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*****Thank you so much for listening to the Making Money in Multifamily Real Estate Show! This show covers everything to do with Multifamily Real Estate Investing to help you, the listener, become an expert in your real estate ventures. The host, Dave Morgia, brings on guests who are already experts in their respective fields to discuss what principles and practices they follow that have helped them achieve their success so far.
Pasha's Background:
In this episode we cover:
Connect with Pasha:
Connect with Dave:
Other ways to listen/watch:
Follow or Subscribe:
If you enjoyed this episode or like the show, please subscribe and leave a review! It is a huge help for just a little effort
*****Thank you so much for listening to the Making Money in Multifamily Real Estate Show! This show covers everything to do with Multifamily Real Estate Investing to help you, the listener, become an expert in your real estate ventures. The host, Dave Morgia, brings on guests who are already experts in their respective fields to discuss what principles and practices they follow that have helped them achieve their success so far.
Welcome to the Making Money in Multifamily Show, where we discuss everything to do with multifamily real estate investing. We believe it's the best way to gain financial freedom and build lasting wealth. This is where you'll find it the best information and practices to help you succeed in your real estate business, whether you're already experienced or just starting out. Here's your host, Dave Morgia. Hello
Dave Morgia:listener and welcome to the show. I'm your host, Dave Morgia. And with me today is Pasha Esfandiary. Pasha, welcome to the show.
Pasha Esfandiary:Thanks for having me, Dave. I appreciate it.
Dave Morgia:yeah, really looking forward to this one. And just wanted to let the listener know a little bit more about you before we kick it off Pasha Pasha started his investing career in 2011 started flipping homes. And he's scaled obviously, a huge amount since then he's done over $125 million in transactions across all types of asset types. And then he started his newest company in 2021, evoke capital. And the objective there is to help others achieve financial freedom through real estate investing, much like myself and my team, and evoke within nine months of in math and include a portfolio of 300 units, a mobile home park, and 197. Lots under contract. And this one I just wanted to read this was on your by your passion, I thought was really interesting, we might just kind of pick it this to start. But he has been pretty much posh has been involved in a bunch of successful professional ventures. And one of the focuses with his new company evoke is to develop a sustainable community. And with that, he wants to pretty much develop all sorts of things with low income housing, which includes NGOs, and all these sorts of amazing things. So I just want to kind of pick it that a little bit, it seems like your mission is pretty tight and pretty tight. So do you just want to kind of start there with your history and what your kind of focus is with this company and what your really your goals are?
Pasha Esfandiary:Yeah, sure, we'd love to, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, I'll start with how I got started in real estate, a little bit of my backstory, and we'll talk about the NGOs and all that and what our mission is here. You know, I'm a son of an immigrant Father, we I moved here when, in 1987, my father being very successful back in Iran gave up literally everything to come here to, for his two sons to essentially start fresh. And so I always tell the story that I think I got into real estate actually, I know I got in real estate because it was my father's dream. My My father had to sacrifice his dream for us. And so growing up, I'd always hear him talk about oh, man, I wish I bought that house or i Man, I wish I bought that land. And oh, man, I could have bought that for 20,000. Now it's worth like, you know, 500,000 and, and so I remember just always hearing that as a child and like, Man, I love real estate. And so I always knew that real estate was my endgame. Now obviously, my journey took some zigs and zags until I got here. And that's really kind of how it happened. You know, I am a college dropout. And now I can say I'm proud of that, you know, back when I did, I was not, I became a professional poker player in about I think, probably 2006. Following my brother, he became very successful in poker. And that led me into real estate, after many, many years of playing poker, just because I realized that real estate was the always the end game. And but I thought I learned a lot of great things, playing poker. So So fast forward to now, Evo capital, we do do that we do syndications. And mostly mobile home parks, we did just, we now actually have 396 units in escrow. Just you know, it's just kind of like all coming at once, which is great. You know, a lot of those six months of dry spell, and they just kept coming at us now.
Dave Morgia:feast or famine? Yeah, it's,
Pasha Esfandiary:it's really a feast or famine. We're like, I'm like, Alright, I guess I got to buy that one, too. You know, it's I'm not complaining, right. And just to briefly talk about the end game for me is I've had to be self taught on everything. My father was working at all hours. And so I had to learn everything on my own. Especially outside of college, I had to I wanted to learn, I learned more outside of, you know, high school and college all by just reading books, going to masterminds. All I mean, all the informations on the internet. And so that's something that's really important to me is education. And in these low income communities that I have, I find that there's a big lack of education, culture, and empowerment. And so the end end goal, which I'm sure we can talk about later on is, is to essentially get to the point where I could build my own communities, where I do a lot of emotional intelligence, nutrition, financial workshops, all within the apartment complex, not so focused on the bottom line, but really creating a culture of empowerment so people can get ahead And I think that goes really a miss in our, in our culture, you know, I'm not people tried to just gamify it on how much money they make, instead of about what kind of impact can you make, you know, and I truly believe that you get to a certain point in life, it's about giving back. Because it doesn't really matter when you die with the money that you have.
Dave Morgia:Now, that's amazing. It sounds like what you're aiming to do is kind of essentially help supplement what you'd probably get a conventional education for, whether you like public school education, or whatever formal education you get, you don't always get like the soup to nuts, wellness, education, kind of like what you're talking about, right? They kind of stop you after algebra class or, or science class. And that's kind of what you get, but you don't really talk about, you know, how, how you do the adult stuff or, or how you should be taking care of your body more at a high level these types of things. So, so yeah, that's really interesting.
Pasha Esfandiary:Yeah, absolutely. You know, I find it so fascinating to me that most people, and I'm 37, but a lot of people my age that I talked to don't have a ton of financial literacy outside of like the real estate world, because we're already in this world. And everyone already kind of knows why we're doing it. But no one is taught about, you know, compound interest or, or investing and IRR and all these things. And so how are they supposed to get ahead? And so that's something that really sticks out to me.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, I think we could, we could probably dive into this topic for an hour. I think. I think it's almost there's no aim for that in an education system, because it doesn't really help people professionally. And that's almost what the education system is meant to do in a way, right? It's supposed to help you start your career essentially, helps educate you and get you out to like, do the job, whatever. But yeah, it doesn't really help with like, the personal lifestyle, and all these kinds of personal choice you should be making, you know, well before your adulthood, or at least being trained to me. So yeah, really interesting. How, I guess on your progress of this, what does it look like when you talk about this with your team and everything? Is it something you're implementing currently? Or is it something you're still working on kind of progressing through and developing?
Pasha Esfandiary:Okay, so this is a great question, I think I want to go back to something that I always give him a really good metaphor, but essentially, about expanding your time horizons, that if I can look at my life and expand it out into like, a 10 year her life horizon, this is how I always view 10 year chunks at a time. And so for me, actually, the reason why I got into multifamily and why I got into mobile, home parks and more low income outside of the economics of, you know, there's the wealth disparities is growing and growing. And so we need to be positioned for that. Secondly, is that, you know, these communities I'm going to build are going to be down like five years down the line, that line and I want to sell fund it, because I've tried going the light tech route that government grants, and it's just not really cost effective. And then actually, in my opinion, doesn't really serve low income communities, it actually serves like more of a middle to low income bracket with like new housing, so not a lot of people can get into there. So I think there's this massive need for this. And so I said, Okay, let me just go by as much low income communities that can now understand the systems understand the needs of them, and then position myself to know how to do it. In addition to that, there is a company that I've been in talks with called apartment life, third nonprofit organization. And they do exactly this. I don't think they do it to the scale that I want. But they do this. And so we have you been contacted one of my apartment complexes in Wichita, we are going to implement this, I was just waiting to get our occupancy up. And really, we closed on it earlier this year. So we're waiting to turn it around before we implement it. So it's going to happen here shortly.
Dave Morgia:So I'm in talking with this company, I'm sure you learned, you know, a trick or two kind of what they've been involved in at this stage. They might be, you know, a couple of steps ahead. What are some mechanics that kind of were different, or you weren't expecting that? Maybe there's some, I guess, variable that comes into play that you didn't consider when, you know, visions are great, but it a good vision, essentially, to me, it's like asking a good question. But then you got to, you know, 10 year goal, figure out the answer. Right. So So what kind of piece was was missing that you didn't realize you had to kind of use a hurdle?
Pasha Esfandiary:What I really liked that what what they do is they Okay, so we both had a really same similar vision, about community about how we want to build community. You always want to live somewhere where you know your neighbors and you can count on each other. Why not? Right? The thing that I really like that what they do is that they're most more like a liaison. It's like so they, they they have someone that lives there. And they go introduce themselves to anyone who moves in and just say, Hey, if you need anything, let me know I'm here for you. And they try to set more community events together. What I find little lacking, as of right now is probably more on the emotional intelligence side or a lot of training side, which is fine, right? I don't think they're positioned that way. But so when I enact my vision five years from now, there's going to be a lot more of education, a lot more of empowerment, a lot more of hey, you can go get accomplish all your goals and settings and dreams and whatnot.
Dave Morgia:And so I guess, kind of turning it back to the original thing that I guess to me, it sounds like was driven because you pretty much at some level had that same experience where you kind of had to figure that out on your own type Ness, right? So without going too far into structure, versus letting people figure things out on their own, what kind of kind of box are you going to draw around this to help facilitate this so people don't have to, you know, learn from their mistakes like you quote unquote, had to but also give them the freedom to kind of go about this. I know these might be tricky questions when you got me curious, man. So no,
Pasha Esfandiary:this is a great, let's go down this road. I love it. This is actually a great question. But I 100% the one person say go make mistakes like I did, I you know, I have a funny story is when I first got into real estate, I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to be in real estate. So I saw a house in a neighborhood I wanted, that I thought was good. And I just walked up to the for sale sign I just rang the doorbell and said, Hey, I want to buy your house. And they're like, alright, you talk to my realtor. I'm like, realtor, you know, they're like, You have money, money. What are you What are you talking about?
Dave Morgia:Your house, right?
Pasha Esfandiary:But, you know, you just learned from the safety like, oh, I need a realtor. So I got a realtor, then they explained to me, and then it was just one thing after another you have that's i That's how I've always lived my life. But to create the structure on this, you know, I think as long as I think everybody naturally wants to get ahead, right? I don't think there's a human in the world that says, You know what, I'm just complacent, where I'm at at all, especially in low income communities. I think everyone wants to get ahead. But sometimes it's just that one little piece of information, that one little tweak that one environment of you know what you can do it. So if you have the subconscious training of like always hearing that, hey, you can do it, hey, you can do it even from childhood, you're gonna carry that along with you, right? You know, we could say that, at least what I believe is that we're just a set of patterns reinforced time and time again, right, we have 90% of our habits from the age seven, and we just reinforced the same things over and over again. But if we can build a community, where in the child, the children in that community are being empowered, and learning things, and growing, and having free tutorship at these communities, then man imagine how far they can go imagine the mental conversations, they can have the internal conversations they could have with themselves. In comparison to environments where you can't do anything, you can't get ahead, you know, and you have these dead end jobs. Again, that's a generalization. Everything's a little bit skewed. But my mission is very clear to me, that I think education and empowerment are vital to people's success and getting ahead and having the confidence in themselves.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, it's and speaking in generalities. I'll get into one a little bit I guess, and, you know, keep don't quote me, I guess, but I guess what my fiancee, she is a teacher, I'm here in New York, she's a teacher in lower Harlem. So she sees some communities where there is kind of this common mindset where it's a scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset. And that, to some effect comes from literally having less, you know, oftentimes compared to most so to get people out of that mindset to find abundance where there might not be which is pretty much what you're talking about. If you have the right tools, you can find the right catalyst to do these things to just improve on your life versus your ancestors lives, etc, etc. It can be, you know, empowering to be able to do that. So yeah, I really, really commend you for that. So it really really interesting stuff. It just I don't know if we need to do the entire show on that because it's like a crazy meta topic that you could pretty much devolve into like an entire toy hour episode but but yeah, really interesting to hear the I guess the vision of everything. So yeah, excited to kind of see your progress on that. But I guess possible kind of trailer back into the multifamily stuff. So when these low income communities that you're looking to target mobile home parks often you mentioned not light tech, low income housing tax credit communities, can you kind of explain the hurdles you found there? Why that doesn't really make sense for you guys and and I guess we'll get more into the business side of things. What are you really looking forward to accomplish these goals that you were mentioning and maybe why is that not one of the channels
Pasha Esfandiary:like tech for me was just it's just slow like first first thing is foremost as I have ADD, like you know, one thing that I really know I understand how my brain operates light tech process is so incredibly slow, and it doesn't. It doesn't hit the target market that I want. Second I've been in real estate development for a long time, I've developed bunch of land up construction here in LA. And it's boring, and it's slow, and I hate it. And I don't like it, I like faster results. And I like cash flow. And so to me that just didn't fit what I wanted to do, and I didn't bring me enough joy to want to do that route. Plus, I don't think it was catering to the real market that I want to end up hitting, right. And so that's why I just chose not to go down that route. And that's why I felt a big resistance for it. And the communities that we're in now, you know, they're, they're not like super low income, they're more of the C class properties. And, you know, I think a lot of people have a stigma on like low income, or C class properties, and C areas. But if you get the right tenants, they're all great. They're really grateful. If you treat them with superior customer service, and superior product, they're going to treat your product, which is your unit, in a superior way. I've never, ever really been attracted to going to luxury market or A or B properties, I've always been attracted to going to see properties doing it better than everybody else. And I've always hit top of market rents, and had to toggle market models. And I've always had really, really good tenants, obviously, you have some bad apples. And now that I've scaled up, you know, we have some people here and there and one person burns down a duplex or, you know, things like that, but it's very rare and far between. And if you have the right teams in place, it's really not that much of a bother at all.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, so I think we might have found our next kind of conversation piece here. Because that is, I would say relatively contrarian compared to most people's, you know, shift in opinion. These days, you talked a lot of people, they are moving from kind of the the C class as to the B's, and maybe even the A's, if they can, you know, pull that off. Just because, you know, they see the valuations going up, and the bees aren't looking too much more expensive than the C's right now on these types of things. So it's interesting to hear that take and you mentioned, and I think you're right, it's just a little bit more effort on getting the right tenants in and maybe a little bit more expensive, just because of maybe the property is a little bit older, or these types of things economically, but I think you're right, so what why do you think in this climate in this economic climate where I guess we're I'm saying most people think that it might be better to move to see that you are still set out on the C class as being a good risk reward? Oh, yeah, we're investing.
Pasha Esfandiary:First things, you know, coming from a poker background, there's a thing called game selection, right. And so when you're deciding which route to go, for me, the C class properties in the C areas were or even D class properties and care, because I don't mind a big fixer upper is game selection. For me, I'm getting higher yields. And B, I'm getting really good returns. And secondly, on a macro scale, I like to think of 10 year spans, right? I think I mentioned earlier about expanded time horizons. For me, they're not building enough low income housing, to meet the demand. And secondly, it's a fact the poor are getting poorer and rich are getting richer. So the disparity is becoming more and more, there's going to become more and more of a need for low income housing, you know, two years, five years, 1020 years down the line, and I'm positioning myself to take advantage of that. Also, at the same time, giving back and helping more than anybody else, that I think it's the low income community. Look, that's to generalize, I'm sure there's a ton of people out there that are giving back in a big way. So to me, it was a no brainer, you know, higher yields, and on a macro level and position myself to take advantage of what's happening.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, it sounds like maybe that's the answer, then you talk to Well, I syndicate and a lot of other syndicators, I talked to all their underwriting job, you know, their pro formas are underwritten for three to five, maybe seven year holds, seems to be you know, most commonly, you know, under seven years, usually about a five year hold, it'd be talking about 10 year, you know, your options can kind of open up quite a bit. It's just tougher to make returns, sometimes on these deals when people need to, essentially keep transacting to, you know, keep their investors employed and deals, basically. But you talk about 10 years, which I mean, we try to find deals which go for longer horizons like yourself, that's when the kind of, you know, forward planning, like you're talking about can can make sense, right where you don't mind. Basically owning that property for longer and setting yourself up for either you can refi out of it, or just hold it for that next kind of whatever market shift takes place in the next five, seven years, instead of kind of flipping it in three to five. So sounds like maybe that's, that's where the advantages. So how do you typically pull off, you know, structuring a deal so that you can hold it for kinda longer than that five to seven year hold?
Pasha Esfandiary:Yeah. So to be really clear in Canada that every property up until this time has been I purchased on my own. Okay, so you We, I am just starting to syndicate just now. Because I don't want to turn off deal flow. And I've set up a team. And I've set up, you know, a pipeline of deals, and I just don't want it to stop that goes along with the lines of getting as many assets as I can right now, because I just see where the macro economy is going. So it just falls in line. Secondly, back to our original statement is, again, I have so many people around me that have money, and they're sitting in savings, and I feel like I have to syndicate to help them. Truly. And honestly, because some of the deals that I'm getting into, I wish they can be part of it up until this point. So just growing my friends money, really is something really important for me, and I try to teach financial literacy to everyone around me. And so we're, I'm doing a little bit of a different model, where I'll do essentially a, we're going to do a long term hold. But in our first indications, we can take an upfront acquisition fee, a 7%, pref, and then everything's gonna go back to the investors until I basically pay back the principal 100%. And then we'll go to a 5050, split in perpetuity forever. So, you know, they have to be in line with the long term planning of what I'm doing. And so they, what I do try to educate is that the real money is made after you're paid back hole, and then that you're just straight 100% ROI, and you're able to refi every few years in these homes. And it's lifelong money. Like to me, it's a no brainer, and it's insane.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, I think there can, there can be a culture of, I guess, I guess this two sided coin, there can be a culture of, you know, flipping a deal too early, when maybe the market like right now is going pretty high. And it seems attractive to to advertise it, your deal popped and was more than a 2x, multiple and three years, what have you, that can be a great story. And, you know, it makes your investors really happy. But there's also a lot to be said, when you just hold these legacy assets, like you're talking about where if it's a if it's a no brainer, juicy asset, and you just believe in that area, that community for, you know, essentially a lifetime, it's, it's hard to not hold on to something like that, in my opinion. So that's what we look forward to. So yeah, exactly.
Pasha Esfandiary:And I get it like when you're a syndicator it's, it's much easier and probably helped, like better to just flip it. I mean, you're dealing with investors, you're it's like a marriage for a really long time. And anyone who doesn't syndicate doesn't understand like, it can be difficult time you're dealing with, like so many different personalities, and so many of their needs, and my fluctuate. So, you know, that's, that's why I'm trying to do this. And we'll do have like a buyout clause, I'm sure you know, at least right now, for the first few deals, it's all like really close friends of mine that are doing it. But later on, as I open it up later, later on, you know, the structure might change. But that's really like the wealthiest people I've ever met in real estate, the, the bosses of bosses, they've all kept the properties. They don't look for the short term run, they don't look for the short term game, they just held on to all their properties. And they started to recycle their money into other properties. And it just started becoming a snowball effect. Right. And so when you're, you're able to get appreciation on multiple assets, then you're spot, you can essentially double that again in five years. tax free. So those are the guys who really made it. And that's, that's what I'm just trying to model here.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, I think I agree with you, there's something to be said, when you have that balance sheet and you don't have to make a sale or, you know, 1031 into something to get to the next level, quote, unquote, if you can just basically own a few really good deals, and then only make decisions when the market is, is most ripe to make them type of thing. You can make only two or three big moves and and kind of like the Warren Buffett as it moves just to make a couple of good ones and just sit on it forever, right? It's kind of sometimes more convoluted than it has to be. Right video. So yeah, really interesting to hear that take. So getting into I guess, investment thesis a little bit deeper. What you're looking at now, is it market specific? Are you looking at a bunch of scenarios you mentioned, you're in Cali I think you said right. So I assume you're probably not out there necessarily. So where are you looking these days?
Pasha Esfandiary:Anywhere? Bacau
Dave Morgia:How did I know? I'm in New York. So I feel Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary:or New York or California. The returns in the yields are so high and so like it's it's so tenant friendly as well too, which isn't a horrible thing. Like I'm not against that. But they do make it very difficult when you do have a really bad tenant and you know, so right now I'm looking anywhere, looking anywhere in the Midwest, we have one in Arizona one in Ohio one in most of my properties are in Kansas, I have an Alabama really anywhere. And because when your mobile home parks is a little different, it's not As much maintenance, and you don't really need much if when you're able to position correctly, right. And so I'm very lucky to have a very strong support team that can handle all the heavy lifting. And for that, so that I can really look anywhere at this point.
Dave Morgia:And you mentioned that the board thing we kind of touched on it before we hit record, we kind of pinned you more as the visionary and we were talking, you know, visionary integrator type of thing I mentioned I was more integrator style, and my partner's a visionary. So so how do you kind of keep it all together? I'm sure you have a nice team fleshed out that handles more of the detail oriented tasks, but how do you kind of manage all of that going on at once? You know, multiple properties, all these things? What are you doing to stay on task? But also, I mean, you have such a high level vision seems like you're pretty well defined. So how do you stay in the clouds, but also make sure the business isn't running itself dry at the bottom there? So
Pasha Esfandiary:Right? I mean, there's, there's a lot of ways here that I have I mean, we could talk about the minute details like I journal every single day, I have two business coaches. One is a real estate specific one is overall, to keep me very much. I'm like, you know, if you're like in a bowling alley, you know, I have to have the guards up, because I would want to go in every other direction. And it's really just always visualizing, I'm always journaling, I always know where I'm at. I always make graphs I, I, I know where I have a checklist, always, every single day, I'm going over and combing through Hey, what needs to get done, and how to quarterback it and who has what responsibilities. So nothing goes a myth, you know. And that's really how we do it. And we just want to execute on a high level, like, here's the plan, let's just execute and let's just go do it.
Dave Morgia:So here's one for you. You have you said that you mentioned he had a real estate coach and just a general business coach. I've done similar have similar where you kind of have, you know, a broader range kind of group and then, you know, a more niched one. Is there any conflicting advice that goes on in that, because sometimes with me, you can almost when you're in a niche, it can be tunnel vision to a certain extent, right, because a certain coach knows, you know, very good at one way of doing things, but not necessarily experienced in all, you know, broader spectrum. So it's kind of, you know, master of all trades, jack, jack of all trades, master of none, if you will, so, so any kind of conflicting advice you've gotten, or, or some big decisions that you kind of have gotten surprising answers between the two parties or anything like that, that you can kind of think of?
Pasha Esfandiary:I wouldn't say there wasn't anything that stuck out. I mean, I think I think both coaches have a little bit of a different way to approach something, but they usually give pretty sound advice. And, you know, really big credit to both of my coaches, they're really strong. They're both incredibly successful themselves. So they give really sound advice. So one coach gives one feedback here other coach gives other feedback here, it's usually because I'm so crystal clear on my vision and what I'm creating that I don't think there is any difference of opinion on on how to do it. It's usually in the same thread, but maybe a different approach.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, I guess it goes back to what I was saying way back in the mean, the show if you asked the correct question, you just got to figure out the answer, which is the hard part. Right. Right. Exactly. Absolutely. That's when a couple of coaches will do for you though, right. So Right. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's interesting. Oh, no, oh, sorry, I
Pasha Esfandiary:didn't mean to cut you off. You know, I think it comes to this, it's, for me, it's a lot about coming to like how to be relentless. Right. So one thing that I would say, I have always like, in my, in my poker background, I was very concerned, I'm a more of a conservative player, I'm more of a conservative real estate investor as well to my numbers have to really check out one thing though, in poker that you learn is that you have to be very aggressive. Once you decide your niche, or you decide which strategy you're gonna employ. Go by the math, but be very aggressive, right. So like in poker, if you just sit on the sidelines, you're gonna lose, no matter what you're guaranteed to lose, you have to learn how to be aggressive. And so I really take that to heart of like, once I find something or find a niche, I attack it relentlessly, like, you know, especially with my flipping or my land development deals, I didn't really know anything about land development. But I saw an opportunity and I attacked it, and it paid off in dividends. But you just got to follow the math. And if you if the math checks out over and over again, go and attack it and go attack it really hard. And so to relate it back to the coaches, they know what my vision is, they know the numbers I'm trying to hit. And it's a common goal. So as long as the math checks out, they're having me attack at full speed.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, and I love the poker analogy. It's kind of essentially what you're saying is, you know, if you eliminate the risk, because you know, a strategy, then just go 100% with that strategy, right? So yeah, you can eliminate a lot of the risks that way and then you can just really commit and you go with conviction and, and you just hold on, right so
Pasha Esfandiary:yeah, it's a game. It's a game of making consistent Good decisions over the long run, because sometimes your decisions don't really work out in the short term, especially in poker, because just the mathematical odds, and sometimes you just hits against you, and good luck, bad luck, whatever. But if you make consistently good decisions over the long term, you're just going to hit some really amazing, like properties or numbers. And then to the reference point that it was feast or famine earlier, six months, I had nothing. I was beating my head over like the wall. And now I have five and they all came in within about a month and a half span. You know?
Dave Morgia:Yeah, so we're kind of eking into this, you know, I guess mental rigidity, and all the kind of mental 42 questions that I asked in my five key questions. So unless you had a piece that you wanted to share about, you know, the low income housing or any of your Mission Viejo, any last words, otherwise, I'd love to get into these five key questions. pashya. No, I'm good. So the first one here is if you could only pick one trait that explains your success, what is that trait and why?
Pasha Esfandiary:I never gave up. And that's really it, you know, I'll say I'm not the most intelligent person in the world. I'm not super detail oriented. But I do know that, hey, there's other people that are and to team up with them. And so it's, it's about being relentless. And I'm not saying that like, in the rah rah way, it's just like, but just keep going and keep trying and keep being okay to fail. I know that everyone says that, and I try not to be like a broken record. And then secondly, one thing that I think everyone talks about this, but this is my twist on it, when you have a very crystal clear vision, like you no matter what, cuz I think everyone writes goals, especially in this community of real estate, everyone writes goals, they know what they want. But a man if you have the most crystal clear vision, it's like a no matter what that you have to accomplish, you will grow into that person. Because what happens, Dave is that when you say, hey, I want to I want to make $10 million or something, you start, if you train yourself every single day to think that way. You start to see opportunities differently, you start to go into different doors that you normally wouldn't, you would start different conversations or you would do something differently. And those little things add up they compound over time.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, it's a, I think it's the correct effect. The Baader Meinhof effect, it's like when you see when you buy a new car, and then you see that same car literally everywhere around you exactly. It was always in your subconscious, they were always out there, but it didn't light up your brain until you actually knew it existed, right? So you don't see opportunities out there until you want to kind of will it yourself, it's probably, you know, a more gray area, you know, kind of comparison in that regard. But if you want to just do something, make it clear in your head, and you know, write it down every day, see it every day, and then it'll kind of compound from there. So couldn't agree more. And then the second one here is what is the most uncharacteristic thing you have done in your business? And why did you do it?
Pasha Esfandiary:So this one's very easy for me to answer, I got into a pretty much a really bad deal. And so I got into a bad deal. I'm not going to go into details. And the other person didn't really my my partner at the time. There do it on purpose, but got us into a bad deal. And I just essentially just trusted kind of blindly and let him kind of handle the rate. I have other businesses. And I got really busy and inundated with a lot of things. And I said, Well, you know what, this guy's been a real estate for a long time. Let him just do his thing. And I just kept I remember thinking at one point, like, hey, go ahead and handle it. I know you got it. And I just kind of stepped back. And man, I paid for it for so long, because that person couldn't really kind of afford it. So then I had to pick it up. It was a four year ordeal on a development deal. That went really South really quickly. So you know, don't blindly trust someone and think they absolutely know everything. Go back to the fundamentals, do your math, do your homework, educate yourself, and then make an informed decision.
Dave Morgia:And then I guess that may eat into this next question, but can you name a time where you felt like you weren't going to end up successful? And how did you overcome that fear?
Pasha Esfandiary:Oh, man, there was so many times in poker where, you know, you just run bad for months, and you just lose and you go broke or you almost go broke and you have to get a loan or there's there was a lot of ups and downs and you really had to create a Teflon like armor and just say you have to learn how to be optimistic, you know, and just say, hey, the next hand is going to turn around, hey, this month is going to turn around. So there was a lot of times that really I think set me up for success. And in the real estate game. Honestly, I've never really felt like I was I wasn't going to be unsuccessful even in my you know, bad deal or I don't really make it a much of money. When I first started out. I always knew 100% of the time I was gonna make this.
Dave Morgia:Now I love that and pretty much the flip of that project. Can you name a time or something and your business went perfectly? And what did you do to make that a reality?
Pasha Esfandiary:Yeah, you know, I think there's a kind of a tricky question, because I don't think I give myself enough credit, at least my wife says, I never do.
Dave Morgia:Because most of us don't.
Pasha Esfandiary:You know, and so I think things can always be optimized and be better. I think one thing that was my saving grace is that when I started, I never let my emotions get in the way, I always stuck to the math, I was always very conservative, at least in the beginning of my career. So that way, I could get the education and get the experience to make different decisions. But in the beginning, it was strictly math, it was strictly conservative math, and I just was patient enough to find the right house to buy at the auction. And when I did, I made every mistake in the world. But I still made about $3,000. And it was because I bought it correctly. And I don't just want to buy a house just to say I was doing it.
Dave Morgia:And then the last one here, what have you been focusing on lately to improve yourself or your business?
Pasha Esfandiary:I think the number one thing that I've been doing really differently this year is I built a team around me. I used to be a big lone wolf, in all my real estate deals that I really learned to really scale and get into the vision that I want to create, to have a team around me a bunch of mentors around me as well. And secondly is my health you know, we look at real estate as this thing that we're going to do for ourselves later on so we can retire and have cash flow. And I want to look at my life the same way. So when I do a lot of these bio hacking, I do the cold plunge every single day I take a bunch of supplements, but I look at my life the same way I'm going to do everything I can today to make sure that when I'm older around 8090 100 years old that I'm still feeling young and vibrant. And you know, I'm mentally all there still. So just looking at your life at the expanded time horizon as well.
Dave Morgia:Yeah, man, we we covered a gauntlet it feels like today, I appreciate you going through the wickets of me because I feel like I dragged y'all all over the place. But yeah, no, I love the mission. I love what you're doing it and working on it. Sounds like it's gonna be easy, because like you mentioned on, you know, the second question there. Once you have it kind of figured out what you want to do, it's just a matter of acting on it. So putting the rep seems like an easy thing for you to do. So I can't wait to see you kind of continue your path here. And just for the listener, if you want to drop you know your website or whatever, you know how to contact you just go right ahead, really
Pasha Esfandiary:appreciate it. You can just look for patias Fangio on LinkedIn or you can just go to evoke capital dotnet and you can connect with me there.
Dave Morgia:Thanks again, so much pleasure. I appreciate it. Dave.
Pasha Esfandiary:Thank you
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