry.
Jennie Berger:No, that's probably the biggest headache because we did have an actual 911 almost emergency with one of the sliding glass doors that fell in Whoa and actually if the tenant wasn't 6'5 and 220 pounds probably would have crushed whoever was there.
Rachel Wagner:Wow, yeah, yeah.
Jennie Berger:So so those doors are really heavy they are and they have soundproof glass so they're super, super, super thick and um my supplier I would recommend for your windows and doors and any of your suppliers, just to keep it as close to home as possible. You know like if get your products granted, a lot of things come from overseas. We know this, but your, your main connection point here should be someone like that has a storefront with the products and as your direct contact through to that other country or the main supplier outside of the country, because the replacement parts for the doors and windows are really difficult to um to source and they take a long time to come in and to get someone to fix them. If your supplier goes mia, like which my vendor did, is another thing.
Tristan Lora:So, yeah, huge pain point yeah, everything was so custom, like proprietary to this brand. There's nothing we can source or supply ourselves or fabricate with this same property with sheffield. I'm getting a friend in austin to cnc of a bracket so that we can put a handrail back on properly because it's so custom and how it was done. We just can't buy the part that's needed.
Jennie Berger:The length bracket just doesn't exist I have to add like an extender onto it, to it's oh gosh, it sounds so ridiculous really, yeah, yeah and she'll send me a picture.
Tristan Lora:I'm like, why did the handyman do that? That is the worst thing they can do. And then I'm like, then I'll look at it and be like, oh, there's really nothing else he could have done the way it was originally installed. Yeah, yeah, so then I go back to why was it built this way?
Jennie Berger:yeah, yeah, yeah yeah but we're working on selling the condos yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah.
Tristan Lora:Getting close.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah, because one of your yeah, you've got one of them under contract, right? Yes, yeah.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, which is a whole process. I had no idea. I have somewhat of a real estate part of my life. Yeah, I have a little bit of it. You were a former agent, former agent and loan officer. Wow, and the idea the Chicago way of things is just so crazy of how you have to get the pins and split it up. And you know I come from the Wild West, where you can do whatever you want with the property you own, but it's a lot different here, yeah.
Jennie Berger:Oh, splitting the pins into condos, yeah, yeah.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, and setting up the HOAs and everything. Just that property alone is just very unique to Chicago, being a duplex down.
Rachel Wagner:So it was built to be sold as individual condo units, not as an entire building. Right Did you when you built, set up an HOA? Is that an actual requirement to have?
Jennie Berger:We didn't set up the HOA because we never got any of the units under contract for sale. Right, so I always want to wait until the last minute to set up the HOA, until we actually have a unit under contract, because otherwise it's just spending unnecessary money, like funding the account you know, creating the reserves and starting the association cost money, so once I turned it into rentals, I didn't need to go through that process.
Tristan Lora:But you kept your own reserves, for in my eyes it's a mock HOA. Like you are the HOA.
Jason Wagner:Right From the rental perspective. I always just think it's just, it's so fascinating that you were able to get very good I mean I thought very good rents for these units and actually it didn't take that long once you did kind of convert them into rentals, right, right, yeah, so there is a market because of the location for that sizable of you know a rent that you were collecting on that.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, yeah, we got good rents. We rented them fairly quickly. It was a good season I mean it was like early spring, you know, late winter, early spring and I think the sizes of the units help, because finding a condo that lives like a home, that's over 3,000 square feet with four bedrooms is tough for people to find in the rental category. So I was one of the only places like that. Even though the two-bed, two-bath rented first, it was, you know, the other ones came quickly thereafter. So I think having that distinguishing factor or those distinguishing factors, really helped to get those prices. You know, you figured well, I'm. I've got four bedrooms, this had three. I've got 3000 square feet, this had 2100. So it shouldn't be this price. But there wasn't a comp. But because they had those features, you know, people were willing to pay the extra price.
Jason Wagner:Right, and so it's interesting, because when you went from the sale perspective, they weren't like, they didn't go as quick, right, and obviously you had to convert it into rentals, but it wasn't the same timeline, right. It was different, wasn't it?
Jennie Berger:Like trying to sell took much longer yeah, how long were you on the market for? Early December that I put them up for rent because we didn't have an offer on any of the units, and then I rented the first unit, like within the first week, I think, or week and a half, and then after that they just came all the way to January.
Jennie Berger:Well, not unit one. Unit one we had for one year and they moved out, moved to West Loop. But our unit two and unit three tenants were the same. Yeah, they rented very quickly.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, so that's the interesting part of that building. There is that well, you were selling kind of in the slow season.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:And then, as soon as you converted it over into rentals, it happened to be into starting the spring market and starting the rental season. Then you were able to do it really quickly.
Jennie Berger:Yes, and I sometimes think if I had just been able to wait a little longer, until January or February, people would have gotten they would have been more used to the interest rates because they were higher around that time. But they would have seen okay, look, interest rates aren't going anywhere, this is what it is. Let's pull the trigger now. Plus, it would have been early spring market, but I didn't want to take the chance. The monthly payment on our loan was so high and I was just tired of paying it and not having any income yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah, no, I think you made a. I think you made a great move, because obviously that's what it comes down to, is that you got to find a solution. You know you try for a certain amount of time, but, understanding the real estate cycle and the market, you know January does kind of start a whole new level, coming out of December and and so, yeah, I mean, but you just know that going into, well, as a lease comes up, you know what do I do with it now. Is it going to go back on the market, maybe the timing of it, and kind of figure that out. Or if they're like, hey, we're going to go back on the market, maybe the timing of it, and kind of figure that out. Or if they're like, hey, we're going to move out and you know we're buying a house that happens all the time.
Tristan Lora:I have faith these tenants are all going to buy.
Jennie Berger:That's my hope. Is that the tenants will the remaining tenants will buy the units.
Jason Wagner:That's my hope. Yeah, you bring it to them and say hey.
Jennie Berger:It's been offered already. Oh, okay, and at this point they don't want to buy. But they still have time on their leases, and one renewed because they have the right to renew. The other one just has a really long-term lease. So my hope is that by the time their leases are up they'll be ready to buy.
Tristan Lora:Either that or the CTA gets their act together. There's two things that can happen.
Jason Wagner:What's going on with?
Jennie Berger:that act together. There's two things that can happen. What's going on with that? Yeah, well, so you have the red purple modernization project that's been going on in the city for a few years. Um, they're modernizing the tracks on the red and purple lines and we we have the red purple and the brown line that runs right behind us on sheffield. Um, they've modernized the tracks, like starting one block north of us and then going north, and then there's also modernized tracks south of us, going south. But there's this gap. We're in that gap where the tracks are still old and loud. Where they have modernized, it makes a big difference in the sound, yeah, so the hope is that they finish the project and it's quieter and so that's less of a deterrent because we are right by the train.
Tristan Lora:I mean, honestly, I can hear anything coming to the city. I think it's okay in there, you know, in Chicago, but once that happens it'll be silent because of all the work that you did to silence it and all the soundproofing you did to silence it, and all the soundproofing it will be. I think you know we'll have. We have sweat equity, we have time equity and then we have cta equity which is coming on. That if we can hold out until that happens, it's going to be a huge game changer and if not, someone's going to, you know, have a really good purchase, because I think either way, whenever the leases come up, if that project's not done, someone's gonna want that area because I mean the, the place is really great. There was a period where we didn't know what was happening and she was like we might have to move there and I'm like I can make it work. You know it's a great spot I would love to live there.
Jason Wagner:Oh my god, yeah which unit one, two or three well, the penthouse one was like it was massive, it was so big you'd be walking up 42 stairs every day yeah, yeah, which I could do, that I'd be okay with that. You probably wouldn't.
Jennie Berger:But I mean with the kids, you know, oh yeah, it's a lot.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, the kids would, yeah all this stuff, it's a lot I got a guy for an elevator, so if y'all want to buy it, you can put a lift in yeah, yeah, the penthouse was really cool.
Rachel Wagner:Honestly, I, I would I would do that one, I would totally do that one yeah yeah, so we'll see all right.
Jason Wagner:so you did. You started with flipping regular single family homes, then you did new construction and now you're in the lender space. So yeah, the risk went from like because new construction builds is like highest risk. I would agree.
Jennie Berger:Right.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, and then everybody always wants to get to the lender side, because that's actually, like I believe is, much lower risk, because, again, everything is backed by real estate and everything, as long as you're underwriting, you know, and you know you're saying oh our loan to value is always going to be less than what the property is worth. Always you always kind of want to be in that lender position. So your risk adjustment has clearly gone from so, I guess, to your scale that you had before. You're right in the middle.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, yeah, I finally made my way back. I was like this before real estate. Then I got into real estate development and I was up here and then I kind of brought it back.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, and not many people really know what risk is until they do it until they do it, you know what I mean it's, um, until you've actually experienced what oh that's.
Jason Wagner:What risk was? I always kind of think about it like from one of our projects. When we first started, you know, we got super lucky. When I first did my first house flip, I got really lucky. Everything worked out like sunshines and rainbows and I was like big head, this is awesome, I'm going to go into this next project and it was just way riskier. But I didn't understand what risk was at the time because I just came off of you know something really successful and so I didn't take the time to really understand what I was getting into. I was kind of like you were ah, we'll figure it out.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, how's it a risk? If you can make it work, I'll fix it.
Jennie Berger:Right, I can make it work right. Yeah, yeah, I'll fix it right. I don't think. I don't think people know what risk is until they have money invested in it. That's my, my belief.
Jason Wagner:You can put all the time and sweat and energy into something but risk is money.
Jennie Berger:yeah, that that's. That, to me, is the true skin in the game, and unless you have money invested in something you really you know what you have to lose pales in comparison to the person that has money invested in it. My opinion, yeah. Some people might disagree, but that's how I feel.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah, it's not until you actually have like you've lost it before. I feel like some people have to go through like we've actually lost it to really understand, oh, that's what risk was.
Tristan Lora:I got five on it.
Rachel Wagner:Five on what.
Tristan Lora:Whatever you want, I'm not risk averse.
Rachel Wagner:He'll bet on anything with me, yeah.
Jason Wagner:I love it. I had a moment. I had a moment one time before I was um.
Jason Wagner:I was doing like, oh, I was trying to get into real estate and uh, I was like Rachel, I could, I could be really good at stock trading and so I kind of learned it a little bit and then I did really well. And then one day I made like this crazy trade and I was like, wow, this is going well If this happens. And then that didn't happen. It were actually way the opposite, and there was a moment where I lost $40,000 in one day and I had to tell her that and I was like I don't know how to tell you this, but I literally had this money and then now it's gone tell you this, but I literally had this money and then now it's gone.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, it's like all the money made on that purse flip, it was just, it was just gone. It was just. I was like what?
Rachel Wagner:what I was like? Well, don't do that again.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, unfortunately she didn't, like you know, pack her bags and leave um, but it was just one of those learning things where it's like, oh, that's what risk was, like you can't be putting call options out there when the market's going out and that's high risk. It was high, you know there are different levels of risk.
Jennie Berger:Right, that wasn't maybe necessarily a calculated, wise risk. That was just you being excited about something and feeling, you know, like I. This is it, you know yeah at. You know that's a level of risk there are different what was the stock?
Jason Wagner:it was the well, it was nvidia because I would trade in and out of nvidia and it was, at least at the time again, super novice, novice, but I had identified patterns and I'm like, oh, it's hitting the pattern again and look, it's done it every time and I was successful with it and like, all right, it's going to go back up because it's bouncing off. And then, but the whole market had this moment of just crush, sell, sell, sell, everything sold. And I wasn't expecting kind of that, more of a black swan type thing. It wasn't black swan, but it was just like well, everything sold off and it sold off for a week straight and I couldn't handle that pain at all.
Jennie Berger:And I'm sorry, that's when you're supposed to buy, and buy, and buy more and more, yeah, double down, yeah, or you just buy index funds because you don't have the stomach for the volatility of the market.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, I didn't have the stomach for it anymore. After I lost 40 grand I was like, well, I literally don't have much more to lose here. Yeah.
Rachel Wagner:I think that was the biggest thing is that was coming out of you having just quit your job. We were living solely just off of my salary and everything you had just made on your first endeavor after leaving your job was gone. We you had just made on your first endeavor after leaving your job was gone. We didn't have any more savings.
Jason Wagner:Really we didn't have a lot. It was early into marriage. Yeah, it goes on the level of risk and how much you have available to lose it all. It's kind of like Bitcoin, you don't put your whole life savings into Bitcoin.
Jennie Berger:Right.
Jason Wagner:But the people that did, they did well.
Jennie Berger:They still hold it. I'm still holding. My life savings is not in there, but I'm still holding.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, it's awesome, I have access to it still, unlike the guy that threw away the piece of paper that's in the landfill, that he bought the landfill to try to find all of his Bitcoin.
Jason Wagner:Oh, that's right.
Tristan Lora:I just heard about that the other day. He stopped the search, finally, or something.
Rachel Wagner:I mean it's definitely. If he wrote it on paper, it's gone by now. I have not heard about this guy.
Tristan Lora:Someone bought like 20,000 Bitcoins and he had his code or his key on a piece of paper and it got thrown away, and so he bought the landfill to try to find it, mm-hmm he crowdfunded to get the landfill, to get it.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, that's the first thing they say is don't write these things down on paper, or something like that.
Tristan Lora:I don't know. Crypto's funny because my dad was super into it and I bought I don't know $500 or $600 worth. And I bought my I don't know five or $600 worth and I was like I'll check it in five years. I checked it in like two days and it was like $10,000. And I was like, oh cool. I was like this will be fun in five years. I checked it in three days. I had $200. I'm like what happened Just goes up and down like crazy. Yeah, every day is a new surprise with crypto.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, that's more my speed, yeah, now. So then, jenny, any advice on on like risk tolerance and understand like how your risk is kind of maybe adjusted over kind of the the things you've seen?
Tristan Lora:any advice lend with jenny things you've seen Any advice Lend with Jenny. That's not my advice.
Jason Wagner:That's mine.
Jennie Berger:It's a good question, I really have to think about this answer. I don't know that I have an answer at this moment become a landlord.
Jason Wagner:It's actually pretty easy right now, especially if you have like a 3% mortgage rate, and oftentimes I find myself saying, well, just rent out your current place and you can buy the next place and you can use the rental income to help you qualify, and types of things like that.
Jason Wagner:And like you know, you kind of dip your toe into you know renting your, you know becoming the landlord and you're renting the home that you lived in you know with it. I feel like that's a good way for people to get into you know, becoming a real estate investor.
Jason Wagner:But at the same time I'm now just going through my first eviction and you know it, thank God that it's in a building where there's five units and four of them are still paying but one of them's not, and one of them hasn't been paying for eight months. And now we're on a timeline of like I don't know when they're actually going to get out. They were supposed to be kicked out by the sheriff, you know, and we are going through the eviction court and now, all of a sudden, we're kind of like in this limbo mode where I don't know what's happening, which is like really disheartening. But again I'm like thanking myself that this isn't a building that has other units.
Jason Wagner:If this was a single family home and this person is not paying the rent, they could literally live there for over eight months and freeload, and the person that owns that house is going to feel so much pain. And so I kind of sometimes have to catch myself a little bit more where I didn't understand what that risk was until I went through the process. I've always heard of people oh man, they're going through an eviction. That only happens on the south side of Chicago, or, like you know, this isn't a nicer area, but like that's not the case, right, there is that risk that you are taking and, um, that I think I've just been awakened to more recently. And so then it's like okay, we're coming up on a lease renewal on, you know, our old house that we used to live in and we haven't found anybody yet. Well, after going through this, rachel's like well, maybe we should just sell the property, you know, just because of the potential of that to happen. Yeah, so anyways.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it'd be really impactful. Eight months on that house it would be it would have a much greater impact it would be.
Jason Wagner:And so I guess, as I go to think about if I'm going to continue to buy you know buildings or you know apartments. I don't necessarily know if I'm going to want to convert a. You know, if it's only one unit, it's. It's hard for me to not follow this advice because if we were to move out of this house, I would certainly put it into a rental and I would. I would try that whole thing, but it's that's not following. You know what I just experienced, right. So I think from a long story, I don't know If I'm going to buy an apartment building, it's going to be. There has to be more rental units to offset the risk.
Tristan Lora:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:Right More people.
Tristan Lora:Paying you on a monthly basis eliminates a lot of the risk, because if one or two of them stop, you know, at least you can still be self-sufficient with some but I think you really need to look at the eviction in a different way as well, like, yeah, it sucks and you had to learn a lot, but go back to that underwriting, go back to what.
Tristan Lora:Did you miss anything? Did you what on there could have pointed to this so that you can do those different underwriting techniques, moving forward, so that you can help prevent it. It's like you're the boss at the end of the day. So if someone you know lost their job and they got a new job and they're three months in or something, but then you look back and they've done this six times with six gaps, like okay, maybe I don't want this person in here, maybe I'm going to do this, or maybe you do, maybe you want to give them a chance because this is a property that you could do that and just let them know, like I'm taking a chance on you for this. But what can you learn from that eviction over reducing that risk and for.
Tristan Lora:Jenny. In the year and a half that I've known her, I've I've known her to trust herself more with her decisions and lean on herself more and her feelings because of her education and what she's learned from everything going forward, especially with not only just tenants but vendors as well as vetted's vetting vendors and knowing like I want this vendor because of the way that they responded or how quickly they did this or how they answered this or how they gave me the proposal back.
Tristan Lora:And she's really grown a bunch with her own intuition and her own trust in herself because she's always had partners in her endeavors and she's really taken on a whole load of this business by herself, as of late. I'm always there to support her, but it's moral support. This is her financial support, this is her livelihood, her job, her world, and she's really grown a lot in the last year with her intuition and her trust in herself, of her underwriting skills, and it's really impressive yeah, thank you.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, trust your instincts, thank you, yeah.
Jennie Berger:No, that's awesome but you also got to make sure that your instincts are talking to you properly, because a lot of like instincts and intuition that comes from places in the body that can sometimes be compromised depending on whether or not you're healthy mentally, physically. This all goes to like diet and lifestyle stuff and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, your intuition steers you wrong. So I say that I would say that with caveat like to trust your intuition, because your intuition can be misleading sometimes, depending on the state of your health.
Rachel Wagner:That's a really good point.
Jason Wagner:There's a lot to unpack there.
Jennie Berger:That's probably another discussion of, like you know, three hours, another day, but yeah.
Jason Wagner:Is there something that you do now to kind of help with mental, physical, spiritual, all kinds of stuff, to kind of stay in the healthy realm?
Jennie Berger:Yeah, I mean, eating is a big thing, you know, eating mostly plant foods and don't eat any animals and, um, we try to eat as many whole foods as possible, any animals, and we try to eat as many whole foods as possible, you know, just not processed.
Jennie Berger:lift weights four times a week and that's a really good antidepressant and anti-anxiety yeah um, we play a lot of pickleball and love to walk and bike and we try to do pilates once a week, reformer pilates. So staying active, you staying very active, as much as possible and eating well, just like every the decisions you make throughout the day. Like, I mean, I don't even really drink coffee anymore because, as much as I love the taste of coffee, I know that caffeine and coffee is like a drug to me, you know, and I just don't want to wake up one day and like feel like I have a headache or I need my coffee. I don't want to be that person. I've been that person, um, so, and I volunteer.
Jennie Berger:I volunteer with hospice patients. That's a big part of my life too, which I think has contributed to helping me come more to terms with my own mortality and giving me sort of an outlet to share love with someone, even if it's not necessarily given back, because sometimes the people I work with can't express gratitude or love or you know things like that, you know, depending on the state that they're in, but, um, but yeah, it helps me. So I think those are big parts of my life. That's my life.
Jason Wagner:What's kind of the uh yeah, volunteering for hospice patients. What's? What are some? Maybe some big takeaways that you've had, or maybe an experience that you really remember the biggest takeaway I I am still angry when I walk through nursing homes.
Jennie Berger:I'm heartbroken and angry at the same time, because I know that these people don't have to be there, and they're there because, for one reason or another, they went down a path in life that led them to decisions that were not the healthiest. And there they are. The last stop is your nursing home. Like, you're most likely dying after you're leaving the nursing home, and so my biggest piece of advice is for people to stay healthy, to be healthy, because you don't want to end up in one of these facilities.
Rachel Wagner:So do you think that those decisions that those people made, they were informed decisions and I guess, to caveat off of that of you know people be healthy? I think that means something different to so many different people and also so many different sources, and so I think it's really interesting that you said you're angry, and I almost want to ask you who are you angry with? Are you angry with those people who made those decisions or do you think it's deeper than?
Jennie Berger:that it's much deeper than that in other countries like we are here.
Rachel Wagner:They definitely are not.
Jennie Berger:Maybe some Western-inspired cultures have some of these similar things, but not to the degree that we have it here.
Rachel Wagner:And when you say degenerative, you mean like the Alzheimer's and the dementia. Yeah, agreed.
Jennie Berger:Yeah.
Rachel Wagner:Those stats are out there and available.
Jennie Berger:Yeah. So I'm angry with the system. I'm angry with, you know, foods that are allowed to be made and sold. I'm angry with the way that people are told they need to listen to the experts, you know, in the medical field or in other fields government, but everyone's paid Every expert every doctor, every study, everything's paid for by Coca-Cola or Johnson Johnson, and these are the things that we grew.
Tristan Lora:Go to another country and you're like wait a second, why is this different? Why is this taste different? Or why is this made different? Why do I come over here? And then it's like how can I leave this apple out for four weeks on my counter? And it's fine.
Rachel Wagner:Like how is that okay?
Tristan Lora:And it's organic.
Rachel Wagner:I remember thinking that when we went to europe for the first time, the first time we went to well together, we first went together. We were there for 18 days and I remember thinking I'm gonna come back being so much heavier because I ate so much food, so much food, and like halfway through the trip I'm like I'm actually like losing a few pounds and I feel amazing and I'm not tired and I should be, because we're so active all day and eating all of this bread we ate so much bread over there, Pasta pizza.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and like I feel incredible. Why do I feel incredible? Because if I was eating like this at home, I would be miserable.
Jason Wagner:We were also drinking a lot. Yeah, we had a lot of the wine.
Rachel Wagner:We had a lot of the wine, yeah.
Jason Wagner:Didn't wake up with hangovers. It's crazy.
Tristan Lora:It's so crazy, yeah, but it's the same thing when you have three, four ingredients in the food that you eat, you're going to feel a lot better. When you have 87 ingredients in your slice of bread, that's whole wheat bread, you're like what is that that you can't even pronounce?
Rachel Wagner:You can't pronounce this.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, it's funny you say Europe because it goes with everything. It's not just the way that our country is and how we love. Money so much hurts us and we're not going to get any better unless we're sick. We're not going to get any richer unless we're sick. So it's in everyone's best interest to keep us unwell. And it goes not just with that.
Tristan Lora:I remember in 2005, it was my first tour in Europe and every single car got 50 plus miles a gallon and I was like that's strange. This is a Toyota Camry, why does it get 50 miles a gallon? Ours only gets 28. Why does this Saab get 50 miles a gallon? I don't understand why the same car gets different gas mileage in the United States versus Europe, because in Europe they don't want to use gas or fuel. In the United States we need to burn as much as we can so that we can deplete everything and everyone and spend money. And it's the same with our healthcare system. It's the same idea. It's why keep us healthy, because that's not good for business. A lot of things fail. If we keep everyone sick and keep everyone in the system and keep everyone uneducated, then everything's the status quo, then we're fine.
Tristan Lora:I didn't know grocery stores like that we have. Jewel, osco or Whole Foods existed until I was 13 years old. Jewel Osco or Whole Foods existed until I was 13 years old when I left my house. And I left my house when I was 13 and went out with some friends and the friend's parents were like we're going to the grocery store. So I thought we were going to the liquor store because that's where I got groceries. Or to church getting food out of the back of the van. That was day old bread from whatever grocery store.
Tristan Lora:And we went to a grocery store I was like wow, there's like seven kinds of paper towels. Like I didn't know that, like I didn't even know what a paper towel was because we used to use the little cocktail napkins and there's pastas and milks and cheeses and aisles of stuff. And I was like this is crazy, because neighborhoods in the poorer communities you shop at liquor stores. And now that you see a liquor store you're going to notice it says liquor food, beer. That's where you shop in the hood at those food shops. And growing up as a vegetarian, I had American cheese, white bread, beans, rice and powdered milk was my options for most of my meals and it's crazy to think that that's what we have access to and that's what we're supposed to do, and it's just to keep us sick and to keep us controlled.
Tristan Lora:So when Jenny says we eat healthy, we read labels. We work really hard. It's not easy to do what we do. I'm a very proficient chef. Jenny's very good in the kitchen. We meal prep. We prioritize time to do this to keep ourselves healthy and feeling good, and not falling into that because it is a priority for us. And not falling into that because it is a priority for us, especially being plant-based and working out four or five times a week and playing pickleball four or five hours at a time.
Jason Wagner:I'm 220.
Tristan Lora:I need 200 plus grams of protein and that's not easy to come by. That's a lot of pumpkin seeds I got to eat.
Jason Wagner:Is that where you get it from?
Jennie Berger:No, we make our own Haley, tofu and seitan. We make our own seitan now.
Tristan Lora:And the seitan is really the key to it. My mom was asking me today. She was like people are interested, how do you?
Jason Wagner:get 200 grams. What is seitan? I saw you post about it the other day. That sandwich looked amazing, it's made from vital wheat gluten. So, it's the protein.
Jennie Berger:that's the base. It's like they turn it into a flour and you mix it with a couple of things and then you can boil it or bake it and it is like a meat replacer, if you will.
Tristan Lora:It's a protein-dense food. So we make these 10-gram protein balls 10 grams of protein per ball so I'll have three as a snack for my between breakfast, lunch, three after lunch, and you can use it in our eggs sandwiches, sandwiches wraps really anything yeah and we really try to find in like we found these great flatbreads with like four ingredients at whole foods that are that don't taste like cardboard. You know, sometimes Jenny will bring something home and I'm like why did you give me a piece of paper to wrap this tofu up?
Rachel Wagner:He's still getting used to Ezekiel bread. Oh, we have some of that in the freezer, yeah that's my favorite.
Jennie Berger:I mean, does it taste the best? No, it's not the best tasting bread on the planet, but is it one of the healthiest?
Rachel Wagner:Yes, you get used to the taste.
Tristan Lora:It's tough being very well-traveled and then living here, so I know what the food tastes like elsewhere and I know what the fruit tastes like elsewhere, and then, coming home, chicago is like a fruit desert. It's a fruit desert.
Jennie Berger:They have tons of fruit, but finding good ones is covered in that wax?
Jason Wagner:What do you do for the fruit? Where do you get it from? Just do the best we can, yeah.
Jennie Berger:Whole foods or wherever you can find the best that you can, and it's a crapshoot these days.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, watermelon is very tough to find here.
Jason Wagner:So things that are labeled organic, you are still very wary of.
Jennie Berger:We'll buy organic because I think it's the better option, but yeah, I don't know Watermelon's the best.
Tristan Lora:I don't know that anything's really organic yeah watermelon is all GMO'd now and having seedless organic watermelon is kind of funny to me. It's like it should have seeds in it. It should have the black seeds in it and be normal. But all we can do is the best that we can. Yeah, and that's the true definition of veganism is doing the best that we can for the animals, for our environment and for our bodies just don't get sick.
Jennie Berger:That's the key. Anything you can do to prevent yourself from going to an assisted living facility or a nursing home, and you are above by leaps and bounds.
Rachel Wagner:Even the hospital right, Just trying to stay out of the hospital. Yes, yes.
Jennie Berger:I mean barring anything catastrophic. You know that, you, just you know I do recommend that hernia surgery here in Chicago. Did it work out.
Rachel Wagner:Very good, awesome. What was the recovery like?
Tristan Lora:Men have. We have three holes that are very prone to hernias, no matter your health, it's just what it is. Our intestines push through where our testes drop, like that's just what it is, and then one for our umbilical cord. So it's very common in men. My first hernia surgery was awful. Don't want to talk about it. My second one got out of surgery and we went to the farmer's market.
Jennie Berger:The next day.
Tristan Lora:The next day, whoa.
Jennie Berger:So he was walking slowly, yeah.
Tristan Lora:And I think on day two or three we did like a three-mile walk, Like we just walked for a couple hours.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, and then like four days later you played a little pickleball.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, yeah, really incredible here.
Jennie Berger:And you also had somebody there with you.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, you know his first surgery he didn't have anybody taking care of him.
Jennie Berger:That makes a big difference too. Oh yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, sure.
Tristan Lora:And I wasn't as healthy, I just wasn't.
Jennie Berger:That's right yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, the recovery is always sometimes a lot better when you go into that surgery when you're actually in pretty good shape.
Jennie Berger:And in love. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Rachel Wagner:And in love.
Jason Wagner:You got a reason to come out alive.
Tristan Lora:Yeah exactly. I'm going to wake up from this one please.
Jason Wagner:I woke up and I said where's jenny?
Tristan Lora:yeah, that's awesome I didn't even think that, whenever the anesthesiologist was like pushing me back to the or I was like I'll be asleep before we even get there and she was like we need to tell you some things before, and then I woke up and I was done. Yeah, I was like that was the fastest surgery.
Jason Wagner:That's awesome. I've really enjoyed this conversation guys.
Rachel Wagner:Anything else you want to dive into? Well yeah, but I think we probably do need to wrap it up. I feel like we could do a whole nother show with you guys. I have so many more things I want to talk about. I do want to get more into, like the, the veganism and the diet and um the health stuff.
Tristan Lora:But I don't know, that's a big, big animal we love, love talking about it, it's. I mean it's, we could talk about it probably on another podcast or another chat or whatever.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah, unless what's like you're burning. What's your burning question?
Jennie Berger:about now, but it's up to you guys, because y'all have kids.
Jason Wagner:What's your burning question?
Rachel Wagner:Well, I think my first question would be where did it come from, like, when did it start and why? What was, like the underlying reason? Because you said you grew up a vegetarian, which I was surprised to hear that too, so that started very early for you, but that wasn't true for you.
Jennie Berger:I don't believe, right, right, right. Yeah, I grew up eating everything and when I was back in 2015-ish, I started learning about just the animal industry like the farming industry, animal industry like the farming industry. I saw some videos that horrified me on social media and I was like I can't believe that they do this to animals and I'm eating these animals. So I was heartbroken Around. The same time, I discovered the Gentle Barn, which is a nonprofit organization. They're an animal sanctuary. They rescue, rehabilitate, neglected and abused farm animals and what they do is they bring in groups of kids who are kind of maybe kind of facing similar situations in their lives and have maybe a hard time trusting people and they bring them to the farm animals and then they connect with the animals and they learn to maybe build some confidence and communication skills and trust through working with the animals. So it's kind of like a dual faceted organization.
Jennie Berger:But I went to the Gentle Barn. We had one in Knoxville. They have like public tours on Saturday where you can go and learn all about the Gentle Barn history and learn about some of their animals, go meet the animals, pet them. They all had names and I mean I just I fell in love with the cows and the pigs there and I learned the story about the veal industry being a byproduct of the dairy industry, like I had always known about the veal industry from when I was younger just with baby cow, I'm like I don't understand this. I never ate veal growing up never. But I didn't know that the dairy industry was just as despicable, if not more, and I learned that at the Gentle Barn.
Tristan Lora:So between seeing the animal cruelty videos on farming and those undercover videos and then visiting the Gentle Barn, I was 13 years old and a baseball player and I was getting a physical for baseball and this frail, frail doctor he was like you should really think about going vegan, it'll make you stronger and I looked at him and I was like, are you? Vegan and he was like, yeah, and I'm like, I'm doing everything I can to gain weight and you don't look like you can gain weight, so I just blew it off.
Tristan Lora:I just, I really blew it off and I was a junketarian. My dad always called me a junketarian for most of my life and I realized in my 30s I was like I just kept eating the same junk like cheese, quesadilla, bean and cheese, tacos, occasional salad here and there, broccoli with cheese, just cheese on everything and a lot of eggs. And I felt like I was 80 years old, like my joints hurt, my bones hurt and I just chalked it up as I lived a rough life. Bones hurt and I just chalked it up as I lived a rough life. And I went to a few doctors and they're all like, yeah, you know, you got to get surgery, but you're not old enough. So when you're 55, come back and we'll do the couple of things. So make you feel better. Until then, here's Oxycontin. I'm like I'm 32. You want?
Tristan Lora:me to take Oxycodone or Oxycontin until I'm 55? And you're like, yeah, that's what we do. And I was like there's got to be something different. So probably 11 years ago now, I was like I'm going to challenge myself to eat better, I'm going to just eat better. I'm going to be vegan for 60 days See how this goes, because that'll force me to eat vegetables. Get away from cheese, figure it out. So I did and I jumped. I ate rice and beans almost every day for the first like week. And then I found a meal delivery service that had vegan stuff and I got a little bit more kind of inspiration on it.
Tristan Lora:And on day 22, I did a memorial bike ride. I'm a big cyclist and I did 102 miles on the bike in Austin, texas and I averaged 22 miles an hour and got it under six hours for the first time 100-mile ride. And I got back and I was like man, my last two miles were uphill and I was like this is crazy, I feel good, I feel like an 18,. My last two miles were uphill. I was like this is crazy, I feel good, I feel like an 18-year-old.
Tristan Lora:Then the next day I woke up and I was like I'm going to go do a quick 20-mile ride a couple hours because I'll be really sore if I don't. I did 50 miles faster than I ever did and I felt better than ever, better than the day before. I was like, wow, this is crazy. So I got home and I was like Google, does veganism help you bike better? Does veganism help your libido? Does veganism like? Then I started like finding the documentaries and everything and I kind of did it ass backwards than a lot of people. Most people go vegan and then or watch documentaries or go to Gentle.
Tristan Lora:Barn and go vegan. After that Mine was very like reverse it was. I challenged myself. That was all on day 22 and 23. Then I was like, if I feel like this, I'm never going to eat cheese again. And I had full intention of eating cheese and eggs again, just full intention. And on 22 days in I was just like I'm out. And then over the last 10 years it's been a lot more into the cruelties and the animals and the environment. Like I had no clue like one hamburger, 700 gallons of water to produce. Like I had no clue like one hamburger, 700 gallons of water to produce like I had no clue.
Tristan Lora:And I grew up in texas, which is prone to droughts, and san diego, which is prone to droughts, and I'm taking four minute showers trying to save like two gallons. And here's, like you know, don't need a hamburger and save 700 gallons. That's just mind-blowing to me, trying to be sustainable. So the sustainability aspect really kicked in as well over the years. So my journey into veganism from vegetarianism was I was a junketarian. That felt like crap. Oh, and the best part of it all, I was allergic to fruit, allergic to everything, and had to have allergy shots every day for years. And all my allergies went away. I can eat fruit.
Jason Wagner:Really.
Tristan Lora:Oh, like 100%.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, that's huge. I would never be able to wake up. The health benefits are really, if you do vegan right, like because I went, I was, it was the animals for me. I was telling you.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, no, no, tristan, actually your, your veganism story is actually very inspiring, because you're like this is how I felt. I felt awful and all of a sudden I feel so much better because I made this change. And I've never actually heard that from somebody that has gone vegan. I've always feel like most of the time I feel it's been well. It's more of an ideology thing and that's the reason I did it, and then I found the benefits, but yours is kind of different but it's important to know that veganism doesn't mean that you're healthy.
Tristan Lora:A lot of people associate veganism with I'm healthy. You can be a very unhealthy vegan and still feel awful every day if you're eating fried fake chicken and dipping it in fake ranch. Eating Oreos. Eating Oreos and Nutter Butters Pop-Tarts and stuff You're going to feel like crap.
Tristan Lora:But eating healthier and removing the dairy from your life and the cheese for me, especially like my joints, never felt better, like my elbows and all my tough life. I thought you know I was a man because I lived a rough life and I was in pain at 32 years old. That's not real. That was just what I ate. And to find out that I was lied to from doctors for years and lied to from my coaches playing baseball trying to pressure me to eat meat to gain weight, I should have listened to that frail doctor. I didn't know. He wasn't really encouraging, if you will, but it's not really. I don't know if it really would have been possible. Honestly, jenny has really opened the door to me in the idea of protein and what it is.
Tristan Lora:I've never thought about it outside of taking protein shakes and thinking that that's what I needed to weight lift, because I've never had a problem gaining muscle. And now eating 200 grams of protein a day and feeling full more often and really working on it and prioritizing and being able to see my strength and my athletic ability advance further and further at 42 years old is really great. I feel just as good today as I did when I was 18 playing baseball. Today as I did when I was 18 playing baseball, I got asked to throw the first pitch at a game and I was like maybe I can throw it fast enough that they'll want me to join their team.
Jason Wagner:That's awesome. I mean, honestly, like there are very, very few people that you could say, hey, I'm in my forties and I feel like I'm 18 or I'm in my 20s, in the best shape of my life, like it's always the opposite of that, it's you know. Oh, I just pulled a hamstring again, like because I'm washed up.
Jennie Berger:There's so many people in our friend network in their 30s and 40s who talk about, you know, the oohs and the ahs and the pain, this and that, and I'm like, and they say, oh, I'm getting older, I'm getting older, I'm like it has nothing to do with your age.
Tristan Lora:It's not normal. It's normal here.
Jennie Berger:It's not normal to just grow older and be in pain and break.
Rachel Wagner:Just because it's common doesn't mean it's normal, right yeah?
Jason Wagner:There's this like this resort to comfortness that we just love here, right, it's you gotta, you gotta be comfortable, and sometimes that's sitting in a chair all day and you know, maybe go for a little walk, but it's not much more than that. And you know no wonder it your body hurts, because you're not really putting in a discipline every day and you so. So, tristan, you work out for four times a week four times a week weightlifting we
Tristan Lora:do Pilates and tons of pickleball.
Jason Wagner:Yeah.
Tristan Lora:That's awesome yeah.
Jason Wagner:That's awesome.
Jennie Berger:Yeah, and we're trying to, you know, incorporate more stretching.
Tristan Lora:And I say pickleball like we do, really high level pickleball. Now, in the beginning it was, you know, like a little hit here and there and your partner was 70 years old, but now it's we're playing 24 year olds oh cool. Wow.
Tristan Lora:You know, often it's hard to find you're competing yeah, yeah, I, I'd like to compete a little bit more, but she had a whole another life of competing in volleyball. But like we're at a higher level of play to where it's a real aerobic workout, where when we leave we're like, wow, we just really went after it yeah yeah, that's awesome.
Jason Wagner:All right, let's wrap here. Um, so, how we always do this is just kind of like what's the biggest takeaway from this conversation? So we spent over two hours talking with these guys. Rachel, what's your biggest takeaway? Yeah?
Rachel Wagner:I know, because I always start it. So, yeah, yeah, you do. Um, that's hard, there's a lot there's a lot here.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, it's not an easy answer. This is not an easy, and we're we're going to come back to you guys too, um your biggest takeaway from the conversation. But yeah, it's never's never an easy answer.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, I mean. I think my takeaway is actually hopefully a segue into another conversation with you, but it stuck with me when you said, when we were talking about trusting your gut and how you want to make sure that your gut isn't deceiving or your instinct isn't deceiving you because of other things that are going on, you want to make sure that you know your mental state is in a good place, physically you're in a good place, your spirit's in a good place, all of these things right, and I I would love to dive into that even deeper with you at some point, um, hopefully on the show too, so we could share that. But that was kind of my takeaway. It was like well, trust your instincts, but also your instincts can deceive you. So make sure you're not in a clouded state with your instincts when you're, you're trusting them, just like ai. Yeah, that's a good one too. Challenge ai. Don't take their first answer as the end. I'll be, I'll be like, but wait a minute I know this the the mind gut connection.
Jennie Berger:Uh, it's a book. There's like a subtitle to it too. It's pretty long but long. But the Mind-Gut Connection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, by Emron Meyer, I think. Okay, you might enjoy that very much. That's where I learned all about what I said there. It can tell you more about it than I could. Okay, yeah, very good, that's good. Great book Very, very heady. You have the head for it.
Rachel Wagner:well, it struck me because not that I want to go into like deep of a personal conversation, but it struck me because I obviously just had a baby 11 weeks ago, right, and, like you, go through like this huge, like emotional roller coaster right afterwards because of all the hormones, and I was just sitting there thinking like gosh, if I would have taken like my instinct or my thoughts at any like pinpointed period of that, it could have been vastly different, right, and it's you, I obviously this is my third baby, so I know, like you, ground yourself and knowing these are just the hormones this is not real, like it's not.
Jason Wagner:But it struck me because I'm like gosh, that's such a true thing, um, you know, just in so many different aspects yeah, I honestly just admired you guys because you guys like you guys just kind of like go out there and do it, and I really kind of appreciate people that you try new things and like, well, you kind of go with your, your veganism story, like you tried that because you wanted to go feel better, like there was. There was something about you and Jenny where it's like you know, you started with the flipping and then you did new construction and now you're starting this whole lending business and you're just doing it and it's just so cool. We didn't really talk about like your initiative, but it's just something that I really do appreciate about you guys is that you have real experience and you've learned from it and then one.
Rachel Wagner:You've learned from it and then one you've also found a partnership between the two of you where you kind of lift up each other and you just kind of go out yeah no, and it's, it's, it's a brilliant.
Jason Wagner:I mean it's beautiful to witness from the other side of the table here. But I just appreciate both of you guys from that perspective where you know, know what we've learned some things over the years and we're really smart about it now and we try to adjust our risk and do some other things.
Jason Wagner:And we know that these are the steps where we need to stay out of the hospitals. We need to stay out of the intervention stuff and like, let's just focus on diet, go back to kind of fundamentals and, you know, be active, do things we pursue and enjoy and be present and hug somebody a little bit longer and uh, it's just, it's just really cool to to be around people that are like that. So big takeaway from the conversation is all that.
Jason Wagner:So it was awesome you guys, what about you guys? Any reflections, any reflections over the last two hours do you want to go?
Jennie Berger:you go first, ladies first I mean, there are so many, I think you want me to go? Yeah, you go I.
Tristan Lora:I love being in this life that I have. It's been a journey and I feel like the last year I've just scratching the surface of my potential and where I'm going and just now finding the tools I need to keep accelerating to new levels that I have no idea where it is, and Jenny is my foundation and being on this with her and just listening to her just makes it even more. Every day, every day, I fall more and more in love and she's everything that I've always wanted and never knew that I needed, and it's been a really great journey. Wanted and never knew that I needed, and it's been a really great journey and I can't wait to keep going further.
Rachel Wagner:That's awesome.
Tristan Lora:I love that. That's awesome. I know I've done really awesome stuff, but I know that the best stuff that I'm going to do I haven't done yet.
Jason Wagner:Tristan is a romantic man. Yeah, you are I will tell you that. Yeah, tristan is a romantic man.
Tristan Lora:Yeah, you are, I will tell you that he's a romantic man.
Jennie Berger:I mean I have so many takeaways. The thing that just keeps coming back to me is, honestly, I mean, I'm so thankful for you and I love you and you know I could profess my love to you all day and I love you, rachel, to you all day and I love you, rachel. But I am so grateful that I met you, jason, because everything that I've been doing the last you know, four or five years has been kind of like there's been this undercurrent of the Jason Wagner, you know effect. I like I think I just came up with that. I like that.
Tristan Lora:It's the name of the new podcast.
Jennie Berger:I feel like anybody that you know meets Jason and gets to know him, gets to know you, feels the same way.
Jennie Berger:You know, like, because the way that you you've helped in so many ways with the business decisions that I made, like even if I don't come to you for every business decision, there's always this thought that goes through my head like you know well, how would Jason underwrite this or what would he think about this.
Jennie Berger:And then I see your posts on social media with those, you know, smart little like one line, one line, one line. Like that's just so freaking good he needs to write a book. But like, yeah, a lot of the things that I've done over the last few years, whether it's in real estate, you know, as an agent, buying, selling, which I do very little of, or underwriting deals in some capacity, or doing rentals and even lending, and just you know, I you're that way too. You know, and I think that the fact that we're that like I came to Greystone was I've said this publicly, you know, on social media that it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I don't think that people who join brokerages have the kind of support that we have from you, and so I'm really grateful for that and for you.
Jason Wagner:Thank you for that. Thank you for that Jason Wagner effect. I love that. It's a real thing. I love that. Well, thank you, yeah, no, and Jenny, you've yeah, and, and, which is really cool because we do support each other in a lot of things. And uh, you know you're active on social media and you know some, I am too, but sometimes you don't get anybody to like you, like anything you put. You just keep going. But you know jenny's out there watching it and it's good and then she'll, she'll drop something out there.
Jason Wagner:That's like you should write a book and I'm like you're right, I should. Yeah, so I love it. We feed off each other and it's awesome.
Jennie Berger:I'm grateful for both of you so thank you. Thanks for being around and I'm glad I discovered Andrew at that party, that's right late 2020, maybe a holiday party, a multi-family club?
Jason Wagner:yeah, that was awesome you can meet some cool people at those uh, at those multifamily parties, and they become long friends.
Tristan Lora:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:So very cool. Well, thank you very much Both of you for coming on, appreciate it and, um, I'm sure listeners out there they probably found some value in the show. So if you wouldn't,