Episode 212: The Learning Phase

Ah, the infamous topic of real estate has graced the podcast yet again - but this time from the perspective of distressed assets. 

Saint Investment Group not only prides themselves on being able to make their clients money but educate them in the process. Nic will attest to your net worth being directly related to who you surround yourself with and the knowledge you are taking in as well. 

By making wise decisions now, you could set yourself up for years and years of success - he’s a prime example! 

Tune in to episode 212 as Nic differentiates between forward-facing companies and those that aren’t, explains how to determine your buy box within real estate and much more! 

For more information about Saint Investment Group: 

Website: saintinvestment.com/resources

LinkedIn: Nic DeAngelo 

Instagram: @nicdeangelo

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I feel like for today's episode, Nick really gave us the blueprint for success. From taking what we may think a side hustle is and really breaking that down and simplifying it and giving his definition of it to also telling you who you surround yourself with, what you're doing today, what you're studying, what you're reading upon, how that can dictate the next five to ten years of your life. And on top of that, really took a deeper dive into his company, Saint Investment Group, and how, you know, right now they're using fixed income to invest in distressed assets. But that wasn't always what they were doing. They always felt like education should be at the forefront. Because you don't just get 200 million in assets under management, you don't just get over 500 assets in 20 states overnight and keep it going, especially during one of the hardest economical times, he'd say. So I will let Nick do all of the teaching, all of the explaining. I just need you to do all of the listening. And without further ado, enjoy episode 212, the learning phase. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Down to Business Podcast here with Tamar Turner. We've been doing a lot of east to west coast tapping in lately. So my guy Nick is joining us all the way from California. As y'all know, I'm here in Tampa. By the time you're here in this episode, I'll actually be in the DMV area. So I'll be relocated. I'll be all set up shop. Yes, y'all moving back up to the cold in the snow, unfortunately, but just had to make some things happen for the sake of the family. But we're gonna move and we're gonna groove, and I'm definitely gonna get back to Florida ASAP. So I'll be back for all my people out there. But nonetheless, very excited to sit down and chop it up with Nick here today. We had to work around some things with scheduling and just some natural disasters coming our way. But like I told y'all, delay is not denial. If it's meant to be, it'll happen every single time. So I appreciate Nick's just flexibility and understanding, but also just wanted to come on here and really provide some value, provide some insight, maybe even make some people some money. I know that's one of y'all favorite M words on here. So let's make it happen. But before we do that, Nick, how's everything on your end? How you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Tamar, great to be here. Great catching up with you before a little bit on uh what's going on and some things we're we're both uh diving into and working on. I'm excited, man. I'm looking forward to diving in on some good topics today.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

All right, let's do it. Let's do it. So before we really get into everything, before I just let you really take it over and I'll just kind of sit here and be quiet. Um, I just need you to do two things for me. So I recognize that with this show, we have a host of different people within the audience. We're gonna have some people who know about you who are tapping in to show you love and support you along your ventures. We're gonna have some people who have been following along the Down the Business podcast for quite some time, supporting me and my different ventures and everything of the sort like that. But we're gonna have some newcomers along the way, people who arguably may not know about either one of us, but want to learn, came across this episode in some capacity. And so they want to kind of continue to follow along both our journeys. So, in order to put everybody on a level playing field, in order to bring everybody up to speed, can you just do two things for me? One, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? And then can you two just tell me what brings you on the Down the Business Podcast today?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Sure. So my name, for those that don't know me, my name is Nick D'Angelo. I focus exactly 100% on real estate. So our company, Saint Investment Group, we are overly focused, 100% primarily focused on fixed income investing through real estate. So we pay returns 12 to you know over 14%, 100% real estate backed assets. The reason that we did that, and the reason that we do that today is that my background is with a couple family offices that I started off with very early, really big net worths, you know, nine figure plus individuals and families, multi-generational wealth that I wanted to get very close with and learn the systems, learn the strategies that they were using. What we found as the best tool and our the best advantage that we had in the marketplace was leaning into fixed income real estate, things that paid the same amount every month and added streams of cash flow to people's lives. So that's what we do today. We have a portfolio we're really proud of, over 200 million in assets under management, over 500 assets in you know, over 20 states. So very happy. It's been a long road to get here. We've built and sold some companies along the way. We've worked in multiple industries, and real estate's by far been the best and our biggest focus. Um, the reason I wanted to be on the show today is I love the audience that you put together. I love the culture of, you know, a little bit looking into different opportunities to invest time and money and resources and efforts to whether it's add cash flow or whether it's to add business opportunities. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I've been doing this since I was 15. So anytime I can share that knowledge, it's really important to me. It's one of the things I'm passionate about is sharing those experiences and trying to give back however I can to people in that way. So hopefully that answers the questions well for you.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Oh, you killed both of them. So thank you so much for that. I appreciate that. And thank you for those words and just the due diligence that you did on our platform and just everything that we've been doing. So I I really do love that. And again, that that that phrase, man, I've been telling y'all about this. I uh if if y'all keep hearing episodes and we keep talking about real estate, it's because now is your time, now is your chance. I think even a lot of times these episodes are talking to me personally. So I have begun to take those steps, I'm but I'm calling y'all out and and making that too. You know, we love call to actions on the podcast, but we also recognize that collaboration will always be over competition. So as I spoke to just the my audience has uh has quite the familiarity with real estate, whether it be land flipping, whether it be arbitrage, Airbnb, whether it be it, it can be a host of anything. So with getting your start into real estate, was it easy? Was it just something that you woke up one day and you just kind of you know, you were maybe doing some research? As you said, you're no you're not new to the entrepreneurial or business ownership facet of life, you know, 15 years old, that's quite that that that's quite an age. You know, I didn't get my first job really till I was like 14, 15, and I definitely wasn't thinking along the lines of owning my own business or businesses. So for you really wanting to get your start, really wanting to propel this and learn more about what it is that you're doing today, how did that work for you? How did you really kind of get rolling within real estate?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So I was blessed to have some of the worst jobs at first. I was I did construction, I built walls for 11 hours a day. I was about, you know, 12, 13 when I started that, started working in the summers, and it was hot as hell. The work was brutal. I have huge respect for uh the people I worked with, you know, many of them career uh masons, masonry. And that job was brutal. And I did see consistently people that were very successful being in real estate. And I was, I am very stubborn. I'm always trying to push for the biggest, the best, trying to get around those people. I have huge respect for very successful people. And I understood clearly, even from early on, how hard it would be to get around those people, but how it was very much worth it. So I got jobs for free. I just basically did whatever I could to get close to those people. Uh, both turned me down. They said, no, working for free for us is too expensive. So instead, I just said, well, what can I do? How can I get this job for free? Right. Today I think the mentality is that, oh, for free, no, you should be paying me. And the reality is the you will make more by being around the right people than any dollar figure that you're going to be thinking about or thinking that you deserve at that period of time. I think there's a phase to learn, and you go into the marketplace, you go into a career, you go into an investment world in this case case with an idea that that you actually shouldn't be making money. The goal, the strategy isn't to make money. The strategy is to learn and see what those people are doing. And if the expectation is to be making money along the way, then it actually limits your opportunities. So I worked, you know, basically 24-7 during that period of time. I had side businesses that were supporting me so that I could eat, you know, and then uh I was learning during the day. And I was learning and I was reading books. And if I was at home, I was studying. And if I was always 24-7 doing something, the goal was at the end of the day to get towards the biggest deals and learn the biggest things. So what I leaned into in real estate was the biggest opportunities in the marketplace when I got into the market. So when I got into the market, I'm a little older than you, I got a few more gray hairs than you tomorrow, but I am from the era of the great financial crisis, the great recession. So when I entered the marketplace, the sky was falling. There was no money, nobody was willing to do deals, nobody had any interest in investing in real estate. It was like a terrible asset class, it was a terrible idea. If you were in real estate, people were questioning if you were nuts, right? Because everybody had lost their ass during this period of time. So I knew that long term, real estate had a good fundamental or had good fundamentals, had good opportunities, and I wanted to get around people that understood how to survive and thrive even in the worst of markets. And I'm lucky that I was successful to be around those people. What I learned during that time was how to invest in distressed assets, how to buy things for less than what they are on the market other places. That's the that's the business model in a nutshell. So over time, we built that up. I went, I worked my way up as a young, young man to buying up to $10 million a week in distressed assets. I was working with banks, I was working with people much smarter than me, much older than me, that intimidated me in every meeting, in every situation, in every phone call. I was nervous and you know, felt that in my stomach. And over the years, you know, I always felt imposter syndrome. They talk about that all the time, you know, especially in business. I think that was part of the process. And eventually I woke up, I was pretty damn good at what I did because I spent the hours on it. We started buying great assets. Our investors got really happy, and we worked our way up to the point where we had a great pool of investors, but they were looking for something different. What they wanted were assets that were paying specific amounts because they had a portfolio, they had assets, they had real estate, they had stocks and bonds and all this stuff. They wanted something that would pay them month in and month out, very stably, very safe, very secure, that they could expect for 10 plus years. So what we found at that time with our relationships with banks and financial institutions was that we could invest in mortgages. So the mortgages that people have on their homes, the mortgages that, you know, um people purchase their first home, their fifth home, their family home where their kids and their, you know, wives and husbands live. And we found that investing in those mortgages gave us a long road ahead and let us enable families to be safe and secure in their homes. So we buy distressed mortgages today. We work with the families to get those mortgages and those payments back on track. And then we have a track record of payments, you know, usually 10 to 20 years into the future. So that's a little bit about my background and what I leaned into. I still am always looking for assets that are below market pricing because it gives more opportunity to us and to our investors. And I still have the mentality that market pricing is almost always too expensive. So that's kind of how we break things down today. That's how we look 10 to 20 years in the future. Because if you look at the world today, tomorrow, we have a Federal Reserve who had the biggest loss that they've ever had. Our central currency manager, if you want to think of it that way, our central bank in the United States lost more money in 2023 than they ever have. This year, they're already up five times on that. They're about to blow that record out of the water. We printed more money than we've ever printed in the history of the United States in the last four years. These are scary statistics. We're looking for investments and opportunities that give a very long track record of success into the future.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Time, time, time. That's what I'm hearing through all of this from you, you even this reminded me of an episode that I did further back with another real estate guy, Dan Habrikos. And he was basically telling me that at the start of his journey, this front-range, front-range land is his business. And I'm I feel like I'm missing a word on the end, but I apologize, damn my guy. But he was basically talking about in the beginning how a lot of the resources, the knowledge, the education that he was getting was all done for him just taking that initiative, for him taking that time, for him just wanting to go about it and doing it, for him driving and it being nothing monetary of no monetary benefit to him, but rather of him having to put more money towards it and not make anything back. But as you said, I think that the most important thing there is the skill itself, is the knowledge. I tell people all the time, because I feel like for me, that's my journey when it comes to charts and trading and looking at stocks and currencies and things like that. You know, it was something that I wanted to teach myself to just learn. And now it's just like, you know, because I see that there are people out here doing it for these bigger companies, for these Fortune 500 people, for these people who want to invest. But ultimately, once you learn that skill, it doesn't leave. You only sharpen it, you only do whatever. But as you even spoke about again, the minute that you allow money to be at the forefront, or the minute you allow money to kind of take precedent, you limit yourself, you take away from things. You don't even really put your all in because it's just like, okay, well, I don't want to give too much if the compensation is not going to be there. Or when you do give a lot, it's like you're looking for something. And when you don't get it, then you start to draw back, then you start to take away. And all in all, the only thing, the only person that you're hurting is yourself, because that company is going to recognize you or that person is going to recognize you as expendable. As you said, you working for them for free. They told you that was the more expensive. And to some people, that was that would be something hard to wrap your brain your brain around, but they don't understand the diligence behind things and the expectations and just the entitlement that could come with that, you know, because it can go one of two ways working for free, especially if you're doing well versus if you're doing really good. So I thank you for that breakdown. And it's very interesting too. I love asking that question too in the beginning because it's all about two and what you grew up in and what generation you were raised in and what was going on. You know, if I ask that to somebody that may be closer to my age or my little brother's age, he'll be 21 next year. It they may have a totally different answer. They may have, you know, 15 for them look like a totally different thing. The social media landscape of things, the market, everything like that. Everybody wanted to have a piece of the pie. So I think for you, when times were really tight, and when people, as you said, were asking, you're doing what right now in this day and age, like you're and and you're fine with that, you know. So it's a hard thing to kind of go. So, all right. So, now to get a little bit more honed in, a little bit more specific, saying investment specific, right? At what point did you decide to brand this? You know, as as you said, you were uh pretty familiar with business ownership, with entrepreneurship, had worked with different companies, had started some when I exited, whatever the case may be. So, at what point along this journey did did you then decide to brand yourself? Was this you in the process of building a team and wanting others to kind of come around you? You figure, you know, you you you said, wow, I'm pretty I'm pretty darn good at what I do. I might know a little thing here, or was this something that you know you kind of just wanted something or the forefront from the beginning because of your expertise and knowledge around business ownership?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

So the the genesis of Saint specifically is that I I think it breaks down to this. Does your company need to be forward-facing or does it not? Does does do people do a lot of people need to know about you or not? And I think today most people assume that you need to have this marketing machine and be very well branded and be out there. I don't agree with that. I think there are many industries that people, many companies that people never even hear about or know about that are massive, that are super, super profitable, right? If you want to think about like weird one-off industries that nobody thinks of, think about things like sanitation, right? Or like portal potties. These guys make a killing because nobody wants to do these jobs, right? Then there's the other side where everyone really needs to know about you. These are retail companies. These are people that are selling, you know, let's say a widget, or these are people selling a business to consumer item, somewhere where you're working with huge groups of people, it's extremely important that people know about you. So we had a lot of success early on. We didn't really need to market, we didn't really need to lean into it in that way. So there was no Saint investment group for the first, I don't know, almost a decade probably, because of the fact that Saint started when we were started raising money and working with new investors. Okay. So before that, we were working just with a select group of ultra high net worth, very wealthy, very smart, very sophisticated investors. And we were on the acquisition side. What happened was naturally things progressed and we started buying more properties. We had we had more success. Everyone got happier. We reached a point with having enough properties and enough assets where there was enough trust, also, where our partners said, Hey, why don't you take over the asset management? Why don't you get more involved and roll up your sleeves more and start managing these assets to perform on them and get them making more money and having a bigger game plan? And at that point, we eventually said, we're getting pretty good at this. We like this business, you know, we're ramping up, teams getting bigger. Let's brand this, let's name it Saint Investment Group. We were working with a lot of messy, distressed assets. We brought the idea of wanting to do it a little bit differently to the market, where we were doing things that were better for the individuals. If if there was a distressed asset, for instance, a mortgage, we could keep families in the houses, whereas other people were foreclosing on them. That felt good. I really liked the idea of that and doing it a little bit better to the marketplace. So that was the genesis of Saint. The reality is, so that that's the you know, the forces that brought Saint together. The reality is what Saint stands for today, and the reason Saint has a brand today and what was behind the brand today is Saint is equal parts an investment opportunity and equal parts education. And the reason that we do that, we really consider ourselves more of economic strategists at this point in time. Because where we're at is we've done so many deals in so many different markets, in so many different environments. We have said we have seen that the most successful deals and the reason that we feel compelled to do deals in certain areas have gotten more advanced. Our data has gotten more advanced, our understanding of markets and drivers has gotten more advanced. We've made mistakes at times. I'm very proud to say we've never not returned money to investors. We've never even missed a distribution to investors. So that's over a decade of on-time payments. But the way we do things and the reason we do it is so economics focused. So we do webinars now. It's a huge portion of what we do, is the education side. We've done webinars recently. We're doing a whole breakdown of the tax ramifications of the next president. So it allows people to understand, you know, one president, you know, one president option has these game plans for the economy and these game plans for taxes. The other side also has game plans for taxes in the economy. We break down both and tell people how to make money either way, what they should be looking for in each situation. We talk about the biggest things in the economy, like the Federal Reserve having issues, what that means for inflation, what that means for your investments or your banks or your uh stock market holdings, how you can invest and be better. So the education side for us has been huge as we've grown. It gives, we're already doing all this research and it allows us to give it back to people for free, which I mean, we're not charging for courses. We're investors, right? Like our goal is just to get people to be making more money and being more intelligent. And it's kind of our way of you know giving back at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

We love education and we love free. So I think you're you're you're you're you're you're striking the interest of a lot of people tapping in here. And throughout this interview so far, I've heard you mention phrases like fixed income and distressed assets and things like that. What about those specifically intrigued you? Because, you know, I, as we kind of spoke about as we were catching up, but also even at the beginning, there are a host of facets of real estate. There are a lot of different ways, and depending on what video you may have scrolled past or what email you opened, you could take one over the other, a thing one may be greater than another, or be apprehensive about another. But the was there something specific about buying things that are worth less than what their output that kind of attracted you? Was it kind of an experience that you had? What was that really like with getting involved in this side of things?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

So again, I I entered a market that was a very unique time in history. It was the worst economy that we had ever had since the Great Depression, right? Just like every, you know, every era of the economy, every generation of Americans deals with different cards that they're dealt, right? Today, we can see that almost 60% of Americans believe that we're in a recession right now, right? 39%, so almost 40% of American families believe that they have or have significant problems paying their daily bills, their monthly bills as a family. During my era, the global financial crisis, the great recession, that number was 37%. So arguably, today, the lifestyle of families is more impacted. It's more difficult paying their bills on a monthly basis than it was even in the Great Recession. So, all that to be said, different environments call for different needs. They call for different skill sets, they call for different tools. Like you said, a later generation might look at social media differently or marketing differently, hopefully. Which because it means that they're evolving. They're seeing uh the world in the new way that it should be seen in. At that time, when I entered the market, I saw big zeros because I was around people much bigger than me, bigger fish. Again, huge, huge, huge questions of like, can I swim in this pond? Are these sharks too big? And I realized that that was needed. I needed to lean into that. I needed to be around the best. And I was going to be uncomfortable at part of that. What I also realized was I was freaking broke. I didn't realize how broke I was. I thought I was doing okay. I was broke, broke being around these guys. Because the amount of zeros and the sophistication and the hustle and the generations of business sense that these guys had, it was so impressive. So all I could do was work as hard as I could and learn as much as I could. Since then, I've learned kind of the steps to get up to that level. The big three steps that I see consistently with the best investors are the following. The first is you got to make 250 grand a year. Okay. That's a big step, especially today. There's a lot of things going on in the market. But until you get above about 200 or 250,000 in income, you can't invest into accredited investor investments. Those are the top tier of investments for investors. There's a whole tier of investments that most Americans don't even have access to. Not because there's, you know, not because these investors, you know, the funds don't want to get them involved. The SEC, the Security and Exchange Commission, mandates that the income must be 200,000, 250,000 or higher. So if you were to ask me step one for people to be really successful in investing, it's invest in yourself. Invest in your education, invest in your skill sets so that you can increase your income north of 250,000. I absolutely believe that. I did the same because I was freaking broke. And until I reached that level, then I saw that there was a new level to be at and new opportunities. From there, so step one is 250 grand in income. Step two is fixed income. It always is. Because once you're making 250 and you have a good stream of income behind you, and you're saying, oh wow, okay, I got a few bucks. Now I have more opportunities. Now I can invest in accredited investor opportunities. You want to add streams of income so that you're multiplying that and you're building that up. You have a few streams of income, you're making 250 and you're diversifying that. You wake up with a lot of cash flow. When banks look at the strength of an individual, they're looking at cash flow, not net worth. They look at net worth, but you can't spend net worth. A bank would have to sue an individual to get access to their net worth. Whereas cash flow, that's every month, right? So step one, 250 grand. Step two, I'd invest again if I was doing it back again. I would invest in fixed income opportunities, cash flow opportunities. And step three, it's the appreciation for me. I'd be looking at real estate opportunities that are going to grow over time. I'd be looking at long-term stock options, things that, you know, in 10 years are going to be solid, things like utilities, things, et cetera, et cetera. Things that I don't have to trade in and out of, right? For me, that's not my game plan. I'm a real estate guy. So some people day trade and they kill it. But that would be my three steps. One is you got to get the income up north of 250 so that you can be an accredited investor. Two, it's adding streams of income. It's getting fixed income opportunities in your life so that you can diversify your income streams. And then three, it's getting those appreciation items in there. It's getting things like real estate, it's getting things like long-term assets, hard fixed assets, real, real assets that if inflation or whatever comes up in the future, you're actually making more money. You're it's increasing your net worth. If you do those three things, you get your income, you add your streams of income, and then you add your appreciation. I've seen people multiply their net worth, multiply their lifestyle. You know, generational wealth is built that way. So that's by far the biggest strategy that I learned from these individuals. There's millions of stuff I could drill down on, but that three-step process is something that is drilled into my brain. It's burned into my brain.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

That answer alone just makes me think about something that uh a post that I come across sometimes that says if you're the if you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room. And you know, to hear that to some people, you could take that really one of two ways. To be the smartest person in the room, well, that's an accolade in itself. You know, you're there for a reason. You were maybe invited into that room in some capacity or something. So in some instances, you, you know, if I'm if I'm speaking to grade school children, I I would hope, besides the teacher, that I'm the smartest person in that room. But I also hear with that too, the the hunger for more. And the idea in your instance, as you said, it wasn't until you got around these people and they started speaking in certain ways or they started bringing up certain things. And I I relate to that so much because there were so many times where I would be having conversations with older fraternity brothers of mine, or just older family members, or just people who I consider mentors, or just those wise old owls, as I call them. But they would just say certain things, whether it be acronyms, whether it be terminology, phrases, different things, and I'd be like, What did you say? Or I'd try to, you know, just try to play it off. Like, yeah, I got that. And I'd be pulling up Google on my phone, like, well, what did that mean? Or what is this, or how do you, you know. So I I love the fact that in a sense you were uncomfortable because you how you I love the fact that you were uncomfortable and how you responded to it. Let me say that. Because oftentimes when we are uncomfortable, sometimes you know, nobody likes that. Nobody likes to have those awkward moments or to feel kind of slighted or like, wow, I'm I'm a bit like I might have bit off a little bit more than I can chew. But and you, as a sense, you use that as motivation. Hey, I'm not here, dot dot dot yet. But as I'm as I'm following these people, you know, because you're you're gonna naturally surround yourself, rightfully so, with people that are where you want to be, that have done what you want to do. And so now when you talk about those three steps, these are not just things that you've kind of just pulled out of thin air, these are not just things that you typed in the chat BT chat GPT and just kind of went off and branded it. These are not just things that you're even charging for. You said it on the podcast now. As you said, you're an investor. We're not worried about courses here. But these are things that are real life examples, things that are tried, tested, and true. You did it yourself, you know. And so now you've kind of gotten your hands dirty a little bit. You figured out what needed to be done. You've been broke, broke, as you can say. And I feel like you know, a lot of us as business owners or entrepreneurs, we can relate to that in some part of our journey that you you didn't necessarily always know how ends were going to meet, how that subscription was getting paid for, if you were gonna even reply to that email, because I might not have a business tomorrow. You know what I'm saying? So I love that because too, it took a journey. And I I I time and time again, I love really connecting with people of your of your caliber because it's just like you know, how often do you really get to sit down and have conversations with people who have been there, done that, and are willing to offer you the steps to take to get to generational wealth so that you don't have to go through that for free? Yeah, I don't, man, I don't call me crazy, but it it doesn't happen as often as it should, you know what I mean. So, but to to hear that, to hear where you were, to hear what it took, to hear the conversations that needed to be had with the work that was done behind closed doors, everything that it took to really for Saint to be as accredited as it is today. I didn't even know that, you know, in my head, I'm I could imagine that there are just certain things that we don't know about or certain things that we may have not been exposed to because of monetary resources. But me just in talking to all the real estate people, I would have never known that. You know, there's just a bucket or a pool that if you don't have this set worth or set income or you can't put pen to paper on that, we can't even talk to you. The funds are there, the opportunities are there, but it's also about what are you doing diligently. And it makes sense. You also spoke about too, you know, I know that you're based in California, West Coast, but you've talked about working in 20 plus different markets. And something that's always so interesting to me about people involved in real estate in any capacity is that they normally don't do business where they're located. And I think that that's so cool in a sense, because it's just like, you know, when we think of those B2B, B2C, C2C, everything like that, you you more so think about doing business where you are. And, you know, that retail or that, you know, you want to franchise, you can go other places online and everything, but naturally you're gonna have a location or setup shop or corral most of what you're doing there. For you, for what you guys are doing to still maintain the success, the accreditation, the credibility, how is it that you guys are able to expand yourselves in so many different markets and still that not take away from the forefront from the investment?

SPEAKER_00 30:32

That's a great question. So, the foundation of operating nationwide, we only do the US because we the US is anyone who's listening to this, that's a U.S. citizen, you have to understand the U.S. is the wealthiest country, the most successful, the most powerful country, empire, whatever you want to call it, that has ever existed. So the fact that we're here, the opportunity that's happening in the U.S. right now, the turnover of generations, the turnover of wealth that's happening in the U.S. is more than we've ever seen. Ever. The baby boomer generation, the net worth of the baby boomer generation, they're handing down over $72 trillion into the next several generations in the next decade or so. So we have a remarkable change in our country that's ahead, and we have an amazing ramp up of the U.S. more opportunity now than we've ever had. So I look at that. I look at that, I want a piece of that, and I want to be involved in the success of the U.S. also. So I want to give back on the education side. I want us to win even more. I love, I love our country. I want people to win. I want American citizens to win. And I look at the market, the markets throughout the country as changing because they are. I love California. I love a lot of things about California. To invest in California only would be, in my opinion, a huge mistake because of the fact there's legislation that's concerning, there's leadership questions in the state of California that are concerning at the state level. And I believe that can happen in any state. So I don't think any state is safe from that. So what we do to diversify is look into other states. It depends on the asset type, the asset class. It depends in what kind of investment we're looking in. But the way that we manage that is also by having a team that is not location dependent. So in the COVID era, you know, another big ramp up for many companies, a lot of opportunity. What we saw was that offices were closed and it forced companies to innovate. The good news is we were already leaning into that. I don't want to be limited to only hire people in our own market. I think that's a huge limitation. So the Saints, we have Saints staff in a handful of states, very happy with that. Very successful trend and very successful uh system that we have on our side. I'm not afraid of going nationwide for multiple things that we're looking for. When it comes to assets, when it comes to buying assets or buying properties in other states, we're looking for the same fundamentals, the same reasons to buy those assets as we're looking for in any other state. So when we buy, let's say, industrial real estate, which is one of my favorite asset classes, huge warehouses made out of uh made out of concrete, literally poured concrete, tilt up, uh almost bulletproof. I mean, they can last, you know, you know, probably a hundred years with the construction that they do. I'm looking for the same thing, whether it's Texas, whether it's California, whether it's Atlanta. What we're looking for is the port systems driving imported goods and those spreading out through the country. I'm looking for manufacturing in the US or in Mexico that can feed into these warehouses or manufacturing buildings and where those are going to go after the fact. So it's the same drivers, whether it's Southern California or the Texas Triangle or Atlanta or wherever else, the same concept. When we look at mortgages, we have a very specific buy box. We're looking at exactly almost the cookie cutter deal just in different markets. So that's how you systemize that is look, it could be a hundred different markets that you're looking at, a hundred different neighborhoods, if you want to think of it that way, but you still want, you know, a similar amount of people there, right? You don't want to go from a farm on one side to a downtown on the other. It's too much of a variance. The markets are too different, right? You want to go with uh the same property value and the same kind of range, right? Some guys will go very, very high end. They'll do only $20 million mortgages. Some guys will do just $10,000 mortgages or somewhere in between. We kind of like our sweet spot of what we're looking for. So by systemizing the things that you're looking for, you can expand to different markets, to different business models. And to do that, and you know your sweet spot. You know your buy box is what you call it in real estate and investing.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

That buy box, I tell y'all, man. I'm I'm I feel like I'm I'm getting to my guru status myself. I didn't heard that term a few times. So I I'm checking that one off. I know that one. Okay, so I want to take it a step further a bit. So almost similar to what you were kind of saying, maybe just a bit further, a bit different. To someone who hears this, who sees Saint, who sees what you guys have done, who sees the foundation you have built, who sees all your experience, 15 years old, whether you were investing or not, but just 15 years old of entrepreneurial experience in that journey. Someone may say, hey, Nick, like, well, okay, I'm loving what you're talking about. It definitely makes sense. I too would like to talk about distressed assets or fixed income and everything like that. But where do I start? You know, you have a network now, you have resources, you've built this foundation. So for you, exploring different markets, it may not be too difficult or anything like that. But for me, for someone, let's just say I'm in Tampa, Florida. I don't know who's there, but let's just say somebody's in Tampa, Florida. Um, somebody looking to get into real estate sees the opportunity not only within Tampa, but Florida and along the East Coast in general. What words of maybe advice or what insight do you have for them for people who feel like, you know, they're behind the eight ball or may not necessarily have access to all the education or resources to be successful?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Yeah, I'll walk you through step by step if you want. So it literally, if I could, if I was going to go back and redo it, the first thing is you got to be in a successful market. Okay. I'm not going to beat around the bush. It's like when people want to find someone that they want to marry for the rest of their life or find, you know, what something that's super important to them. You have to be in a place where you can actually meet that person or have that opportunity or dive into that. If you're not in a place like a city or a you know, high-end area or around people that you can tap into within a driving distance, you don't have the same opportunities. I don't know how to put that better, right? That's just the reality. So I didn't live in an amazing area. Again, I was pretty dead broke, but I could drive somewhere where there were successful people, right? So it's you got to get within distance to actually physically be around those people. Okay. When I say Saint has a team that's virtual, you know, a huge chunk of our team's virtual, I didn't start that way. That's a really difficult way to do that. So you got to be in person and you got to be close enough to success, right? So from there, you need to get around the most successful people. So step one, you need to be physically close to those individuals. Step two, you got to go find them. I don't know a better way to put that, but with the world of LinkedIn today and the world of just being able to search in your backyard, LinkedIn sales navigator is $79 a month. Okay. That's essentially a database of nearly every person that does business in the United States for $79. Okay. I understand at the time that would have been a lot of money for me. It's money well spent. Somebody, if somebody's in that position, they need to save up the $79 and they need to go on sales navigator and look in their backyard for successful people in the industry that they want to be successful in. Okay. Then it's getting in touch with those individuals, however you can, whatever you can do. Saying, you know, I want to discourage people from doing the, I want to pick your brain. It does not work. Okay. You want to get in front of these people, give them away stuff for free. Seriously. It's not a bribe. Okay. You're adding value. And especially if you're young, if you're young. When I was young, I saw all kinds of people. Oh, when I'm older, I'll be able to do that. You know, I want to wait. I want to wait when the time is right, is what basically what they're saying. The time is never right. It will never come. When you're young, you have this ridiculous opportunity where you can reach out and say, hey, I'm a young guy or gal. I, you know, I'm really interested in what you're doing. You know, can I come in? Can I bring you a cup of coffee? I have a Starbucks gift card. Can I drop that off and talk to you for five minutes? Things like that. If you're young and you want to hustle and you have a lot of enthusiasm for what they're doing, most people are going to say yes, at least a very high percentage of the time. And you don't need everybody to say yes. You just need a few, right? So it's a huge, disproportionate opportunity when you're younger. You're much less, you know, threatening or concerning or competitive. They're not looking at you like those things. So then from there, you got to get over the internal stuff. Hey, I don't belong here. Hey, I'm so nervous. Hey, the reality is if you're running into things that are imposter syndrome or you feel out of your depth or all that, you have to do that. That's not a bad thing. That doesn't mean you don't belong there. That means that's part of the process. And when you swim with bigger fish and you're around the sharks, eventually you get comfortable. And eventually you look back to where you were and you're like, oh man, I thought that was the comfortable area. Now this is the comfortable area. And then you have to go find deeper ocean, deeper water, bigger fish, bigger sharks to go be around. And it's a forever process. It never ends. And then it's, you know, you can push your comfort zone, whatever that looks like for you, but getting comfortable around successful people is part of that process, understanding how they talk, how they think, because we all know this. We all know the fact that the people you surround yourself with will determine your future. Your discipline today, your education today, how you spend your time today determines your next five years, 10 years, your next lifetime if you do it properly. Right. The other advice I'd give to people is side hustles are completely misunderstood. Completely misunderstood. Side hustles are not to make money on the side. Okay, it sounds obvious. Side hustle. Hustle on the side, make money on the side. No, that is not a side hustle. The purpose of a side hustle is to survive and not starve to death while you're focusing on the main thing. Because if you're doing the main thing properly, it should be enough opportunity really for a lifetime. There should be so many zeros, so many opportunities, so many big steps that you can take. The problem is early on, it's usually slim pickings. For me, I had to start an ATM business on the side. Okay. And I was dead broke. Every dollar went into the business. And it was enough that I could pay for meals here and there. I could barely scrape by enough money for rent. I could barely make my car payments and gas, but I got to work every day. I got the opportunity to work 15, 16 hour days and keep surviving. So side hustles are a they're a band-aid. They're for a short period of time to patch a rough patch early on so that you can learn the real skills to be around the real big people, and you don't have to take opportunities just based on money. So that's what I would do out of the gates. That's absolutely my advice, especially to the younger crowd that's trying to step into a big industry or big opportunities and trying to figure out and navigate the early steps.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Gotta get Nick his own podcast, y'all. I'm just sitting here like, wow, I wanted to pull out, I wanted to just start writing it down, you know, because it was, I was really resonating with a lot of that, especially that inserting yourself into bigger ponds. And I think for me, that was where I noticed the trajectory of the podcast changed. And it wasn't until, you know, I don't really have a problem with making myself uncomfortable, but I also, you know, I was very apprehensive about putting my brand out there if I didn't feel like it was like this household name or the way that it should be, or the right time, or the right interviewer. Or, you know, I've been saying the right interview for five years, if we're technically speaking, and I'm I'm here doing me and I'm enjoying it. But no, it got to a point where, you know, I started the podcast off, I'm interviewing friends, family, friends of friends. Easy. But it wasn't until I started talking to these execs and C-suites and serial entrepreneurs and learning different things that I'm I'm vetting some of these people and I'm just scrolling through the media kids, like, wow, this guy does what? He up here on him and he wants to talk to me. This is crazy. But you know, when you recognize that the the tough times don't last, that tough people do. So through it all, as you said, that scrape to get by, you just completely transform my whole depiction of side hustles. Now I'm never gonna think of a side hustle the same. And I I but I encourage all of my business owners, all of my entrepreneurs along that journey in some capacity to appreciate that, appreciate that process, but be diligent about it. Because as you said, these decisions that we're making now or not making are definitely gonna, we're gonna feel these five to ten years from now. What are we gonna be saying? Dang, I wish back in 2024 I would have did this, or I wish back in back I would have did this or did that. You know, set yourself up now for you know, the the the permanence of being able to do whatever you want to do comes at the cost of some sacrifice. It comes at, you know, just some not missing out on some fun per se and just being able to live life. I'd rather say. Sacrifice that temporary fund for just forever just waking up and being able to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it, wherever I want to do it. So thank you so much just for that insight, especially because you know, as we said once again, these are things that you were living. You were in that process and in that mindset where you probably woke up and you may not have known where your next meal was coming from, or what you were gonna scrape to get that rent payment, keep that roof over your head, or gas had to be a little, you know, sometimes you gotta put five, seven in the tank just to get from A to B to make sure you make it from work to home. And that I remember there was a specific point in my life where I was literally only going from work to home. I was not stopping anywhere. In between, I was trying to take the route with no lights. I was just trying to make sure I got there as quick as possible. So I love that. But at the end of the day, the grind is definitely relentless, no matter where you are, no matter starting off, no matter even when you're because something I don't want y'all to get misconstrued or misconfused is that Nick said the you know, the transformation of the business also comes with the transformation of what you do, of wealth just the same, and of everything that comes with it. You know, just because his team is in place now, they're in different markets, they're doing different things, they're able to automate and systemate some and systemize some things and make things easier does not mean that he still doesn't go through the struggle, does not mean that he still doesn't have days where it's just like, oh man, this is a lot. You know, something that I really had to put into perspective for people on here is that, you know, you don't just get wealthy or build that generational wealth and and come across those big deals or that commission or whatever have you, and all the the lessons and all the trials and tribulation just goes out the window. No, it just comes at a bigger scale, you know. So sometimes I wake up and, you know, to see that so-and-so lost a million or a billion, you know, I cry. You know, I cry. I haven't even touched that type of money in my life now. But these are real life things that people are experiencing and going through. So before we close out, before we tell people where they can find you, the best places to tap in with you, whether it be from an investment side, an education side, or maybe even a little bit of both, do you have any last words or anything that you want to leave out there for business owners, for entrepreneurs, for curious investors, even for people who are now tapping into Saint, finding out about you guys and wanting to follow along the journey? You know, we think about ending Q4 now and Q1 of 2025 being directly around the corner. So is there anything even that you guys are gearing up for looking to, or anything that you want to share with us out here?

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Absolutely. The number one thing, the number one thing that I want to leave everybody with today is there's more opportunity today than we have seen in generations. There's more wealth passing down, there's more wealth redistributed, there's more opportunities to tap into investment opportunities, there's more opportunities to start businesses and new industries that are reinventing themselves or have opportunities to do something differently and become very wealthy. I want to make sure that people understand that there's more education today available that there's ever been in human history, but definitely American history, and that if you put all these things together and you get around the right people and you get around the right information, then you can take it to the moon without a question. So on our side, our way of giving back and kind of, you know, like you said, Tamar, the the best way to get in touch with us and see what we're up to is to tap into our education side. That's our way of giving back, especially to entrepreneurs, to me, you know, whatever stage you're at, early, middle, late, we deal with a ton of um high net worth individuals also. That's a huge portion of our audience. What we do is deep, deep dives on economics. So if you're on the business community and you're looking to understand the financial world around you, we have webinar after webinar after long form video after all these high-level strategies and deep dives that you can check out for free at saintinvestment.com slash resources. So sainvestment.com slash resources. We do live webinars, you know, one to two times a month where people can go and ask questions. We do super long form videos. We give all kinds of investment tools and spreadsheets and trackers away for free. So if people are trying to enter the business world and enter the investment world or they're seasoned veterans, we have stuff for everyone to learn more and be better at what they're trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Whew, that's amazing, man. I and I have to really just thank you and thank y'all for one, all the work that y'all are doing and the and the due diligence, but two, just for willing to offer that, you know, for a time and time again, we we scroll on social media and we see this flitz and glamour and everything that comes with it. And sometimes you just want to have a real conversation, you know. But also with that, I love the emphasis that you placed on adding value. And that is something that I've really learned with, you know, what when I'm speaking to a lot of these different executives or people on LinkedIn is that it shouldn't just be a take, take, take, take, take. You know, you also have to have something like what's your what's your selling point or almost what's your not even more so a pitch, but what can you do for said person? What initiative are you willing to take to show them that money or no money response or no response? I'm gonna grind this out, I'm gonna make this happen, I'm gonna get where I need to be. So I love that. And as I always say, I'm preaching to the choir, I'm beating the dead drum. Somebody go visit that website, somebody take advantage of it because I'm gonna be on it and I'm not, you know, I'm not begging people to come along, nor is Saint. You know, they're still gonna be operating. As he said, they're gonna continue to expand nationwide and and and attribute that success. So I know you just said it again, but as far as reaching out, as far as getting in contact with you, did we miss anything? Website, social media is Saint Investment Group the best place for everything that you guys have in-house?

SPEAKER_00 49:27

Absolutely. Yeah, you can find me on social media, LinkedIn, Nick D'Angelo. And uh, but again, the best tools, the best way I can give people a lot of resources for free is Saint Investment.com/slash resources. We typically have about a hundred thousand visitors a month that view our different uh platforms and view our different videos, et cetera. So we'd love to have more people learning and uh making our country get great and uh you know, making sure that they find success with a lot of our research that we're happy to give back.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Absolutely. And man, Nick, thank you so much just for the time, for the insight, again, the flexibility. I appreciate it. And to just know that, you know, there's another avenue out there, to know that, you know, to but not just to know that there's another avenue out there and okay, go have at it, you know, to know that there are resources out there, there are education out there, there's continual learning. Because as y'all see, Nick still has to remain a student of the game. You know, he is saying now that the opportunity is evermore. And so for him, you know, he's probably looking at different things, things that weren't there during that recession, things that may have not been there during COVID, but things that you know could continue to be taken advantage of as we go. So he's speaking to somebody out there, whether you hear this episode when it airs, whether you hear it at a later date, just know that the opportunity is there, and Saint is really here to help however they can, however they can too as well. So to everybody out there who continuously taps in with the show's love, the events, everything that y'all do, man. I love y'all. I think y'all. Um, this has been another episode of the Down to Business Podcast. Hey, we're tomorrow turner.