The Most Dwanderful Real Estate Podcast Ever!

Season Eight, New Wealth Playbook

• Dwan Bent-Twyford • Season 8 • Episode 416

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We kick off season eight with Jay Patel to unpack how to build steady, inflation‑beating income from real estate using three verticals: distressed deals, durable cash flow, and bridge lending. Along the way, Jay shares how he helped launch India’s first national MLS and why diversification belongs in both portfolios and life.

• origins of Proptex and Jay’s 30 years in real estate
• building India’s first national MLS and fixing broken data
• why a fund instead of a syndication
• solving sequence‑of‑returns risk in retirement
• three verticals: distressed equity, assisted living and co‑living, bridge lending
• targeting 11% with quarterly distributions or compounding
• one‑year lockup and investor‑first waterfall
• risk management, conservative LTVs and authentic comps
• avoiding shiny objects and vetting operators
• accessible next steps, calls, and social links
• word of the week: diversification

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Make it a Dwanderful Day!

Kicking Off Season Eight

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Hey everybody, welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I am so excited because it is season eight. Can you believe it? I am in my eighth year of podcasting. It's 2026. I'm eight years in, and I have almost two million downloads, thanks to all of you. 686,025 in 25 alone. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate all of the five-star reviews, all the subscriptions. I love my audience. So Mr. Jay is my very first guest, the first season eight. So we're so excited to have Jay in the house today. So yeah, so this is uh the fresh start of my eighth season, and I have met some of the greatest people and interviewed people and worked with people, and it's just been amazing. So congratulations on being guest number one.

Jay’s Background And Proptex Overview

Jay Patel

Woohoo! Thank you so much. I appreciate the uh the honor of being your first guest this year. That's it. That's it. Exciting.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

So, Jay, we uh just throw people to the wolves over here. I just have you really quickly tell us who you are, how to find you on social media, and give me one or two lines about what you do, and then I'm gonna ask some questions.

Building India’s First National MLS

Speaker 1

Sure. Uh well, first of all, like we said, my name is Jay Patel. Uh, been in real estate over 25, almost closing in on 30 years. We're getting old, man. I can't believe how fast time flies. Uh, I currently manage the uh Prop Tex funds, and more specifically, we've created a fund called the uh Prop Tech's Income Advantage Fund One. And that's one of our, that's our, I guess, our flagship fund, if you will. It provides a nice 11% consistent yearly return. And uh as far as what I do is anything and everything to do with real estate. So, like I said, I've been in it for a long time. Uh currently also hold a managing broker license, although I don't really practice it. Uh, I really have it more for you know the ability to have access to the MLS and be able to uh find all the information that I need in terms of you know doing our research online, at least in the local markets. And uh yeah, and so we do. As far as finding me online, you can go to our website, proptex.com That's P R O P T E X dot com. Uh, you can also check out our LinkedIn profile, or my personal LinkedIn profile will be under uh LinkedIn, uh Jay Patel, and then there's a dash MLS. And you say, why is that there? Well, because um, besides just doing regular investing in real estate and uh now managing this fund, I've also been involved in the prop tech space. So um you you might not know this, Dwan, but 90% of the world does not have an MLS system in terms of all these countries.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Oh, yeah.

Jay Patel

And we developed the first MLS. You do know that's fantastic. So we developed India's first MLS system. My nationality is Indian as well. Uh so I happened to go there and saw that the market was a complete mess. Absolutely. Um, so we built that, uh, we started that project back in 2015. We've grown it to over 12,000 users. Now we're expanding it internationally. Of course, 12,000 users is nothing in the grand scheme things. Our goal is to get up to you know a few hundred thousand users now. Then now that the product is built, we're gonna really blow it open and uh do a significant amount in advertising and marketing of that. And then we're also expanding uh Southeast Asia uh globally. So we're looking at Philippines and a few other countries that will be our first uh forays uh in 2026. But so that's uh that's why my LinkedIn has that dash MLS. If you go to Instagram, you can find me at uh PropTex's funds. Uh that's our uh LinkedIn, excuse me, our Instagram uh profile. And that's uh a bit about me.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

So after I interview people, then I Instagram stop them. I go follow and then I read and read and read and read and read. No, no, I definitely am.

Jay Patel

And uh it's a new profile. If if you go on it, it's a new Instagram profile. So you won't see a lot on there, but you see just some videos of uh some past uh podcasts we've done. But you know, this is where you got to start. So prop tech's funds is actually a relatively new fund, even though I've been in the business over 30 years, almost 30 years now. Um, you know, I've been doing it for myself as well as you know, individual clients. But to actually set up a fund is something that's um it's relatively new.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Oh, it is. So I so I just want to go back to what you said. So you are in prop tech. So uh so prop T-E-X-T, prop text.

Jay Patel

Prop text. So it's prop short for property, P-R-O-P, then T, and then uh E X. Basically, we came up with the word nowadays. If you want to get a do, by the way, I commend you because you've got a fantastic show and you came up with your own name, Dwanderful. It's fantastic because you took your first name. So we had to do something similar. There's really nowadays getting a dot-com is almost impossible, right? Like if you want to get a one-word short dot com. It is. It's it's impossible. So when I first start what do you have to do? You gotta create your create.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

When I first started my podcast, um, I had a few people that were in the podcast, and they said, You should do a play on your name. And I was like, a play on my name. And I thought, okay, Dwan. And I was already calling people like my Dwandanaires, my millionaires, and I would always say, Have a Dwantastic day. So I was kind of already using my name, and I thought, Dwan, like wonderful, dwanderful, like Mr. Wonderful. I thought, oh, that'd be fun. I'll be Dwanderful. So I like it.

Jay Patel

So how we came, how we came up with PropTex is prop short for property. T is for technology, because we combine technology with property, especially now using AI. And then X is basically our expertise. So we came up with the word proptex, and that's what we have, proptext.com. So you can go to the website there and uh get some information.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Oh, T E X or T E X T.

Jay Patel

No, just T E X.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Okay, I'm gonna make sure because I thought you said X, so P-R-O-P-T-E-X.

Speaker 1

Correct.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

People need to know because I thought you said text. So I love it. So I just want to ask you. So you said, so I know that in other countries, I actually work with a lot of people in the Philippines and India and and people in Canada and around the world. The MLS is not available to everyone. So you have created a system to make the MLS available in other countries.

Why Create A Real Estate Income Fund

Jay Patel

Yeah, not our MLS. Our LMS MLS is here locally, right? It's so MLS basically, as you understand, as you know uh from your vast experience, is that it's a software tool that aggregates all the property listings in a local, like a geographic market. So for example, if you're in South Florida, you know, you'll have an MLS there that has all the properties in, say, Palm Beach County and then Fort Lauderdale. So I guess that's Broward County, and you know, that all comes into one place. So I'm in Chicago, and in Chicago, we have a system called MRED, M-R-E-D, Midwest Real Estate Data, and that aggregates all of the property listings in the greater Chicagoland area. So there's only one MLS in every geographic location. And sometimes in some markets, for example, in California, you may have two or three, like some of the brokers may have to get two or three different MLSs, only because uh, you know, the cities are there's you've got bigger cities that are pretty close nearby, and they have two different MLSs. So if you happen to be in the middle, you have to be able to access both. But yeah, so this is what we've created for India is uh it's vastly different uh in terms of overall structure because it's not limited to just its one city. We launched in Mumbai, but uh which is Bombay. And uh but our MLS that we built there is a national MLS. Uh that means anyone that comes on, they actually have access to property listings throughout the country. Um, and that's our first project. And the second project after that is going to be launching what we call a consumer-facing or a B2C. The MLS is a B2B. Our next project would be to launch the B2C, which takes all of this valuable data. Today, as you know, it's not the revenue that you earn, it's the data that you have. The data is worth much more money than uh, you know, any kind of revenue you may be generating right now. So that's the key. So we want to take that valuable data and then distribute it to the general public, similar to what we have in the US, which is like Zillow or realtor.com. Yeah. Um, so there are sites like that currently. All the countries, they have sites, but the problem you're gonna see in the majority of them is that the data is not authentic, it's not legitimate. Um, many people put fake listings, and you say, why would somebody put a fake listing? And really it's simple. It's because what they're trying to do is use that tool, that website, as a lead generation tool. So they put up a listing that looks amazing, put beautiful pictures, price at about 20% below what would be considered a fair market value, or even below that. And what happens? People see that and say they want to call them up right away. Hey, is this available? And the first thing that happens, the guy says, Oh no, I'm sorry, just got sold yesterday. But don't worry, I can show you something else. And that becomes the lead, you know? And but it's frustrating. It's frustrating for you as a buyer, it's frustrating even for other brokers. So, long story short, we saw the need, we developed the product, and that's a whole separate business uh which runs, and uh that's on the other side of the world. But yeah, I'm I'm proud of it, and uh, we're just scratching the surface.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

But that's amazing. I mean, you're the out of all my eight years of podcasting, you are the only person I met that has branched out like that into other countries doing what you do. Like that's amazing. That's a really great idea.

Jay Patel

It's it's a challenge.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

So now the key is to get India hooked up to the United States. So they can go, hey, let me see what I can there, or what can we buy over there? I know it is coming. That is, but that's amazing. That's really good for you. It's like, you know, there we, you know, you've talked, you've been investing 30 years. So I've been in 35, so we know we've seen everything. And you hardly ever see anything that's new or fresh. Yeah. So I'm like, hey, what a good way to start off my year with a new fresh thing with the guy that invented it. I feel really honored now.

Speaker 1

So we've got that, and then of course, the big thing that we have here is the uh is the prop tax funds, and that's really my my new baby that I'm that I'm happy uh that I'm excited about.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

So is that a syndication?

Beating Inflation And Outliving Your Money

Jay Patel

No, so it's actually different. It's not a syndication. I'll tell you what it is is it's a fund, it's a real estate fund, right? So many the genesis of the prop tax funds happened like this. I mean, I never set out to go ahead and create a fund. Uh long story short, I'll give you the uh the quick two-minute synopsis. Is I like I said, I've been in real estate for a long time. Uh we make our mistakes when we, you know, I mean, we learn the most from the mistakes we make. So over the years, I've made some mistakes, but at the same time, I've had some good success. Uh, and I thank God, because if we hadn't, we wouldn't be where we are today. And one of the things that I learned was how to build a portfolio of properties that ultimately gives you enough passive income that it can replace your full-time job or your, you know, your paycheck, if you will. And that's important for me because now, you know, as I'm getting up around 55, I'm looking at retiring in the next few years, you know, and I want to make sure that I have enough consistent cash flow that I don't have to worry about, you know, am I going to deplete my savings or will I have enough in case I live a long life, right? I mean, one of the things that we do, my Instagram profile, by the way, is redefining age. You just say, why do you have that? Because I I don't I believe age is a number. And why do I bring that up? Because we focus a lot, it is absolutely a number, right? I mean, we focus a lot on health and fitness. And what do we do that for? Because we have a better overall lifestyle, we can spend more time with our kids and ultimately our grandkids. Yep. And we we can live a long life. Well, what happens if you live a long life, but you haven't saved enough money? What happens if you, you know, if you don't have a plan that's gonna be able to allow you to maintain your principle, your safety without depleting it, and you can actually just live off the interest. You're gonna outlive your money. And this is one of the biggest concerns. So Proptex came about as a result of me talking to uh some of my friends who said, Hey Jay, you built this thing. Can you help me in terms of building a portfolio? So I helped a couple of guys, and the problem with that is you can't do this on a one-on-one with many people, it's not really scalable. And we said, So, what is the easiest thing to do? And we had a huge group of friends, we said, look, let's set up a fund. If you like what we do here, put your capital in there, and then we'll I'll manage the whole thing, and my team does. So we have four different divisions in the company, right? Excuse me. Excuse me. We have acquisitions, we have underwriting, we have the management side of it, and then we have dispositions. So acquisitions, that team just focuses on really ideal properties that we want to buy, properties where we can have built-in equity. So one of the things we love is foreclosures, short sales, uh tax deed properties. We're buying these properties at well below the current market value. And that means, and this is so much different from like the stock market. Tomorrow you buy a stock, you have no idea if that's going up or down. You have maybe some idea, you have a hope more than an idea. And that's why you buy. You say, okay, I believe this is gonna go higher. But wouldn't it be nice if you bought a stock and you knew that, hey, it's gonna be 25 or 30% higher tomorrow? Yes. That's kind of what we do in foreclosures or short sales or even taxis. We're buying them so far below the market value. And we know what the actual fair value would be because that's the beauty in the US city. We have the MLS, we have all this data that we can pull from and get actual live comps. So you know what a true comparable price is. And you say, okay, it's a million-dollar property, I can buy it for $700,000. That's like making over 30, it's actually more than that. If you look at it, if you put $700,000 in, it's worth a million. It's not a 30% return, it's greater than that. Yeah. So it's better than the market, it's predictable, it's stable, it's not gonna go to zero tomorrow, which I love. Um, I've got some scars from the market, and I didn't want that in my retirement. So we ended up deciding, right? So that's that's how this whole thing, that's the genesis of the proptext funds. We built it so that we're delivering 11% to the investors. We, meaning Jake Tell and my team, we don't make a dime until first 11% is made by you or you know, the as as the investor.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Okay, I love that.

Speaker 1

Uh that's not how it was, yeah, it's not it's not big. And then also the other big thing is, and I'm sure you're familiar with real estate, most funds or most syndications, like you asked me earlier, they're typically going to be three to five year lockups.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yes, that's it's not a liquidity.

Jay Patel

Yeah. So it's not a syndication, that's the good news. You only have a one-year lockup, which is the bare minimum. Uh, that means that after one year, you can pull out with just a you know, a 90-day notice, okay, look, I need it by next quarter, no problem. It's pulled out. That doesn't happen in typical real estate funds. So you have tremendous flexibility, you get nice 11%, and then you have two options. Option number one is if let's say you're retired and you need the income, well, then you get the quarterly payments every single quarter. If you don't need the income and you're not quite retired yet, and you're like myself, I'm 55, I want to be retired at 60, 65. So I want my money compounding, right? You know, the power of compounding is really where you truly make money. You might say, oh, 11% is not really sexy. It's not a really high return. But would you believe if I told you that if you took as little as $100,000 and you put it into something that could give you a consistent 11%, that $100,000 in 10 years would be $295,000 based on compounding. That's phenomenal. Based on because what we're doing is it's actually $283,000. But because ours is quarterly compounding, it actually grows to about $295,000. That's three times almost 3x. So that's huge. Many of my peers, and you know, most of them were professionals uh in the corporate world, uh well educated, they did extremely well, they've saved up money, they got 401ks, IRAs, et cetera. They're really good at what they do, but what they're not good at is the investment side of it. Or and and they're they you know admit it that this is not our strength, just the way my strength would not be what they do. And so, you know, they recognize that we need to do something with it. And if they were to take it, and I should basically show them you take, let's say, hypothetically half a million bucks and you put it in something like this, that half a million becomes about 1.5, close to 1.5. About I think it ends up being like 1.42. 11% on 1.42 is over $13,000 a month. Now, I think most people today can at least, you know, live comfortably without having to change their lifestyle significantly. And we're able to accomplish that with as little as a half a million bucks. So it's not, you know, the biggest fear a lot of people have today is do I have enough money saved up, right? No. And that's the way you start thinking about when you get to around 50, 55, 60.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

It's true.

Speaker 1

I so I'm and this is what's uh what the conversation is with, doesn't it?

How The Fund Works And 11 Percent Target

Dwan Bent-Twyford

No, so I'm 66 and I've been investing for 35 years, and it's like, ah, you know, you start thinking, oh, maybe I want to retire. And I love the fact that you have a fund um opposed to like a syndication. But a good example is my dad retired. He so I'm from Ohio, so I was raised up in, you know, near you from Chicago. Um, you know, the the blue blue collar were gonna jump, like graduate high school in 77. So the deal was for the girls was get married, have kids, and work in a factory and work for the man and retire when you're 60, and da-da-da-da. And so my dad did that, you know, worked, worked for the man, the factory, and retired at like 57. Well, you know, they spent all their money in mutual funds and da-da-da-da. And around 70 years old, my dad calls. He says, Listen, my my wife loves my my stepmom called my little mama. He goes, We've been going through our money, and he goes, at the rate the market is going down, he goes, We don't have enough money to live on. And I was this is like, you know, now you're 70 and you've been retired for over a decade, and you're thinking, like, I'm I'm gonna run out of money. And so at that time, you know, this was he passed away last year, so that would have been like 17, 18 years ago. I said, listen, you guys are sitting on gobs of money. Won't you buy rentals? Because they live in the country. I said, get some rentals in the little town, pay cash, or give you guys something to put them around and, you know, fix them up and work on and just get you out of the house. Anyway, so he bought a couple of rentals and all of a sudden their income went from whatever their fixed income was, maybe $2,500. It was like $8,800 a month. A seven-year-old man that was like, you know, worked for the man and retired and everything he had was paid for, and you know, everything's gotta be in your name, and you know, that. He's like, Do you know how much money we have coming in now? And I'm like, Yes, I do, thank you. You know, and I was investing for decades. And I have an old school dad, so he was like, you need to get a real job and insurance and you know, 401ks. You need a real job, that investing. That's not a real job. And then in his old age, he's like, hey, listen, tell me how to do what you're doing because I'm running out of money. And it's a real, it was a real fear. They were like really terrified they were running out of money, and then they ended up living like super high on the hog. Next thing you know, they're traveling to China and they're going here and they're going there.

Jay Patel

But isn't that and isn't that what retirement's supposed to be? I mean, right?

Dwan Bent-Twyford

It is. And I'm really proud that I was able to help my dad because and they were still living a good life. I mean, they were doing things that they left, they went like first class everywhere. They were like really doing it. And I thought that's what retirement should be. But people are still kind of have the mindset of I gotta save and scrimp this and save my social security, and da da da da. Maybe I'll have, you know. $4,000 a month to live on when I retire, signing off.

Speaker 1

No, it's not. Especially you have to consider that inflation is fairly high nowadays compared to, you know, even what it has been. So the the value or the purchasing power of the dollar is not what it was at one time. And it definitely is not what it's you know, what it's going to be. It's going to get going lower and lower, right? So it's super important that whatever you have your money in it, I don't care if it's in real estate or the or the market or bonds or whatever it is, it's got to outpace inflation. Or you're already kind of like behind the eight ball. So you've got one problem is the inflation. Number two, you're potentially dwindling your savings. Like you said, yeah, if your father was concerned because he sees that, okay, I've got X amount, whatever that amount is, it's coming down. And if you're gonna outlive that, you know, if you're gonna live a long life, you're gonna outlive that amount of money. So what are you gonna do? And it's good that he was actually, you know, a lot of times what people do, and this is obviously the worst thing to do, but they kind of sweep it under the rug. They don't think about it and say, okay, I'll deal with it when the problem happens. And, you know, listen, I'm guilty about that too in other respects. But when I came to this, it was it's a top priority because this is like, you know, you want to be able to not have to change your lifestyle. You have a certain lifestyle that you're used to. I don't want to now suddenly, you know, not be able to travel or not go out to the nice, you know, dinners or whatever I I want to do. I want to be able to spend time with my kids and all those things, even when I am retired, because I that's the biggest problem is that many people face, okay, I may have to, you know, curb my lifestyle, maybe not travel as much. Because once that paycheck stops coming in, you become, you know, it's a finite amount of money that you have. And what are you gonna do? So the the whole objective is it just make sure you have a plan. And so a lot of my friends that I at least I was speaking with, I helped them get it to a few properties. And let me tell you, they're happy, they're they're great, but it just wasn't scalable. But the fund allows me to do that because now I manage one pool of capital. We're buying these properties, like even my own property here that I live in. I bought this home as a foreclosure property. Of course, we fix it up now and it's worth double what we got it for. And that's built-in equity, which is fantastic, right? So, this is what we do for our clients. And so we have three different vertical, just to kind of give you a little bit of background.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, no, I want to hear all that. I want to hear it. I love the whole topic. I'm I'm I'm actually, I don't mean for this to sound, I don't know, I don't mean for this to sound like I know everything. But as if it's not that often I talk to someone that like has something that's like new to me. So, you know what I mean? So everyone does the same thing. So I love you telling everything about it because this is new to me and I'm excited about it.

Three Verticals: Distress, Cash Flow, Lending

Jay Patel

Cool. Well, no, I appreciate that. And by the way, you've I know you've done extremely well for yourself. So the advice you gave to your dad was priceless. They had a change of lifestyle. We're trying to do the same thing for our, you know, our clients. Our fund really is geared more towards people that are, you know, maybe late 40s up to early 60s, even older. I'm saying that would be our ideal or target person. That's not to say that someone in their 20s or 30s, if they're prudent enough and they're thinking long term, this would be a great option for them too, because if hypothetically, let's say they save and they put 100 grand in, which by the way is our minimum, if they put 100,000 in, every 10 years, that money's tripling. So imagine in 30 years, in an ideal world, if everything goes well and you get 11%, that $100,000 becomes close to $300,000, becomes close to $900,000 within 20 years, becomes close to like $2.5 million, $2.7 million. That's incredible from a $100,000 amount within 30 years when they're retiring. If somebody told me that when I was 25, I don't know if I would have believed it, but that's that's the way to go. You know, you get in, you put $100,000 and you can you can basically retire on that money. It's amazing. So you're outpacing inflation. Um so anyway, going back to our three verticals, I mentioned one is we love distress type properties. We love these properties because we can go in, we've got built-in equity from day one. Yeah. What that does is it eliminates or at least it diminishes significant downside. Um, we already know that unlike the stocks, you know, our property is not going to go to zero. Stocks can go to zero. They can have massive volatility. Okay, you're not gonna have that same level of volatility in this. And something you had mentioned earlier was actually it's interesting because what your father had experienced is something called it's a sequence of returns risk. And what I mean by that is you can have the SP can go up 10%, which is the average, by the way. If you look at the SP's returns historically over the last 10, 20, 30 years, it's on average about 10%. Now, 2025 was an anomaly because it was up like 16 to 17 percent. The there's a there's a pro and a con to that. The first is wow, fantastic. If you had money in the market, you did great in that one year. Yeah, but the negative could be okay, it's overextended. One of the things that we look at very closely is the Schiller PE index on the S P 500. And that's well over 40. Just to put that into perspective for you, and I'm a big technical guy, I'm a numbers guy. A Schiller PE index of 40, well, and the max that it's really ever been is 44, means you're really near the top, but it's dangerous territory, it's overbought territory. The average or median Schiller to PE index is about a 17, 18. So that's what we consider a healthy, you know, nice, consistent growth. But when you get overextended, there's a chance for it to correct and pull back. So this is one of the things that, you know, it's an important indicator for us. And it should be even for your listeners, if they're if they're invested in the market, we're at a point where the market's gotten a little bit overextended. Even today, as we speak, it's up again after being down quite a bit this morning. It was down, I think, 300 points as we've come back. Um, but the point I'm making is in life, things can not just in the market, but anything, if it gets outside of its norm, it eventually pulls back. It does. And so one of the concerns I have for the market is that it could happen. Now, if you're invested, do you want to be in there where it could come down, or would you be rather put your capital on something just consistently going up 11%? And that's kind of the model that we built it on. But that sequence of uh diminishing returns or uh that returns risk that I mentioned is this. When the market goes up like that, you say, okay, I make a big gain. But if it drops now, say let's take a 10 or 15%, if it comes down from that number, you say, oh yeah, but it was already up 16%, it's only back down to where it started. It's actually a greater uh painful, like it's it's more painful than if it had just gone, if it had stayed there, because now you've got that coming down, you've lost those two years of time. When you lose that two years of time and the potential income, that compounds. So it actually hurts you even more. And remember, inflation hasn't stopped. Inflation is still growing at whatever, two, three, four percent. So that's gonna hurt you in the long run. So, long story short, is we love the distressed properties that we can buy at huge discounts. Um, uh as I mentioned, foreclosure short sales. I've done some of my best deals in taxed investments. We're buying these properties.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

A lot of people don't do that or understand it. I used to do that way back in the beginning when I really didn't know anything. I thought this is like a really fun way to invest.

Jay Patel

Yeah, it is. And if you know what you're doing, you can get really nice, consistent, you know, anywhere from 12 to 18 percent. Uh depends on each state to state. Those are more on the lean side. What we prefer are the tax deeds where we're actually buying the property, buying the deed to the property. Um, and I have a bunch of property right now that we bought in Alabama. Uh, pennies on the dollar. When I say pennies, Duan, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. We bought these for 10 cents on the dollar. Now, granted, they do need a lot of work. Yeah. So we put the money in and we we up, it's all right, exactly. So as long as you have the outlook, the look, this is not a get rich quick. Real estate is a consistent, steady, you have a plan, you're gonna build a portfolio, you're building wealth. You're not trying to get rich quick. And as long as you have that understanding, you're gonna buy this thing for let's say 10 cents on the dollar, you're gonna have to put another 50, 60 cents in there on the dollar. So you're in for let's say 60,000, $70,000, but it's worth over 100 or 120,000, you've got significant positive equity. So, what's the next best thing to do? Instead of leaving your money tied up, you basically do like a refinance. Many of your investors may be familiar with a firm with a concept called Burr. You know, it's where you buy and then you uh rehab, you rent it out, you refinance it, and and then basically, you know, you repeat the process. And that's the B R R R R. What that does is it gets your money back into cash. You got no real risk into that property right now because your money's back in cash, and you're getting positive cash flow every single month because the property's worth 100 and some odd thousand. So you're able to pull some money out, you get positive cash flow, and you have no money left in the deal, which is fantastic. So I've got a bunch of properties that we bought in um in Alabama, we've got some other states. These are huge wins. So that's one of our verticals, is the I love that though.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I'm a big fan of buying everything 13. I mean, I've done over 2,000 personal deals by myself, and they were all foreclosures.

Speaker 1

I saw that, by the way. You've sold what about a $500 million in real estate or something?

Dwan Bent-Twyford

So much, so much. And I don't know, you probably don't know this, but I actually am the very first person that actually trademarked the term short sales as it applies to real estate investing. And I wrote the short sale program. Yeah, I wrote the first short sale program for real estate investors back in the 90s and trademark. And as it applies to real estate, because short sales is used in the stock markets is used in other industries, but as it applies to real estate, I actually own the registered trademark for short sales and the queen of short sales.

Speaker 1

Good for you. That's amazing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1

Well, that's something that we love because this is a big part of our business.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, I helped invent the entire industry.

Speaker 1

So that's one vertical.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Okay, I love it. Second vertical.

Jay Patel

The second vertical that we have, okay. So in this vertical, we love investing in properties that are strong cash flow properties. Remember, the first vertical is we're buying super cheap. So we've got like 20, 30, 40% equity built into the deal. The second vertical is where we're buying properties that are going to be really good strong cash flow properties. So say, Jay, what does that mean? What are give me some examples? So, first and foremost, what we love today, my number one at the top of the list is assisted living centers, like residential assisted living. Why is that? And this goes hand in hand, right? You're laughing because you've probably been on both.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Because I love assisted living. My husband and I, not to interact with my husband and I are like, we need to open some assisted living and call them like rock and roll assisted living. Because the people living in there that are in their 70s and 80s, they were teenagers like in the 60s, and they were, you know, hippies. And like, you know, let them smoke weed and drop some acid and dance and play like rolling bones.

Jay Patel

They deserve it. They've lived a full life to work their butt off, and it's time to enjoy, right?

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Why not? I'm telling you, I think it would be so much fun. It's like hearing it.

Jay Patel

So that's one of their and it's and it, you know, I'll tell you something. What's really interesting. Today in America, right now, they're just talking about the US. In the US right now, we're short by over a million beds because the baby boomer generation is now just turning of that age. We're gonna need that assisted living, right? And that is creating a major shortage. And what that means is that that shortage is an opportunity for people like myself and our funds. So we invest in these funds in these properties. We basically set them up turnkey. Now imagine you're someone who is an operator in that space. You would rather come and take one of mine, which is already built and it's beautiful, it's turnkey. You'll be willing to pay a higher premium, which is a higher rent, even put up a bigger security deposit because it's gonna do two things for you. One, no headache in terms of getting it going. And two, think about all the time and money. You don't have to lay out the money, you don't have to deal with the headache. You got a turnkey solution, and you're willing to pay a premium for that. And that's what we get to pay for. So our returns on those residential assisted livings are fantastic. We know they're gonna be full. We know that as long as we got a strong operator, by the way, we're not in the business of operating them because we're a real estate company. Yeah, yeah. We are like the landlords. We want to bank property, right? But we want to make sure that these properties are strong cash flow properties. I agree. So assisted living, we absolutely love those. Co-living, something else that's been really taken off in this country is co-living. Uh, we like those. We've also converted some of our Airbnb properties, which is another holding we have, into co-living properties, which are again, it's better. I call it like rental property on steroids because where you might make, for example, three or four thousand. You know, you're familiar with co-living.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Assisted Living And Co‑Living Strategy

Jay Patel

So you're getting almost 25, 30%, sometimes 50% more than you would on a rental property. So that's our second vertical. First was buying properties at deep discounts, whether it's foreclosure, short sale, tax deeds. Second vertical that we have is we're buying really strong cash flow properties that will consistently deliver, you know, above average returns, double-digit returns. And everything is measured on a cash-on-cash basis. So we want to make sure that our cash on cash is in double digits, right? Uh, our third vertical, now this is interesting. We believe that all money should always be deployed as much as possible. As a fund, if you have money just sitting in cash, you're not making any money on that. And therefore, the entire performance of the fund can come down. So I'll give an example. Let's assume uh let's take a round number, $20 million. If there's $20 million in the fund, but $10 million is deployed and it's generating fantastic returns, let's say 20% a year, but the other 10 million is sitting in cash, what is the net return of that fund? Because 50% is deployed and 50% is sitting in cash. The 50% that's generating 20%, it's really giving the fund the net return for the fund is only 10%. Right. That doesn't cut it. We need to be above 11%. So what that means is the money should always be deployed. So how do we ensure, as a fund, that even if our projects, let's say, for example, we bought a property, did it, we we bought a foreclosure, we sold it, we made some money. That's fantastic. But what we do for the excess money, if it's ever there, it's sitting there, is we have a bridge lending business. So that means we help people in real estate get short-term bridge loans at 12% or higher. We're fully collateralized because we're loaning the money out at a, you know, at a at a wide enough uh loan to value, where let's say, for example, 70% of or 65% of ARV, 75% of ARV. So we've got enough cushion that's in the deal, and we have a lien in the first position. So we know that should anything ever happen, we we can take over the property. Um, and then we're getting 12% up front plus two points. So you say, okay, that's not bad, but you're only making 14%. Well, here's where it gets really exciting. We don't do these loans to hold them because remember what I told you, we're a real estate investment company. Yeah, that means we want to truly invest our money into the other projects. Our money, we don't want it sitting idle. So what we do is we make these short-term bridge loans or loan for people who are flipping. Once we have four or five of these loans, we package the loan and then we sell those to a hedge fund or a pension fund. Now, you may have seen or you may have experienced it yourself. Even your you know, conventional loan that you have with which XYZ bank, you'll find that many times your loan, you get a notice that it's been sold. Why do banks do that? Because what they're doing is essentially they're selling the loan off, get their cash back in their hands so they can make more loans. They're making money on fees, they're making money on points and a number of other things, right? So they sell their loans to funds that are happy making eight, nine percent. So where I was getting 12 from the client who wanted to borrow it, I've now sold that to a fund that's gonna that wants to only make eight or nine percent, thereby creating a 3% arbitrage for us. So we're gonna make 3%, and already our money's back in cash, plus we make the additional one to two points for the origination fees. So we're making between four to five points on these loans, and we don't really have any risk now because the cash is is back in our pocket. It's a fantastic business.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

You guys have every angle covered.

Speaker 1

Well, the whole idea there, right, Duan, is that you even though we're a real estate fund and we want to deliver strong double-digit returns, it's got to be done in a prudent way where we're not overexposed on risk. And the way we do that is like I said, we're because we're buying properties at significant discounts, that protects that side of it. But what about the cash flow? So our cash flow is covered because we've got good strong investments, but that would mean that 100% of the money has to be fully invested in that. But that doesn't give us the flexibility to take a good deal that comes along tomorrow. So our capital must be available and ready so that once a great foreclosure, short sale, tax deed opportunity comes along, we can plop down the two, three, four million dollars, whatever's required, and we can take that down right away. But in the interim, the money should not be sitting item. So I hope that it kind of gives you an idea. This is where we're able to deliver and how we're able to deliver the 11%.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I love it. Now, I feel like I just had uh an entire seminar just directly from me. Such good information, such good information. So now, someone wants to invest in your fund. You said there's a $100,000 minimum.

Speaker 1

True. Our our fund is designed for accredited investors. It's not just for you know somebody who wants to put in $10,000 or $20,000. Yeah, it's important because we want to work with people that understand. Ideally, like I said, when I when we opened this uh initial podcast, I mentioned that our ideal uh candidate or ideal client would be someone who's maybe 50 to 60 years old and is thinking about retiring in the next five, 10, 15 years. They want to make sure that they've got a strong plan in place. And if that constitutes, it doesn't matter if it's only 100,000, 300,000, 500,000, whatever they're comfortable. And we never tell anybody to take on any more risk than they're comfortable with. First of all, we do manage risk. Our number one priority in this fund is capital preservation. Return is second. So as long because why we're at that age now, we don't want to take that level of risk. I started the majority of my business, of course. Now, actually, as you get older, you don't, you know, you become more risk averse. But when I was younger, I was a you know a serial entrepreneur. We did many things, and that's where you know you the last thing you want, there's a there's a quote uh that I read recently, and I think um it'll resonate. Yeah, the people say that you know, success comes at an expensive price. And what is that price? You know, you've gave up a lot of time, you made sacrifices, you invested a lot of money, et cetera. But the greatest risk or the greatest cost is the when the bill arrived for regret. So you don't want to look back 10, 15 years later and you say, man, I regret I didn't do this, because that's gonna hurt you way more than the things that you did uh looking back. And besides, the work that we put in, we work hard. We learn a lot in the process. As I said before, you know, you know, I've been I was involved in the market, I've done my real estate transactions, we've done stuff all over the world. And believe it or not, we've obviously we've lost money in some of those deals. But where you learn the most, unfortunately, is when is from our losses. So today we're happy to say, right? Isn't that true? No, I think when you make money, you think you're a genius.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, you do. And I tell people all the time, it's like, listen, if you want to be involved in real estate investing, initially, you need to have a fairly high risk factor. Because even if you're just doing like a single family home, if you underestimate repairs or time or whatever, you can lose you know whatever, your little mini little. You can.

Speaker 1

So that's the thing that people need to understand.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

But that's why I like things like this.

Speaker 1

Yeah, real estate you can.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

You've got it. People put the money in, there's a risk.

Speaker 1

It's about m mitigating risk. So listen, first and for if anybody ever tells you that there's no risk, you should run the other way because they're not being truthful. Um they're, you know, you you want to deal with people that are transparent. Uh if there's only one of two reasons why somebody's gonna say there's no risk. One is they don't fully understand it, they're not knowledgeable, they don't recognize it, or they're not being truthful. And because in reality, there is really isn't an investment out there that's I mean, look, I'll tell you something. Tax deeds. Okay, a tax deed is a is a or a tax lien, for example, can deliver you anywhere from 12 to 18 percent. For example, in the state of Illinois, we get 18%. I believe in the state of Florida, I think that's where you're at right now, it's like 18%. Yeah. But but uh does that mean that you could just buy any tax lien? No, because if you bought a lien that really has no interest or demand out there, um, no one's gonna come back and redeem that, or who's gonna pay you the interest on that? So you still need to know what to buy, when to buy it, how to buy it, etc. So just because you know tax liens pay that doesn't mean, hey, I have this. That's the that's the most dangerous investor who has maybe 10 or 15% knowledge and believes that I know everything. Because now they go out there and they're investing in these things, and then only to realize, oh my God, I didn't realize that this is a situation. So we always advise look, don't trust me, do your homework, right? Yes, preaching and acquired.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I tell everyone, does not do that. Absolutely. I mean, you've done it. Listen, like there's so many people that are good marketers. So you see them online, you go, oh my gosh, they look amazing. I'm gonna work with them. So, yeah, but just because someone's a good marketer doesn't mean they know what they're actually doing behind what you see on the internet. Like, you gotta find people, you've got to research, you have to see how long they've been doing it. Are they actually successful in their field? Because people want to chase, you know, the next podcast or the next seminar and the next fire, the next shiny object. People want to chase all the shiny objects, but that's not where you don't make any money. That's where people lose everything. And there's so many, and it didn't work out.

Bridge Lending And Arbitrage Explained

Speaker 1

That actually drives me nuts, Duan. I'll tell you something. How many times do you see, and I'll listen, first of all, I'll commend them on their marketing ability. But a lot of these 20 and early 30-year-olds, they're they're young. There's no way they're gonna have, you know, 20, 30 years of experience, not even 20 themselves. So my point, so they're but they're incredible at marketing online. They've got they can get a ton of followers, and then they're selling, you know, high-ticket coaching courses and things like that. But really, the value comes from experience. And that's having been there, having done it, you know, cutting your teeth on it, and taking your law. You know, I'm like, you know, you've been there. We've we're like, we're like old school, you and I. But the thing is, like this is, you know, this is what gets us to where we are, where we can at least show that look, there's ways to make money, there's also ways to lose it. You got to know how to manage that. How do you mitigate your risk so that uh and don't assume that there's no risk, there's always going to be some level. The question is how are you gonna manage it? And so that's one of our biggest takeaways is that uh just to make sure you know what you're getting into, and then making sure that it's it's covering what your you know your non-negotiables are. If, for example, you know, if you're hypothetically 60, 65 and you just don't want to take any risk whatsoever, then there's always T bonds and things like that that you can buy, uh, which is a much lower level. It's backed on the you know by the government, et cetera, um, you're gonna get a lower return. So today, what can you do uh to make sure you are able to combat that? And what I always tell people is asset allocation. So you you should have an appetite to have a little percentage. So let's say hypothetically, you know, you've got a million dollar portfolio. I'm not saying you have a million dollars in cash. You may have some in a 401, you may have some in your IRA, you have some in your home, you use your prop your equity, et cetera. But your net worth might be, let's say, a million bucks. Question is, what are you gonna do with that to ensure that you're gonna have not only that, but hopefully more than that, plus income generated from that, right? We work hard, like we work our butt off for our money for those first 30, 40 years. It's time that that money starts working for you. Yes. So you can't just leave it sitting there in equity in the home or leave it sitting there in cash, which is being depleted every month to survive on. How are you gonna asset allocate that? So if your tolerance for risk is super low, okay, fine. Put majority of that into, let's say, you know, T bonds or bills or whatever you're comfortable with. Even some annuities can give you some decent returns. But the point is make sure you're diversified. That's the key word I want people to take away. Is if you're gonna allocate, maybe allocate something, even if it's 10 or 15%, 20%, to something like a proptex, because it can deliver you a decent return that will make up for what the others are not doing for you. And then you have the majority of it that's you know, that's sitting in in that asset class. So it's not like it's gonna go to zero or anything else like that. So asset allocation, let me jump important.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

So someone is listening to the most wonderful real estate podcast today, and they're like, I've never heard of this, I've never heard of this guy. He must be pretty good because Duane's got him on our show. So someone that wants to work with you or discover you, like, what would be the first step for somebody that's like, you know, I'm interested in what Jay's saying. What what would be the first step they take to get into your world?

Speaker 1

No, I appreciate that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I think the person because the first of all I wouldn't are not gonna know you.

Speaker 1

So I wouldn't advise anyone to plop down any cash until you not even whether it's us or it's somebody else. So first and foremost, the nice thing that about Proptex is we're extremely approachable. It's not like these big funds when you go to funds, you'll never get a chance to talk to the fund manager themselves. No I mean think about it. You've got these funds like Blackstone, okay? Blackstone's great, a number, a bunch of other funds are great. They invest a lot in real estate. But could you pick up the phone and call the fund manager 99% of the time? Absolutely not. And if you're gonna get their attention, you're gonna have to probably plop down a few million dollars for their, you know, just to even get their attention. So first and foremost, if somebody is genuinely interested and want to learn more about it, either it's about myself personally or about the fund, I always welcome a call. I'm happy to share my calendar link. They can book a call on my calendar, and it can be a 30-minute call, 60-minute call where we actually go through and show them what we do, how we do it, the uh the assets that we buy, some of the deals that we've done. Okay. Um so that way they can get a little better idea. Secondly, I'm not sure.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I like that. I always tell people if you're gonna invest a bunch of money with someone and they won't give you a cell phone number or number to reach them, they're not.

Speaker 1

No, all of all of our clients have my number, so directly they can text me or call me. I think that's super important. Again, a part of that is maybe because we're not so big that we have, you know, tens of thousands of customers. Otherwise, it can be uh as clients or investors. It would be tough. But also, we don't want to get to that level, right? We're very happy with what we do. We know what we're good at, we also know what we're not good at. So, you know, we stay within our lane. And our lane is providing a great return, both for us as well as you know, the people that are now within our within our sphere.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

If somebody has your website, are there videos? Is there something for them to watch? Do you have calls? Anything that people can be like, I just want to listen.

Risk, Research, And Avoiding Shiny Objects

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's a good point. We just launched a a YouTube channel, so that's something new, which is cool. Uh, by the way, I'm I'm a real estate freak, right? I love real estate, but I'm not a tech like a uh social media guy. Okay. And this is the thing that's you know, this is all, I mean, we're still learning that, so I have to go on. So this is where those 20, 30 year olds are great because we bring them in to say, okay, guys, you're good at your marketing. Why don't you do that? Let me deal with the real estate. Yes. And so they're now helping us handle the social media. They're building that for us in terms of a um, we've got a uh a YouTube channel, we've got our our Instagram profile. Um, you can see some videos on there as well. It's like I said, it's a new profile. Nice, but I welcome people to follow it. It's just at uh uh Prop Text Funds. And then uh they can also visit my LinkedIn, which you know, a lot of professionals and business people will go, they'll see a lot of my personal experience on there, which talks about, you know, over 10 years working on the MLS project. I've been in real estate in terms of, you know, I started out as a uh just as a simple investor. I ended up getting my license because I realized that if I have my brokerage license, then one, I can find properties easier, and second, I can avoid, you know, one whole side of the commission because now I'm I'm essentially acting and and representing myself. But that opened up a whole new door for me, which was fantastic. I mean, that opened me up to, you know, actually now I'm a professional, realistic professional, rather than just an investor. And uh, and this is that's what we got the whole, you know, the business started back in uh the late 90s. And we we've even built a 200 plus housing community. You're currently in Florida, where I actually did that in Central Florida. Uh it was a senior, it was a 55 and over community, but it was huge. Uh that was one of my uh my largest deals way back. This is going 20 years ago. No, it's in it's in uh Seabring, so it's not in the you're you're in you're down south, right? Yeah, yeah. You said uh Delray. So this is more central, it's a little bit further north. We've done since then uh larger apartment building deals. Um we've done, you know, I don't know, by the way, uh side joke. You've probably saw and my last name is Patel. Do you know what it's synonymous for in the real estate industry?

Dwan Bent-Twyford

No.

Speaker 1

Okay. So I told you my nationality is Indian.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Right.

Speaker 1

Uh I don't know if you notice this, but majority of the motels and hotels in this country are owned by the Indian population. So the joke has always been it's the Patel Motel or the Patel Hotel. And it's uh it's it's you know, you laugh, but it's true. 80 would you believe 80% of the motels around the country are owned by Indians?

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I know, I know they are. I stay, I travel, I go to little places, little boutiques, even, and they're all, yeah, I'm like, wow. They got them. So different foreign and all the time.

Speaker 1

Different nationalities have carved their space. You know, we're immigrant, like we're my family is first generation here. We we came here with nothing. You have to build it. Um, so the biggest focus of my parents had, obviously, when we were growing up, was all on education. Yeah, we're gonna do that. And even though we had nothing, we we work our butt off at the end of the day, and uh so that you can build, you can make something of it. So the Indian uh population, when they when they first started immigrating to the US, um, you know, they were they were known for obviously hard work, but then they became entrepreneurial when they opened up businesses. And why do they do that? Because then they can control, you know, their own destiny, if you will. They can build their wealth, and many of them opened up these motel.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

And the 7s and all the kind of things.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so I'm getting I'm just getting to that. Is that the three the three industries hospitality, hotel, motels was huge. Yeah, uh, convenience. So we owned uh my own family, and I believe it or not, when I was in college, every day from 4 p.m. till midnight was my shift. And I worked that every summer, four to twelve, seven days a week. We ran our my family's business. Um, and so my parents opened that up. And even though my dad's an engineer by trade uh and education, he ended up doing this as a you know, as a side thing, and then made it become his primary. So I've grown up in that entrepreneurial environment that we had video stores, we had you know liquor. So today, 7-Elevens are huge in the Indian community, hotels, motels are huge in the Indian community, just the same way you find like maybe I think it believes if I'm not mistaken, the Koreans they are big into laundromats, the Filipinos are big into salons. So, you know, there's different things.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Oh, it is true.

Speaker 1

Even though right here in the specialized, yeah, there's a little liquor store called PAS.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

That's like a local liquor store that's run by a family that's all Indian.

Speaker 1

Probably Indian.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, and they're always like, oh, I'm surprised with an accent. I'm like, hey, what's up? Because they all know me by mean because you know.

Speaker 1

I'll tell you, uh I'll tell you one great thing about the liquor business. It's recession proof. So whether the market's doing the economy is doing great, people. And if it's not, then they're drowning their sorrows.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

That's true. That's true. It's recession proof. That's funny. So I'm gonna ask you some personal questions. Let's jump off business for a few minutes here. Sure. You've been listening to my show, sure. Um, I want to talk about you because one thing I know for a fact is that people work with people that they like. So you can have all the knowledge and skills, but people don't like you for a second. I don't like something, just like and you know, they find somebody else. So I always uh like to talk a little bit about you personally, but we've already almost taken up most of the time, but I still want to ask you a few questions. So tell me your favorite band of all time.

Speaker 1

Well, man, there's a few. Um, I've always liked you too. My favorite individual artist was Billy Joel. Uh, I love him because he wrote his own music and he played. I mean, he's just he's he's exceptional, right? Um, so yeah, these are some of I'm an 80s guy, 80s, 90s music.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you too. I mean, gosh, what about what about you? The biggest band. Well, I my favorite band of all time is Sticks. So I started I'm a decade older. I started going to concerts in the 70s, and Sticks used to open for like all these big so I saw them probably 20 times opening for all these really bigger bands until they became like the bigger band. So I don't know. I think because I started seeing them when I was like 16, 17, I'm like, oh, I love sticks. So just the music and the whatever. But I'm uh like a queen arrowsmith kind of girl.

Speaker 1

I love Queen.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, Queen's the best. Uh, Queen's light mind. Well, how about that?

Speaker 1

How about that movie that came out a few years ago? Uh Benefit.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Oh, yeah, I've seen it like three times.

Speaker 1

Amazing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Pretty Marcury, you know, Pretty Mercury is like to me, is like Prince. Like so talented. You're like an anomaly. There just aren't people like that. It's like Michael Jackson. They're just like a once-in-a-lifetime thing that you see there. So, but yeah, you two, you two's they're great. They're great, they're great. So you're Indian. What's your favorite food? Is it Indian food?

Speaker 1

Man, that's uh I I wouldn't call myself a foodie, but I absolutely do love Indian food. However, um, if I'm eating, say I get Indian food at home. If I'm going out, uh, I love Italian, I love uh Mexican. I think my favorite go-to probably I'm a pizza connoisseur, man. I've tried pizza all over the world. I love it. I love pizza, I love true Italian pizza from Napoli, uh like Neapolitan style from Naples. Uh and yeah, I mean, we love even like you know, I actually learned the difference between the Rom Roman, the Romano versus the Neapolitan. It's very different. Um, but they're great in their own respect. So I one of my favorite countries happens to be Italy. I love traveling there, been there a few times, and um love the countryside, Tuscany, Tuscan. Oh, I know. I love Italy.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

You know, it's funny. My favorite food when I go out to eat is I go eat Indian food.

Speaker 1

Yeah. You like you don't so you don't mind the spice at all? That's great.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Now, well, I well, my husband orders everything like full spice, just whatever. I order everything mild to medium, but no, I it's like if I have a choice to go out and eat dinner tonight, I would always go eat Indian food. I love it.

Speaker 1

So if I don't, if I don't get it, if I don't get Indian food for a week, then I feel like I'm deprived. Like I crave it. Because I, you know, once you've grown up with that, the the taste, the spice, the you know, it's it's that explodes in your mouth. Uh, it's hard to find that in other cuisines. So if I don't get it, then I need to I crave it, I have to ask either my wife or even my mom to say, hey, listen, I need I need some. I need to get some good cook me some food. That's right. That's one thing I'm not very good at, by the way. I have strengths, and cooking is not one of them.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, it's not one of mine either. I'm more like I grew up in the South. So my family's from Tennessee, so I can make you pot roast, biscuits, gravy, fried chicken, but outside of that, it's like, mm, I need to go eat out to eat. So all right, so I like all this talk of food is gonna get me hungry. I know. I like uh all my guests at the end of the interview. I like everyone to give us a word of wisdom, but I want you to give me just one single word, a word of wisdom, a single word. And don't explain, just tell me what it is.

Speaker 1

Okay, um diversification.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Okay, don't tell me what it means yet.

Speaker 1

That's that's my word.

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Dwan Bent-Twyford

Okay, I'm writing it down. So all the people that follow me on the regular, they know that at the end of the call, we have a word of the week, it's a word of wisdom. I tell everyone to write it on a little sticky note and put it on your bathroom when you're brushing your teeth. This week you're like diversification, diversification. That's the word of the week for everybody. So I want to know what that means to you. Because I know what it means to me, what does it mean to you?

Speaker 1

Yeah. So that goes back to a lot of what we were talking about earlier. And but like now everything about my life is built on, and I don't mean just in in um in investments, I'm talking about in life uh in general. So you don't want to be, you know, uh singular or just tunnel vision. Um, if it comes to investments, it means making sure you're diversified around uh across multiple asset classes. If you're talking about um, you know, life in general, you don't want to be one dimensional where you're working all the time. You got to fit in fitness, you got to fit in social life. And they say like as you're getting older, um, you need, you know, people who live a longer, healthier life are those who are also socially active because their stress levels are low. Yeah. And so all of this, it's so for me, that one word actually means more than but it happens to also relate to investments, which is great, but it means more than just investments. Uh, but when it comes time to, especially with like retirement, it is super important to have diversification. In your life, it's super important to have diversification. And the same way with food, like we were talking about food. I can't have the same thing every day. I want diversification. I want Italian, I want Mexican, I want Indian. If I don't get it after a certain amount of time, I crave that. So I think the long and short would be keeping it, keep it, keep it spicy, keep it different, you know, uh mix it up a little bit.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Now, I I could not agree more. When you first said that, my first thought is on my podcast, I say, listen, you you can't, your life isn't about money. It's gotta be, you gotta have like the I call them the five equities of life. You've got to have finances, you've got to have spiritual, you have your mental health, your physical health, your family and your friends. Like you have to, if you just do this one thing, your life is gonna be missing too many pieces. And me know people work and work and work and work and work and work, and they don't take time for vacations or health or whatever. And the next thing you know, they just like drop over dead. It's like, okay, but how much of that money did you just take with you? Like, you gotta do what was it all for? You know, more than in one single aspect. So I was really happy you said that word because I feel like that's what I would say to someone is you real estate, obviously, do lots of things, but your life needs to have multiple aspects, really. I feel to be like a whole person. It takes all these pieces to make us whole.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Not just this thing. So I like that word. Okay, so I like and I always like to have the uh guests tell us what they think that it is, and I never let anyone know in advance I'm gonna ask that question because then you'll think of a word before the show, and then throughout you'll be thinking I should change my word. And so I just want to ask you what your word is because you paused, you thought, you looked up, and you're like, you chose a good word. And so that's the word we're pulling out of the hat this week is diversification. And I like what your meaning of it is, and it's the same, I feel the same way. People just can't have all your eggs in a single basket.

Speaker 1

No way. That's that's the recipe for disaster.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

It is a recipe for disaster. So listen, I want to thank you for being on. You have been so much fun and really I have like just pages of notes, really a a a fountain of information. And I really like that because you know you've been on podcasts before. Wow, you've been on them. When you have guests, sometimes you got to pull teeth to get people to talk and answer questions. And, you know, they're not always as easy because people get shy once they know they're on camera. So I appreciate your openness and willing to share. And you just you gave us like so much information. And I appreciate it about you. And I also want to thank you for your time because time is also one of your most valuable assets. So I appreciate you spending an hour with me because it's a it's an hour that you can't get back. So I appreciate that you spent it with me and with my wonderful family. We appreciate your time and your knowledge.

Speaker 1

I I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

I did too. I did too much.

Speaker 1

We'll do it again sometime.

Dwan Bent-Twyford

Yeah, well, no, we'll do it for sure. All right, everybody. So listen, we'll be back next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters. All right, everybody. Goodbye. Jay, goodbye. Thank you. And remember, diversification is a word of the week.

Speaker 1

Love it. Thank you. Bye bye.