The Broke Millionaires
Building Wealth, Raising a Family, and Keeping It Real.
We share the unfiltered journey of growing wealth through mid-term rentals, creative finance, and home renovations - all while raising a young family. From sacrifices and struggles to wins worth celebrating, we bring you real stories, smart strategies, and the behind-the-scenes chaos of chasing big dreams.
Join our FREE Broke Millionaires Skool community with weekly Q&A call. skool.com/brokemillionaires
https://www.instagram.com/thebrokemillionaires_
The Broke Millionaires
E41: How Creative Lending Becomes an Investment Strategy for Anyone.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Join our FREE Broke Millionaires Skool community for weekly Office Hours Call where we break down podcast episodes and apply them to your real-life situation. skool.com/brokemillionaires
In this episode of The Broke Millionaires Podcast, Joshua and Lauryn unpack a powerful wealth-building concept that most investors completely overlook: creative lending itself can be the investment.
The conversation starts by breaking down why the traditional financial system favors owners over employees — from taxes to inflation and debt — and why simply earning more income rarely leads to financial freedom. But around the 12-minute mark, the episode takes a deeper turn into creative lending strategies and how they can be used to generate returns, reduce risk, and unlock deals that conventional financing can’t touch.
Instead of viewing lending as something only banks do, Joshua and Lauryn explain how everyday investors can step into the role of the lender — using private notes, seller financing, subject-to deals, and hybrid structures to create income-producing assets backed by real estate.
They discuss how creative lending allows investors to:
- Earn returns without owning or managing the property
- Control risk through collateral and structure
- Stay liquid while still benefiting from real estate-backed deals
- Participate in deals they otherwise couldn’t qualify for
- Build predictable income streams outside of appreciation plays
The episode also covers why creative lending becomes especially powerful in uncertain or high-interest-rate environments, when sellers need flexibility and traditional buyers struggle to qualify. Rather than sitting on the sidelines, lenders who understand creative structures can step in as problem solvers — and get paid to do it.
Joshua and Lauryn share real-world examples of how these strategies show up in their own investing journey, including how lending can complement long-term rentals, mid-term rentals, and active ownership strategies — all while fitting into a family-focused, long-term wealth plan.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why the financial system rewards ownership over labor
- How inflation quietly destroys savings
- The difference between investing in real estate vs. investing through lending
- What creative lending actually looks like in practice
- How seller financing and private notes work
- Why being the lender can mean less stress and more control
- How creative lending fits into a diversified wealth strategy
This episode is ideal for investors who want exposure to real estate without taking on another renovation, tenant, or management headache — and for families looking to grow wealth without relying solely on appreciation.
Resources & Next Steps:
If you want to learn how we evaluate creative deals, lending structures, and long-term ownership strategies as a family, explore the Legacy Wealth Builder community or book a discovery call to see if it’s a fit.
🎧 Listen through the end, share this episode with a partner or investor friend, and let us know which creative strategy surprised you most.
We are looking for guests that have something helpful to share. If you or someone you know could make a good guest on the show, drop us a line to see if it would be a good fit info@thebrokemillionaires.com
Instagram: @thebrokemillionaires_
CLICK HERE for a FREE download of the ALLLL Method™ blueprint.
Want to learn more about our mastermind community? Send us a DM or visit BMLegacyWealthBuilder.com
So what is a portable mortgage?
SPEAKER_00A portable mortgage is basically you can buy a house and instead of like traditionally, if you buy a house, you sell your old one, you pay off your old mortgage, you get a new mortgage on your new house. The problem is right now nobody wants to do that because they've got these two and a half, three percent mortgages locked in from four or five years ago, and they don't want to give them up because now they're gonna get a six to seven percent interest, so you're gonna double your interest. What the portable mortgage does is it allows you to keep your mortgage that you have in your name and everything and move it to the next property. That's the big key, is that the loan terms stay intact.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the broke billionaires, where we document our daily struggles and building wealth while raising a young family. Join us as we talk creative wealth building for everyday people and couples that are struggling in a down economy. I'm Lauren.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Joshua Massari, and we'll be your host.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to The Broke Millionaires.
SPEAKER_00We've got uh extra team member today.
SPEAKER_02Little special guest. We could only get child care for three of the four kids today, so I'm wearing one.
SPEAKER_00She tried to drop the fourth one off and run, but it didn't work. Didn't quite work. Here we are.
SPEAKER_02Tried to have him in his pack and play next to us and his little bouncer, but no, he's asleep on me. So we'll see we'll see how long of an episode. So here we are.
SPEAKER_00Hopefully this is the last one. Hopefully we will have scheduled child care moving forward for these recordings and interviews. But we're still bootstrapping it.
SPEAKER_02So we are fully bootstrapping it, hence why we've not been very consistent with releases and recording and all the things.
SPEAKER_00That on top of uh trying to test out editors and get someone to help edit these because we are doing video now and the audio alone. I was up till three in the morning editing these once a week, and that just wasn't sustainable. And with video, it you can triple that.
SPEAKER_02And we have video because we have YouTube now.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. So if you haven't checked it out, we have YouTube now.
SPEAKER_02Do you remember what my cousin used to call that?
SPEAKER_00I think it was called FaceTube or something.
SPEAKER_02Every time you say YouTube, I think about that. But no, we have a YouTube channel, so please like and subscribe. That would be amazing.
SPEAKER_00If you are a person that likes to watch podcasts on video, we will have these going forward. And we're going back, we do have a lot of video from past episodes that we are going back and getting edited so that it will end up on YouTube as well. So probably about half of our episodes will be on there once they're all ready to go.
SPEAKER_02I didn't realize so many people watched podcasts. I've only ever listened to them like while I'm in the car. That's usually when I listen to them, sometimes while cooking dinner, but I had no idea that people watch them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, me too. But uh apparently there's more people that watch it than listen to it.
SPEAKER_02So just interesting.
SPEAKER_00All right, so what do we got for updates today?
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness, we are working hard still on this community that we're so excited to be launching. This is way more work than I personally realize. Is it more work than you realize, or did you know this going into it?
SPEAKER_00I have no idea going into it, but it is a lot of work. Just all the back-end stuff putting it together, and we have to make a website for it, and we have to like kind of put everything together and figure out how we're gonna operate everything and schedules, and just there's a lot that goes into it. But we're getting close. We're excited to launch this. Um, we'll be bringing that very, very soon.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I can't believe how I mean it the the workload really falls on you because of the kids and like we keep going back to having no child care. It's been really hard for me to take on any of that, and my hat is just off to you. I don't know how you're doing all of this. So I don't either.
SPEAKER_00I usually put the kids to bed, fall asleep in one of the kids' bed. I have tears in my eyes.
SPEAKER_02I like I really don't know how you do it.
SPEAKER_00Last night I fell asleep at eight o'clock and woke up at like 11 30 and was too awake to go back to bed and had too much stuff to do. So I stayed up for four hours working on this new website.
SPEAKER_02As if you didn't have enough going on or things to do.
SPEAKER_00Well, and then I finally go to bed at three, and then the kids start waking up like just boom, boom, boom, boom. So I never actually fell back asleep. So here I am, still standing.
SPEAKER_02Still standing. Uh, we're in our new studio, which we kind of talked about, which has been amazing. Just having this space is well, a lot better than the kitchen table, that's for sure. Where we were at.
SPEAKER_00And it's still a lot of work to set up, but it's a lot less work because a lot of the stuff stays where it's at. And you still have to get everything all hooked up and ready to go and and ready for the the recording, but it's definitely making it a little easier. So we're just working on getting childcare so we can have a couple days a week where we just schedule these and we'll be able to consistently record whether and have interviews, which we're gonna be doing live in-person interviews, which we're super excited about. Uh we'll still be able to do virtuals, but just having a better setup for it will make it a lot easier. Um, so we'll be able to be a lot more consistent with the the episodes, which we've tried to do over the past year, but we just crossed one year, actually.
SPEAKER_02We just crossed one year two days ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so this is our one year. So we're not at 52 episodes.
SPEAKER_02We were a little short, but yeah, we're what was I say, nine short of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know what? Having a baby, moving, doing all the things that we've done, I think that that's pretty good.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna be intentional about being more consistent weekly episodes moving forward. So that's good.
SPEAKER_02We are. We're very excited. We I can't believe it's already been a year since we recorded the first episode. That's kind of kind of wild. We've had four different studio setups since then. Um we posted a from our very first recording to where we're at now, it's just come a long way and it's still a learning process for us. But thank you for being along on this ride because it means the world to us. And, you know, the feedback is why we are doing this, and or the the positive feedback I should say. We haven't gotten a ton of negative feedback, but the you know, the people that are excited about it is kind of what keeps us going.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, it definitely helps feed the fire.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And with that, if you have any reviews that you have not left, please do so.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Even if it's just a rating and you don't have to write anything, just go there, click five-star count, your five-star count. You just literally just click it and it's done. Like for Spotify and Apple, it's super, super easy. YouTube, you can't do that, but uh just subscribing on YouTube is a huge, huge, huge help.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Okay, our last episode you talked about the 50-year mortgage that was like maybe coming into play.
SPEAKER_00Apparently that's old news. That was a week ago. By the time we actually release that one, it's gonna be old news. So well.
SPEAKER_02Which was an interesting kind of topic or theory, but now you're talking there's something called a portable mortgage.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, the White House is trying to float all these different ideas with how to basically jumpstart the market again and get houses, the housing market moving again. So last week it was 50-year mortgages, and this week it's portable mortgages. So, what is a portable mortgage? So portable, it's very interesting. I didn't really know a lot about this and had to do some research on it, but a portable mortgage is basically you can buy a house and instead of like traditionally, if you buy a house, you sell your old one, you pay off your old mortgage, you get a new mortgage on your new house. The problem is right now nobody wants to do that because they've got these two and a half, three percent mortgages locked in from four or five years ago, and they don't want to give them up because now they're gonna get a six to seven percent interest. So you're gonna double your interest payment to do that. So it's really kind of causing the market to stall and slow down. And so it's it's creating an inventory issue uh because nobody wants to do that. So that's they're they're holding inventory. It also makes it harder for people to buy because they're gonna have a higher interest rate. Even if you know if maybe they're outgrowing their house that they're in now, they've got a really good rate locked in, they're busting at the seams, but it's gonna double their the interest portion on their mortgage, which is the majority of your mortgage anyway. So it could, you know, nearly double your mortgage to even get a same size home right now, just because the interest is going to double. What the portable mortgage does is it allows you to keep your mortgage that you have in your name and everything and move it to the next property. So instead of when you sell your home instead of paying off that mortgage, that lender, or you'd have to go through an application process, but basically you can take that, you know, that call it 3% mortgage for whatever amount and move that over to the new purchase. You're moving the rate over. You're your your rate and terms, the whole, the whole mortgage. So whatever your term, let's say you have 25 years left on it at 3%, you would still have 25 years left on that amount of money, whatever the principal amount is that you're moving over. So if there's 500,000, let's say you had a loan for, you know, 600,000 and you've paid it down and it's at 500,000 now and you've got 25 years left at 3%. That would be moved over to the new homes. A $500,000 loan that goes towards the new purchase. If you're buying a $5,000, $500,000 home, then that's it. You would just move that mortgage over there and then and then you're set. I don't know how it's gonna work with like down payment. I don't know if you have to still be within ratios, I'm sure. So you still have to have some sort of you know, DTI on it, or or uh not DTI, but your LTV would still have to line up. So you still have to qualify there. Um, you also have to go through an application process. So they're gonna like run your credit again with their DTI. Something that anyone can Yeah, you still it's not like you just do it. You have you still have to apply, but it would stick with the same lender and that the same loan term. So that's the big key is that the loan terms stay intact. You still have that 3% interest rate for 30 years or 25 years or whatever you have left. So if you have a difference, let's say you're buying, you've got $500,000, you're able to port over to the new, the new purchase. Let's say you're buying a $700,000 home. So you got $200,000 in difference, you would have to either pay cash for that or you'd have to get a second mortgage for that.
SPEAKER_02And I'm that would be at like today's rate.
SPEAKER_00It would be at today's rate. And I'm not sure there may be different ways to do this. I'm not exactly sure what all the the criteria is, but it would either be a second mortgage at the the current rate, so you'd have a second on it, or the lender that you originally are porting over would take today's rates for that additional amount and they would do a blended rate. So maybe that you get 200,000 at 6.5%, you got your 500,000, 3%, and they blend it and it says, okay, it comes out to like 3.75 is your rate for the whole mortgage or something like that. Or it may just stick as two different mortgages. I'm not real sure how that works. But it's a very interesting concept because those people that are sitting on their mortgages right now are not wanting to sell because of that, it would free up inventory. That's the idea, is it would free up inventory, get inventory going.
SPEAKER_02Get things moving again. Yeah. That's super interesting. That's never been done before, right? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I think it might have at one point. I don't, I think it's not a new idea, but not something that we currently see in in today's market. Um, but the idea is it'll free up inventory. So it could reduce pricing by freeing up inventory and putting more supply in the market, but I don't know if that's really gonna work because you've got a lot of people just waiting on the sidelines. So I don't know. But I think I think it's gonna depend on rates because the new people that are purchasing are not going to they're still gonna be the same position because the rates are still gonna be high. So they they wouldn't, unless they have a mortgage, they're able to move over, home buyers would still be in the same position. That's very true. So I think it's gonna be depending on what rates do. So if rates do come down, they're obviously pushing to to get rates down as well. I don't know. Who knows what's gonna happen, but I think there's gonna be some movement one way or another because the the White House is definitely pushing hard to make some moves on this.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, that'll be interesting to see what ends up happening. Maybe this one will be off the table in less than a week again, too.
SPEAKER_00I know maybe next week we'll be talking about some other crazy idea that comes out of it.
SPEAKER_02It changes so fast.
SPEAKER_00Just a quick disclaimer the information shared on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial, tax, or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. Your individual circumstances may differ and require specific strategies not discussed here. Now let's get back to the show.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so today we're talking about passive investments with high returns. We have a couple different areas we're gonna be focusing on private lending, joint ventures, and syndications.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What would you like to share with us on that today?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely nothing. I'm gonna let you take. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00Is this more my arena?
SPEAKER_02Isn't everything more your arena?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it kind of is. I'm really just interviewing. You're learning.
SPEAKER_02You're learning, so I'm learning, and I'm I'm I really should be. I'm the podcast host, and you're just my consistent guest.
SPEAKER_00Just a weekly, just a weekly reoccurring interviewee.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um okay. So I I'm actually surprised that we've never actually talked about this.
SPEAKER_02When you said that, I can't believe we had to do that.
SPEAKER_00I know we do a lot of this type of investing. So I'm really, I just can't believe we never covered this topic. But we do all of these strategies that we're gonna talk about. And so basically, this is gonna be passive investing without getting involved. So you think of like a rental property as being passive because you get somebody in there for a year and you're not doing much, but it's not really passive because there's there's a lot of there's a lot of risk, there's a lot of bottom moving parts. You've got you're putting money back into the property, you got maintenance requests, things like that. You're either managing the property yourself and dealing with that, or you're paying a property manager and you're having to pay a property manager. So it's not really a true passive investment like a loan would be, where you just you have terms at the beginning and you lock it up and then you just wait for that that loan to mature. Uh so the first thing we're gonna talk about is is private lending. You can be the lender, you can be the bank and loan on properties, on projects, uh, and have this backed by real estate. So you can get a lien on real property, which gives you a lot more security and make the loan a lot less risky versus maybe you're just loaning money to somebody for uh a business startup or you know, a family member starting a business or for whatever reason, uh, where in that case you you're not gonna have a lien on real property. So it's a little riskier. But with with real estate, you actually are able to put a lien on the property and record that at the county. So if something happens and that that borrower defaults, you've got security to be able to recoup your, you know, you got a lien on the property, you could foreclose on the property. Or if you're in second position and the first lender forecloses for whatever reason, you are still wrapped up in that and you are still in second position, you're not the first person to get paid. But if there's extra money, you're still gonna get paid out of that whole situation, out of that foreclosure. So it gives you a lot more security, but you have to do your due diligence. Uh, there's, you know, you got to make sure that the borrower can perform because you don't want somebody who's not going to perform. You don't want to be in a situation where you foreclose on them and have to go through that because that's a lot of legal expense and not guaranteed that you're going to get your all your money or any money at all if you're not in first position. So you do have to know what you're doing and make sure you do your due diligence. You also need to make sure that your I's are dotted and T's are crossed, something like legally with the paperwork. So you need to make sure your documents, your loan documents are properly written for the state that you're lending in. There's a lot of rules and laws regarding lending, which is a lot less regulated when you're doing a business loan. And what I mean by business loan is lending on an investment property versus somebody with a primary residence. So you're not going to do this on a primary residence because you do have to be licensed and there's a lot more regulation on that. But if you're lending on a property for somebody's doing a fix and flip, so they're flipping a house and they need, you know, construction money to finish the project. That's a business investment loan because it's an investment property. So there's a lot less regulation around that. It's still regulated, but you can actually do these loans in most states without being a lender, without having a lender's license. Um, there's some caveats to that. For example, in California, which is a pretty highly regulated state, you can do these loans without a lending license. And you're allowed to do one per year with that you could just do yourself. Um, I wouldn't recommend doing it yourself, but you don't have to have anybody underwrite it and have a lender sign off on it. And when I say lender, there's a lot of attorneys that do these types of loans and do this loan underwriting, but they're also a licensed lender. So they can actually underwrite the loan and get around the lender's license if they take on that loan and they're they're willing to underwrite it. So they have some obligation to make sure they're not just wild, wild west writing crazy loans. But by going through that process, you can get around that. And there's two reasons. One, you can do more than one loan, because in California, you can only do one loan per year on your own. That's it, regardless of who you're loaning to. And there's also usury laws in most states. I don't know if all states have this, but I think most states have usury laws.
SPEAKER_02Usery laws? Okay.
SPEAKER_00So in the state of California, usury law means you can't just charge somebody crazy interest and get away with it. So it's capped at 10% per year for your interest rate, origination fee, and any late fees or any other fees that you charge somebody. So you cannot legally charge somebody more than 10%. A lot of people that do loans, yeah, I hear a lot of private loans getting done that are higher interest and are not legal because they're charging a lot more, which makes sense to charge in this situation. I mean, these types of loans are higher risk and it's not something that somebody can go to a typically go to a bank and get. So you're gonna get higher interest, but if you're doing it on your own in the state of California, you're capped to to that 10%. They can be in California, but you have to do through a lender's, like a lender, somebody that has a lend, you either need to be licensed, which actually to do business loans is not that hard to get licensed. You you have to like not be a criminal. You have to, I think, have 25 or 50,000 net worth or something like that. Maybe it was a little more, but it was not a lot. Pretty basic.
SPEAKER_02There's some This is ringing a bell from when I had my mortgage license back in the day.
SPEAKER_00So there's there's some licensing you have to go through, but it's really not that hard to get, like versus being a consumer lender, which is way a whole totally different thing. You can do these loans. I g some states are easier than California. I will say that California is pretty strict on California.
SPEAKER_02I would say California is most strict on everything. Everything, everything. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Especially when it comes to real estate or anything. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Any sort of licensing and anything.
SPEAKER_00But but we've done a lot of these, and and mostly not in California. Actually, I don't think any of them were in California. I've tried, I've tried to do them in California, but they the ones I was doing didn't quite work out. So what I look for in these is I like to get some at least a 30% return. The reason I say that is because it is a higher risk loan. It's not something that you're lending somebody on their primary residence. So it is going to be a higher risk loan. Usually they're they're shorter loans. They're going to have a shorter term, three months, six months. Sometimes they might be a year. I've never done one that was a year, but usually they're like a couple months. It's just like a bridge loan for somebody or it's a rehab. So that they need like, you know, three to six months to finish up a rehab and then list it on the market. Uh so they're typically shorter term loans. And I do a 30% annualized over the the course of the year. So if it's six months, I might be looking for 15% return over six months, but you know, annualized over the year, that's going to be 30%. So that's the kind of return that I look for on these type of loans. And we've done a few of these, but we've also they don't all work out the way you want them to work out, though. So that's why you need to do your due diligence on the front end.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's a gamble. It really is.
SPEAKER_00The first one that we that we did about five years ago was and to fund these, there's you know, you can do this if you just got cash laying around, you got cash in the bank that's not doing anything for you. This is a great way to get a return. Especially if you got money, cash sitting in the bank during an inflationary period, you are losing money. Like I think I we talked about that last time. We talked about this last time. Like if you had $100,000 in the bank in 2020, today that's only $80,000 in dollars. That's crazy. So you just lost you literally lost $20,000 by you know being safe and keeping to keeping money in the bank.
SPEAKER_02I had no idea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So that's a situation where you have you have money in the bank, cash, and you don't have any invested into anything, you know, at least put it in a money market, but your money market's not going to keep up with inflation, especially right now. At least, at least not right. If you were to do something like this, you could actually do do pretty well as long as you're protecting yourself legally, making sure you're doing it, you know, compliant and making sure picking the the deals that are are getting paid you back. So this one that we did, and and we fund these with our HELOC. We use HELOCs to fund these. So when we get HELOCs, a lot of times when you first get a HELOC on a home, there's like a promotion period. It's like a six-month promotional period where it's 2% or 3%, or sometimes even lower for the first six months that you have just to kind of incentivize you. Everyone's trying to jockey for your business. And so uh a couple of times we've used these promotions to fund these deal. Normally they say that's not good to use to borrow money to lend money. And it's it's risky because if you don't get paid back, you got to pay it back still. Yeah. So you do run the risk, and there is some additional risk there. And a lot of times the delta is not that good. So if you've got something that's 10% interest on a HELOC, which is kind of what they are right now, or like maybe like 8%, but you're charging somebody like 15%, it's not really that much of a delta. I wouldn't say that that's worth the risk to make 7%. It's just, it's just not. It's too risky to make such a low return. Um, but when you got a high return, You know, like this one that we did in Arizona, it was $150,000 in credit line. It wasn't even all a HELOC. It was 110 on a HELOC and 40,000 on a on a credit card that we had that was just sitting, not being used. Uh, with a and I think that might have had a may have had a promotion on that one. I don't remember, but um that was about a it was a two, I think it was a 60-day loan, and it was gonna be like a 30, it was a really high high return. It was gonna be like a 40, 30 or 40 percent return on investment over two months or three months or whatever it was.
SPEAKER_02Which is I remember when you first told me about this, and it was like it's just gonna be two months.
SPEAKER_00It was super high, and we were saving for we were trying to keep the HELOC for a house. We're like, oh, we're not using the money right now, let's just utilize this. We won't need it until later in the year. And so, and you know, I had had an attorney write the write the paperwork and thought I was doing my due diligence, but didn't quite do it right.
SPEAKER_01So it was just two months, or will just be two months.
SPEAKER_00So, long story short, we did not get our money back. Um that deal went sideways. This was during COVID, and the the builder ran into some issues. We did not get the money back. Uh, they filed BK, and so that was just this long, drawn-out process. Five years later, we're still still haven't gotten back. Still working on it. We'll be okay. We'll we'll get we'll we'll end up breaking it. I don't know if we'll make any money on it, but at least we'll get our money back, luckily. But in that case, you know, once this went went to bankruptcy, I had the bankruptcy attorney told me, he's all look at the bright side. Like, you just got a really good education on what not to do. And I was like, Thanks. Like $150,000 education on a little mistake. And and the funny thing is he said, you should have just hired an attorney and paid somebody a few thousand dollars to review the documents. And I told him, I'm like, I did.
SPEAKER_02That was the craziest part.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the you also need to have the right attorney.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Did you learn with that one that is there a specific type of attorney we needed to have the first time that we didn't have?
SPEAKER_00I think just uh a lending an attorney that specializes in in loan documents. So somebody that's very familiar with that and familiar with the laws.
SPEAKER_02There were some details that the attorney we had missed.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and like what's actually required in those type of loans because it there's little nuances, you know, that that you have to make sure, again, that your I's are dotted and your T's are crossed. So just making sure that's the right attorney for the job, I would say on that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00But, you know, we uh learned our lesson on that one. And then after, well, while that one was still going on, we had secured another HELOC on our the next home that we had renovated, and we got a pretty big HELOC there. And we were gonna be buying another house, but not yet. And so we had this HELOC just sitting there being unused. And then an opportunity came along, and it seemed too good to be true, but this time I was like, we're making sure we get the right attorney on this, we're gonna look into this. Can we make this happen? Can we not? And this investor needed needed a couple of $200,000 to bridge a purchase and was willing to pay a lot for it. And we ended up lending $200,000 and getting a 24-point origination fee plus 12% interest only. I think it was a 60-day loan. It took a little longer to pay back. It ended up being 120 days, so it was four months. Um, but we still got it back when we needed it. We got paid everything and it, I mean, it worked out really, really well. I think it ended up being about a 30% return in four months. So that's like 90% return on your money annually. So that weren't that one worked out really, really well. Um, but that one I had to jump through a lot of legal hoops uh and I had an I got the right attorney. I got referred around to several attorneys before I found the right one. He he knew how to make it work, make sure everything was compliant, uh, got the deal to work. The investor was super happy. He got this, this before a portfolio in like Alabama or something. I think he was buying like, I don't remember, like 25 or 30 homes or something. And this was the down payment for that. And his funding had fallen through last minute. So he needed the close. He was in escrow and he needed the close, so he needed the money fast. I was able to fund it faster than a hard money lender.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He was willing to pay a huge origination fee because he ended up making like, I don't know what it was, like half a million dollars instantly on the equity by buying this deal. So for him, he didn't want to lose that. So he was willing to pay a $50,000 origination fee to close the deal. So that one ended up working out. And for us, I mean, over four months, it was a very there was a couple of weeks of jumping through some hoops legally. But once that deal was through, then it was just just waiting for it to close. And it did take a little longer. It was supposed to be two months, it took four months. And those type of deals usually take longer because they're either getting sold and they're having to have to wait till they sell and fund, or they're getting refinanced. And a lot of times there's delays with that, which this one was getting refinanced, so there was just delays on that. But you know, it worked out and we got our money back and did pretty well on that one.
SPEAKER_02For people who might be interested in doing these types of loans, where and I know you there's another one we were gonna get into also, but where are you finding these opportunities?
SPEAKER_00You know, it's it's I guess just connections. It's something that I both of these deals were brought to me for from other people. There were through other people that I knew that said, hey, this person's looking for money are you interested in like, I'll take a look. And it ended up being something that that I was interested in. Really just you know just a good network. Surrounding yourself in the right building a good community, right, you know, networking, right community, and just having those contacts and people that are doing deals and being able to pass stuff back and forth. That's that's really how that one came up.
SPEAKER_02And how did you learn about all of like the private one?
SPEAKER_00You know, I don't really know. I think I've always just kind of heard about it.
SPEAKER_02You're constantly like researching these. Yeah, I'm always like like researching different strategies and things.
SPEAKER_00It may have been like a podcast, like a bigger pockets was talking about it. That may have been kind of where I first started like uh hearing about it and learning about it. But that's just it's it's very prevalent in real estate world, private lending, because private money is a lot easier to come by. So you know it costs more, but it's a lot easier to come by. And there's a lot of banks that won't do this type of lending. There's hard money lenders, but they still that sometimes they there's certain deals that that for whatever reason don't work for them as well, or maybe need more money down with those. So, you know, there's a lot of different opportunities that way.
SPEAKER_02Do you feel like do you know other people that are doing this type of like personally that are doing this other kind of lending this creatively? Or is it like still something that a lot of people don't know about?
SPEAKER_00I think it's still something that a lot of people don't know about, but it's certainly there's I mean, there's a lot of people doing it, and and I know people that are doing it, but I think it's becoming more and more common, uh, especially with like interest rates today. Because the funny thing is like with private lending, interest doesn't really change. It doesn't really matter what interest rates are. So right now, private lending, hard money is actually really cheap comparatively because that gap is bank bank lending is is so high right now. It's like, you know, maybe a hard money loan is like 10%, but right now your standard loan is like seven through six and a half, seven. So it's like not that much of a difference. You know, when conventional loans were three percent, then it's like, oh, those are really expensive money, but right now it's not that expensive. It never really changes, uh it varies very, very little. It's always just kind of constant on those type of loans.
SPEAKER_02Okay, and there was another one you did too. Which one? Tell us about that one, Arizona.
SPEAKER_00Oh, are you talking about something different?
SPEAKER_02Texas. I can't keep my state straight. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we invest all over the place. So it is a little difficult to keep track of everything, I suppose. But yeah, so Texas, there was one, this one, this one was not done on a HELOC. This was actually done in our 401k. So we do we use our solo 401k to do lending, and you can do this with a solo 401k or a self-directed IRA where you can invest in alternate alternative investments, and one of those is private lending. That's actually a really big thing that people do inside of those accounts. So there was a developer in Texas that was buying properties, scraping them, and building brand new homes, and he was looking for um an investor to to help fund get properties across the the finish line so you could start the next one and just kind of keep going with it. And I did one there. I think that one was I think it was a 15% return over six months. And so it ended up being, again, that 30% annualized return. And that one got paid back right on time. Actually, I think it was it might have been slightly delayed in the closing, but I want to say it was real close to paying off.
SPEAKER_02I think each one was getting better and better with the payoff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that one, that one paid off real, real close to. And he actually didn't even sell it. He was supposed to sell it, and then that was what he was using to fund, but he had multiple projects going on, so he sold another one before and just used that to pay back so that way he didn't run past the the deadline. And and I would say too, make sure if you're doing these, make sure that you're protecting yourself on your term. So if it's a six-month loan, if it goes past that six month, there should be penalties, like not just the interest they've been paying, it should have some higher penalties to incentivize that to get paid off on time.
SPEAKER_02That's a good point. What about the high interest loan on some flips that were done in Arizona? I knew there was another Arizona one to talk about.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. So that that was uh, I think those are some of the first deals I funded actually. Before the other Yeah, there was uh two, two flips that I think it was in the 401k. That might have been the first 401k investment, actually, that I did.
SPEAKER_02It was Arizona?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It might have been the first HELOC or the first, I don't remember. I'd have to go back and look at it. It was either HELOC or it was the 401k when I first first started that. But that was basically funding a couple smaller flips. I can't remember if it was two flips simultaneously or if it was one loan funding two flips. I don't remember exactly how we how we did that one, but that one, it was, I want to say it was like a four to six month loan on that one, and that one paid back again, similar, similar interest rate uh on those, and those got paid back. So they they worked out. So you got to be careful, you know. If you friends and family, you got you got somebody that's doing a flip, and and you know, you want to help them out, but you know, you really got to dig in, make sure that the deal makes sense. All right, you know, is it gonna make money? Is there a chance that that it's gonna lose money? Because if it loses money, you're not gonna get paid.
SPEAKER_02That's such a risky situation with friends and family.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you gotta really, really be careful, making sure, and I don't do these with friends and family, I do these people I don't know typically. Um, this one I was actually somebody I actually was an acquaintance, I did know them, but they were pretty uh experienced and and they were still kind of starting out, but they were pretty experienced. They had a pretty good handle on it, and I felt pretty confident about the deal, so that one did work out. Yeah. But yeah, you can you can find if people are doing you know, flips, and we know a lot of people that do flips and they'll get they'll raise money. So they'll raise money from private investors, offer a return that way. So that is one way of funding, you know. If you're a flipper, that's one way of getting the money is from private money. And if you've got money into invest, that's a that's a good way to turn that money because you can turn that money, you know, one, two, three times a year and get good returns that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I like that. What about joint ventures?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so joint ventures something a little different. So with a joint venture, you're not doing a loan. You are basically some, let's say somebody brings you a deal and says, Hey, I just acquired this property and it needs this much money and rehab, but I don't have the money to do the renovations. So what you can do is you can do what's called a joint venture, where you form an LLC and you basically, well, there's different ways of of structuring it, but essentially you own part of the property. So you don't have a lien on it like a loan. You actually own property. You're on title. So, and it may be, you know, if you got two partners, it may be a 50-50 where one person brings the deal, the other person's got the money, or maybe it's a split. Maybe the person that's got the deal is doing the renovations, but just needs money to get it going. So it's kind of negotiable on what the structure of the deal is. Case by case, basically. Yeah. So let's just say, you know, if you maybe you got 30% of it, whatever. Uh, but but basically you own the property. So your return's not a guaranteed return like it would be with a loan. You can't take a loan or you can't take investment money and say, I'm gonna guarantee you a 30% return because that's actually not legal. You can't guarantee a return that's based on the asset itself. You can do it as a loan. If it's structured as a loan and it's gonna, this is the loan term, this is this is when it pays back. But if you're just doing it like based on profit of a deal, yeah, that makes sense. Can't put a number to it because you don't know when it's gonna sell. You don't know what it's going to sell for. It could lose money. And if you lose money, it's not, you know, the loan in a loan situation, the loan is still due, even though there's not enough money to go around and it becomes a legal battle. But in a joint venture, you're taking on responsibility of gains and losses. So if you own 30% of this as the lender, you know, you get 30% of the profits. You also get 30% of the losses. You really gotta make sure that the deal makes sense and go into it knowing that you are on the hook for that deal. But typically returns are gonna be a lot higher. There's more risk because you're now attached to the asset. And you you also have a a little more say and a little more um hand in the deal, I would say, making sure it gets across the finish line. So you're gonna be more involved, making sure this is a profitable deal and gets done and gets sold, or whatever the exit is gonna be. Yeah. But it's another way of investing in these deals where you can get a higher return. So, you know, you may may get much, much greater returns because you're cashing in on whatever the profit is in that deal. Now, conversely, it could market could turn like what like we've seen the last few years on a lot of people where the market goes backwards and they get stuck and they end up losing money. So there's a little bit of risk there. So timing is big, like you really got to look at all the factors on that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, we haven't done a joint venture um per se, but well, we did one, it just never went through. There was somebody that brought a deal, they were buying, I think it was like, it was actually a really good deal. It was like a seller finance type deal, but it was, I can't remember if it was a subject to or no, there was no, there was no, it was seller finance. There was no lien on it. They owned it free and clear, but there was like some tax, some back taxes that were due. Didn't want to be a rental landlord, they just wanted to get rid of it. And so the investor that found this was basically getting to the deal free and brought the deal, had two partners. One partner that was an agent to kind of help facilitate everything and help with the rehab and using contacts. Uh, but they needed money. They needed a money person, and that's where we came in. We were the lender on this, and everybody put in a little bit of money because I that's another thing is you want people to have skin in the game. So in this deal, they didn't put any money down on the ha on the property and had nothing into it. And so my thing was like, I want you to have some skin in the game. Like if you each put 10,000 in, I'll come in on the deal and fund the rest of it. But I wanted them to have enough money in the deal to where they wouldn't just walk away because it's, you know, $10,000 is a decent amount of money to lose.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00So they had some skin of the game, and then we were bringing, we were using, I believe it was a HELOC to fund that one. It didn't end up going through. It was a really strange situation. Like the owner, there was two, I don't know, there was one of the owners was like overseas, and their company got in trouble and it was like assets were frozen, and so like it just, I don't, I don't know what happened. Like they could still be dealing. I might that deal might still be alive, but not I mean, we don't have another contract anymore. So but that was a really uh interesting creative deal that could have ended up working out really nicely, but it just didn't go through. But that is one way of structuring deals where you actually own part of the deal. So if you've got somebody that's looking for funding and you don't feel real comfortable with doing a loan or the return's not good enough, uh here's the other thing. This is another way to get around the usury laws. You know, if they're only offering you like 10% or something like that, and you're like, it's not really enough, and they're making all kinds of profit, you can present, hey, why don't we joint venture on this? I'll bring in the money and take this percentage of the deal. Yeah. That way we're sharing in the profit. So that's a way of getting around that and and structuring it to where it's a little more beneficial for the land.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense. All right. What about syndications?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so syndications, I'm not a big fan of, but we have done some of these. I think they're kind of boring.
SPEAKER_02You don't like them because they're boring.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like something our son would say.
SPEAKER_02It does boring boring in practice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Because you don't do anything. They're there they're they are truly you okay.
SPEAKER_02You don't need any more on your plate. What do you mean? Wouldn't you love this?
SPEAKER_00Because it's boring. It's just boring. But you don't need to have-and they're long-term. They're usually like five to ten years, and you invest in them. It's not like exciting to see. It's not exciting, it's just boring. So syndication is basically where a sponsor, so the sponsor is like the developer or the investor that puts the deal together. And usually this is gonna be on like a commercial deal. So they'll find a commercial property, whether it's an apartment building, usually it's apartment buildings or uh some sort of you know, industrial type of situation, and they will look for value add and they'll say, okay, we're gonna, we got this much money, we're putting in this, we're gonna secure the loan to buy the property. They buy the property. Sometimes they'll buy the property first, sometimes they'll wait, or they'll have it under contract and then raise money while they're under contract. But they'll basically bring in investors, and it's similar to a joint venture where you're taking a percentage. So they'll a percentage of the LLC that owns everything to all these different investors, but instead of like one or two partners that are joint like JV on a joint venture, it could be a bunch of investors. So you could end up with a couple, but typically it's gonna be a larger amount of money they're raising, like you know, 10s, 20s, 30 million dollars, whatever it is, and they're just selling off portions. Typically, they're all different, but a lot of the bigger deals, you'll see a $50,000 minimum. But you can buy into a $150,000 or $150 million project with only $50,000. You got a small slice of the pie. Yeah. But if that project works out, then you know it's still a percentage. You're still getting a percentage of that return. Uh so we've done a number of these. These we've all done in the in the solo 401k. So everything's tax deferred on those, but some good, some not good. They're kind of, I would say hit or miss on those ones. We haven't really knocked one out of the park. We've lost money on some. Some of them, some of them have been decent. I will say, uh, shout out to Grant Cardone, Cardone Capital. The best, the one that has worked out the best so far, and and these are all still in the cycle, so they haven't sold. But so far, the the one that looked the worst on paper was Grant Cardone's deal, but it's Grant Cardone, and he's that one looked the worst on paper. Yeah, it was the lowest returns. It was like a 3% cash on cash return. And then uh at the end, it was supposed to be like, you know, a 14% return or 15 or something. I it wasn't like it wasn't huge, but it was a very like stable asset. It was a brand new. So this was in 2020. It was a developer had just finished up a mid-rise, uh it was like a 105-unit mid-rise, luxury mid-rise apartment building. And they finished it up and their loan was due, and they hadn't started renting them yet, and they just needed to sell. So they were actually selling under market just to get out of it because it was 2020, everyone was freaking out, didn't know what was going on. Um, this was early 2020, so early during COVID. And so the the property was bought at a pretty good discount. And over the next couple years, you know, things, the market kind of everything just changed and and and turned around. I think they had a pretty good loan on it at the time that locked in, and equity on this thing shot up. So it started renting it, started running it really good operations, and the initial investment on that one was 50,000. And I think after like three years, it was already like two and a half, worth two and a half times. So that $50,000 at two and a half X was now worth $150,000 or close to that. Uh and it still has, I think that was a seven-year, usually they're like seven years, but they're not like set on seven years. It's kind of like when we'll sell, when we hit the returns, or when it makes sense. But I believe that one was was seven years. So we've got a couple years left on that one, probably before they exit that. And whether they end up refinancing and exiting and paying off all the investors or selling it, I don't know. I think the idea is they usually sell it, but I don't know what the plans are with that. But you know, that one I think is gonna work out pretty well. It's the only one that's paid consistently month monthly uh dividends, like the rental income. So we've got rental income, very low return on the rental income, but we've gotten rental income every single month since it closed. It'll probably end up being the best one. There's a couple other ones that had higher potential returns, but haven't quite worked out. There's one in Boston that we did. Oh, like an industrial, I remember that. It was the first one we did, I think. That was a industrial, it was actually a, I want to say a general mills plant, like the cereal plant. It was like a they made the cereal there. It was an old General Mills facility. So it had all these warehouses and manufacturing and everything. Yeah. And the idea was they were going to convert everything, renovate it, and it was gonna be sold for cannabis production. I think that was the idea. That's what it was. They were targeting cannabis production because it had just been legalized in in Massachusetts, and that was the idea. Anyway, they had some tr they ran into a lot of trouble renting them. They they've been they've been renting it, but it's been off and on and not not the type of stabilized asset they thought it was gonna be. So I don't know. That was a 10-year deal, so that we've got some time on that one. Still got we're only halfway into that, so a lot can change between now and the next five years. So hopefully that one ends up paying out eventually.
SPEAKER_02A lot can change in five years as we already know.
SPEAKER_00Could go either way too, though. So we'll see. So we won't know for a while. But there was like another one in uh Texas. That would that one was a lower dollar amount, but it was this apartment building. It was like 300 unit apartment building, and they were gonna, I think it was outside of Houston, they were gonna buy these apartments, renovate, and do like do renovations, and they were going to make it pet friendly. That was their play. It was gonna make it very pet friendly with like little patches of grass or these little grass things on on each porch, and it was just gonna be really geared like all these dog parks, and like it was gonna be really geared towards people with dogs. They did not have good financing in place, and this was the like I think this was maybe 21, 22 when they when this was. Acquired and the loan that they got was, you know, a great loan at that time, but it was a variable interest rate. So when rates went up, the deal got real sour real fast. And they had to raise more money. Everybody got diluted. I don't think we'll ever even see our money back on that one. Yeah. Which hopefully, I mean, we're still in on it. So if they end up, if it comes back around, they hang on and they sell it and they exit at a profit, we'll we'll see our our money, but not holding my breath on that one. And then there was another one actually in Boston, too. Uh, do you remember the the the science lab? It was like a mix, a mixture. That's what I was getting confused with. I thought the other one was uh So this one was a yeah, this one was like a full-on redevelopment. It was a like a junk, not a junkyard, but it was like a a a truckyard with all these, like a trucking company or something like that, or it's just basically just big yards with like a couple buildings, but they were redeveloping it into a state-of-the-art miniature like lab. So it was going to be like these, these science or these, these laboratories for healthcare companies, uh, like bioscience. And it was the idea is that these smaller startups, you know, they can't afford their own lab to get all their this big labs. And so it was kind of supposed to be like this mixed use, like smaller space where these startups would be able to get a lab and start their business. And this was an interesting one because it had a step-up aspect to it. I think it was a $25,000 buy-in on this one. And it was after the first two years were just gonna be licensing and permitting. So it wasn't gonna be renting, it wasn't gonna be making any money. Actually, it was still renting to the to the previous tenant. So it was generating some income, just not paying out to the investors. But that one was supposed to get through the licensing. And then once that happened, they were gonna do a second round of funding to fund the actual development of the project. All the original investors that invested on phase one to get all the licensing and permitting done were supposed to get their money back, but still hold their equity. So when the new investors came in, it was gonna pay back the old investors and they got to keep their equity and then continue on. And then the second phase, investors weren't getting as as high of a return, but it was less risky because now all the everything was approved. They did get it approved. It took a little longer than expected, but then they decided not to do the step up. So they kind of went back on that.
SPEAKER_02They do that though.
SPEAKER_00I mean, does that kind of do whatever you want? So you get a bad reputation that way, but this then there's not really like police because they are it's technically their deal and they own it, and you don't have voting rights to be able to outvote them because you're not a majority owner. So it's really hard to like do anything about that. So unfortunately, that one didn't work out. Not that the deal didn't work out, but it didn't, you know, we should have gotten our money back after two to three years and then been in the deal with no, you know, still holding equity without any money in the deal at all. So you know, they're spinning it like, oh, well, now you got we'll give you more equity. Like, well, that only works if we actually get paid out. So we'll see what happens once that project. I mean, it's still moving forward, but we'll see what happens on that one.
SPEAKER_02So, like with these deals, like are these kind of the same thing where it's just people that you know in your network, or how are you finding it?
SPEAKER_00No, these are bigger deals. So these are bigger developers. Um, you know, they're commercial developers that are doing much, much bigger deals, and they will put together this deal and and advertise it. Okay. And so they'll go out and advertise and find investors that way. It could be a referral situation, but most of them are regulated by the SEC and they're advertising it. There are smaller deals like this, smaller syndications that are private. You just you can't advertise it. So it's only word of mouth, and you can only take money from people that you know. Uh, it just depends on what series funding that they're that they're doing. So there are both options, but with it, with an SEC sort of uh regulated one like this, like these bigger ones, they can only take accredited investors. So they can't just take anybody's money.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And an accredited investor for those that don't know, uh, I don't even know. It shit it keeps changing. I feel like they just made some changes to this, but you need to have a million dollars in net worth, or you have to make it was like $250,000 a year for two years in a row, I think. I don't know. I I it's been a while since I've had to provide a letter. So I I usually get a letter from our CPA that that to provide on that. But if you're not an accredited investor and it's one of these larger deals that only accepts credit investors, you like they can't take your money because then they're in violation. But the smaller deals that are not, that don't have to be accredited. Again, they can't advertise them, so you wouldn't know unless you knew somebody or were closer to the deal and found out about it. But those ones, they can take money from anybody.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very interesting, huh? So that's kind of like some alternative investments that we have done. I I can't believe we haven't covered this before.
SPEAKER_02I know. I'm really serious.
SPEAKER_00Because I actually really like doing this stuff.
SPEAKER_02You know, right now except the syndications, apparently.
SPEAKER_00Well, they're boring. I know. Maybe I just haven't done a fun one before. I don't know. But you just don't do anything. You put your money in and then you're done. And it's like like it's boring. See, that sounds like I can see us doing it and getting into the development side and and raising money that way. And that would be fun. But like being an investor for me, and but some people that make sense. Like, you know, somebody that's a doctor or a lawyer is just super busy or doesn't have the knowledge or doesn't want to to learn all the the nuances of uh putting a deal together and and structuring it and and actually doing the development. You know, for somebody like that, it it makes sense because you put them, it's easy. They have the money to invest, they don't have the time to and a lot of times you're gonna get better returns than the stock market. Yeah. I will say this though, you do have to be careful because these are advertised by these sponsors or developers. They always talk about the IRR, which stands for investor rate of return. Investor return rate, something like that. IRR, they'll say like, oh, 15% IRR or 20% IRR. And it sounds like you're getting, oh my goodness, like 15 or 20% return on my money, like that sounds great. You know, my, you know, that's a really good rate. Yeah. But the way that that works is there's there's two things to this. One, it's a blended rate. So it's if you're getting income from the property, they take all that income and they they count that in. And then when they sell the property, they count the profit and they take all the money that's paid back to investors between the whole time owning it and then selling it, and they take that and they divide it by how long it took to do that deal. So they'll divide that by five years or seven years or whatever. So it's really if at 15%, it's not a 15% annual return where you just keep snowballing it, keeps compounding. It's 15%, 15%, 15% of the original investment amount. So it doesn't sound as good as it is. If you say, Oh, you're gonna get 15%, not like a loan where it's a 15%, you know, compounding annual. Like, you know, if you if you got an investment that's growing 15% per year, it's going 15%, you got $100,000, it's 15% on the 100,000. And now you got 115,000 at the end of the year. Then it's 15% on the 115,000. So then you got 15,000. So you got 104, it ends up being like 142 or 145 or whatever. It's more, and then 15% on that. And so the each year it keeps growing. It's not just 15,000 each year. Every year it's it's is exponentially growing. Whereas this, it's just they they look at the rate of return and they're guessing really on what they're gonna get back when they're gonna sell it. And then they're kind of guessing on that. But you do have to be careful because it looks to somebody that's not savvy or is not familiar with these, they see the IRR and people just think, oh, that's the annual return. Like that's not how it works. So you do have to be careful. It's not as good as it sounds. It's more of a steady rate of return over the whole period. It could be 10 years. So if you run this out too long, 15% over 10 years is not a very good return.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So that makes sense. Um, let's see. Are you have you been reading or I should say listening to anything in your all your spare time that you have when you're not? Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_00I still listen to books. I try to try to get through. I'd like to say one a week, but definitely not doing that right now. I've done that before, but not right now. Right now, I am reading Ryan Paneda's wealthy way. Please call it wealthy way. I'm not that far into it. I've been listening to that when I'm working out or or going on runs, but um, yeah, I like Ryan. I guess he's got he's a couch, he's a fellow couch flipper.
SPEAKER_02We gotta make that connection with him at some point. It'd be amazing to have him on the show.
SPEAKER_00That'd be a fun conversation. Yeah. Yeah, he he started couch flipping after he was playing baseball, after he got cut, and and that was around the same time, I think, that that Miles and I were doing it.
SPEAKER_02We just he brought this to my attention the other day. I I had no idea that couch flip flipping was still such a thing. Like I I kind of think you guys were just a little early. You were ahead of your time on the couch flipping. Like maybe that could have been the thing that literally took off.
SPEAKER_00There was not very many people doing it when we did it, and now there's thousands of people doing it, and there's groups on this, there's coaching on this, there's podcasts on it. Like, I think if we had been stuck with it a little longer or maybe gone a different route, like we could have started making videos and like But you were making some videos.
SPEAKER_02We started to, and we I mean we got a video that's got I mean this was before like groups were starting, like mentorships and communities and things like that.
SPEAKER_00I mean, our videos were pretty low budget, but we have we have one video that we made on cleaning a couch. It's it's got I think almost 200,000 views on it.
SPEAKER_01That's pretty good.
SPEAKER_00Probably making money on it, and I don't even know. I should log in there and see. Yeah, you should have to do it. That's not that many views, but yeah. I mean, I think we could have shifted that business model and started teaching people and and probably still been doing that. But here we are.
SPEAKER_02You know, you win some, you lose some, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_02You do I like I said, I think that one was just a little bit ahead of what you knew was to come or was going to come in terms of coaching and I think with like the coaching communities and all these all these Facebook groups.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't really a thing back then. We were on Facebook. I think we had like 10,000 social media followers between our different channels, but we didn't, you know, the the whole groups. I don't know if they even had Facebook groups back then. I don't think they did. I don't think they did. Yeah, there's there's I I actually joined them. There's all these couch flipping face groups. Yeah, yeah, we just kind of missed that whole thing, I guess. A little we were a little early on that, but we're gonna have Miles on here. We'll we'll talk it up and it'll be a fun, be a fun episode.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, oh, we got a baby starting to wake up.
SPEAKER_00Oh, look at that. But he knew good timing.
SPEAKER_02He did, he didn't.
SPEAKER_00All right, well he let us get through this, so that was good.
SPEAKER_02I know. I'm really impressed, actually. He's very sweet. I haven't been able to move my head at all, but you know, we got through it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Anything else?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I just can't believe we're at the end of this year. I can't believe we've been doing this for a year. Like it's kind of you know, when we started this, yeah, I just it's crazy. This year has flown by. Like really, really has. Um but no, we're just excited to keep going, ramp up momentum, like we said, and just kind of I feel like there's a lot of going into 26.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna be it's gonna be a good year.
SPEAKER_02It is gonna be a good year.
SPEAKER_00This has been a b this has been a rough year. It's been a tough year.
SPEAKER_02We thought that 2025 was gonna be a good year. We were painstakingly wrong. But we do feel good about 2026 and the things that are on the horizon. And it's um, and we got in some different rooms now.
SPEAKER_00We're we're surrounding ourselves with with the right people and and really, you know, building the podcast. We're really starting to make this you know more intentional and and putting a lot more effort into this and you know, with a community. I'm very excited about the community, just building a group of people that are doing this with us and that we can we can teach and feed off of and and and learn things too. Like I'm really excited to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02I think that would have been key for us when we first started, like just this whole not starting the podcast, but starting this journey that we've been on of building wealth. Like we've really had no one that was doing exactly what we're doing. And so it's been hard to in these, it's it's hard to talk to, you know, your friends and family about it that aren't in it with you. You could they can only understand so much. And so I think that, you know, when we do find people that are doing something similar, it's so nice to connect with them. And I think that's gonna be a big aspect of this community is, you know, being able to just have that support, but then also, you know, like we said, like some really cool like referral networks and just like working with each other and being able to to truly be in community.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like these these private lending deals, like this is how you find this stuff is is just being in groups of people that are doing these type of things. So that's that's how those those deals come about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm really excited about it.
SPEAKER_00All right. Well, it's not late. We got through the one in the middle of the day. We didn't get rid of the kids or didn't didn't find childcare, I mean, for all the kids, but at least we got at least he was sleeping. We'll we'll get something figured out for the next one. Um, but we have a lot of exciting interviews with people that we've lined up, just like very interesting different topics, different strategies that they're doing that we're not doing. So it's gonna be stuff that we have no have not had exposure to. So it's gonna be like some really, some really cool and some really fun topics coming up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Very excited about that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right. Get out there and make it happen.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening. This has been a production of Rebuilding the Dream Studios.
