Using Business Credit to Buy Real Estate With Dr. Benjamin Maciel

Welcome back to another insightful episode of The Physicians and Properties Podcast with your host, Dr. Alex Schloe!

In this episode, Dr. Schloe sits down with Dr. Benjamin Maciel, Caribbean med school grad, full-time real estate investor, and the definition of doing things differently. Instead of pursuing residency, Dr. Maciel chose a bold path: leveraging credit cards, business lines of credit, and creative finance strategies to build a 30+ unit portfolio in Portland, Oregon.

From buying a property management company at age 22, to raising hundreds of thousands in business credit, to walking away from medicine to go all-in on real estate, this conversation is raw, real, and unlike anything you’ve heard before.

⚠️ Heads up: This episode includes more profanity than usual and discusses aggressive financing strategies. Not financial advice—do your due diligence.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✔️ How Dr. Maciel used business credit to buy real estate—without traditional financing
 ✔️ What it’s like to run a property management company in your early 20s
 ✔️ How studying in the Caribbean taught him discipline, grit, and hustle
 ✔️ Strategies to build credit lines and raise capital as a med student or resident
 ✔️ How to control real estate without owning it outright
 ✔️ A blueprint for house hacking and buying your first property during residency
 ✔️ The power of picking up the phone and building banking relationships

🔥 Key Takeaways:

✔️ You don’t need a residency salary to invest in real estate—just creativity and courage
 ✔️ Business credit is a tool—but understanding the risks is essential
 ✔️ Your first property might come from an unlikely source—stay open to opportunity
 ✔️ Real estate is a relationship game—connect with lenders, mentors, and partners
 ✔️ Sometimes your path to financial freedom means stepping away from the traditional route.

Connect with Dr. Benjamin Maciel:
Website
 Instagram

If you want to learn how investing in real estate can give you the freedom to practice medicine and live life how you want then check out the links below:

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Transcript

Dr. Benjamin Maciel:  When I walk into a bank, for example, nowadays, and this is just based on my experience,  it's like a whole different experience. It's more like a,  Hey man, how can I make this happen? Like, how can I do this?  I'm not walking in there like bombastic, like a jerk, like demanding, like give me this, give me that.

No, I treat people the way I want to be treated.  How do I raise this 200 K business lines of credit?  How do I do this? How do I do that? Okay. Well, you need to have 800 K in gross income for that year.  Well, I can put that together.  And once you get that checklist, man, you walk in there and demanding your financing and you're going to get it.

 Dr. Alex Schloe: Welcome to the Physicians and Properties Podcast,  the show where we teach you how investing in real estate can give you the freedom to practice medicine and live life how you want. Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor,  doctor.  Now here's your host, Dr. Alex Schloe.


 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Physicians and Properties Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Dr. Alex Schloe, and I'm grateful  for you taking the time to listen to this episode.  Today's podcast was very unique,  something that I have not heard about.  I will give two caveats. The first is there's a little bit more profanity in this episode.

So  if your kids are in the car,  maybe you listen to this at a time when,  they're, they're not around.  The other is,  our guest today talks about a very unique strategy in ways that you can purchase  real estate using business lines of credit.  Okay. Do your due diligence on this. This is not financial advice.

This is  a very unique strategy that may work for you   but you definitely wanna make sure you're partnering with and you're understanding the risk  of this strategy.  So without any further ado, let's get started with today's episode with Dr. Benjamin Maciel. He graduated from  Caribbean Medical School in 2024.

 decided to do real estate full-time instead of pursuing residency.  He owned,  owns 31 total units in Portland, Oregon  and started by buying properties with credit cards and cash advances.  So again, really unique strategy and it was really cool to hear his journey  first,  buying a property management company when he was 22,  realizing, hey, there's gotta be something more to this.

 Exiting that business  and then going into medical school.  Then realizing, hey, maybe  this isn't for me. I really love the real estate. I really love the business aspect. I'm really  have really figured out this unique strategy that's working   and going from there and deciding to grow and scale that. So,  like I said, this episode, little bit extra profanity, more unique.

So make sure you're doing your due diligence, but a really cool strategy and a really cool podcast episode with Dr. Benjamin Maciel. 

 Dr. Benjamin Maciel, welcome to the physicians and properties podcast. So glad to have you on the podcast. Thanks for your time, man. How are things going?

Dr. Benjamin Maciel: It's going great. It was a very warm welcome. I really appreciated it.  It was awesome. Nice little dry run there. And yeah, man, I'm happy to be here.  I love being around like minded people, physicians who want to make some money in real estate  and also share the journey though, too, and give a little bit of back.

Yeah.

Dr. Alex Schloe: Yeah, absolutely.  It was a  great conversation  before the podcast  folks, we talked for like 10 or 15 minutes and realized we weren't recording. So  Benjamin brought some fire and unfortunately none of it was recorded. So we'll do our best  here right now.  Benjamin, awesome, man. Do you mind telling folks a little bit about yourself and your journey?

Dr. Benjamin Maciel: So I'll pretty much started off after college, you know, after chasing dreams, I wanted to be a big football player, but realize that number one,  I wasn't six foot five and I didn't run a  four, four 40, you know?  And so that wasn't going to work for me. And so I kind of pivoted. I kind of went the social media route, like, Hey, I'm going to go  get a social media marketing job.

This was 2014, 2013,  2014, I think.  And so,  the first job that I landed doing social media type of stuff was basically working in Missouri  at a property management business.  And so, I started out working at that property management business. Here's my dad, he just dropped off rent checks.  That's always nice.  Ha ha ha!

Dr. Alex Schloe: That's awesome.

Dr. Benjamin Maciel: I'm really in real estate, I promise! Ha ha! Tenants paying rent at 8 o'clock at night, you know?

That's, that's what you do. You get it 

a real 

you can get it.  And yeah, that was funny.  And so yeah, so I started off with property management business, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. I just remember showing up there on a, on an early Sunday morning and the lady interviewing me and the lady was about 60 years old at the time  and her daughter was not interested in the business.

And so  I was like, boy, wonder the boy, you know, the son that she never had.  You know, coming to the rescue in a sense. And so I just showed up there. She found out that I knew about construction and building and really, you know, building construction. Cause my dad's a builder  and  it was like, I started out  as an intern.  Then I started out as a leasing agent. And then they found out that about that I had a construction experience. And then I started managing the handyman,  you know,  and,  you know, doing the turnovers and stuff like that. And before I knew it, she just came in. I'll never forget it  on a Tuesday and was like, Hey, I want you to buy my business.  It was like I don't have any money. I don't have any this. I don't have any that. And she's like, don't worry about it. We'll figure it out. But at that time  I kind of  had already introduced her to my,  I call him like my mentor, business partner, friend. And so she found, she knew that I can somehow come up together,  put together the money,  you know   and that's how that started.

And then  before I knew it, I was in the property management business,  but I don't consider that necessarily the real estate business because.  you're there focusing on the business, you know and it took at least two or three years for me to even understand how to run a business in the first place. So  I was 22, 23 years old, but  the office manager that had been there for 10 years was 62. 

Yeah.  I bet that was an interesting dynamic for you.

Yeah, it was an interesting dynamic for me, for sure. What I, you know, when we were working together, it was more like a,  I don't want like an auntie  nephew relationship, you know,  and then over time it was more of like a  employee to employee, more professional boss to this.  And so I missed those days with that person, especially because we're still friends now where it was like, Hey, auntie,  nephew, that kind of thing.  But then we ended up getting into a lawsuit, which is very interesting.  And so then all of a sudden your aunties, they're on the, on the stand, like testifying against you.  And like, you know, facts and stuff like that. And so that was kind of like a  thicker,  you know, thickening the skin  type of situation  on the entrepreneurial journey, you know,  and  it was like, Hey, okay.

At the end of the day, this is a business. These are employees,  you know, in this aspect, you kind of have to separate it. Like,  yeah, she's your auntie. You really appreciate her when you guys were working and first getting started, you know, you appreciate that relationship.  But then once it comes to the business corporation level,  It's like a completely  different relationship, you know,  and it just makes you respect the game,  if that makes sense,  like, okay, I respect the game a little bit more and now thinking back about it,  it was like, okay, she had a job to do.

It was her job.  She stayed there in the business when I had already exited,  you know,  and so it was like, of course, she's gonna, you know, get on the stand and do this and do that. It's her job, you know.  And so once I exited that business, I had ran it for three or four years. We built it up from doing 300 K in revenue to then doubling revenue, six, 700, 000.

But for a property management business,  that's pretty big.

Yeah, it's 

The margins. Yeah. The margins on property management businesses are great.  And so I was talking to a friend the the other day, I actually met him through Instagram  and he wants to talk about investing in the Midwest and investing out of state.

And I told him, I said,  if you want to do that, it's my opinion.  I would first and foremost look around for a property management business to purchase first.  And then I would go out and start looking at property and projects, et cetera,  you know? And so, yeah, that was my experience in terms of my first access to real estate.

And at that time I bought a fourplex.  Then I bought a  duplex. My fourplex got robbed.  And so  literally  that neck, I,  I kid you not, I still can't explain it to this day how I pulled that thing off.  My fourplex got robbed.  That night, I had already put together a lease option deal, my first lease option deal, and I didn't even know it was actually called  a lease option.

All I said was, Hey,  I don't have the money now,  but in six months, I swear I'm going to buy this property from you.  And right now though,  from right now, this six months to the next six months, I'm going to pay you  675 a month,  but just take the 675  off the sales price.  And dude, it was like on a one page letter of intent type of deal, you know, probably couldn't even enforce it.  And yeah, man, I pulled it off. And so I got us out of that little fourplex that we got broken into.  And so I ran the business long story short and I wasn't really diving deep into real estate though.  Now, once I got the business up and running my last year there, my last year  that's when I started listening to this, this podcast and you guys can listen to him.

He's, he's great. He's awesome. His name's Vincent Polisi. So you guys can look into  him,  but he started teaching me like through the, through the books and I met him on Facebook and all that kind of stuff, phone calls, bought his stuff.  But he started teaching me about like creative financing  and why you never want to have equity in properties.  And lawsuits and bankruptcy laws and, and  all the, all, I would say the,  I don't want to say the dark side of real estate,  but like the, the third and fourth level of real estate, like, Hey, instead of buying one property a year, why don't you buy 10 and this is how you do it. This is how you set it up.  And so. When I was  that last year of living in  the Midwest,  that's when I went from like two or three properties to then owning or controlling, which is a big thing that people don't know. You don't have to own a property. You can control properties.  So I went from owning  probably two or three properties to then controlling like almost 20 units.  Yeah. Which is really funny because  somewhere in like divorce paperwork. I'm going through divorce right now.  The attorney somewhere, somehow found out a paper from like six or seven years ago.  And they're like, you own these properties and you lied to us in court and all this kind of stuff.  And it was like, listen, I didn't own the properties.

And you have no room to explain if that makes sense.  And so it's like, I didn't own them at the time I controlled them. I did a lease off, you know, you want to say all this stuff, but you can't like explain in great detail if that makes sense.  So anyway,  After that last year, I was getting ready to exit the business and it was like, let me look around for things that I'm very interested in, you know, very interested in like I was 26, 27 at the time.  I think I was 26 at that time.  And it was like,  let me try this. Let me try that. Let me try this. But it was like, man, that kind of seems like  kind of low, you know, like if I'm going to do it, I want to do it big. You know, I want to do something bigger.  And so my wife at the time, she basically was like, Hey, why don't you try and be an anesthesiologist?

I think you'd make a good anesthesiologist.  And so eventually I ended up going to shadow and on the first day I saw  them administer anesthesia.  And then I saw the patient interaction, you know,  and I was hooked. And I was like, okay, how the heck do I do this?  You know, like my, I was already locked in on it.

And then I remember running payroll for my small business. Right.  And you know, in payroll, it's like, Hey, if you're paying 20, somebody, 20, 25 an hour, you have to bill out at least 50,  you know, to make margins and that kind of thing.  And so I remember leaving my office for that, that, that morning  and then walking into this hospital that all of a sudden had a big ass cafeteria.  That all of a sudden had all of these employees and all of this massive extra stuff.  And I'm like, Oh, there's money here for sure.  Like this is a whole new,  new game. This is a whole new  area. You know, property management business isn't, it isn't loop. It's good margins.  But it isn't lucrative in a small town, in a small place, in a small area.

 The real estate is where you make the most money on.  And so, yeah, that was pretty much how I got to the point where I decided in medicine. 

Yeah, man, that's awesome. What a cool and crazy journey. But that's awesome. Yeah. Property management, that's a tough business to be in. You definitely you got your hands dirty and you learned a lot, I'm sure. And  it probably honestly helped you  in med school to be able to translate some of those skills.

 Managing people, dealing with difficult folks, you know, those sorts of things.  I'm sure it was really  helpful for you in med school as well.  And probably some stressful,  stressful times  that  prepared you for the stress of med school. 

Yeah. These last, yeah. These last 10 years, I would say from the point where I was 22 or 23, my whole life has been  high performance, high stress.  You know, just  buying a business right away, then going into medical school. And then, you know, now  it's, it's always been that. And so people are like, well, you never stop.  Your mind is always going  because I've mentally trained. I put myself in situations where it was like,  you got to do this  or else,  you know   and at the time it was like, Hey, I owed people, you know, three, 400, 000. And so it was like, that was like the, the.  I want to say like that gun to your head type of moment, like where you better perform, you know, because I always want to pay my debts, you know, I don't want to put myself in a position ever, whether it's a bank contract or anybody where somebody is coming to my house and knocking on my door saying that I owe them money in a sense, 

 you know,  and so.  Basically, the hard part about medical school,  the hardest part was going from 7, 8 employees, 15 employees at a time, that kind of thing,  being able to walk in a room, delegate, hey, do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, that,  to then all of a sudden,  you're in there in a room in a one bedroom apartment in the Caribbean, which I went to Caribbean medical school.  I went to, I chose Caribbean medical school cause they were, I remember calling up Portland community college. Cause by that time we had moved to Portland community college or Portland.  And I was like, Hey, what do I got to do be, be in medical school? They were like three years of undergrad or three years of prerequisites.  You may get a, and you may get in the first round.  I was like, well, that's not going to happen,  you know?  And so anyway, I just remember Googling away and I found this girl on YouTube. Her name's Medjumentry,  right?  Blonde girl, little tiny thing.  And I just watched her journey. And then I saw the point where she was getting in a residency and I just focused on one person.  If that person could do it, I could do it.  Like, I went on Reddit at that point, looked at all the horror stories, I looked at all these, you know, different people.  And I, I just didn't pay attention to them, honestly. I was like, hey, if one person can do it, I know I can do it.  And so that was, that was really my mindset.

And so I chose Caribbean because I didn't have to wait three or four years, and then from there it was like the costs were just  ridiculously cheaper. 

Yeah.  That's awesome. What,  where were you in the Caribbean? What school did you go to?

I was at St. Vincent and the, and the Grenadines. 

How did you, how did you study  with those views? 

Oh, I had a, so let me tell you this, this was the funny part. So I get to the Caribbean, right? And I move, and I go to this apartment and it's up at the top of a hill.  And I'm like, hey, cool, this is awesome. It doesn't have a view, but it was like 500 bucks a month, you know what I mean?  And it was a house, but the way older people retire in the Caribbean specifically is  they'll go up into the mountains and they'll build like a three or four story structure.

 Right? That's basically all cement.  But it'll be skeleton, but all the way at the top, the top level  will be finished and done, and they'll live in that apartment.  And then as they grow older,  they'll just build down.  Right.  And so my apartment was like on the third or fourth level up against a hill.  And I was there maybe a week that time.

Right.  And so  all of a sudden  he's like, oh, we're going to do an addition on this side.  No big deal. You know? And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I got to study, you know, by then they had already given my first like  set of coursework.  And I had no background in anatomy, physiology, science, nothing. I legit showed up there with a, with a pad and a pen and a laptop, right?

Like legit, nothing.  And then all of a sudden I'm learning anatomy and physiology taking 21, 22 units, right?  I told you man, high stress, high stress.  So, I go, I go and I'm sitting there in my apartment and the guy goes, Hey, we're going to start construction right here, we're building a new unit.  And I was like, no, you know, I got, I got to work and I got to study.  All this stuff.  And then he's like, Oh, no big deal. We're just going to come and put plastic all over all of your stuff.  And the guy was actually going to take down my whole wall on my apartment.  And he was expecting me to stay there.  So I was like, dude, no, like no way. And at that time I hadn't given them my deposit yet  because I was trying to  convert it into a Caribbean dollars, you know?  And so I was like, Hey man, just, I'm going to leave. I'm going to go find another place. And then I found a place with a friend,  beachfront apartment. I'll make a post on Instagram  here in a little while for you guys. So you guys can actually go back and see the view.  But beachfront apartment, 500 bucks, all utilities included.  And it was just awesome.  It was just awesome. But to answer your question, how I studied there with the views.  That was pretty much when I started learning how my test strategies were and how I learned  And I learned through drawing things like drawing things out  I can't tell you guys his name, but  when I was in  the Caribbean I was not focused on Caribbean medical students  because a lot of us, you know we didn't make it obviously and I knew that  in general  but  I was focused on people that were going to Harvard   you know,  Mount Cedar, Mount Sinai, like I was focused on people that were out of the U S and so I would watch their vlogs.

That was like when vlogging first came out, you know, I think it was like 2020, you know, 2021, where a lot of people were at home.  And they were just doing a lot of vlogging.  And so I just remember Dr. Grid, something GR, big, long Indian name from Harvard.  And so I started watching, watching and learning how he learned.  And I was just drawing out the system. I was drawing out pathways. I was drawing things out to just draw  and it just registered, you know, it just really, really clicked.  And so  I just found out my learning my test strategy, but also  I learned that basically if I wake up at three 45, three 3345 in the morning  from three 45 to like seven or eight, that's my peak time.  That's like the time when mentally I am just  on it.  You know   and there's no distractions. And so to answer your question, that's really how I was able to do it. Just studying really stupid early.  And. Ignoring all, a lot of the  extra stuff. Now the weekends were fun.  The weekends were a lot of fun. You know, you would take a catamaran and you'd go to Beckway or you would do, you know, there was always things to do.  And then you start making some friendships with locals, et cetera. So there's always some fun stuff to do,  but you know, you got to stay focused at the same time. 

That's awesome, man.  How, how did med school go for you? How was that, that process? And   how, how was the real estate business and so forth while you were there? 

Yeah. So let me tell you this. So  I was over there on the island and then COVID happened  right  now, when I was in medical school, I started getting buff and in shape again. And so what ended up happening was I tore my, like my rotator cuff, the part of my rotator cuff that attaches to my pec.  And so I had to be back in surgery.  So I can't, I flew back home to be with my wife in surgery.  And literally two weeks later, that's when they shut everything down for COVID. 

Yeah, that was a 

so I liked to,  yeah, it was. And I, I feel like I had two lives, two medical school experiences when it came to medical school. I had the first like traditional.  Being a medical student, living in the Caribbean, flying back every couple of months to, you know, visit my wife at the time and all that kind of stuff.  And then the COVID time where I was just sitting there in a lab and on a flight, I kid you not, on a flight from the Caribbean  to Portland, I had a layover in Toronto, Canada.  And my friend at the time, he said, and his name was Tameed and I love him still to this day.  He invited me up to his lounge, you know, the, I say his lounge, but it was a lounge that you get because he had a certain credit card,  right?

I think it's like the Capitol lounge or something like that.  And so it kind of like anything, I just got super hooked on it. I said, wait, what? Just because you have a credit card, you get this,  you know,  like showers, food, benches, you know, things that you can sleep, massage chairs.  And I was like, what the hell is this?

Let me geek out on this because.  The way I was always like, Hey, we're going to do things with debit cards, no credit cards. You know, you maybe have a credit card.  My wife at the time, she was the one with the credit cards and all that stuff. I never believed in credit cards, all that kind of thing.  And so I just went down the rabbit hole, man.

And it started out with credit cards, credit rewards. And then all of a sudden I saw one video that was like, Hey, use credit cards to buy real estate. And I was like,  this is the answer to all my problems.  You know, and it was like, what do you mean? I can literally take a bunch of credit cards and I can go out and buy a bunch of real estate, you know  And so I had my LLC.

I had my wife's, w 2 income as a nurse,  right?  And now I knew how to raise a bunch of business credit  It was like  the perfect storm and then covid where I was just sitting there at home all day  Studying  like that's like the perfect like  like the perfect environment to just go out and build some shit, you know

Your risk tolerance is way higher than mine. 

dude,  I'm telling you, once you go through one process where like,  literally you have,  you know, like I said, like when I first bought my first business at 22 years old, I was sitting at 400k in debt that I owed to individuals, not institutions,  owing money to individuals.  is a lot more stressful than owing money to institutions.

 I learned that,  you know,  when I, when I, when I'm on a property and let's say it was to go bad,  I want to make sure all the contractors get paid before the lender gets paid because they're in the business of lending. They understand that risk.  When this person signs up to take on my job,  you know  that's for his family.

He's not in the business of collecting money. He's in the business of.  You know, providing a service.  And so because I owed individuals at that time,  that's a whole nother level of stress, 

It's a good way to look at it. Yeah. Yeah, for 

Yeah. And so it's like, okay, what do you mean? I'm going to, I'm going to take out this 20, 000 credit card to use it as a down payment on a three and a half percent FHA loan or a 5 percent down FHA loan that we're buying in my wife's name.  Or things like that nature, you know, like,  What I realized too, and this is in Vincent Polisi's podcast. And I think I mentioned that when we were first talking or maybe I mentioned it now,

Yeah, you mentioned it now. Yep.

 yeah, yeah. So Vincent Polisi, you know, a lot of his, you know, the structuring and things like that in real estate.

And then later on I connected with Sharif Medawar.  You can look him up Sharif Medawar. He's a great too.  He's the one that I actually learned a lot from and did consulting calls with   during a time when the recession was going from,  you know, 11, 12 percent interest rates up  right on hard money.  And basically between those two guys, it was like, man, risk is just a part of the business. 

Yeah, it sure is.

 risk is just a part of the business. And so if, if,  if you reach the level of desperation enough mentally,  you know,  you're going to be like, and I was, and I, and I said, I  tell people this, like,  I was at the point where I was mentally desperate because I wanted so badly to get ahead of my situation because I wanted my wife to be able to have kids.

I wanted to get out of one bedroom, one bath apartment.  I wanted to be  four different people or five different people at one time. I want to be a medical student making doctor money  and that was doing  medical school different than everybody else.  You know, I always wanted to do it different a little bit different than everybody else  And so that was really the solution and my creative outlet  was to raise a bunch of money with business credit And then use it to buy real estate to improve our lives and I got to tell you  that first transaction  It was the first transaction that I did with business credit, right?  and I was at a divorce like deposition, you know where they put you in like a deposition and it's basically like a  Like a, a game of gotcha, right?  Like where they're trying to got play, gotcha do this, do that. What's this explain this, do that. You know?  And then I realized like, man, this is all like an act, like.  Like it's like an act, you know, the legal system is,  it's kind of like a game. Nobody's going to put a gun to your head in the sense.  So anyway, I'm sitting there  and in this moment they give me the settlements still right now I can tear up on command  legit. I can tear up on command looking at that settlement statement  because it was like they put the settlement statement in front of me  and  you see the transactions.

15, 000, 21, 000, 12, 000,  and each one of those transactions represents like three or four months of planning and work that I had done before that  sleepless  nights  waiting for that money to hit, you know,  waiting for that money to hit.  And then once it actually hit, you know,  from the balance transfers to lender accounts, et cetera.  And then once that transaction hit within that next week.  Seeing my parents come and look at the property. They were like, holy shit, you bought this, you know, like you bought this fourplex. It's almost 800, 000. You bought this.  And then seeing my wife come through with our brand new, I bought a,  a Dodge Ram limited and business credit.

 Cause then I started finding out about business credit and all that stuff.  So we were driving like a brand new Dodge Ram.  And the morning, that morning I was studying too. I woke up super early to study and then in the afternoon I went over there. Dude, it was like a,  I can't explain it other than it was like a dream,  you know?  And I just remember pulling her, her pulling my daughter out. You know, my daughter at the time, we just had a daughter.  And  it was like a surreal moment, you know? It was like, holy shit, all of this because I just went out and raised a bunch of money.

Yeah, that's wild.

credit cards  during medical school,

you know, while I'm becoming a doctor,

Yeah. And a dad, and a new dad. Yeah. 

and a new dad.  Well, that was, that was a lot of the stress relief to, you know, making babies. 

What was what was next for you after that first deal? 

So after that first deal, I just started  piling them on. I just got on the rollercoaster. That was a time when interest rates were like what three or four. And so in that span, I think we bought eight or nine properties, totaling 30, 31 units.  And then obviously with the interest rates slowing us down, right.  You know, when the interest rates started kicking up and slowing us down, that's when everything was like, whoop,  you know, I just, I just stopped cold Turkey,  but the thing that really screwed us was not only the interest rates going up, right.  But also that my wife went down to part time.  So a lot of our loose secured,  I would say our loose unsecured debt.  Why I had to put together a roller coaster, like a train, so to speak, a balance transfers,  because then at that point, you know, on paper,  you're making 12, 000 a month or 10, 000 a month to now work in part time. You're only making six.  Well, then it messes up your debt to income ratio.  So then I'm sitting there as a man looking at my wife and being like, well, I'm not going to make you go back to work in full time.

Like, how are you going to do that? You know?

 And that, by that time, I already had my second, my son  Ezra.  And so it was like,  I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to figure out a plan to get us a bridge. Right. And my goal, my bridge was like, Hey, survive to 25.

That was in my mind.  I saw that online where some guys said  survive to 95. And in my mind, I copied that. And I was like, Hey, if I can just survive to 25.  I'll be out of medical school, right?  I'll be ready to rock and roll towards the end of June,  June's when I, June, 2024 is when I finished medical school.  And so mentally I was like, as soon as June comes, I'm going to get back on the train again. I'm going to go start flipping. I'm going to go start raising money, start a consulting business  do a more of the social media  consulting type of stuff at that point, you know, and which then, you know, the divorce and all that stuff started. But that was really the transition was  I would say interest rates rising  And then not being able to refinance a lot of the unsecured debt.  So now we're at a spot where  we're pretty much holding a lot of, and I'm being very vulnerable. I'm not here to hide details or information from anybody,  but now we're at a point where we're carrying this debt.

And basically a lot of the rental income now is going to servicing that debt.  And so all we have to do now is get to the point where we can like move around debt   refinance, you know, rebuild in a sense.  And it kind of goes in those waves, right?  But now it's at the point where like  I know the game  so now it's like it's only a matter of me of being free Getting back on the on the bikes on the bike so to speak  and just turning on the engines and I'm like, okay I can move this do that bounce here bounce there  create, you know, create these types of transactions  But in terms of real estate, I just can't think of any other business man where you're just sitting there from your phone  And you put together a team and I, I wanted to really help a lot of new people.

So I put together some notes here this afternoon about different  positions, you know, like a different game plan, how to go from  being a busy medical student  to then all of a sudden being able to buy properties during residencies as you're moving around rotations. Yeah,

thing real quick before you, before you did that. So  graduated med school in 24,  was there, were you, was there any thought to like, Hey, I'm going to go to residency now, or are you just like, Hey, I see the light in, in real estate. I'm loving this. Let me just get after it from a real estate 

honestly,  no, I mentally, I, I I was in a counseling session the other day or whatever it was. And then one guy said that he quietly quit and it just kind of stuck with me,  you know,  where it was like, Whoa, what do you mean quietly quit? You know?  And so mentally at that point, both the problems in my marriage, I would say more so made me quietly quit  where it was like, okay, if I keep growing in real estate.  Like basically I'm going to lose half of it anyway,  so it kind of got that like spiral where it was like, Hey, I was super embarrassed, but the motivation and the inspiration that got me to this level, which primarily came from my wife and my family, you know, that family dynamic  where it kind of just like leveled out,  you know, and I was like, out of that,  out of that Eden moment, you know, I call it my out of coming out of the garden of Eden moment where it was like, Oh shit, this is the world.

Like, this is a new reality for me, you know.  And so I just kind of quietly quit the real estate business. And I just kind of  like, just kind of coasted by so to speak, but I mentally just shut down in terms of real estate and medicine. I just remember sitting there for studying for step two,  two, three nights before it.  And I was already checked out.  Like I was not in the game. You know what I mean?  And it was because like, and I hate to say this honestly, and a lot of people are, are, you're, you may watch this and you're like, man,  This guy is living in an alternate reality, kind of appears to be delusional.  But when you're on the phone one day, and I shit you not, this is a situation when you're on the phone one day  and you walk into the bank with your checklist and you know that you have every single T dotted and every single die.

And I I dotted. You know, without a shadow of a doubt that you're just gonna raise a hundred thousand dollars, the a hundred thousand dollars that you need  to go invest in a property, your life ain't gonna be the same anymore after that. 

Fair. 

know, you're not  , you're not gonna be the same after that.

Money is. Money is like,  like this. Rent check is great, it's cool,  you know, but I'm gonna take this, whatever, a thousand bucks, for example, from this tenant, and I'm gonna try and rack up $300,000 of debt against it 

somehow, some 

Yeah. Yeah. As I say, how? Tell us how. 

Well,

the, the banks are, the banks are lending institutions. So we can go on that because a lot of people are going to ask how the, how the, how the, how  basically what I've learned is that banks market for a reason.  Because they want to make loans,  you know,  and the younger, the banker,  the, the, the, the wetter your beak should get because they're more hungrier. They're more on it. They want to make the sale.  Every, every young banker at 22 years old, for some reason, they're a vice president. If you've realized that,  you know, every mortgage broker is a vice president, you know,  and it's like,  it's all just a show, right?

But the younger bankers, they're the ones that are going to direct you and lead you to the senior underwriters.  And underwriters are the actual ones  who are  the signal callers, et cetera.  And so I was just on the phone recently and I said, listen, you're not going to know who the sit, who the, who the shock caller is, the boss is, so to speak,  until you do your first loan with this bank.

And then they're going to run you up all the way to gamut.  And then finally, you're going to find out who the decision maker is.  And from that decision maker, then you're going to look back on your profile  and they're going to say, Hey, you need 20 more points on your credit score. You need two months more of seasoning  on this credit account.

 And then you're going to get your actual checklist,  you know?  And then from there, you're going to go back in there with your checklist two or three months later,  and you're going to demand your funding, you know?  And at that point, they're going to say, Oh shit, this guy completed every single task that we told him to do.

And they're going to have no choice.  But by the way, they also want to give you that money.  So when I walk into a bank, for example, nowadays, and this is just based on my experience,  it's like a whole different experience. It's more like a,  Hey man, how can I make this happen? Like, how can I do this?  I'm not walking in there like bombastic, like a jerk, like demanding, like give me this, give me that.

No, I treat people the way I want to be treated.  Okay. How man do I, how do I raise this 200 K business lines of credit?  How do I do this? How do I do that? Okay. Well, you need to have 800 K in gross income for that year.  Well, I can put that together. I got rentals.  That are making 10, 15, 20 K in gross income, you know, and we can do some transactions, that kind of thing. And once you get that checklist, man, you walk in there and demanding your financing and you're going to get it, you know the hard part isn't creating the money. This is what I see nowadays.  The hard part isn't raising the money.  The hard part is actually taking that money, those lines of credit, et cetera, that you use  to then go try and buy assets with it and

actually run a project.  Now, my process for running projects, now looking back, right, because I did a lot of trial and error,  but it's a mixture of  how I bought my first  property management business  and also how I started in real estate, kind of both.  I put those experiences into one package, basically.  And so my experience when I first bought a business was  I went out and found a partner.  Right.  But the problem was, was I didn't have anything to bring to the table to that partner  besides a a, a smile and a promise. I'm gonna pay you and I'm promise I'm gonna show up. That's all I had to offer at the time. Right.  Whereas with now, what I tell medical students, especially if you're in medical school,  go out, start working on your credit,  start working on manufactured spending, open up your LLC  to start getting it aged and start learning how to manufacture spend,  get a business credit card, start paying your rent with it.

Start paying your phone bill with it. Start paying any little bills that you can with it and pay it off. And then every three months  call that same bag bank up and say, Hey, I need a higher credit limit.  Hey, I need a higher credit limit. Hey, I need a higher credit limit.  And then before you know it,  You get four credit cards for banks, et cetera.

And you've been doing that for six to 12 months.  You're going to get 50 K 75 K a hundred K  right. And credit limits because business credit.  I mean, they're, they're, they're obscene. I have this, I have this form.  And it's actually a screenshot of a picture,  but I went from a 3, 000 credit limit with us bank  to 30, 000.  To 30, 000. 

Wow.

Yeah. And that's, that's 30, 000. That's a three and a half percent FHA down payment, you

Right. Right.

Yeah. And that's 5 percent down on a 500, 000 house.  Plus

some closing costs. Yeah.

dude.  Now,  so that's the first thing I tell people like, Hey, work on this manufactured spending process, et cetera.  And learn that get your LLC aged, et cetera.  The second part of that is dude, it's only  40 hours. Go get your real estate license.  Just take the classes and go get your real estate license.  You're in a room 14, 15 hours a day anyway,  because you're either stressed the heck out studying,  or you're just antisocial because medicine makes you antisocial, right?  So just stay in there a couple hours. And it's like  the 40 hour real estate class, you're in there for 10 hours. It's actually really 10 hours worth of work. And then the other four, 30 hours of it, you're just  clicking,  you know, to refresh the screen, to put it in your time, you know?

Oh, for sure.

yeah. And so go get your real estate license.  So then all of a sudden you graduate medical school, you have 50 to a hundred K and business credit and credit lines.  You have your real estate license  and then wherever they put you out in residency,  you go out and you buy your first fourplex or your first single family.  You can represent yourself as a buyer's agent, get two and a half percent  commission.  Plus you can get your.  You can use your down payment,  right? On a business credit, et cetera.  And how you structure that is differently.  And before you know it, man, you're on the, you're on the gravy train.

Now, if you really want to go crazy, the third part to this is, and I, and I told, I told my friends this, the third part  is basically calling up a hard money lender in your area.

Once you get there as a resident.  And you're going to find out who the players are.  You know what I mean by that? 

there's the big fish. He's got the cash.

Yeah. And the hard money lenders, they're going to know who the guys are that are, are the real serious people. If you want to know who the real serious people are in terms of joint venture partners and business partners, et cetera,  you want to call a bank or hard money lender because they're going to want to connect you with somebody to do a deal,  a real serious person. 

Yeah. Then you build out your team. You keep going from there.  The cool thing Benjamin too, is that we in residency. And I tell folks to all the time, you should, you should be thinking about buying buying a home, buying a multifamily property, house hacking to your buddies that you're in residency with, cause you all are never going to be home anyways, but you still need a place to stay.

 Then your cash flowing on that deal. And you can just continue to stack like you're saying. So  that's that's really cool. 

yeah, man, the, the one thing too, and, and I was going to make a video on breaking down extenuating circumstances when it comes to FHA and conventional guidelines. Basically,  you can move into, let's say Portland, Oregon, right? And you can work at OHSU  and you can get a 0 percent down, you can get a FHA, you know, 3.

5 percent down, 5 percent down, whatever it is.  But because of extenuating circumstances, if you have to move greater than 50 miles away, then you then qualify for another FHA or another conventional loan.  And so there's ways that you can just start stacking properties. It's crazy.  You know, if

you really start looking at the guidelines, et cetera,  and as a resident,  I'm just familiar with OHSU because that was the program that I wanted to apply to the most.  At the time when I was actually interested in residency and finishing on, you know, determined, I was determined to be a physician until I wasn't, if that makes sense.

But it was like  just reading through the fine print. Nobody wants to do the extra work. And so the reason why I say nowadays, it feels like I'm in finance is because now I'm pulling up all the guidelines and mortgages and lending requirements and all these different things  and working backwards,  you know, okay, what does the bank want first before I go out and hit the pavement, looking at deals,  you know   a lot of people, they say, go out and buy a rehab house, you know, sober living, rehab houses, et cetera.

It's great.  But the problem with that is basically,  essentially,  they're still going to give you appraisals at market rent.  So even though your house may rent to a rehab sober living for eight or 9, 000 bucks a month,  the problem with it is the appraisal is only going to be set at four or 5, 000,  let's say,  because that's the market rent, right?  So what ends up happening is you have to kind of layer it. You have to get third parties involved. You have to get business partners involved,  and you just have to cooperate more so to make sure the structure's right.  So you can please the bank,  you know, for their initial appraisal. So you can say, I'm just telling you in general, okay, these are topics.  These are concepts. I'm not really doing them.  You know what I mean?  So anyway, you can go out and get a house. Let's say that's, you know, 3, 000 a month on market rent.  And you can have a third party rent that house for 3, 500 bucks a month, right? The business partner, et cetera.  And then you can use that 3, 500 bucks.

And they'll say, you know, it's pretty close  to market rent.  It's not that much higher up. So we're going to go ahead and use that one.  Right. Remember  what I told you guys about  younger bankers.  That want to be future investment bankers. And when they take the series seven, they're going to be these Mr.

Investment  bankers, you know,  they're the ones that are going to push these types of things through because it's a good solid investment, you know, we're not like  it's, it's.  It's like what's the value of a property?  Is it the appraised value or is it the replacement value or is it whatever? Somebody's going to buy from it at the end of the day The bank has the appraisals the bank has the information  and they make the call  if that makes sense  and so you can have a 3, 500 rent on on the first layer and then the second layer then that's when you can have your  you know, actual lease to the, you know, to the original party who run it to do the deal and actually run the  sober living, et cetera. 

That's cool, man. Yeah, that's a,  that's a unique way to stack, stack things up to make it look more favorable for the bank. He's ultimately making the decision. And   I think you bring up a good point too, of  kind of having your financial house in order, like figuring out, Hey, what is the bank?  Need before I go out and find the deal.

 So you're not racing backwards, trying to figure out like, Hey, I found this great deal. Now I have to figure out how to fund it and  down my due diligence time and all these other things. So   yeah, that's important  to think about going forward.  What's what's something you're passionate about that you're working on right now? 

Right now, honestly, so just going through the court process and the legal process and all the shit that I've had to deal with these last six months, I've been exposed to a lot more.  I would say government funded type of housing, like sober living, rehab, housing, things of that nature. I've seen somebody,  I shit you not, when they were  in a, in a secluded area on treatment, you know,  totally engaged,  you know,  and then I saw the same person at the gas station, the Arco gas station in North Plains,  and it was like a night and day person.  One person's in there with me talking about God and you know, the Bible and very active and very like one like this.  And then the next minute it's like talking to a ghost. And I'm like, wow, there's a serious need for sober living. There's a serious need for people to get off the street and get in, get in a house, get in a controlled environment.

 Not everybody can handle freedom,  you know?  And so taking just,  I would say my passion for healthcare, so to speak.  And just kind of redirecting it to real estate and finance and, you know, also solving a big need.  I would say that's more so of the area that I'm going in.  But if you're talking like, what's my end goal in this?

My end goal in this is to buy,  you know, God willing, 10, 15, 20 acres within the next five to six years,  set up a place where people can go on Sabbath days and Saturdays and hang out and, and, you know, enjoy  life, kind of live in an alternate reality for a little bit, you know.  And get out in the woods somewhere.

 And then of course just manage, maintain rentals, do business deals.  Eventually what I want to do once  this next phase, which is the real estate building wealth phase, you know, the next 5 to 10 years for me.  Then from that phase I want to go on like a corporate run with my kids once they turn like 18 or 19 years old, you know. 

Nice.  That's awesome, 

of that the general outlook.

Yeah. You got things figured out.  That's cool. I'm sure,  I'm sure, you know, your kids are going to learn a lot from your  creative mind, like your work ethic, figuring out business, all these sorts of things, and they're going to be  off to the races for sure.

Oh yeah. And their moms, their moms are extremely hard worker too.

So they're going to get it from both sides. You know, she was like a softball athlete. She was very like successful   in her own right. You know, she became a nurse. She worked in the CVOR, got her like CVR license or certificate or something like that.  So they're going to get it from both sides.  But I think for me, they're going to get more. So the creative ambitious side, you know, like, Hey, I can actually do all kinds of crazy stuff, you know, 

Financially and I could just dream a little bit, you know,

Yeah. Dream figured out. Think, think, you know, not, not necessarily  big picture, but get, get into the creative side of things to figure out, Hey, how can I make this work? Instead of  just like, Oh, the bank said, no, I'm just going to leave, you know, and, and figure out, Hey, well, how can I  make my situation more favorable?

How can I  get this,  this deal to go through? Which, which is awesome, man.  As we're getting 

Yeah,  just just really just really quickly because I

think this is gonna benefit a lot of people.

 What I've realized too is you're not gonna know  Unless you actually submit the paperwork and talk to an actual banker You're not gonna go until you have a property under contract. And so one thing that's helps people, you know, if you're like, hey, man How do I buy a property with no money?  Contact a banker. They're going to fail.  They want to do loans.  You know,  there's no dog, no, no income bank statement types of loans.  There are all types of different loan situations and scenarios.  And so if you go out and you raise 300, 000 worth of business credit,  you're going to find somebody out there.

That's going to give you a loan on a 500, 000 house. They're going to say what? You want to put down 300, 000 in business credit  in cash.  Okay. Yeah. I'll carry that note.

 Yeah.  Are you working mostly with more like smaller local regional banks or  what would you look for in a bank when you're doing the strategy?

So this, this is what I, this is what I learned. Number one, if they're a new bank,  like if they're a new bank in the area, you know, or they just did a merger  like Rivermark credit union and another bank just did a merger.  And I'm like drawn to that.  Like that's,  you know, if they open up a new branch, you know, and like I said, they're putting the young bankers over there, you know?  And so I would say if there's a new bank, if it's a new merger,  those kinds of, those kinds of people.  But also, you know, talk to hard money lenders and private money lenders in your area. They're going to tell you  this bank sucks. This bank is great.  This bank is awesome. Banner banks, another bank that I've been doing some research on   here locally.  But if you talk to, again,  I think this is a perfect, I can tell you guys in four or five minutes, you guys want to know the perfect, I would say, in my opinion, 

Yeah. 

you're moving to a new area in medical school,  right? And your new hobby now isn't playing video games or social media or Netflix.  Your new hobby now is raising money for fun.  Now I don't want to get it out right now, but I have a  I have a baseball card case with like 60 credit cards in it  Right.  It's fun.  It's fun. It's like oh shoot. Look at all the it's like pokemon, you know, like  like playing pokemon  And so you go to this new place you go to this new area The first people that you want to contact is hard money lenders and you just want to tell them this you want to say Hey, man, I have 150 000 to invest.  I want to partner with somebody's experience  And that hard money lender,  it's very rarely they get a call like that,  but they're very excited because what they want to do is they want to put you with somebody who's actually doing deals and producing deals.  And so then from there, you just simply ask questions, humble yourself a little bit, shut up.

Don't be like one of the medical students on rotations  that want to tell the physicians about everything they've done in their lives, you know,  you know,  and you just sit there, humble yourself, just ask questions, be genuine. And then, you know, let's say you find 15, 20 people that they give you names of, right? You're going to find at least one guy there that you get genuinely along with.  And then you just kind of ride his coattail a little bit.  And you're going to find out who all the players are, all the investment strategies, et cetera.  Now, what I did,  and I did this even recently. So this is why I'm telling you guys, this, this lesson is still in my mind.  Basically what I did was I was like, shoot, you know, I'm going through a divorce, all this situation. I can't buy anything because asset restraining order  can't move debt. So I'm just kind of sitting here like this, you know?  And I said, well, I can build my Rolodex.  You know, I can go out and fill up, find partners.

And a lot of, a lot of men resonate with being divorced and going through that divorce. So they're like, Oh man, I went through that.  Yeah, I'm here to support you brother, all these kinds of things, you know?  And so anyway, you ride this guy's coattail. Now  what you don't want to do  is bring your ideas to the table.  That's not this time.  That's not the time to do it.  So if you find somebody that you genuinely get along with and this  person has been successful in apartment building since 1994  Don't go over there and be like,  well, I want to go ahead and I really want to do a short term rental That's my big grand idea  or hey, I want to open up a coffee shop And I want to partner with you to open up a coffee shop No,  you're in the apartment business now  until you get  you know, really successful  And then from there then you can start hitting your dreams in a sense  So that would that would probably be one of the easiest ways like a prop.

What do you call it a shortcut to success?

Yeah. Yeah. 

yeah,

 does that make logical sense to you? 

No.  Yeah, absolutely. And it all kind of boils down to,  to one kind of putting yourself out there and being willing to make a phone call or a couple of phone calls to the bankers, to the hard money lenders  that might be uncomfortable.  But also building those relationships. I mean, this is real estate is a relationships game, no matter how you look at it.

 So absolutely, man,  that's awesome. Well, if 

Dude, it gets it gets yeah 

It gets on let me tell you guys this though because before you even get to that point We're like, let me pick up the phone and all this kind of stuff, right,  dude I can't tell you how desperate I had to be to pick up that phone and how how  you know, you're like this  I remember when I was in my, in my one bedroom, one bath apartment, where I was like, holy crap.

I was inundated with all this information about business credit and all that stuff.  And I was really desperate. I was really desperate.  But then when it came to picking up this phone  and start making shit happen,  it got really like,  like really, really like this. And so  that's normal.  That's very, very normal.

So just so you guys know that before you do what I just told you and replay  it back five, 10 times,  just know that when you look at that phone,  you're going to be like,  like this.

Yeah, this is about to get real.

it's about to get real and that's a good thing. 

That's awesome.  Yeah. I mean, sometimes, you know, that moment when you're getting called to action, you can either  step into that or you can run away and that  call to adventure, that call to action, it's, it's important to answer the call and get after it.  So super cool, man.  But Ben, I know you have I know you have some ways that folks can reach out to you if they want to know more, they want to learn about  what you're doing.

What are some good ways folks can reach out to you if they, if 

Yeah. The best way to reach out to me honestly, right now is either through my website, Benjamin Maciel. com or on Instagram, Benjamin Maciel underscore MD.  Those are the best ways to reach out to me.  Now, if you guys have like basic simple questions where you just want to talk and text, I'm working on something   right now where it's like 37 bucks a month and it's unlimited talking  it's unlimited texting. to get your first deal.  But if you want like one on one talking and zoom stuff like that,  you know, it's like, okay, we'll set up a call. We'll do 250. I'll walk you through raising your first hundred credit.  And then we can talk and text, you know, or we can text  the rest of the way until you get that first,  I would say deal done.  But my long, my long game in this.  Is actually to start raising up, you know, MDs,  where we get partners  and we can start bouncing credit, bouncing deals, start moving, start making transactions, et cetera, maybe buy a hospital  in the future.  So it's a

long, it's a long game,  you know? 

That's awesome, man. Go back by the hospital that you were in where you were like, Hey,  this is where the money is, where the anesthesiologist was. So  maybe take it full circle.  That's awesome, 

sure. 

 Well, Benjamin, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for coming on the physicians and properties podcast.

I definitely learned a lot going to be reaching out to you. I learned more about this strategy because it's not something that  I've heard  or been familiar with. So really cool. 

Yeah, man, a lot of prayer, a lot of fasting these last six months and a lot of reflection just kind of to put together things, you know, and I feel like it's all coming full circle in a sense where now it's like a matter of time before  I can kind of get off the. Yeah. Get off the leash and so to speak and start hitting it.  But I can't tell you guys enough that  healthy physicians are not only healthy physically, but also in other areas of life. And  don't discount what creativity and life outside of   medicine does, you know, that was my outlet.  You know, when I was sitting there in my one bedroom apartment,  like this was the creative outlet that I needed that was productive.

It wasn't just sitting there sketching,  drawing pictures. It was like  creating money, going out and buying real estate and meeting new people.  And I just want to tell you, man,  this is probably one of the most   coolest podcasts that I've been a part of.  I appreciate you letting me just take the time to talk and kind of explain a little D different details.  And we definitely got to do this again.  We definitely got to do

Absolutely, man.  Yeah. Well, Hey, thanks for, thanks for reaching out. Thanks for coming on the podcast.  And I'm excited to see where things go next, man. You're moving fast. So  good luck with everything coming up. If I can help out in any way, just let me know.

100%. Bless you guys. Thank you guys for watching.

Awesome, man. Thanks for your time. Have a good night.

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