Welcome to The Deal Pen, a podcast that digs into the details of untold stories from crafty real estate investors. And now, here's your host, Avi Rasowsky All right, we are live now with Brad Spelbring And Brad is with the Hurt Key Land Company. Brad, how are you doing today? Doing great. How are you, Avi? I'm doing great. I'm glad that we got this chance to have you on The Dealpen podcast. I'm excited to chat with you. And we were just kind of reminiscing a little bit. The first time we ever met was at the Cafe South local meetup here in Charlotte. And I know you're up in New Hampshire these days. So it sounds like you guys are joining up Yeah, so several years ago, I had the opportunity to look at some opportunities in Maine and New Hampshire. And I love the West, but that area is really hard to monopolize or to monetize. And it's not always about money, but there's some things about it you have to be able to do. Because I'm one of those guys, you'll probably never hear me talk. If people met me before, they've never, ever heard me talk about retirement. So my plan is to work in one shape or another until they put me in a hole. So anyway, about a year ago, I got the opportunity to make a change and move to New Hampshire. And I took the opportunity. I had made some other changes. So this is kind of where I wanted to go. And so I ended up here. It's beautiful. We have great summers. I live in the Lakes region, which is around Laconia. Right now, I'm not sure what the real estate market is going to do across the US, so I'm kind of holding my cards really tight right now and just kind of waiting and seeing. I'm not really afraid of the interest like a lot of people are. For a lot of years, I paid a lot of interest. I think my first mortgage was at 9% in the mid 2000s or mid 90s. So it doesn't really bother me that there's 7%. Obviously, like everyone else, I'd like them to No, seven's not crazy. And I've made some investor deals at 12 or 13. You and I both know it just kind of depends on where the money lands and how No, that makes sense. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I've paid, gosh, I've paid incredibly high interest rates. If the deal's good enough, you'd figure So I think the most I've ever paid on a deal was about 22% on a short term deal like six months. Yeah. After Um, and we really, the property just cashflow. But when I was able to refinance it and get 4%, that property was a Yep. Yep. I remember my first couple of deals, I just needed tiny amounts. I'm talking 10,000, 15,000, and I would pay whatever I needed to pay because I knew I'd get it back pretty quick or I had a pretty good idea. Obviously, I'm doing long-term money. I'd like it to be a little bit lower. The deal will dictate what you can do. I would love to talk through a lot of what you've been through. If we can even get a little fraction of what's in your brain. Every time I talk to you, I learn something new. I know you've done a ton of real estate investing, and it sounds like you're into buying businesses lately, but if you could kind of give like a summary of where you're at and where you've been, and then we'll maybe dive back into your past and some lessons that It'd be great. So, um, in 2022, I owned a considerable number of units, um, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Okay. And I owned everything from apartment buildings, mobile home parks to, um, self storage. Okay. We've been on one large warehouse. You know how I structure most of my deals. I work mainly with private partners. I don't use investors. They have to want to partner with me. The criteria is different. I want them to be, what is it called, like a level one criteria for an investor for the IRS. Cause I don't, if something would go wrong, I wouldn't want to bankrupt someone, right? So. Is that a category of accredited investor or Yeah. Like an accredited investor. I call those, we call it a hierarchy land company. We call those level one or tier one investors. Got it. And we work with a few tier two and tier three investors. But, um, that, that's, that's, uh, that's about all I'm willing to. And again, we don't call them best investors. We don't work with them as investors. We work with them on a partnership basis. Everybody signs a limited partnership with me. Okay. So that way they can take advantage of the tax breaks and take advantage of the other things based on their percentage of ownership. Okay. Interesting. So I did things a little differently. Most of my partners were older in their mid, actually in their late sixties to mid eighties. Okay. Almost all of my partners were. So in 2001, we started discussing exit strategies for everyone involved. And my exit strategy was not to own everything. So everybody thinks that's the greatest piece of the pie for me. And it can be for them, it just wasn't for me. I like to build. I don't really care about managing and owning. That's not my thing. I like to, it might be a five year build, but I like to build. And at the end of the build, I don't, I get bored very quickly. You're talking about building, building a business, not specifically a business building and putting everything together. Um, like in the real estate industry is putting a bunch of pieces together to create portfolios and then selling off that portfolio to either private equity or whatever we, what we were doing at the time. Okay. So anyway, 21, my partners and I, we all got together, we get together, we used to get together quarterly, they decided they wanted to sell. We put everything up for sale. And by the mid to end of 2022, we only had four assets left, maybe, maybe a fifth assets, we I think we had a piece of dirt left to So I think we had five assets left, if I remember everything correctly. So what I did was a couple of my partners and a couple of those assets wanted out. So I had taken my profits from the other projects and just paid everybody out. So I had some good properties, cash flowing. And then I worked on selling those, which I did sell them all. And what was amazing is I had a piece of dirt that was left in another property that was left and I closed on them April 2nd Thanks. So that's kind of what I do. I don't know how deep you want me to get. So if you want to put another question in here, how I structure stuff and how I do it. And So yeah, I mean, so what's going through my mind is I know way back. I mean, you look back, I don't know how far back, maybe 20 years where you had. Lots of lessons on what what you built and then some, you know, obviously some very tough times that you recovered from. I'd So a little bit about me. My first investment was made In 1991 or 1989, I was 19 years old. And I bought two mobile homes and a warehouse in a small town. I was actually in the military station somewhere else. This was not only it was profitable at first, but I learned a really good lesson that you need a good manager, right? Because when you're not there, You think you can trust these people because it's a small town, but it's still, you know, and it's a town right outside of where I grew up. So I knew I knew a lot of people, but even so, it's two mobile homes and a warehouse. So I rented the two mobile homes out pretty easily. And then I found a gentleman who wanted to run a mechanic shop out of the warehouse, which wasn't a big deal either. We got it rented pretty quickly. That was my first structured deal with a bank. Right. I went to the bank. I borrowed the money. I put that together. And I had that property for about three and a half years. And I got very kind of lucky there. So behind it was a, the city had like a small water treatment plant. Well, they wanted to expand. They wanted that whole section of land. So basically, in a short period of time, they tripled what I Wow, so you learned, I mean, back to what you said earlier about liking to build and then exit. You sort of accidentally fell into that, so you got the sweet taste of what that's Yeah, my very first deal was really nice. So then, a little bit about my background. I served in the military. When I got out of the military, I lived in Ireland for a couple years. Um, and then when I got moved back from Ireland, I actually worked in Louisiana for a couple of years. Um, and then I moved back to Illinois and I, uh, started buying rental properties. So I was actually renting and So yeah, I bought, and you can't do this hardly anywhere anymore, but I bought a really decent little old house for like 18,000 bucks. Okay. I went to my hometown bank, I negotiated, and that's so different now too, I think, than years ago. Like hometown banks, small banks back in the day, I mean, you go in, your family had a good reputation, they knew you, everybody knew you, So you went there, I only had to put a 10% down payment. I didn't pay any PMI. I remodeled the house. And with my little help from my dad. And when I say remodeled, like we didn't change any plumbing, any electrical, anything like that. We just went in, paint, flooring. I think on that house, we had to tear out a couple walls. or replace some drywall that is old plaster. So we just tore out a section and put in all new drywall and stuff. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't the best looking drywall job or anything like that. I got it all put back together and rented in a very short amount of time, got that one rented. And like, the people would see me going there a lot. And, um, And I worked full-time in a factory and was going to college and remodeling a house. But as people would see me driving by, so like four houses down, they wanted to sell. It had been their parents' house. Their parents had passed away, had sat vacant for over a year. The state didn't know what they wanted to do with it. So they called me and said, hey, would you want to buy our house? So I wound up buying a second house. And I tell people, sometimes it's better to be lucky and good. And I don't know your spiritual beliefs, but sometimes I believe in my life, God's just been looking out for me. So I bought, I did that. And I I had two of them and because my plan was to get four houses so they would pay my mortgage and that's all I really wanted to do, right? I didn't, that was my whole plan. I'd been through the Carlton sheets program and I was like, you know, if I get four of them, get them all rented out and they make cashflow, then it would pay my mortgage and I wouldn't have to ever worry about paying my mortgage and always have a little bit extra money. That's all I really wanted when I started this whole journey. So, um, Then I built my first house where I was the GC on it. Nice house, little, but I did a lot of the work on the inside and did some upgrades, a little upgrades, like my dad and I tiled all the bathrooms, we tiled the kitchen. And at this time in the 93, 94, that just wasn't that common of a thing. So, I went from there and I fell into two more rental houses. Somebody that I knew from years ago, he had somebody pass away in his family again, old rundown house, just a lot of deferred maintenance. Probably 20,000 bucks, not much more. Bought it, got it fixed up, got it rented. And then there was a couple, then it was about a year or so and I didn't really do anything else. I was going to school and some things and going to college and some other stuff. So I really didn't do another house for a little bit. And then I decided I wanted to build a second house. So I did, we did. And the three houses I had weren't enough to cover the mortgage. So I started looking for houses then. And it was kind of a different deal. I know a lot of guys, people who wholesale, I didn't even, I'd never even heard the word before. So I worked with a realtor lady who helped me acquire five houses over a three-year period. So then I was up to about eight houses. At that point, I could kind of see, man, if you had 50 of these, you could might Right, exactly. So you were working for somebody else? You No, I wasn't. I was actually a lineman. I was a lineman for seven years. And then after I got my degree, I went inside the office and started doing construction management. I actually went in to estimate. Okay. So that was working my way through that. And then, 97, 98, I bought a small mobile home park. Okay. And this was the beginning of the end for a little bit. I bought this mobile home park and being a nice guy that I was and a kid and everything and not really understanding. And this is a lesson for everybody to make sure you have enough insurance. So what happened was is I had people in here. I had some single moms and some other people. I went and cleaned off some steps in the middle of the winter for them. Well, somebody came. One of the people, their boyfriend came out, slipped, fell down, broke his hip. He was a union iron worker, so he got an attorney. They sued me and I went bankrupt. My first bankruptcy at 28. So So was it icy or what was the cause of the fall? Yeah, so it was snow and ice. I just went out, went There was a couple older people in these places that didn't have any kids or anything to clean. And then just being a nice person, there were two or three other places, so I just cleaned them all. I just cleaned everybody's front step. Wow, okay. So yeah, just trying to do the right thing and be helpful. Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, so that created a bankruptcy and this So when I was smart enough, I did have it all in an LLC. So basically I just lost my entire LLC overnight. I had 22 units probably, 21 units. So Jeez, okay. So how did, kind of walk me through what, a lot of people have never been through that. How I'll tell you the weird thing was, I never slowed down the whole time because I had built a long-term relationship with a small bank. So I went to the bank after the bankruptcy started the new LLC, they knew I was good for the money, right? It didn't affect my personal bankruptcy one bit. So it was just a corporate bankruptcy. Yeah, so and they didn't lose any money on the deal. Really, in all honesty, they didn't lose any money. One of the prop, the mobile home park was owner financed. So um, What I did was I helped everyone through the bankruptcy. I helped them find a buyer for that. Then I went to the ones that were all being rented. I went to someone so the bank would get all their money back and make a profit so they could put it towards the corporate settlement. I went through it very positive because I'd seen people who had gotten bitter and lost everything and then just didn't know where to go. Well, you can't do that. If you're gonna keep moving forward, you have to be able to adapt. So, I mean, literally within 18 months Wow. And you were making it right for people. So what I heard you say is the mobile home park seller that you bought it from on terms, you helped them find a new buyer to get Yes. I was able to go to some other people who I knew were investors. where you put a deal together, and they actually had bank financing and some cash, so it put the owner in a better position. Doesn't always happen, that Yeah, yeah. Out of curiosity, how many trailers in the mobile home park? Six. Okay, and so had that not happened, I mean, was It was a great investment. It was a good cash flow. This is back in the 90s. I made about $900 a month in pure profit off of that. In the 90s, that was always my thing. I tried to buy cheaper houses. My goal was always to have $150 pure profit Just out of curiosity, comparing numbers now, what did you buy I don't have any idea. I can't remember. It's been so long ago, I don't remember the deal. But I remember some of the houses I bought back then were probably between 10,000 and 25,000. And a lot of these smaller towns back at that time, they were everywhere, all those houses were. And you were buying pretty local to where you were or all over? I tried All right, so now you've recovered, you kept buying rentals again 18 months after the bankruptcy, and then tell me about the next spurt of growth for I left the company that I'd worked for for nine years and I started my own company, which was good. We did really well, but that's really not here nor there at this time. So after I left there in the real estate thing, after I did that, I just started buying a lot of picking off one-offs. And then I got into development a little bit. I built a couple duplexes where I would have somebody come out and frame them and build a shell. And then I would finish the interior. A lot of these small towns, I had a cousin who's a plumber. I can do hard work. You know, I'm not a great drywall or anything yet, but I can put it up, I can put up insulation, all the stuff like that. I can mount cabinets, I can lay tile, I can do all of those tasks. Not everybody have those skills, but at the time, it was a way for me to start building equity again. Do I recommend it? On a flip, I don't recommend it if you're flipping, doing your own work. You know, it needs to be managed work and you need to do what you're best at, It's something you learn over time, right? It's at that point in my life that I wanted to build the equity and I thought it was the best way to do it. Anyway, so I did two duplexes, they gave me four more units. Then I started getting into some other things. And I went to another real estate seminar in St. Louis. And I cannot remember the guy's name now, but he was really famous at the time. He was famous because he went in the line an unemployment line in St. Louis. He helped a guy put together a deal. Seriously, the whole deal with like a, and I'd never heard anything about hard money or anything before. So I went to that seminar and I got connected with a bunch of people. And some money, right? That's the weird thing. You get to meet people, you meet people with more, a lot more money than you. So anyway, I started partnering with a couple of people. And I had a really good relationship with a gentleman named Phil. Phil had a lot of money, but he wanted someone he could trust to invest it with. But Phil opened my eyes to a lot of things. He showed me, he and I got into jukeboxes. That was back in the day when you put money in them. I bought with him, we partnered, we bought like 25 ATMs and put them in bars and some weird places. And then he and I got, we partnered on a couple of other coin operated things, which is kind of cool. I learned a lot about the business. And he and I also, we bought an old convent in St. Louis. Oh, wow. And we converted it to about a hundred units. Okay, it was a vacant convent when you got it? Wasn't vacant. It was vacant. The Catholic church was moving all the nuns out of it to a new structure, like maybe a half mile away. Okay. So we bought it and converted it into about 100 apartments, if I'm not mistaken, between 80 and 100. Wow. Really good deal. Really neat deal. It was a fun kind of a deal. Then we started looking down there, run down big buildings because we did that renovation, it went really well. This is when I met a gentleman by the name of Tim Grimmett. Tim's a great guy. He's in St. Louis. He still does a lot of investing in St. Louis. Tim was teaching people how to wholesale and do other things and do flips. which I had never really realized that I was doing flips, right? I was, I was actually doing the, I think they call it the burr method. Yeah. Way before it was ever called the burr method. Right. Yeah, exactly. And except for, I didn't really normally, I didn't refinance mine. I just left them alone. And because, you know, for years I bleeped into Ramsey method, Which is not a bad model, but, um, in my opinion, That's really good for W2 people, not so great for business owners, the burr method. So, right. I don't mind, I don't mind debt now. So anyway, long story, let's try to get into this. So I built up to like 300 units, 350 units, but we had them all financed with a local bank in St. Louis, a small bank. And guess what? 2008 hit. And I don't know if you've ever heard anybody else tell this story, but it's a true story. It happened to me. It's happened to a guy named Grant Cardone. It's happened to other people. So what happened was, uh, the bank I was at went bankrupt. Okay. So they called in our note. Well, I don't know if you remember 2008, you for like 10 months, you And the two big private investors we worked with were bankrupt. So we, There was three of us in the partnership. We lost our properties to the bank and Wow. And this is, how many days notice We had 90 days to come up with the money. Geez. Do you remember about how much you needed to, I mean, you couldn't do it, right? Yeah, it was probably 20 million Jeez. Okay. So, all right. So what, what, what had like, what unfolded from So I was mad and bitter for a couple of years. That's what unfolded from that. So, um, I mean, seriously, I was just, I was really upset. I I helped start another business with some guys. It was fun, made a ton of money, it was fun, traveled a lot with it, good business. Anyway, so, and the thing is, I can't really say the name of the business because when we all parted ways and I went and started another business, I had to sign in like a non-disclosure and some other things. So it's actually a very well-known public company now. So I just can't talk about it. No, I understand. No problem at And I still owned a ton of shares there, so it was worth it. Yeah. There you go. So I left there and went and started another company with a bunch of people from that company. There was like nine or 10 of us. I did that for a while. I didn't get bored there. We just decided to go in different directions. So I, Kept my shares in that company also. It was a private company though. And then I went to work as a consultant for several people in the solar industry. Then I started a solar company. And then I moved to North Carolina and I started investing again. When did you move to North Carolina? What's that? Well, around when did you move to Carolina? 2014 probably. Okay. 2013. Somewhere between 2012 and 2014, I don't remember. I was going back and forth because I had a house in L.A.J., Georgia that I bought out of foreclosure and I was going back and forth. So anyway, I got into real estate in North Carolina a little bit. I bought a couple of houses, a couple of modular homes in, I can't think of the little town over there now. It doesn't matter, but, oh, Kings Mountain. And then you can still find older run, you know, at the time, the, the, the Carolina market hadn't really blown up yet. Right. This was, I mean, I was still finding relatively reasonably priced houses, 20, 30, 40,000. Um, I worked with a couple of people to do complete rehabs on them. Um, and then we, then I would, um, rent, refinance them and rent them. Um, so I did that method for a long time. And then, um, I met this guy from Iowa who did mobile home parks. And I met him in Myrtle Beach. I can't remember what we were over in Myrtle Beach for. We were over there for something. And it was crazy because this guy was like, yeah, I own, you know, 6,000 mobile home units and the whole deal. Yeah. And started telling me about how he did it and how we acquired him and some other things. So I, I learned his model. And here's what is called a master lease option. And the most famous master lease option in the world is, well, there's two of them, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building are both are under master lease options date all the way back to the like 70s. Wow. Okay. I did not know that. So Most people don't realize it. It's very prevalent in commercial real So essentially his model was to do what? To mask the lease? He would lease it from the seller, from No. So he would lease it from the seller with a purchase price at your option, right? Okay. So let's say you have 10 units in a mobile home park. Let's say he's getting $500 a month rent. So you're paying, you guarantee him $5,000. So when you go into, well, no, you don't guarantee him 5,000. You guarantee him$3,500, but he doesn't have to deal with anything. So your goal, you want to find distressed properties is a goal. You want to go in and make improvements and do all this stuff. But you also, in that MLO, the option part, you agree on a price the day you buy it. Got it. The day you take that lease over, you agree that you have 10 year lease. And anytime in that 10 years, you can buy it for this price. Whatever that price would be. A lot of people use this model. I mean, it's very well known when you get into bigger properties. So anyway, so that's what I did. I started doing that. Works I did. I was able to acquire 2000 units with this with this program. Geez. Yeah. And one of the reasons is you don't have to have a bunch of down payment money, right? You just have option option money to. OK, so basically what you do is you do. No, you don't even have to have any option money. OK, you pay first and last month's rent to him because you're going to lease it. That's basically. You might be able to control a million dollars worth of real estate for $20,000. Amazing. Yes. Great system. With the lease, you're making sure you have that option to buy at whatever your strike price Right. Unbelievable. That's how I got started. What we did was we made some agreements with Clayton Holmes and some other people. Um, you know, we were able to buy some really big parks. I was able to buy a 600 unit park and some other parks. And then we worked through this whole master lease option thing. Um, Four, five. Okay. All in all, it was more than that. It was 10. It was about 10 parks because I had some really small. When I first started out, I was afraid. So I was only doing like 10, 12 unit parks. And then I kind of was like, why don't we just scale? So we wound up buying a 600 unit The 900 was in Georgia, the 600 was in the Carolinas. Okay. That's fascinating. So when you approach these owners of parks, because nowadays you talk to an owner of a park, they're like, no, I'm not selling unless you're way over market value. But back Right. So what you have to do, there's a lot of work. that no one talks about, it's not glamorous, it's not negotiating, it's research. So you know this and I know this, but the best real estate investors are the best researchers. So what you do is you find a mobile home park, what I use is Google Earth, right? Everybody knows it. And you go into Google, you go in like, let's use an example, you go to, I'm trying to think of a place, Let's just say Charlotte, North Carolina and type in mobile home parks. So you look at all these different mobile home parks, right? So then you zoom in on the map and you look at the park. Well, then you have to do, that's when the legwork starts. It's not too terribly tough now. I think most of the real estate records are public. So what you do is you would go and you do your research, find out who owns it. And then what I did was I drafted a really good letter Okay. To the owner. To the owner. Yes. So I would draft a really good letter to the owner, send it to him, and then Okay. Okay. And so you were just blanketing Yeah, normally my goal was 100 letters Okay. And in the Philippines to do my back office stuff. All this lady did was follow up calls on those hundred letters a week. OK, like, hey, did you get the letter and just maintaining that And that's all she did. It worked great, too, because at some point. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. If it's that, yeah, you catch them at whatever time and they say, no, you might have a few years down the road that they're okay selling and moving And that's how it was. The really big one we bought in Georgia, he had gotten offers from everybody to buy the, he even had some huge cash offers. And for some reason he liked me, we, we clicked and he wound up doing the master lease option with me. But he came out of that deal with probably a lot more money. Yeah. Because we we did the lease for 30 months or 30, about 34 months before we bought him out. So he made all that other money. You know, so it was a little bit different. And the other thing, too, is and I'll be, you know, this as well as I do, you have to be able Because everybody thinks you're a buyer when you're going in to do a master lease option, you're a salesperson, you're not a buyer. One, you have to convince them what the master lease option is. Most people don't know, it's like, you know, most people have never even heard of it. So you gotta go in and teach them what it is, and then you sell them the idea that, you know, hey, you're gonna get all this money and you're not gonna have to pay capital gains for maybe up to 10 years. So I was just gonna ask you how long you typically made that option period, 120 months was my normal. Some wanted shorter, some were okay with doing it that long. And again, like every other thing in real estate, it's all negotiable. And then one of the big things is if I was gonna lower the term of the master lease, I wanted them to lower the price. I didn't care about any, I didn't care about what And I normally, for every two years they wanted to lower the master lease, I wanted, normally I tried to get five to 10% off of the purchase price for every two years they So, I guess a couple things. Your deals that ended up coming through, right? The nine, 10 parks that you for these- Yeah, but what people don't realize is there was 1,000, there was probably 1,500 letters mailed. You end up with 10 properties, right? Right. And probably 400 negotiations or I tell you the biggest thing, and I tell people this all the time, is You know, people, it gets tough. I guess that's why the people that are the 1% are the 1%, and then there's everybody working and doing everything else. And there's going to be tough times. There's going to be crappy times. It doesn't matter how much you love what you do. There's always a day you don't Yeah. And I have a good partner, my fiance. She's a wonderful woman. She's been with me for 9 or 10 years. She's been with me on the highs and the lows and yeah, everywhere in between and and and that's it. I think that's important. It's it's tough to be out there by yourself. Yeah, yeah, well there's a saying I actually learned this from from just sports growing up that today I do what you want so tomorrow I can do what you can't. And yeah, most people just don't want to do the tough things, right? So you did it and got through it. That's awesome. It's an amazing story just to build up that kind of portfolio for mobile home parks. Was that one of the assets you had or was that one of the portfolio items that you Yes, we sold off everything because again, You know, once you get it, you think that's the hard part, all the negotiation, that's the easy part. Then the work starts. Then you gotta start cleaning it up, right? And you have to have money to do all that. Unless you wanna go pay a bank, which I'm not opposed to, but after my burning in 08, I'm a little itchy. I don't use a lot of bank money to this day. I'd rather use private equity. I'd rather use investors. I wanna make people rich. I don't wanna make banks rich. Yeah, I love that. Yep. And that's one of my, I'm sure you've heard of Zig Ziglar. Yeah. You know, my favorite quote of Zig Ziglar, well actually there's three, but this is one of my favorites is, if you help enough other people get everything they want, you can get everything you want, right? Yep, I love it. I believe that, you know, if you help people get the returns they're looking for, and again, I'm gonna tell people this, you know, I probably met with 5,000 investors You know, and it's time consuming. And, you know, I was running another contracting company and I was doing other things. At one point I was a commercial real estate broker and a business broker. And while you're doing all that, you're still, you still have to run, you still have to make it work and you get up early and you stay up late and you, you know, when your friends are out on the lake on Memorial day and you're sitting in front of a computer, finishing up a business plan, So you can go down and just eat with them and spend a few hours with them. And then you come back in the evening and finish. I mean, but those are the prices you you need to pay. And, you know, because I've had tons of failures. You know, I've had tons of I've had businesses go bankrupt. I've had partners, you know, beat me out, not just not just buy me out, beat me out. No. So, you know, it's just you just got to get up every day, keep going and keep plugging away and make more, you know. And again, You reach a point where everybody's like, oh, it's just not about the money. And that's something I don't disagree with. It's not always just about the money, but you have to, I just believe it's very important to keep striving to something. It might not be money for everybody, right? But you have to keep striving for something. And some of them might be little wins, but you need to keep striving. And like I said earlier, you're never gonna ever hear me mention me talking about going and being My, my dream plan is to be retired and all this stuff, you know, like my friends, you know, this is good to get it. I'm 55. I turned 55 this year. So a lot of my friends are talking about, oh, And my thing is all time was like, man. I hope God's not ready to punish me by making me retire in 12 years. I want to be able to keep giving back and doing, and it might be in a totally different capacity. I'm finding something now I enjoy doing that I didn't even know about till three So whatever you're able to talk So I run an electrical contracting company for private equity. I have a minority ownership in it, but I basically run the day-to-day operations. I'm the president of the company. We're not huge Can we rewind a little bit to last, probably two, three years ago, we were, we had met up and talked a little bit and you, uh, I think you were getting into buying businesses. Is It is, but I've learned, I learned something through this whole thing was, um, no, I became a business broker. This is where a lot of people, and again, I have nothing against it. It's just not me. A lot of people go to work for a company as an accountant, right? Yeah. Well, for 30 years, they're an account. To me, that is not what I ever wanted to do. So I wanted to learn how to buy and sell businesses and learn a little bit about the MA thing. So I knew I can sell. So I learned how to get business listings. I used the same system that I use for getting mobile home parks to get business listings. And we can go into that, it's a long deal, but. You're talking about the same research or the same master lease option deal? No, the same research is the same. And then how we get them and everything. And then what I did was I started selling businesses before I started looking at buying any. And then I looked at a bunch of businesses in the Carolinas, but by then there's a, I can't think of the lady's name, Cody something. She Yeah, I think that's right. You know, oh, you should do this, you should do that. I still don't believe everyone should go buy a business, man. Like, I don't believe everyone should own real estate. I believe, again, so a little bit about my background. I have a bachelor's degree in ag economics. I have a bachelor's degree in finance, which I got those about six months apart. I have a bachelor's degree in construction management. And I have a master's degree in economics. What I stressed in economics was learning more about the macro and how it affected the dollar and things of that nature. I could talk to you all day about how that works, but it's boring and no one wants to hear that stuff. No, it really is. It's boring, but it gives me an advantage sometimes. I understand things that other people don't see. So anyway, so I started looking into buying businesses. I still haven't bought anything yet. I partnered with this company. I'm looking, you know, I'm always kind of looking at doing something else, but I'm looking right now to start a couple of things from scratch. I really don't want to get into it too much. But I'm looking to start a couple of things from scratch. And I think one of the huge advantages people don't see is in the farming world. You know, not being, not being a huge grain farmer, like where I grew up in the Midwest, but like a niche farming market. Um, there, there's some real, there's some real high margins and, and things like that. So anyway, so very I think one, no, go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, just the way that you think is different from a lot of people that I run into, at least, you have such a bigger vision. The types of numbers you've done, most people couldn't even fathom, right? What do you attribute that to and how would you say, let's say someone's looking at their one house at a time world or one deal at a time, how do you look up and see the grand scheme of what you were able to do on multiple times building such large portfolios? I I believe it's something that's just, you've Okay. And I'm sure you've read some of the other, the World's Greatest Salesman, That's a good book. And there's some other books out there. Anything by Augmandino is his name. Okay. But what one person told me one time, and I'll never forget this, this is back when I did multi-level marketing. I don't even, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that, but no, but the thing about multi-level marketing, it taught me that, um, You can dream as big as you want to dream. Yeah. And all the bad stuff of the multilevel marketing, it just taught me that one thing you can just. And the other thing, too, is, you know, and what somebody told me one time, and I know you believe this, too, I'm sure you do. Well, that's not for me. OK, I believe that. At this point in that person's life, this is not for them, right? Right. But it's just a different thing. You have to always look at where you're going. And you just have to keep, and I know it sounds crazy. I mean, I'm 55 years old and I got a vision board. My vision board's gotten narrower over the years, like things I want, things I want to do, but I still have a vision board. I think it's very important. You know, Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, really didn't make a lot of money until he was in his late 50s, early 60s. My favorite story is Colonel Sanders, 65 years old. From 65 to 75, he went from being bankrupt to a billionaire because he never stopped. That's amazing, yeah. You know, I mean, the things that I look at is, you know, it's you, and I'm gonna throw something Okay, so three years ago, my son overdosed, passed away. That made me look, change completely how I look at life. I quit worrying about work-life balance and everybody's like, did you think you'd be just the opposite? You'd worry about it more. And I read something from a, of all people, Dave Ramsey and another gentleman called Bradley. There is no such thing as work-life balance. There's just work and there's a lot, it's part of your life. Yeah. So you have to make the time if you want to go to your kid's soccer game, go to your kid's soccer game. But if you want to be successful, you need to find a way to schedule that meeting or appointment or that time. You might be doing it 10 o'clock at night while the whole family's in You know, you might go to bed. In a cold mattress or you know what I'm saying, right? Or you might fall asleep in a chair, but you those choices have to be made. And when you're ready to make those choices, you're ready to be successful until you're. And if you're never going to make those choices, I hate to say it, but you know, unless you win the lottery, you're not going to be financially successful. And again, it's not just about money. I mean, like you think Nobel. You think Nobel Prize winners when they're doing a mathematic for in mathematics when they're when they're stuck on a problem, whatever you think they worry about getting sleep or eating or spending time with their family, they want to figure out what's wrong and the Yeah, you know, I'm so sorry to hear about your son. I can't even fathom. It's a big no. And the thing was, you know, you know. You never get over it. You think about it. Probably. I probably think about it every day. But the thing about it is it made me look at everything else in my life and how important it is and the things that, you know, how I mean, I'm sure you've seen the movie The Last Samurai. I Well, I'm going to I'm going to spoil part of it for you. That's all right. The lead, the head of the samurai clan or whatever, I don't know what his name, I can't remember his name now, but he was out looking for the perfect four-leaf clover, right, the perfect clovers. He was like looking through them. When he's dying, there's a bunch of these clovers blowing over him and he's like, they're all perfect. You see what I'm saying? Yes. I think I think losing my son made me realize that, you know, driving to work is a privilege, right? Some people aren't going to get to do this tomorrow because they're not going to be here. So that driving to work is a privilege. Yeah. And I think that's what motivates me, too, is. There's so many things in life that people look at. And they think, oh, well, whatever. It's not a whatever, you know, you get a chance to eat ice cream tonight or, you know, I'm just using that, whatever it is. Yeah. Whatever that thing is that, that someone's never going to get to do again, you know, and you have to, you have to, you have to cherish it. It's just life is life. But so many people think, you know, I would, I would never be, well, I hope I'm never one of those people. I don't think I ever will be. But you know they they look at everything and everything's bad. Oh, I gotta drive 3 hours. Yeah, I gotta drive 3 hours to go see my son. You know what I mean? Yeah, instead of saying man, I get to see my son at the end of this drive. They're like or their kid or yeah or you know I have. I have people I've met up here who live within a half an hour and again I'm not a huge NFL fan, but I'm using this for example. It's not they don't have the money and they're huge fans, but they don't want to drive to the stadium. They think that's a burden. They don't realize that the chance to go to drive the stadium is a gift, right? Yeah, you know the chance I get to get up every day and work is a gift from God. I get it. I get to use the talents that the God has given me. Good and bad. Yeah, make to make my life better and hopefully make other people's lives better. Yeah, but so many people. And I know if you can cut, you can cut this out later if you want to. This is just how I feel a lot over the past important stuff. Over the past 20 years, I've changed so much in how I look at business and how business gets done. And I believe it's helped me become a better business person. And I believe it's helped me get better deals and everything else was. It's it's a privilege to do what we do every day, and I believe people who are lazy are arrogant to God because God gives everyone a talent. And if you don't use that talent to the best of your ability, I think you're being arrogant to God, which you know, yeah, it's it's like a wasted wasted gift, right? Right, you know, not there's. That's the biggest cliche too, right? You know nothing is more prevalent Yeah, for real. Now it's a beautiful way to look at how you do it and and so. Yeah, you're just grateful for the opportunity to do what you do best and and Yes. So you want to give me a couple more minutes here and I'm going to, I'm going to go into a little bit about why I'm not buying. So yeah, please, please. As long as you've got, I'm not buying anything right now. I believe that this is an opinion. Um, you're starting to see the same, we're getting the same of the same telltale signs. We got no 708. Okay. Um, and basically in the same areas too, right? And you're starting to see prices drop in Texas, Arizona, Florida, It's a repeat of 08 in what I see. I'm glad I'm out of the market. I mean, I don't even own a residential house I'm renting right now. And I'm glad. My opinion, you're going to see some things really happen. You know, it's one point, if I remember the numbers correctly, it's $1.49 trillion in commercial property that will never be able to be reappraised for what they appraised them for in 01 or 2021 and 2022. Well, they're coming due. And 2020 also, all those properties are coming due. Not never, but let's say in the short term, in the next 36 months, those properties won't hit those values again. So basically, the first year was kick the can, we'll kick it down the road, we'll worry about it. Now, last year, I knew a bunch of people in the commercial business world, it was delay and pray. Well, this year, well, this year, it's such a huge amount. It's. I mean. You're going to start seeing them topple that they Is it is it one category like multifamily or is it office or I think it's three categories from what I understand and what I've read. So you know that the Federal Reserve puts out every every. Federal Reserve office or location puts out a. quarterly newsletter, right? Okay. About how the economy is doing. So I am the one nerd in America who reads every one of those. Okay. Nice. Yeah. Well, my fiance doesn't think it's so nice. You're educated though on it. You understand. Well, I try. I knew the quarters I missed cause like nothing's changing or I read through a couple of them and they sound, they look the same, you know, whatever. So I don't, I maybe don't read them all every quarter, but I read most of them and I try to, and I definitely skim them all every quarter. Okay. So anyway, you know, I'm gonna predict this. Okay. So in 36 months, you're probably gonna see, it's gonna make the Great Recession look like a day in the park. Jeez. I see 50, I see 35 to $4,500 silver, or gold, sorry, gold. Say again, $3,500 to $4,500? Yeah, a dollar gold. Okay. I see $50 to $75 an ounce silver. And Well, the Fed's not gonna come down on rates for a lot of reasons. Okay. I don't know your age, but I remember the late 70s. I was born at 83 42 years old. Oh, so you don't even remember so in the late 70s and early 80s, I remember the Division between the Federal Reserve and the government and it's the same thing we have now with the Federal Reserve and Trump Yeah, so Carter was begging the Federal Reserve at the time to lower rates I mean, I think he would have done anything to get him to do it. They wouldn't do it They were trying to break inflation I think some of the overnight rates or the Fed rates got up to around 18%, 19%. I know bonds were being sold at 20%. You could have bought a 30-year T-bill and retired. You know what I'm saying? If you had money like we have nowadays, you could go back and buy those T-bills at 30% and just retire. You wouldn't have to do anything else. Right. I don't think they hit 30%, but I know a bunch of those 30 year bills at 20%. Okay. Well, and you know, the rules of 72. So You know, and the government, a lot of those rolled off in the early 2000s. And that's why Clinton's balance sheet looks so great. Oh, well, yeah, you lost a ton of debt that you're paying 20% interest on. So, you know, I didn't, I didn't nothing against the Clinton presidency or billing person or anything like that. It was just that it wasn't really as good as everybody made out. Because most people aren't smart enough to go into the details of what's rolling off of the debt. So anyway, And it might start sooner than that. So there's a everyone knows who Jamie Diamond is. Jamie Diamond predicting a huge depression. Ray Dalio, you know, Ray, one of the smartest people I've ever I've never really met him, but one of the smartest people I've ever listened to. Yeah, I would put him up with. I'd put him up against anybody for understanding the markets and how things work. you know, he's calling for a depression. There's some other people out there too, you know, but again, you know me well enough. I'm not a Debbie Downer. I'm just, I'm trying to be realistic. So what I'd see coming is you're gonna see some people in the multifamily market who bought with a two or 3% margin. And interest rates are up more than that. So what are they going to, they have no cashflow. These Um, commercials even worse. They bought them back in the day when they were paying 6% for a commercial loan and they have no, there's, they had very minimal margins then they were buying on the idea of appreciation and they could raise rents. Well, commercial rents fell through after COVID. Yep. So now you got properties who really haven't appreciated much. You have an interest that's climbed to nine and a half to 11% depending on your credit worthiness. And there's no way those properties have appreciated 11%. And the fact you're getting less rent. So it's a storm. Again, I don't know how the government's gonna work around it or how some of these big banks There's probably gonna be two or three regional banks in every region fail. And the other two that no one talks about is car loans. So, you know as well as I do, if you can't make your car payments and they start repoing cars or whatever, right? That's just normally the beginning for most people. Then they can't make their credit card debts. And I watched something really interesting last night is, So let's say you buy a house at the peak of what you can afford, okay? And I'm gonna just use $2,500 a month, okay? So your income didn't go up any, and inflation, so now you have less discretionary funds, you have less leftover money, okay. But you live in Charlotte and you get your new tax bill and it's up, your property value's up 10%. Well, your tax bill's up, right? Well, what else goes up? Your insurance, because the value of your home goes up. So now your $2,500 a month mortgage is $2,900 a month. And you were struggling to get by at 2,500 because you just bought this house. And the average person, I was reading something the other day, the average person has one At 29% interest. Right. And again, I'm not Dave Ramsey. I don't have anything against credit cards. I think there's a use for short-term debt. I use it all the time. If something I wanna buy is on sale, I use my credit card. I try to pay it off in two months. Everybody's like, well, yeah, but you paid interest. Yeah, but if I bought something for 25 or 30% off that I needed anyway, And now I paid two to three percent interest on it. I'll take that. I still save twenty seven percent. You use that money. Yeah. But But to your point, a lot of people are not as disciplined and they they And I've seen it. You know, I know I know tons of people who've done this. Right. I mean, and it's sad, especially when people go through a divorce. It really hits them. OK. Get off my soapbox about that for a second. So back to this here. So one of the big things I see is The SBA, a lot of people, what people don't know is I still consult with business owners. And I'm willing to help anyone if they want to pay the fees and stuff, and I get it. They're probably struggling, so it's probably not the best choice for them. But a lot of people, and I've talked to a lot of people in the SBA, lenders and things, a lot of deals are upside down. A lot of businesses are upside down. Especially retail, this is kind of crazy. So there's so many car wash, they have so many car washes and laundromats financed, the And something else they won't finance at all right now, this is what they told me recently, was a car dealership. They told me this about six months ago, that they were getting away from car dealerships. So Yes, the Small Business Administration, you know, they back the loans and stuff. They don't want Yeah. I mean, I've had some business brokers I know have taken some pretty good deals, like that would have got financing six, eight So back to your comment, you're not buying now because of a lot of these Yes. I'm buying a little bit of silver. I don't really play the gold market. The gold market, I think gold's been overinflated. At 700 an ounce, gold was probably a fair deal. At 3300 an ounce, it's all speculation. There's a lot of gold out there. People don't realize the value. There's So what's the best way to, let's say someone that's used to getting really good deals in real estate, what would you say to do Is there another path you think is better? Right now, I think one of the best paths to create equity is to find something creative you can do already. I the whole short-term rental. I wouldn't, I don't get bias on it, because I don't understand it well, but I'm not a huge fan of the short-term rental thing. I've had a lot of people, I'll tell you one thing, if you have a four-bedroom property, it's There's still a demand for that. Yeah, the midterm rentals you're talking about. Yep. They take a six month con. What's that? I'm No, God, I think we're I think it's glitching just a little bit, but I keep going. You know, most nurses take a six month cut. Is So most nurses take a six month contract. So I would just take that six month. I would just take it and go with the nurse, you know, find people or whatever, and then do the six month contract with a nurse. furnish it, charge them, buy the room, get locks for all the doors, have them all sign a lease, and Yeah. What about other vehicles? I'm just gonna throw this out there, because I heard about it a couple times now from people that seem to be knowing what they're doing with their money. Have you heard of this thing called yield max ETFs? A Okay. You don't like that game? So basically, you're putting your money into someone else's trust fund, right? That's not my thing. There's a lot of things you have to really, you have to do a lot of research. You have to understand the market and how it works. It's like right now, how many W-2 people throw 20% of their money in an IRA, right? Or 401k, I mean, sorry, 401k. Probably, 40% of our country, everyone uses the 401k because we got rid of pensions. But they don't have any idea how the stock market works. If you ask somebody what's the P-E ratio on their stocks, they wouldn't even know what P-E ratio meant. So they're Yep. So let me ask you one other thing because you talked about retirement and not wanting to retire. On the topic though still, do you use retirement vehicles, like your self-directed accounts to grow tax-free, I use three different things. I like self-directed IRAs. There's another thing out there like a 401k, but you can use it differently. I think it's called a 403b. And I have to do some research, I can't remember, I like those. And my favorite thing is a, and I'm sure people have heard me talk about this, and the guy to look up on this is called the Intelligent Banker, if I'm not mistaken. Done a ton of research, we set this up years ago, we have attorneys in our family, so. We have a non-custodial irrevocable trust, and we invest everything within that trust. and that is creating your tax shelter. Yeah, so what happens on that is you can put money in there, you can invest in anything, it gets all of its money back, right? Okay. And then you can't take a disbursement from it because you have to do a promissory note So a non-custodial irrevocable trust. Yep. And another great way to build wealth is, this is what one of my friends did right before he sold all of his units. I tried to talk to my investors and they wouldn't do it because they went out and put like 85% loans on all their properties, took all that money out. So then when you pay it off, you have very minimal capital gains because you have a big, huge note on it. Interesting. You have to structure everything exact timing. You have to know when you're going to sell it. You have to know when you're going to refinance it. It all comes down to timing. You want to refinance it, then within 30 days, you want to put it on the market and you hope it sells within six months. You But you want to make sure it's still cash flows, but you don't care if it makes a profit anymore. Could you just, hopefully you only owe 50, 45, 50% on it. So now you just took 35% of that value out of there and you put it in a bank or you put it in, I like silver. I'm It's not exaggeration. I probably own 10,000 ounces of silver. Okay. I've been buying silver since I was like five years old. I've sold it a little bit here and there over the years, but I was really young when I started buying silver. I started buying ounces of silver very young. I've got most of it left in my life. I recommend it. I mean, like I got my first silver coin when I went through my first communion. And then I started, so I was older and that's probably six or seven. But then I started buying it and I've always collected silver. I've done some other coins. I have some coin collections. But right now, I just think everything's overpriced. But I don't rely on a lot of cash Yeah. So you're using your silver. Your silver is your store of Yes, to some extent, yes. I mean, everybody's like, oh, it's so hard to sell. Really? You run down to the, you find the locals. And everybody doesn't know the system, right? Excuse me. But you find, you know, like Hyatt's in Charlotte's one, okay. Pays a fair price. If you need to sell it, whatever you go in, they look at it, whatever spot is, I think they give you a little bit less than spot for it. And then, you know, you get your money, they get to make a little money. And now it's, it's not normally they do one to 3% less than spot, depending on how much you're selling that day. Um, you know, And again, it's one of those kind of things. You order 10 ounce bar, you throw it in your safe, and you don't think about it, and it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't eat. It's always going to have value. So silver is a good vehicle. I have a large sum in silver. I like silver. But there's just a lot of things. I just don't know right now. And again, I'm not giving anyone financial advice. I want to make that clear. This is my opinion. Right. Right. OK. I want to make that clear. I don't want anybody calling you or suing me or whatever. Entertainment purposes only. Right. Right. This is entertainment purposes only. But my my my main thing is I like silver a lot. Like I said, I'll say it probably a dozen times in my life. But that's one of the vehicles I'm using right now. I just don't I just think, again, I know I'm a little bit older and I'm old fashioned and some other things, but my opinion, real estate in every market where there's a few exceptions is at least 35% over value. I'll tell you why I believe that. I just sold my house for 20% more than I thought it was worth. Wow. I went to the realtor and gave him a price after we did a complete remodel. And she come back to me and said, I could never sell it for that. I was like, what am I way over? You're like, you're way under. No one ever buy it. They think something's wrong with it. I was like, you're kidding me. No, seriously. That's what she told me, right? It was in a house you sold in Carolina? Yeah, Yeah. Wow. That's interesting. I guess just to kind of wrap a bow on it, if you have any Thoughts for people that are building a portfolio that you've been through so much and probably some things that people don't want to ever go through, right? What would you say in summary on things that people should keep in mind as we're going through the times Yep. Scale fast. Bankruptcy won't kill you. It's just beanie weenies. No, seriously, just rice and beans, whatever you call it. Scale fast. Um, don't buy right now. I would hold, I would, I would just build cash. Um, I would find a online bank and put it in a CD that it's getting four or 5%. I know you're not, everybody says, oh, you're not beating inflation. That's fine. But you're going to want this money quick. When the market crashes, you're going to want to, you're going to want to have quick access to quick money. Um, Keep your credit score high. I don't care what anyone says about all that. I wish I would have done a better job of that in my 30s and 40s. I own businesses and I borrowed tons of money so your credit gets beat to crap all the time. And the last thing I would tell everyone is learn a system and use that system. Don't try to do what everyone else does. Learn one system and use that system. Now you can use like the You could overlap maybe the MLO system with the birth system like we did, right? Yeah. But learn a system. And then, you know, I hate to say this, man. It's weird you say it like this, It's if you don't have a story, what do you have? Everyone's got money or everyone in the game. It has money or can get money. So what do you have different than everyone else if you don't learn a pitch? The thing is, be truthful about it. No BS. Just go in and be honest with people. Hey, listen, I'll never forget real quick. When I went through my second divorce, I lost everything. I lived in my car for six weeks. but I had saved enough money from selling all of my assets. I didn't have to live in a car, I made a choice. But I bought my first rental to start building my portfolio again back then. And it is what it is. You have to be able to pay a price too. I mean, so many people get so caught up in comfort. So that's a huge takeaway. Be willing to pay the price, learn a system, and then go out and find the money. The money's out there. For years, I said something, and I wish I wouldn't have said it because I believe that whatever you say permeates in your mind. For years, when I talk to people, they're like, oh, how's the deal? Oh, it's going great, but I'm struggling finding money. Well, you know what you're telling yourself every day? You're struggling, you're finding money. So after that, I just quit saying it. It was crazy. The money literally started flowing in. Yeah, your mind is a real thing. It is. I mean, it was funny because after we quit saying that in my house, that I probably had 20 investors knocking down my door once. And I'd done a few small deals with I know you got places to be, so I don't want to keep you, but thank you Yeah, I enjoyed it. And if we ever want to get into one detail or something again, let me know. We can talk about when I built my 100 million dollar contracting company and sold it and the mistakes I made or whatever you want to do. I'm always willing to. That was that was electrical contracting. Yes. I did. Yeah. You got two minutes. Tell that just high level so people understand what you just said. OK, so in 2000 and. In 2002, three, I started a contracting company. And I'd been in alignment for a number of years. I started a contracting company. And in five years, we went from $0 in revenue to... The last year we were in business, when we sold it to a competitor of ours, we had$107 million, what's called on the books, in contracts and in finished work. Jeez. So you sold it to, well, I remember a little bits and pieces that you had bought some companies that never wanted, they didn't want Right. Right. So, so I learned acquisition back then. I learned M&A back then. What I would do was I would buy, once we started making money, I went again, I went to another seminar, man. I'm, I'm, I'm a huge believer for something you want to learn. You got to go out and find it. Right. Yeah. So I went to I met someone at a Zig Ziglar born to win seminar about three or four years before that, and I just kind of stayed in touch with this gentleman and he worked in M&A so he. said, hey, listen, this M&A thing's going on. Why don't you come out here and learn how to do this? And I was more wanting to learn about acquisitions, not really mergers, right? I wanted to learn to acquire businesses. That's what I did. So I took my business, which we started as Spellbring Electric, and when we sold it, we were a company called PCS. We had so much changes. But, you know, I was able to bring in some heavy hitter, you know, investors and partners on that one. And it was really good for me. It was a learning curve. It was a huge learning curve. And this is a true story too. If you want to see your weaknesses, start making a lot of money. Interesting. Because you see all your vices, all your weaknesses, like everything you thought you ever want. I mean, I owned every toy you could imagine, right? Yeah. Corvettes and Harleys and boats and motor coaches and just everything you can imagine, which it's just all stuff. Yeah. Um, you know. It's it was a crazy. It was a crazy. It was a crazy time and I learned so much about myself and. What I didn't want to do again and what I didn't want to do again and and those five years from yeah, when did you start from zero to that electrical contracting business? 0102 to 070607. Incredible, I had like three. I had three down. I had three crazy things all happened like with Anna. 06, 07, I was going through my divorce, I was selling my company, and then about a year later, all my other income went away Yeah. Wow. You've got unbelievable experiences, and we could probably go for hours, but let me hit pause for now, and then, yeah, I'd love to reconnect on some of this stuff in the future, if that ever makes sense, would be awesome. Yeah, sounds great. Yeah. Thank Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of The Deal Pen. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way we'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. 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