“I’m Selling Everything!” Why Ben Mallah Is Cashing Out Of Real Estate

We've been delaying. We've been praying. Eventually, the music has to stop. The housing market is flashing red. We're at a standstill. You can't even sell it to break even. All these newer buildings right now. Homes for sale in the US surging to 500,000. Well, loan is due. What are we going to do? How are you finding good deals right now? I'm looking every day and I'm lowballing. Baby, how do you lowball them without offending the seller? There's no offending in business. I'll sell Jimmy Hart to get that house. You wake up in the morning, what the are you going to do? That's the question. You got to be a machine. Have you noticed any effects on the housing market from the tariffs? Tariffs? The tariffs? The tariffs. Tariffs is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary. What do you think are the biggest opportunities right now? Speaking of timing, I mean, opportunity is always out there. You got to look for it and you got to be persistent. I love it. I just absolutely love it. If somebody was a genius, they could figure out do all these Ben Mala, thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee hour. That's all you got to say? I'm just thanking you for coming on the show. But remember, this podcast is sponsored by car poolool tables, baby. You better get one. Can you put one in your house? How much did this cost right here? They start at about 20 grand and they go up to maybe 50 depending on what you want. Ford Mustang 65 Mustang. You can get the 69 Camaro. This was the copy of the Indianapolis 500 pace car that Mario and Dreddy won and was personally here and blessed it. And we do the 59 Corvette and we do Shelby's. We have them signed by Shelby before he passed away. And we can make them any color you want on the felt. We can do any body paint you want. Could you do a Ford GT? Real bumper, but not real wheels. The reels are real, but they're shrunken down. Okay. But the fenders are I mean the grill's real, the bumper's real, the headlights are real, the emblems are real, and they're licensed by Ford and GM. So, what's your affiliation with them? With who? With with the these pool tables. I created it. You created it and another company. Creator. I did it because I wanted one in my house. Because the the long story, the short story, the long story is this. Everyone was about three years old. All right. I wanted to get him a car bed. Why? Cuz I always wanted a car bed when I was a kid. But no, I slept on the goddamn floor or in a bathtub. Can you imagine a little kid? I slept in a bathtub. Can you imagine growing up like that when I was a little kid? Nowhere to sleep. Sleep in a bathtub. All right. Yeah. It was a tiny little house. It was My father bought a little bungalow. You know what a summer bungalow is? Okay. and he bought it where and he made us live in it all year round. The shower was a hose hooked up in the backyard until he built us a real bathroom finally. And uh that's the way we lived. And uh poor white, but we weren't thing was he wasn't poor. He could have done better. He wasn't rich. He was, you know, a city worker. He made a salary, but he was the ultimate cheapkate. I told you about my father, didn't I? Well, it was the ultimate cheapkate. You know, he take two ply toilet paper, make two rolls out of it. So, would he save money then and invest that money or what would he do with all of his excess money? He did stash it away, you know, he put away like in, you know, bonds and like that or whatever. He did piss himself away in some investments, but the point is he had no quality of life. His mentality was he grew up in the depression and they want to hoard every penny they had and even if they had a few extra bucks, they weren't going to spend it and make their family happy. They rather live with the ketchup bottles upside down, putting water in it and shaking it up to get every drop of ketchup. Sounds like me. You do that, don't you? He likes you out of laziness cuz he's too lazy to go buy another. He just does it for the thrill of shaking the bottle. Whatever turns him on. And you know, so anyway, that was where we grew up. You've also been very vocal about having $500 million in assets. I'm curious because we've now talked for a couple of years and that number has stayed consistent through those couple of years. How is this process going? When you pay all of these taxes, how much is that affecting your net worth and your equity? I mean, a lot of your profits are going to be going towards tax unless you can 1031. Well, as you know, or you probably don't know, um, for the past few years, there hasn't been a lot of opportunity in real estate. And that's life. It's a market. It's a cycle, you know. So, what do you do? You just keep fine-tuning the stuff you got. You sell some stuff off, you know, and you do whatever you can do. But there hasn't been a lot of opportunity in the past few years. Why not? Because we're at a standstill. You know, everybody locked in a lot of low rates and um you know, prices went up, rents went up, and uh everything is just overpriced, and uh there's not a lot of action going on right now. I mean, you know, the institutions, they go out and they they buy their five cab. Who the can I say? Sure. Who the wants to own a 50 or hundred million asset and and have all that responsibility and all that liability for a 5% return and then if you know and then if you leverage it, it used to be you make money on the bank. Okay? But now you're not making money on the bank. the banks, you you're losing money cuz it used to be you borrow money at 4%. Right? And if you had say a 6% return, then you're making money on the banks. You're making that two point spread. You got debt. So now you can't borrow money cheap. So you're not making money. I made a lot of money just using the bank's money. And now I can't do that cuz rates went up. So why aren't prices coming down faster? Well, because you know, we live in a world now where they keep finding new tricks and you know, they don't want the to hit the fan. Can you imagine if it was exposed to the market? I'm surprised these stock guys aren't smarter because, you know, if they really really looked into the bank is only worth what the loans are. Correct. Mhm. If the loans ain't worth what they loaned them on, you know what I mean? Then the bank ain't worth what it should be because the loans ain't worth what they should be. So what happens? The stock goes down. Just like when I lost that million bucks on that California bank with our preferred stock, the loans weren't worth they were only worth 50 cents and a dollar. Well, then the bank's only worth 50 cents and a dollar and eventually if they hit such lows, then the bank just goes belly up. So, you think someone is going to forgive some? The price goes to zero. This remember you weren't around in 2008. I used to trade City Bank at a dollar. What happened? It's worth a lot of money, man. You would have made a fortune buying a dollar. It's life. It's a cycle and you just got to ride a roller coaster. Do you still predict though that when these loans come due, these people are going to have to sell their properties because they can't afford, they didn't price in paying 7% to borrow for these commercial properties? Do you still think this is happening? And it's just delayed out. I see it happening every day. Every day I'm seeing more and more. And there's a ton of on the market. But right now, we're at the point where they don't want to sell at a loss, okay? And they can't get their money back, okay? They can't even sell it at break even. All these newer buildings right now. They can't. And now they're going to have to eventually come to the point or the bank's going to have to come to the point say, "Okay, the loan is due. What are we going to do? We've been delaying and uh we've been praying and uh we've been doing all the you know we can't eventually the the the the music has to stop and this cat has to get out the bag and unless rates what they're basically praying is that rates are going to finally come down and then these loans will be good again and the properties will meet the debt ratio and then and they'll have cash flow. Okay, but right now at the new rates they'll be in a negative. Okay. Cuz your four is now a seven plus and they can't handle that. And then who the hell wants to own real estate when you have no cash flow anyway? That's stupid. Yeah. Now, for the average person who's interested in the real estate market, who should not buy a home? If you can rent a property right now for less money, the equivalent property, than owning it, I would suggest you wait, okay? And just rent it. Now, by owning it, if it's a break even and the same, you might consider it just like we were talking earlier. If you think there's going to be future appreciation in the value of the home, then you say, "Okay, well, it doesn't matter whether I rent or own, but at least if I own, maybe prices will go up in homes and I'll make some money there." So, you know, everybody's got to, you know, has their own risk tolerance and u you know, and you got to just decide what's best for you. Do you think that people need to own a home anymore? Do you think that maybe a home is personal? It's not business. So, you know, it's like this house. This house is somewhat personal. Well, to me, it's business. Everything is business. Um, but you know, homes are normally personal, you know, cuz you got kids, you got wives, you got two cars, you got all these pools and all this and uh it's a personal thing. So, you're paying for the uh, you know, the amenities, the pleasure in life to, you know, what the to the point of working if you're not going to enjoy your life. See, I almost think that this myth of home ownership is going to go the way of a college education where people put it down your throat that you need a college degree. And I feel like there's that same sort of pressure for a lot of people that they feel like, I need to own a home even though when when I look at the prices, I'm like, it just doesn't make sense. The masses of people, the middle income, okay, the middle income masses of people should buy a home because that's really their only way of giving themselves that extra protection down the road. It's a forced savings account. You keep paying down the mortgage. What happens in 20 years? You're sitting around with a house. It's going to be worth a half a million bucks or more and you're not going to have a mortgage on it. So, it's a good thing for people that have trouble saving money, you know, and, you know, they'll get the appreciation, you know, from the house and uh it's it makes sense for the average person. Yes. What do you think about the theories that home prices have peaked overall and that we're having an aging population is going to go into care facilities. There's going to be an influx of homes on the market and our population's somewhat declining and there's going to be less demand maybe for single family homes. I don't have a crystal ball, but I can tell you, you know, you don't know. I mean, Mark, listen, it's you see it go up, then you see it go down. You see it go up, you see it go down. You see it's stable. I mean, you know, you just if it's your home and you're living in it and you can afford the payment, then you know, of course, you want to own a home. You know, what's your overall read right now of the housing market? Right now, people are not, you know, there's not a lot of houses moving. Things are kind of like, you know, unless you're in some high growth area where things are booming, you know, I mean, it's pretty much, you know, just flat flat houses sitting on the market. There's not five people making office for them like it used to be at the same time right away. And there's not bidding wars going on anymore. um rates are up, you know, and uh that's the thing, you know, typically if uh you buy a house for a million bucks in today's rate environment, you know, you're going to be paying probably with taxes and insurance somewhere between 89,000 a month. Have you noticed any effects on the housing market from the tariffs? The tariffs. The tariffs. The tariffs. Have you noticed anything? Listen, I'm so sick of hearing about tariffs. Listen, one day the tariffs are this, one day the tariffs are that. It's just a it's it's a game, okay? It's a game. All right? The people in the in the market just forget about tariffs. Tariffs are just political, okay? It's a way to, you know, play a card, okay? to scare people and negotiate to get something else or, you know, it's going to, you know, if the tariffs do go through um and get jacked up to the roof, then yeah, the cost of goods are going to be more money. Okay. Do we get wood from China? I don't know. How do we get wood from our own country? Canada. Canada. Okay. Well, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, listen, [ __ ] happens and it happens. You just got to deal with it. But I can tell you right now, the homebuilders, I know for a fact a lot of home developments they built were converted to BTR, which they said. You know what BTR is? No. Build to rent. Oh. Oh. Because they couldn't sell them. It's true. I show you on my computer. They were on sale right now. The whole thing you buy the whole development of houses. So they're having trouble selling these houses. Why were they having trouble? Is it just like the race? The same guy that used to see the point is when they when they it takes years and years for them to go out, find the land, secure the land, get all the improvements done, the roads, the power, the water, all that. It takes years to put all that together when you build like say 100 or 200 homes. So when they did it, rates were low. that type of financing you typically, to my knowledge, don't fix. Okay? Banks don't fix them. They don't want the risk. Um, so, you know, they got bridge loans or if they got a bridge loan, they could have fixed it. Um, anyway, the point is when they started this project, rates were low and people were buying it out of homes. Why? Because there were home loans for three and a half%. Okay? So, that means you're going to pay $3,500, you know, on a what is that? Um it's it's um on a million bucks you only pay 35,000 which is only 3,000 a month. Okay. Now it's double or more. So of course you know people are just going to stop buying homes. There's a lot of home builders in Las Vegas go up. Huh. There's a lot of home builders in Las Vegas right now that are offering free incentives and free upgrades if you buy and they're Yeah. They're free upgrades if you buy this house today. will give you a free dishwasher and it'll be stainless steel or they're discounting the price of premium materials by 50%. That's where it starts. Okay, that's where it starts. And then they'll sit around. They'll sit around, but sooner or later if they got debt, which they do, they're going to have to discount that and hopefully walk away with their pants still on. So, who right now is buying and selling in the real estate market? I mean, there's not a lot of action going on. I mean, there's always deals going on. Institutions are always moving money. Why? because it ain't theirs. As long as they they don't want to sit on your money, they don't, you know, they want they got to put your money to work. They got to tie that [ __ ] up, okay? Uh so, you know, they'll buy I don't know. Anybody buys on a five cap these days when rates are seven is nuts. It's it's stupid. Okay. Unless you're in a 1031, you're going to save taxes. And you know, it could be some very strange weird reasons, but on on a big picture, it's stupid to buy borrow money at seven when you're only getting five. It means you're two underwater, you idiot. And you know, whatever. And then you're only getting 5% on your portion. So, um, right now we're in a standstill, you know, and we're waiting for the banks to finally, you know, fess up. you know what fess up means and and and open it up and say listen you know we got to get rid of this you know we can't keep sitting here with loans that aren't you know you know holding the value that they had when we loan the money and then you know then they'll have to sell them off take a loss write off their losses and hopefully the bank will stay intact and everybody live happily ever after and uh they'll do it all again so how are you adjusting your own strategy right now what I'm doing you know everybody's got their own personal I run a portfolio, you know, all different types of diversified assets. You know, right now we're trying to, you know, move away from retail. Um, and you know, we're limiting the amount of hotels we have. And you know, what I'm doing is I'm always looking at a property. Is this place making me money? Or if I sell it and I take that money from the sale and would it make the same amount of money if I put it in say taxree med bonds 5%. Okay, because you know the money I may be making more than 5% on the property, but then it's taxable. So what's my NOI after 37% tax, you know, paying tax on it? What does that number equal versus if I just take the money for the sale, put it in taxree beauty bonds, and what's the difference? Well, I might take less money. Why? You know why, right? Why would you take less money? Because you have to pay taxes on taxree. No, I take a little less money because I don't have the responsibility and the time and the work and and the and the liability of owning a big hotel when I can have the money safely sitting there giving me a return. I mean, you know, it's a give and take, you know, and then, you know, it's it's everybody's got their own portfolio in life to manage, you know, but right now I'm waiting because I know those apartments are coming. I see them every day. They're just sitting on the market. The brokers all tell me, you know, they they can't sell right now because the the the sellers know, but they don't want to swallow the fact that their properties don't cash flow and um the banks aren't ready to do any negotiating, short sales, you know, we're waiting, you know, they're just waiting and waiting. So, we talked to a lot of entrepreneurs on this show, just like this episode with Ben Ma, but one thing we haven't really covered is how do you actually get started? Like, what's the first step? How do you set up an LLC? And where do you even go? Well, fortunately, we've actually partnered up with a busy to sponsor this episode because I've used them myself, and I got to be honest, it couldn't have been any easier. Setting up my LLC took less than 10 minutes, and I had utter confidence that everything was getting filed properly and professionally. Busy has helped over a million people start their business, and they make the entire process super simple. There's no confusing paperwork, no legal jargon. You just fill out a short form and they handle the rest. Plus, they include your first year of registered agent service for free, which a lot of other companies charge up to $250 for. And the best part, there are no hidden fees or surprise subscriptions. What you see is what you pay, plain and simple. So, if you're ready to finally start up that business idea you've been sitting on, there's not a better place to start than busy.com/ic. We also have a link down below in the description. That is busy.com/ic. B.com/ic. Seriously, guys, used it myself. Highly recommend it. Why do you buy bonds instead of index funds? Index funds are taxable, too. Yes, but they can grow at more than 5%. And probably more than 37%. What? They could also not grow, right? That's true. Yeah. I mean, the thing is this. I'm not saying I do everything in bonds, but I keep a safe haven of bonds. So, at least I know I got that to protect me. Why? Because they're 100% safe and they're taxfree. Anything else I have to pay 37% on except capital gains that's 20%. We're 22 now. So, how are you finding good deals right now? I'm looking every day and I'm lowballing, baby. How much? I'm lowballing the out everything. And if you don't like the offer, then write me the one you like and then I'll go back and show you. You know, it's a game you play. The more you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it. You got to play the game. So, how do you lowball them without offending the seller? There's no offending in business. Wouldn't they just say, "Oh, this guy's not serious. This guy's not serious." Listen, I'm not making crazy offers. My kids My kids underwrite this stuff. They have formulas. They have underwriting. They plug the numbers in. How much is bringing in, how much is going out, and we figure out what is the proper price for us to pay, and do we have to make capital improvements to the property? That's another factor. Okay, I negotiated a deal. We just went into contract or going into contract. You know, the place I could blink an eye and really make the place the way it should be with a million bucks. And I asked for that million bucks. We ended up splitting it. They're going to give me a half a million credit. I mean, you know, it's a it's a game you play, but I'm going to have major 1031 benefits by buying that, you know, that. So, you know, there's a lot of factors involved. You got to figure out what's important to you and what are you accomplishing, but it's all about there's no offense. All right. This is the number I came up. Well, how'd you come up with that number? This is how I came up with it. It should be a seven or eight cap. Am I saying it too much? I don't like that. Now, here's the thing. You could say as much as you want for the members version. And if you guys want to see these episodes completely uncensored, join the membership and we're not going to bleep anything. Bleep everything. Bleep. Um, you know, basically there's no offense. Listen, I'm not making stupid offers, but on average, I'm offering about 25% less than what they're asking. That's what that's what their fat is. Does it help or hurt to have your YouTube channel? Do people ever see your offer and be like, "Wait a second. This is Ben Mala. I saw him on YouTube yelling at the homeless guy behind the the ride aid. Does it help you at all or does it give you credibility or do they just say, "Ah, this is Ben. He's he's probably filming this." They never say, "This is Ben. He's filming it. Everything I do is real." And they know if I tell them I'm going to make up an offer on a property, I'm real. It's a one-page LOI. It has my name and signature on it. They take it very serious. You know why? Because my name's not Jack. I got the money. No, I mean the YouTube thing I don't I don't you know does it help in in people knowing who I am? Yes. Okay. Yes. Most people most brokers especially they know who I am and they will respond to me where they probably wouldn't respond to him. Mhm. Um so it does help me because it shows who I am. I mean there's nothing fake about me. There's nothing, you know, it's all real. Uh, so they know this guy is the real deal. Okay? You know, like my wife said, "What'd you do all day? What'd you do today?" And I told her, "You want to know what I did today? Why don't you read the paper?" You know, there's a news article about what I a deal I just closed. Anyway, um, the point is it does help. How often is it that someone comes to you with a deal from YouTube that they just want to sign? I get them. I get them. I get them. And I almost had one, but I didn't want to go out of state. In fact, I fed it to the guy that me and you going to visit. Yeah. In Georgia. Okay. Um I do get opportunities, but they're mostly out of state. You know, anything going on in Florida, I pretty much know about. Got it. And I don't really want to branch out, you know. I I don't do deals from, you know, I don't get a lot of deals from YouTube, though. So, you're saying you're trying to get more liquid, but at the same time, you're still buying a lot of deals. Well, I'm always going to be buying if the deal makes sense. Mhm. Because I got kids to run. My kids run everything. I don't do it. If I tell them tomorrow, hey, go take over that 250 units over there. They'll say fine. They'll go over there and they'll take over that and they'll run it and they'll make money. They'll actually do something to make money. I said, I'm not going to pick on Jack. I'm sorry. H to tell you. Or they could be like Jack and do nothing. How do your How do your kids stay motivated to actually go and kill managing a 250 unit apartment complex? I don't. But how do they like how do they how did you foster gonna hire an on-site manager? They have an on-site maintenance person. How are they how are they so motivated? How are they motivated to do? They're hungry. Why are they hungry when you've done so much that they could theoretically just be a bit lazy? My kids came from nothing, the older ones. And they're hungry. And they want to do it on their own, too. They wanted they listen I couldn't count the number of deals my kids have done or places they've lived in like gypsies all over the place. I couldn't even I tried to think about all the places my middle son lived. I couldn't I couldn't I I lost count. I couldn't remember. It was too many of them. Anyway, they I trained them. They grew up with me. They came from nothing like me. So they're they have the same motivation or hunger of being able to know that they've made millions of dollars and they can take care of the family and they can enjoy their life. I mean I'm an I'm their example. Well, look where the [ __ ] I live. They all live in million dollar houses. Not like this, but they live in multi-million dollar houses. They got boats, you know, not they'll get to my level when they're my age. But anyway, what are you talking about? What about your youngest? Who your youngest? Yeah, your youngest. He grew up in affluence. So, how do you cultivate that like that hunger? Well, he's not spoiled. I mean, you know, he he appreciates whatever he gets. And I I I still I you know, my youngest son, you know, I'm constantly giving him things to do. Okay. Yeah. He's the one that's going to go to college. He's graduating high school in a couple of days. He's going to college here in Tampa. And um he's interested in the stock market, you know, but I think he's really gambling. He just call you stock like this gambling. That's why he like stock market. Who you bullshitting? But anyway, he he he he's um definitely money driven. Likes to make money. He he he has that he has that bug that we all have. Is he born with it or spend money or that was taught? He's been around me and he knows that money makes your life a lot easier, you know, or helps and it definitely, you know, it's nice to go out to dinner and not worry about what the bill is, right? Well, you don't know. But um you know, luckily I'm I'm I'm lucky with all my kids. My kids all got the bug to make money. And if I tell you the young one, listen, go do this, go do that. Listen, during the hurricane here, he was out there filthy, dirty, shoveling sand, pressure washing, whatever the we had to do, we do, you know. And he also we go on a yacht, he works the boat with the captain, you know. He wasn't with us when you went, did he? Okay. Um anyway, you know, I try to raise my kids to where they're they're definitely um what's the word I'm looking for? Motivated. Hungry. Motivated. Now, what would you say to parents whose kids are not hungry or motivated? I think kids when you live with your kids, you spend a lot of time with your kids. Typically, a lot of them follow in whatever you do, you have to set the example and you have to put them in the environment. Okay? I put my kids in the environment. When Ben Jr. was in his first year of college and I saw he was just partying and having a good time, I told him, "College is not for you. You know, here's an address. We just bought the apartment building. Ship your car from California to Florida. Go get an apartment over there in this building and take the [ __ ] over and start collecting the rents and make sure everything's fixed." And he did. And he was 19. He was 19. Why did he do it? Did you like offer to pay him a lot of money? Well, he had no choice. I mean, it was either that or I had to walk away from him. I mean, I wasn't going to keep paying 50 grand a year for him to party in school, you know? I mean, what are you going to do? You're not going to school. You're not get you're taking course. You're not getting good grades. All right. You had a you had a good time for a year. I'm glad you had a good time for a year. Now, go and then this way. I'm also protecting myself by by helping my kids. I'm protecting myself because now I'm I'm almost 60 years old and I want to take a break. I want to enjoy life, you know, now let them take over and run everything. And now they all have the experience to do that. Did he resent you at all during that time where you pulled him out of school? No. How did he feel when you said, "Sorry, no more partying, but you have responsibility." Such an abrupt change. Listen, he he he he did what I asked him to do. I told him, "Go over here to Larville, Florida. Move in the building." He did. He took it over and he was already grew up in the business around the business. So, and he saw that how the business has helped the quality of our life cuz he remembers being dirt poor. I remember, you know, living really rough for my I had in when I was 18. So, I was, you know, bad shape. Well, I was, you know, I was in the army and, you know, barely ends meet. But anyway, um, I'm lucky. You know, all my kids step up to the plate. They do whatever I tell them to do because they know it's the right thing. Okay? And they get rewarded. Okay? They all live in, like I said, million-dollar homes. They all have boats. They all have fancy cars. They all can go on vacation. They all take all their kids are in private schools. They all do very well. Does being rich make you happier? I mean, I' I've lived without money. I wasn't very happy. So, I mean, you know, listen, it depends with, you know, am I happy all the time? No. I'm sometimes I'm unhappy because I got issues I'm dealing with, but it's a lot easier living with money. Yes, my kids are getting a quality education. All of my nieces, my nephews, my grandkids, uh you know, my kids, uh whatever, they're all getting great educations. Why? They go to great private school and you know, and yes, they go on vacations and they enjoy their life. And it's a lot nicer having money than sweating and struggling and worrying about paying your bills. At what point do you notice that quality of life change most dramatically? I mean, when you feel like you're not worried about the dinner bill anymore. I remember counting the pennies to buy lunch for my kids. Pennies. Making sure enough to pay the California tax when you get two tacos for a dollar at Jack in a Box. They remember it, too. I mean, you know, when you can not worry so much about paying your house note and you don't have to worry about stuff on your cars. I mean, that's, you know, you're at a level in life where you can kind of relax. At least, you know, you got enough money to pay your necessity bills and and you ain't got car payments and and all that, you know, and you can handle an emergency when it comes up. I mean, it gives you some sort of comfort of saving that stability in life. Is there ever a point of having too much money where it just invites problems? I don't know. I I don't know. I mean, you know, not really because I got kids that I have to think about leaving it to. So, I always wanted to make as much money as I could. So, I have enough to spread it around everybody. Um, you know, and then I want to, you know, be able to live without worried about getting on my plane, you know, whenever I want and using the plane a couple of thousand an hour, whatever. Uh, you know, I want to go on my boat and it cost uh $3 a gallon and I need 2,800 gallons of gas uh or diesel. I mean, I don't know. It's nice to have money and not have to worry about it. you know, my American Express bill came in today and, you know, it was, you know, probably double what it normally was. I didn't give a I saw what it was. It was logical things. We don't piss money away. We don't waste money. I'm not a degenerate gambler. Uh, you know, so, you know, look, I got I got a car pool table. You know, it's nice. And a lot of people when they first start making money, they're like, "Okay, I just need to make this amount and I need to have this amount of money to finally be happy." And then they get there and then they raise that number and then they get there and they raise that number. Yeah, that's what I did. I always thought I should have when I remember when I was younger, I always said when I first became a millionaire, I said I should have if I'm 35, I should be worth 35 million. That was my weird way of of of of setting my goals. And then when I'm 40, I should have 40 million. And then when 50, I should have 50 million. But maybe the timing was right for me because a lot of timing has a lot to do with it. I call it luck. I don't I don't really believe in luck. I believe in timing. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time with the right money to do the deal, you know, and then it grew to be, you know, I I I exceeded my goals. Put it that way. Okay. But even once you exceeded all of those goals, you didn't really think about it anymore. You don't think about it. You just keep accumulating. You just keep doing it. If you're hooked on what you do and you're hooked on growth, money is the reward of busting your ass and making deals and making [ __ ] happen. I mean, it comes, that's the reward. and your bank account grows and your wealth grows. But it, you know, was I money driven? Yeah, because money was the reward. But I I always had the hunger with to find the next deal or better yet, have three or four deals going on at the same time. That's what I like to do. What do you think are the biggest opportunities right now? Speaking of timing, I mean, if somebody was a genius, they could figure out do all these empty office buildings, but I ain't seen that genius yet. I mean, opportunity is always out there. You got to look for it and you got to be persistent. I mean, you know, I was on the phone today with the same deal. It was 160,000 a unit about 3 or 4 months ago. All right. And the broker's calling me today saying, "You know what? I get the guy there at 130 a door. It's 30,000 a unit. It's a couple hundred units. That's $6 million less he's willing to take. But even at buck 30, I didn't like it. And, you know, I'm more comfortable at about a buck 10 or a buck 15. you know, I got to be comfortable with the deal. So, you know, but but the point is I'm going to keep waiting or I'm going to keep making offers and I'm going to keep lowballing until the right deal comes, you know, and right now it's just moving slow, but it's moving. And if I can't buy, then I'm going to sell. If I ain't spending my time finding deals, then I'm going to be selling deals. What would you stay away from? Office buildings. I don't have any knowledge in industrial. Industrial always scared me because they're such large spaces that if they ever went empty and you need a specific type business to be in it, it would would be very dangerous. Um, so um, offices uh, you got to know what you're doing in industrial. I mean, you know, it's all about finding a deal. Palmets are great. Retail's another animal. All right. The only there's only one way you're going to make money on retail. You got to buy it with vacant space. M because when you buy it with vacant space, you're getting it for free. You're buying it on a cap rate. If you go out tomorrow and you buy 10 shops, okay, but only seven of them are rented, you're buying that property based on the rental income of those seven units. The other three that don't have any income, they just come with the deal. And then you rent them out and then your cap rate goes up and you made money. I always see those places that have like a 50% vacancy and they have these proforma rates on them that they're just trying to price it because they're living in a dream world. All right. Nobody buys on a proform. Okay. That I know of that has any sense in real estate unless apartments. Yes. Because with apartments, you pretty much know you can rent it. You know what the market is. You know the guy down the block is is charging $200 more a month. Okay. So, yes, that's and apartments. Yes, you can buy a performer if you're 100% sure that that you could raise the rents and the market's higher by throwing in some new appliances or whatever you got to do. But perform typically you don't see ever in retail. If you do, then the seller's just dreaming and he's got his head stuck up as you know what. When you're negotiating in real estate, is money really the only thing that has any value in terms of negotiation or have you seen people win or lose deals due to personality or any other factors? I mean, everything in real estate is contractual, okay? You got your terms, they got their terms. As long as your terms come to meet together, you got a deal. All right? If people It's not I've never been emotional or anything, you know, like that with a with a real estate deal. I mean, I've done deals with snakes, guys that I knew were crooks, guys that went to jail for being crooks in real estate and other things. And and I still did business with them. All right? Because as long as you know, you know that the guy's a crook, then you know, you got to watch every little thing you're doing and cover your ass a lot more than you would normally. But the point is, it's not emotional. I've come across people with all kinds of personalities, you know, and you just, you know, you ignore it. It's not number one, in my world, it's all done by brokers and lawyers. I don't really get involved. I mean, you know, I get involved by making sure it's a great deal, making sure it's what I want to buy. But as far as making a deal, I just like I don't know if you were there right when you were there eating your hot dogs, I um I was telling I said, "Let I told my lawyer, let me get the broker on the phone. Let him deal with it. Oh, these people want this, they want that." And the broker says, "Okay, I'll handle it." All right. That's why you deal with brokers. You have lawyers. That's their job, you know, to make the deal happen. You just, you know, make the decisions. Now, in business, there's a saying that you could have better, cheaper, or faster, but you could only pick two. Well, what if I told you that you could have all three? 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How important is it to be liked in the transaction? Because if a guy is just nice to you, you don't think that like, hey, I'll shave 20 grand off. It's just a pleasant guy to deal with. No, I've never seen it happen on buy side or sell side. It doesn't matter. It's all numbers. There's nothing, you know, personal about real estate. It's numbers. How much money's coming in? How much money is going out? But you're talking about commercial real estate. How does how does this apply to residential? I mean, you know, homeowners are a different breed. But even with homeowners, it's the salespeople that are handling the transaction, okay? You know, unless you're doing uh you're buying from an owner direct, okay? You know, that's different. I guess if you're buying from somebody and you smoo them over and you win, there was a crazy one I saw on Twitter recently. Uh, it was a handwritten letter to a family who had owned this home for generations in Hancock Park. And it was an old home from the 1920s. And their only wish was not to sell it to a developer, but sell it to a family who's going to keep the home in its character. And this person wrote this incredible letter. And the seller posted this on Twitter saying, "This is a letter we got, and they seem perfect. They were going to take care of it. They were going to make this their own." Um, and they did a deal and they [ __ ] them. Yep. They tore the house down immediately after closing. You know, they had pulled permit. They were getting everything started the second the deal closed. Reminds me of that old nursery rhyme or whatever or the old old kitty thing with the three little pigs. They'll huff and they'll puff and they'll blow your house down. But, uh, similar situation happened here. Similar situation happened right here in Cle right on the main ocean front here. The developers came in. This little old lady owned this nice house right on the inter coastal here. And some developer came in. He bought up everything around it and she wouldn't sell. So now she and they did everything they could to piss her off and they cut off her power while they were building. They cut off her water. They did all kinds of things to make her life miserable to make her sell. She wouldn't sell. And she actually stuck it to him. She I don't know what the name of the document was, but she recorded a document while she was alive saying that that house could never be anything but a single family residential house ever. And to this day, you got all these apartments and condos all around it and her house sitting right there on the on the the tip of the the land on the water. I always think about that whenever I try my boat. But yeah, I mean, you know, some people have emotional, you know, some people, you know, they they're, you know, just to me it never was emotional. I don't care. It's all about numbers. It's just uh real estate is a is a is a thing. It's material. It's an asset. You know, it's tangible is the right word, right? Would you place any value, let's just say you're selling a shopping center or a gym, and someone comes to you and says, "I worked out at this gym 18 years ago and I was broke. I was coming up and I said, "One day I want to own this property." and I saved and this is all I could afford. You're asking 12. All I have is nine and this would be a dream and I'll forever be appreciative to this. Would you do that? Depends on the I think it really depends on the situation. I think I think there are certain I'd be like all right screw over 5 10 bucks. You're such a lawyer. Okay, you're such a lawyer. Okay, maybe not me. You're the biggest I know. You're not shaving off aing penny. Who are you? I'm Graham sold me a t-shirt that didn't fit him and hardly fit me. I know. And he never wore it once and he sold it to me for like a great I wore it like three times. Gave it away for free. California uh softy whatever or what do you call it? Radical liberal whatever the hell they are. Anyway, the point is this. It has nothing to do with real estate in my world except the numbers. How much am I paying? How much is it worth? You know, what's the cash flow? Uh if I'm selling, what's my taxes? How much, you know, it's it's all about me. It's not about you. For the average person, how do they negotiate? What would be your advice to teach people how to best get a good deal on something? You got to you got to start low. But I'm not saying go ridiculously low where it's, you know, just total nonsense where somebody wants 500,000 for a house and you can offer them 250. No, but you have to, you know, get it to a point where you know you're going to be happy as the buyer and they're going to still be happy as the seller. It's just a matter of two people finding the number. It's all about money. It's all about numbers, you know. I I don't honestly I don't remember ever having deals that were emotional. I mean, you know, oh, one lady was emotional once. It was right near here, but we didn't do the deal because what happened was she was an old lady, inherited a bunch of apartments from her father, and uh she never ran them, right? She ran them like and she she she milked them for everything she could. And then I I bought one of her buildings and I went in and Vincent handled it, my middle son, he moved he was the manager and everything. and he fixed the place up, made it really nice, raised the rents, um, ran it really like a nice building and we sold it and made a lot of money and she found out. She got mad. She told the broker on the next building she was selling right near here that he could sell the building to anybody but Ben Mala because I made money on a building. What you stupid lady? You should have went in there and fixed the place up. You should have raised the goddamn rents. You should have added value and you would have made more money. But you didn't want to do it, you lazy old [ __ ] What the you been mad at me for? It's stupid to even be personal with real estate. It makes no sense. It's all about dollars and cents. You hear me? You said that in transactions the only thing of importance is dollars and cents. When in your life have you made emotionalbased financial decisions? Have you ever had like a crazy rich person purchase that didn't make any numbers sense, but you just did it anyway? Well, you buy personal things. That's different. Real estate is not emotional. Never. Ever. I never bought a place cuz oh, I like this place. I like the numbers. Now, cars, you know, boats, that's that's totally emotional. That's 100% emotional. And what about other rich guy purchases? like this would be an like I don't know how much that lion costs but I can't imagine that it's very inexpensive anyway these are just things that bring you some sort of pleasure you like a painting why do people spend hundred million on a piece of artwork or 5 million or 10 million why because they feel like they they enjoy it they like it that's emotional tax evasion you know tax evasion moneyaundering moneyaundering he's always He always thinks everybody's up to something. You know, there's always a cynical agenda behind everything. There's a word for that. You always think that there's um conspiracy. You're a conspiracer. So, what are some of the crazy rich person things that you've done? Crazy rich person things. I saw I saw I came up and created a car poolool table. Um I mean, not much. I don't do crazy. Not much. I saw you in a video. You got stuck in the Bahamas because of bad weather and so you flew cigarettes in a private jet to you. Like that's cigarettes. It was cigarettes which are very important. It was tequila which is very important to my wife. And see the plane also had to get my kids back to school which I wasn't ready to go back but they had to go back to school the spring break. So the plane had a lot of missions. It brought the camera guy out there. It brought my barber out there because I needed a haircut. Uh, it brought the cigarettes and necessities we needed. It brought a couple of friends I had that were coming on the boat because my kids are getting off the boat. I mean, I'm I was a traffic management coordinator, United States Army. You know that. I know how to coordinate things. It's all about managing, coordinating things, making [ __ ] happen without wasting money or time. Okay. I was under the impression that you literally just flew cigarettes and the barber. I flew him in because I mean you all right it made sense. There was a seat on the plane. The plane lands. Okay. He gets off the plane. He comes to my boat. He gives me a haircut. He gets with my kids back on the plane. He gives my son a haircut while he's on the plane going home. I like time management. I love to manage my time efficiently because you know you're getting done and saving time can be saving money. What is the cost of owning a plane? Well, you know, everybody has their own way of owning them. You know, do I own it outright? I don't have a loan on it, but I have partners. So, me and a couple of guys that I know really well, I trust. We share the cost of the plane. You know, you could buy planes anywhere from a couple of million up to who the [ __ ] knows 50 million or whatever. You know, ours is probably worth, I don't know, a couple few million. Okay, it's good enough for what I use. I used to have two planes. I got rid of one because I never used it. So, you know, I got one plane. I got a couple of partners. We're into it for if the planes today probably worth, I don't know, a couple million, few million, then we're into it for say 750 a piece or a million a piece. And you know, we pay for we split the expenses and we pay for what you use. If I'm going to fly somewhere, I got to pay for the gas. I got to pay for the pilot. How expensive is the gas and pilot? I mean, you know, uh the gas is going to run about if I go to Fort Lauderdale and back, that's about 500 miles. That's going to cost me $2,500. So, what's that come out to be? About $5 a mile. Anyway, so whatever. That's what it is. That's typically what it costs. Uh and it's about an hour. Oh, wait. It's 2500 bucks an hour with gas and pilot, you know. Well, no, not an hour cuz pilot you got for all day. You know, you can use a pilot for up to it 12 or 14 hours a day, but after that you got to give them a break for how long? 12 hours 8 hours. Yeah, I think so. Or something. But anyway, are there any safety issues of having your own plane? I I hear just the standard They're all being We have a management company that manages the plane. They meet all the requirements. make sure you get all the inspections and they're checking everything and the pilots are fabulous. They're brilliant and my plane only takes one pilot, my jet. So, you know, that keeps the cost down too a lot, but hopefully they're all young guys, so hopefully we're in good shape. One thing I really admire in you is your ability to negotiate everything. Like I see you I saw you in this one video where you were getting an Uber somewhere in like the Bahamas and the guy was like, "Oh yeah, it'll be $35." And you're like, "How about 20?" And then the guy's like, "Okay, yeah, we do." And then you're the Gilligan, you know, your like deck hand or whatever. He was like, "It's $35." Like, but the guy that makes, you know, 20 bucks an hour, whatever he makes, you know? Yeah. Big shot with my money, right? So, do you negotiate every single price that comes your way? I grew up with the mentality of you shouldn't give away your money or you shouldn't have to overspend. I mean, if you want to make a lot of money in life, you can't go around wasting it. You got to, you know, so yeah, I have that, you know, we'll call it the Jew in me. I could say that I'm Jewish. But yeah, I don't know. It's just natural because I know for a fact, listen, does it really matter that there's six of us or four of us in a car? No. So why am I paying more? You know what they do in the Bahamas? They charge by the head, man. I charge you by the head. If you have six heads, I charge $5 a head. It's $30, man. Well, what the the difference whether it's four of us, if you order a XL Uber, you could have one, two people because they want a big vehicle, you have six in it because that's their mentality. They want to get you everything they can. And I'm there to say, well, wait, let's be fair now. Okay, you don't need $5 ahead. When is it ever not worth your time to negotiate? I mean, you know, it's always worth a try, but if the person is just an and doesn't want to negotiate, then you just say, "Well, how important is it to me to appease this person?" And you do, you know, and then sometimes you give a little extra and you really get some benefits in life. You know, my wife was telling me, she said, "Oh my god, she got six little kids with her in Hawaii right now." She says, "Oh, they're going crazy and the lady's acting like a you know what, that's works here." and she's telling us about rules and all this. My wife learned from being married to me for 22 years. You know what she did? She slipped her $100 bill. The rest of a week, the lady treat her like royalty. Kids can do whatever the hell they want. You know what's interesting? Uh Owen Cook uh was saying something that nobody does, and that's negotiate higher. And so what he says if you want to get the best deal on something is if someone quotes you a price give them more and say well how about I pay you double what could I get for that? Depending on what it is of course it could be a service. It could be a car you know the price is the price. What are they going to do? Throw in free oil changes maybe. But I don't know. I mean, listen, every situation's different, but I don't believe in overpaying for because saving money, making money. Thank you. He learned something today. What do you think is the weirdest thing that you've negotiated? A guy once told me he hated the price I offered for the property. He really was he was he was emotional about it. Well, he was getting less money. And honestly, he could have sold that building for more money. Okay. He wasn't getting my terms. See, but you got to understand terms have a lot to do with money, but we'll get into that. The point was in the story was he watched my videos and that's the one time the video actually hurt me. He said, "I'll take your offer, but you got to give me a Batmobile." And I I it came out of like nowhere. It's just like, you know how somebody says something to you that you never expected them to ever say, right? He just And the Batmobile, that Batmobile he got was a really one of the nicest ones I ever had. And um it was signed by the real Batman and Robin and everything. It wasn't wrong for the TV show, but it was worth it was worth a couple hundred grand. And I thought about it and uh I eventually gave in and I shipped it to him. So, you know, but I still felt like I was buying a building for a million dollars less than he probably could have sold it on the market if he would have, you know, I mean, the place needed a couple little things done, but whatever. The point was I'm open to anything. Put it on the table. It's all about two people agreeing, you know? That's it. What's the most you've ever gained from a negotiation? Typically, the best negotiating I've experienced was with banks buying their real estate or I bought loans from banks. I bought loans for 50 cents in a dollar. How do you do that? When a bank has an un non-performing loan, they want to get rid of it and they'll write off the loss. They don't care. They just want to do it. They don't want to go in front of their board or they don't want their investors or anybody. They don't want it. They don't want non-performing loans on their books. So, they want it gone quick. Makes the bank look bad. And once it's gone, everybody forgets about it. And you write off the loss and then blah blah blah blah blah. And that's the end of it. And you move on. So, I've had most of my success with banks buying foreclosures, buying uh doing short sales, um buying notes, and then I foreclose or go make a deal with the with the borrower and do a friendly foreclosure. Um you know, I mean, but that's pretty much where you probably get your your most um benefit is when you're dealing with because it's not personal. The banks just want to get rid of it. It was a deal that went bad. They want it gone. They're not in real estate. Banks don't want to be in real estate. They don't want to own this. Then they got to have management companies. Then they got to have receivers. Then they got to they're open to lawsuits. They have the liability. They don't want they don't want to be in real estate. They just want to loan the money. They don't want to be involved in this. So, you know, banks are pretty much the ones that are most vulnerable uh when you're doing a deal. So, you've been doing a lot of consulting lately. What's a common question that people come to you with? I mean, you know, typically is everybody wants to know based on what their situation is, what's the next step in the right direction. Okay? I get people from all different levels. I get a guy, I get kids, you know, in high school, graduating or whatever or even younger and, you know, and they want to know what the next move is, you know, they want a plan. They want to get cooking, baby. And um you know, so I look at what they are, what they got, who they are, where they're at in their life, and what would I do if I was in their shoes, and that's what I try to tell them to do. You know, whatever. I have guys that have 100 million that can sell with me. I got people that have nothing. Their first getting their first house, and they got to go to FHA, you know, I got some people that can't even raise the FHA deposit. You know what I tell them to do? Because they have an interest in real estate anyway. Get your license. Okay? You go buy that house and you represent yourself and you found a house yourself. Well, FHA is 3 and a half% down. The commissions 3%. How much you going to put down on that $200,000 house? 1,000 bucks. Does FHA allow you to use commissions on a closing towards a down payment? Of course, because number one, it's in the it's in the closing. The money is going to you, correct? It's your money. You earned it. and FHA loans to real estate people and agents and everybody. Yes, they will because if you if you show them, you know, they're not illogical. It would be illogical for them not to. That's what I was doing when I was an agent. I would use my commission. It was a hassle. Well, back then things would change a little. Yes, sure. back then you always it's always question everything you know but if you if the lender is a real lender and they understand listen it's your money you know you earned it you know yeah what are the most frustrating calls that you get or frustrating calls or people that you see people that have just got too much going on in their life and they're not ready for it like you know I I have consults with people that just they're they're trying to be big shots and they didn't earn it we had the video about the guy in Vegas. He's driving a Lamborghini. Okay. But he ain't got no money in the bank. Does that make any sense? Stupid. Why do you drive a Lamborghini if you got no money in the bank? All right. And when I say no money, I mean like at least 50 grand, 100 grand. Sell a Lamborghini and get your together. You know, you don't need it. And you don't want Everybody wants to be a big shop before they earn it, you know? How did he justify buying the Lamborghini? How do you justify How did he like what was his reason when you were like why did you do this? Listen, you know, listen, I'm sure you have done it. We've all done it. When I was young, I bought a Ferrari. I should have what? Okay. I I really wasn't financially ready for it. when you're young and you you you're impulsive and you want to look cool and it's the only way you're going to get a girl is to have a nice car. Uh, you know, I mean, you do things that don't make sense and you have to, you know, you have to discipline yourself that, you know, yeah, it would be nice to have this Lamborghini and yeah, you know, I could have the I make the payment, but then I want money for, you know, something else or I'll never be able to grow or I'll never be able to save money. I mean, you can't make stupid decisions in your life. I've made them. I'll be the first to admit I made plenty of stupid decisions, you know, when I was younger, but I learned from my mistakes. And I try to let people learn from my mistakes, like my kids especially, I always tell him, "Listen, I've been there. I've done that, okay? That was my mistake. And don't do it." And if you want consulting from Ben, that'll be linked down below. Listen, I'm not bragging, but I don't know anybody out there that the average person, not the big shots maybe, can call to get real advice that I'm not looking for anything. I don't want to, you know, they're going to pay the fee because, you know, my time is valuable. I could be working on a $10 million deal. Uh, Rafal crying. He needs to make money running the channel and coordinating and making appointments and all this stuff. The point is this. I don't ever give people bad advice, okay? I just tell them my opinion, what I would do if I was in issues, and I truly try to help them. How many other people do you know that you can for a few hundred bucks get on a phone that's worth uh whatever, 500 million or whatever, and get really good advice. To me, I become your friend. I'm like a friend. I'm a real friend and you could trust and call to get solid, logical advice on your real estate. See, I honestly I was I was telling you off camera, I I think you're underpriced for where you are. I mean, it if anyone books you, it it's at a bargain. Like they are getting the better deal. Now, I can tell people that that don't have a lot of money, you know, cuz sometimes people do get on the phone, I feel bad, and I'll say, "Well, okay." Cuz right away, I'm going to ask them, "What are you making? What do you own? What do you got? I got to understand that person's life. And I'm making notes. Okay, he's this age. He lives here. He's got this much coming in a year. He owns this house. Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay. And a lot of them ain't got and, you know, for them to extra few hundred bucks is a lot, you know, to to spend. So, I try to really help these people. And I've gotten so many compliments and so many people have gone back and come back to me and said, "Oh my god, I'm so glad I listened to you and I did what you said." I had people families in the Bahamas coming up to me, you know, they were traveling from Miami. Families coming up to me and found they heard I was there. They came to my boat, which I love, and they were just thanking me and thanking me, thanking me. A Spanish family from Miami that listened to me and they made money and the kids were there and the kids, it was great. I can attest to this. We We were in the Bahamas and someone came up and you invited them on the boat. Him and his wife. I'm nice to everybody. You're nice to me. nice to you. Carla made them margaritas. When somebody wants to say hello to me or take a picture or whatever, it's the most flattering thing in the world. I love it. And everybody I meet is always super nice. Always. I've never met an [ __ ] Yeah. Well, okay. There was one crazy Jew, but he was mentally ill in New York City once and I had to tell him, "Go away." So, you grew up poor and now you've made a fortune. What would you say are the biggest mentality shifts around money that you've experienced? You know, when you have money, for me it was being exposed to other people that worked hard their lives and made and were successful and um I don't know, you could say it's, you know, moving up a class, it showed me the better way of living. Okay. Yes. When I moved here, I still was kind of rough. I I made a lot of I made some good money before I moved here, you know. Uh, but I was never around like a lot of classy people, you know, people that I was never around country clubs. Now I belong in three of them, okay? I wasn't I I wasn't able to expose my kids to a finer life, you know, where people just and good people, nice people. I mean, they're not stuck up. I mean, you know, there's a lot of rich people in this area here that are just genuinely really super nice people and a lot of them came from nothing like me, but you know, but they they carried themselves and they lived a certain way and I respected it and liked it, you know, with the nice house and, you know, and acted to raise their kids respectful, you know, and they talked like normal people and and respectful people and had manners, you know. It's like I noticed my son, every time my youngest son talks to any adult, it's always yes sir, no sir, you know, and um very respectful and and it really brought our our our quality of life and the way we felt, how we lived a lot better. 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That's the one the part that really pisses me off. I've had people that I've that worked for me that were smart. They they had and they had me to back them and they still do it, but they're worried about stupid like partying and chasing women or whatever, chasing men or whatever the you know, their priorities aren't in order. the kids ain't living like they should. They just, you know, I don't like being around people that don't, they're going through life with just the bare necessities and not really trying, you know, and they have the ability to try. You know, if somebody doesn't have the ability and a nice person, I could tolerate them like you. How do you balance staying financially secure while also enjoying life? Is it much of a calculation in your brain anymore? Like you budget a certain amount for certain things? I mean, I'm not a wasteful person, you know? It's just like when when I took my kid this weekend for his graduation present to the Bahamas. You know, I could have stuck us in the van and made him drive four hours to Fort Lauderdale. Okay. I could have done that and I would have saved whatever the few grand five grand 2500 there could send the plane back and don't pay to keep it there and whatever. Anyway, I would have saved the five grand if I would have made him drive the van. And he would have done it and he would have been happy, you know, but you splurge, but you know, for me, five grand is not going to make or break me, you know. It was it made our life easier. Impressed him, impressed his friends, you know, it made us feel like we're they were special and it was definitely, you know, convenient, you know. So, you know, I don't waste money. I do things in moderation. You live your life in moderation, you know. And then sometimes, you know, I I I correct myself. I had a half a million dollar fan. I'm sitting in a garage and when the rates were going up and I'm saying, "Oh, what the I have $500,000 sitting in the garage. I barely even used the goddamn car." All right. I went through the whole car phase, you know? So, I sold it. 500 grand, you know, sitting in a bank at that time is 5% even in a money market account. That's a couple of grand a month. I don't know. I just like doing what's practical and logical. That's the way I try to live my life. Do I live in a $30 million house? Hopefully, it's 30 million. I don't know. The market right now is going down. But in Florida, you get a weird sense of buyers. It's different when you have a high-end house in Florida. You know, there's always people with money who want to come to Florida because if you homestead it, they can't take it away from you. The bank can. The IRS can, but nobody else can. Is there ever a price tag for you that's just doesn't make any sense or just out of out of your league where you just wouldn't even consider it? Like what? Could just be any like a boat. Sure. I mean, yeah. I would not go out like I want to buy another boat. I'm selling mine right now. You need to buy my boat. You know that. Um you need those losses. So if if I buy it low enough, that's not that you keep mixing personal with with with with taxes. No, I think you could charter it temporarily and then it's but then it's now an investment, depreciate it, and then sell it to me at a loss, a substantial loss. Do that when you buy it. I they got to hurry to be in a business. We'll talk about that later. You could transfer it to a Montana LLC for the purposes of Listen, you guys can come up with all you do this and do that and do this. I don't do all that [ __ ] You know why? Cuz I sleep at night knowing the IRS will never with me. They got nothing to me on. So, I don't cross the line or I don't even get close to the line when it has to do with taxes. I just play it clearcut. You know why? Because it's the tax system that made me who I was today. If it wasn't for the 1031, there is no possible way I would have grown to the level I've grown to. No way. The the the the tax system that we have forced me pushed me to never touch the money and roll it into the next deal and defer the tax. That forced me to grow. How much do you think you'd have if you couldn't utilize the 1031? I mean, I know right now if I was to say I'm going to sell everything and just pay the tax bill, I probably owe about 50 million bucks fine. And I'm, you know, it's definitely a possibility I consider sometimes, but I'm not going to do the whole 50 on 1031 some. I don't know. I might pay I may not sell you. It's it's a combination of a lot of scenarios. You know, you have to when you're managing a portfolio and you're managing your wealth, it's a job and you're constantly thinking about what's the right move to make. You got to make you got to do your homework. You got to sit down. You got to calculate. You got to calculate the tax ramifications on it. You got to calculate the appreciation, recapture depreciation, cash flow. There's a lot of things you have to consider before you decide to buy or sell a property. What do you say to the people who want to get rid of the 1031 exchange? They're absolutely out of their crazy mind because the 1031 is what capitalism is all about. All right. It pushes you to grow. Okay. It's making you want to do more. Do you know by 10:31 and forcing me or not forcing me but pushing me to buy more more materials I'm buying, more jobs. I'm creating more everything. It's just growth. Okay. And and and and that's how a person can grow on a personal level by it's it's a ticket to growth. You know, without the banks and without the 1031, I would be a garbage man today. Do you think that capitalism has gone too far? That maybe some people are getting really, really, really wealthy and other people are just getting left behind. Listen, if people are getting wealthy legally, that's what it's all about. They're the ones putting forth the effort. They're the ones that are putting out the risk, you know, they're taking the risk. uh you know so how can you knock somebody you know listen I'm sorry but I believe because of the life I've lived that everybody can try they may not succeed as well as I did but they can better their life okay when you can go out and anybody can take one course and one test for what few hundred bucks and get a license and then get a loan from FHA and only have to put a half percent down because your license or want three and a half percent. You can, you know, you can go out and buy a forplex for three and a half% down, right? Mhm. I mean, we have these types of tools in our country that, you know, enable you to get ahead and you should take advantage of them. Now what about the theory that wealth inequality as it grows to a certain point can't sustain itself and you do get just a demise of the entire country when it becomes so unsustainable between the rich and poor that overall countries do better when it's a little closer you've been rich or poor so now more people are rich is that what you're saying more people are rich and and better I've never seen unhappy people being rich you have the rich extreme couple cuckoo more extreme and the poor more poor basic Basically, I don't see there's becoming such a bigger divide. There's plenty of jobs out there for people. You know, it's the individual, I think, that really keeps them down and keeps them poor. It's them. They need to train their brain to do positive things that are going to make their life financially more secure. Okay? A lot of people just don't have the mindset. They they're worried about stupid Okay? Or they get hooked on drugs or they get hooked on gambling or they get hooked on alcohol or they're worrying about keeping up with their Joneses and their friends. You know, people need to focus on themselves. Forget about the rest of the world. Who cares what the somebody's doing? Who cares? What are you doing? What do you got? That's what matters. You got to get a plan for your life. And everybody's got a different life. You know, I never went one day to high school, okay? But I always knew that if an opportunity came my way, I'm going to take it. And that's what I did. I just kept taking opportunities and and and and maybe going a little further than the average person wanted to go. So what's holding so many people back? Mentality. And what's causing that mentality, do you think? I mean, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, could it be they're spending too much time worried about, you know, Instagrams and all this online now? I don't know. a lot of people online making money. So, there's two stories, two sides to everything. It's the individual. It's it's their time management. What are you doing with your time? Did you accomplish anything positive today? Okay, let me tell you something. I'll get depressed and pissed at myself if a whole day goes by and I feel like I didn't do enough that I could have or should have or, you know, I didn't do enough. Okay, I I need to prove to myself. You know, I wake up in the morning. I'm thinking about, okay, I got this deal in contract. Is there anything I need to do on that deal? Do I need to call a broker? I need to call a lawyer. Do I need to find out what's going on? Do I need to get repairs done over here? What do I need to do? All right, you got to keep your brain focused on what you can do and what accomplishments you can make. And then you move on to the next thing. And next thing you know, you keep attacking things. You keep knocking things out. And next thing you know, you you you know, then you look for more opportunities because you you took care of the stuff you had to do. Where do you think lack of motivation comes from? Like all of those friends that you had when you were a kid and you were growing up poor, you're probably surrounded by a bunch of other people that were broke and maybe they went in a different direction. Did you notice any strong distinctions? The problem where I grew up was they had the ability. They had the intelligence even even though they weren't educated on I grew up on the streets but they just didn't know how to leave that world and apply the energy that they had and the talents they had you know from the street. They didn't know how to apply it in a legitimate way. If they would have taken the effort and been a little more patient and put it towards something positive and legal, then they all would have been multi-millionaires. You know, I ran into a guy the other day and this guy, he made me a lot of money and made himself a lot of money. I won't say his name, but he was a Cuban guy from Miami. And this guy just had a personality where he talked and he was we became great friends. We were like close. Our families were close. everything. We loved it. We go on vacations. We'd party. He loved to party. He was full of life. We had a great times. And he was bringing people, buyers from Miami, and I was buying up the out of Orlando. And he was just finding buyers, doctors, these people, and selling deals, and he was getting me really good prices. And I was cutting them in with good commissions. And then I think we even I even let him come in as a partner once. And he he was great about dealing with people and and getting, you know, but he liked to party. He just he, you know, I said, "Why aren't you here? You you should be running this building. Let's get these units turned over. Let's get the carpet guy in here. Let's get the, you know, get on top of the rents we got to collect. You know, what are you doing?" Uh, you know, he's having a good time in Miami, you know, with the girls and the booze and the boats and and that's what he wanted to do. And you know he always hustled and made a good life enough living but he never made you know who he could have been. He could have been major major. Does that frustrate you to see that that people can't live up to their It doesn't frustrate me. I just know that when you show me that you're not on the same road as I'm on then I got to get off the road or you got to get off or whatever. I mean, the way I live is, listen, if I feel you're a productive person and you're positive to be in my world, then I'll give you the shirt off my back. I'll work with you. Listen, I love to help people. I mean, that's that's been honestly, all right, it may sound corny, but put it this way. Money can't buy it. I'm not going to say it's better than money, but money can't buy the satisfaction I get when I take somebody and help them go to another level or or or better their life. I've had some serious stories uh of people personally coming to my events and telling me, you know, I've had like guys that I know had a wicked past, a very bad past or they were in the game or gang bangers, whatever you want to call them, and they have tell me this story on because of watching me and and knowing my story and doing what I did and they now take care of the kids and now they're not getting in trouble and now they're living a they feel so good about themselves that they'd be dead or in jail like I was going to You know, if I didn't leave New York, I would be dead right now. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. Or ride away in jail if I was lucky. I mean, you know, it's it's a mentality. You got to want it. You got to want a good life. We're not here that long. Listen, you know, who knows 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I probably won't even be here, okay? It's going to be over. So, you know, make the most of it. And the people that you brought into this world while you're here, that's what you should do, you know? And then maybe, you know, my kids will remember me, my grandkids will remember me and say, "Hey, yeah, I'm living good because, you know, my father did something when his was here. He made it happen." And then we make and then we're making it happen and we all lived our life on this planet, you know, in peace and happiness and, you know, enjoyed it. Do you ever have concerns that maybe a few generations down they just start wasting the money? I mean, you know, they've said that about every generation. You know, they say in the 60s, they said the 60s generation suck. And he said the 70s suck. But meanwhile, listen, you're either a loser or you're a winner. It's up to you. You can be whatever you want to be. You have the power. All right. You wake up in the morning. What the are you going to do? That's the question. Do you know what you're doing? Are you doing something smart? Are you doing something that's going to lead to a better life? You know, are you helping anybody? Are you making money? And it's up to you. How do you ensure that your like great grandkids don't go and take that money and instead of going to college they go and buy like you can't there's only so many things you control in life. All I'm saying is I'm doing the best I can to set them up for success. Now hopefully my kids now are going to set their kids up like I set my kids up and then their kids will be and we all keep living and growing in that same mentality. Okay. By you know our living experience. Has it always been very easy for you to become motivated or have there been spells where you've lacked motivation for a couple months or a year? I've always been motivated about making money because I knew money would make my life better, okay? And make my life easier and make my family happier and get my kids better educations and lifestyles. I mean, I don't know. I've always been motivated since a very young age, even 10 years old. I remember thinking about, you know, because we grew up in a place where we had no money. So it was all about hustling and trying to think about how can we make next, you know, make next dollar. Do you notice any difference between generations in terms of motivation or work ethic? I mean, my kids, you know, which I don't knock them for it, but I they don't have Well, maybe because they don't have to. See, I I sacrificed being a parent when I was very young. I had to. I wasn't the best parent. I wasn't mean to the kids. I took care of my kids, but my kids spent a lot of time in the backseat of a car while I'm running around in the worst neighborhoods buying boxes, fixing them up, or then when they got old enough, I put them to work. I mean, you know, instead of taking them to baseball, which I tried to do that, but they sucked anyway. Um, I mean I I I I didn't I maybe I could have been a better parent, you know, and uh but now luckily they're in a position where they can have the best of both worlds because of my struggle, you know, and they suffered and they struggled when they were young. So now it paid off in the long run cuz now their kids don't have to struggle like they did or like I did. I don't know. Hopefully, we always talk about our kids being not spoiled. You can't spoil your kids. You can treat them good. You can give them whatever you want and can. But you got to make them appreciate it and realize it didn't come out of the air magically. We earned it. Okay. What childhood experience impacted you the most in terms of how you behave now? I mean by growing up so bad and in such a terrible place, I always wanted a better life. Ex. I wanted to escape New York, you know? I mean, so that always and then when I went to California, that was just as bad. When I was in Oakland for 17 or 18 years, was there ever a specific experience that happened? Like you mentioned sleeping in a bathtub or something maybe that happened where you're like, "Okay, I'm never going to do this." Or, you know, listen, I've slept on trains. Okay. I I I've been around I watch people get actually right in front of me in Manhattan in New York and Hell's Kitchen. Um, I mean the whole life experience of me growing up was no fond memories, just negative, negative, negative. The people, the atmosphere, everything. So I was always motivated to get the hell away from it. Get away from these people. Get out of here. Go move on. There has to be a better life, you know. And luckily the army saved my life. If you were to restart today, how would you do that if you wanted to make a hund00 million over the over the course of a lifetime? Assuming you're starting over right now. I mean, you know, these days things are a little different. You know, I would still, you know, listen, I started by working for other people. I managed other people's real estate. And then common sense told me, well, if you're making them money, you can make your own money. So I went from managing and learning to ownership you know and anybody can do that you know anybody can pick a field any field and say okay I'm going to work for somebody else learn that field be really great at it have a passion for it and then I'm going to become my own you have to become your own boss or you have to have your own company you have to what do they call it um you know self-employed self-employed proprietorship ship, whatever. You have to be your own person and your own create your own growth. You can't let somebody else see. You can't work for a paycheck for the rest of your life. You can't. You, you know, you got to have some opportunity. Okay. Just like he's got opportunity. The bigger you grow, the more he grows. What sector do you think you'd end up pursuing? Would it be real estate? Would you try something new like AI? Or do you think you'd go more the YouTube entertainment route? Entertainment I do because, you know, it's just we enjoy it. Well, it's highly lucrative. You're making a lot of money. It makes good money. Yeah. If you were to restart today, where do you think the most opportunity would lie and what you would pursue? I mean, nothing would compare to real estate. That you'd still do real estate 100%. It's the only It's the oldest profession in the world next to you know what? Mhm. You know what the oldest one is? I'm sure it's the one that Graham is a frequent patron of but they had to Hey, they had to go rent a space somewhere, right? True. The second. But um I don't know. I always looked around and the real estate's always been the most solid uh way of of of making money. And listen, I could have went in a car business and buy cars and fix them and flip them, too. I could see that I did. I used to survive before I owned real estate. I'd sell one Mercedes a month cuz I wasn't making much money in real estate. I was managing for other people. I would buy to San Francisco where nobody could park. Parking is impossible in San Francisco. And people would sell their cars just say, "Get rid of I'm tired of paying for parking. I'm tired of dealing with it. And I'd buy him I'd drive it over one bridge, the Bay Bridge to Oakland. I'd put it in a newspaper ad and some doctor out of Haywood or somewhere would come make five grand. That was my little hustle. And um and I used to finance it. Imagine that. I would finance it because what the hell do I care? I mean, for one month, I'm going to owe the bank uh you know, I think the cars were like 10 grand. I'm selling for 15 $10,000 even at 10% is it's a big,000 bucks. It was like nothing. I was using the bank's money. I'm curious, why do content at all? At least now in this stage of life. Is it for fun? Is it for legacy? Is it money? I I I I always I I wanted to be an actor when I was young. I liked entertainment. I always like being enter, you know, entertaining and you know, but then now I'm doing entertainment and I'm teaching people. You see, you can look at all these big shot actors, okay? And I'm not knocking them. I'm not, you know, all the guys, you know, you know, I'm talking about all the whatever. And you can look at all the ball players, okay? And you can look at all the singers and you can look at all the dancers and all these people. Listen, they're very talented people, all right? and they bring amusement and entertainment into your life. But it's nothing, nothing, not one minuscule of the satisfaction you get when you can entertain and help people. Okay? Yeah, they're great actors and they tell a great story, but once the movie's over, that's it. You know, you saw the movie, you laughed, you enjoyed it. What else? That's it. I get to help people go through their life and and improve their life. You know, educating people is very important. Okay? Everybody needs education. I need education. I learn it every day. You know, we all learn that when you can help people and entertain them, it doesn't get any better than that. And make a few bucks while you're doing it. Now, what about implementing Bitcoin? Because I saw Grant Cardone when it comes to real estate is now doing real estate funds that are tied to Bitcoin where he takes the rents to buy Bitcoin and when you buy one of his buildings, you're also buying Bitcoin. I can't get involved with something I really don't understand and I would never ever risk anybody's money in something that I don't know what I'm doing. So, you know, I'm not knocking it and I'm not for it because I don't understand Bitcoin and I've seen it all over the place and I know it's a new thing and yeah, my son told me to buy it when it was a dollar. Ben Jr., he told me to buy Bitcoin when it was a dollar. He even with the dollar. Why didn't he buy it? I think he was in college. Why did you Because you don't know, you know, because the law it could have been a fraud and it's run by computers. And you know who controls the computers? People. And then if the wrong people get in there, I don't know. You know, I heard all kinds of stories here. Good, you hear bad. I don't know. It It's not my generation. Technology. I came when technology was born. Okay. I didn't really grow with it. That's the problem. Guys like you have grown with technology and understand it is more part of your life. So you know what are you gonna do? You can't do everything in life. But do you think it's worth it to take the time to understand it or to diversify 3% into it? It's always good to diversify because when you diversify, if something hurts you, it's okay because you got some diversification there of other things to protect you. So I'm not against it. And then maybe if my son insisted or Aaron insisted, hey, let's open up a Bitcoin account or whatever, I'd say, fine, open it up. But I'd be doing it more for him than me. I'm in real estate just like I don't loan money. What's I don't play the stocks anymore. I just do what I know because if I focus on what I know, I know I'm going to do well. I know what I'm doing. This is going to either sound really stupid or really amazing 20 years from now, but I see a lot of people online, a lot of real estate investors on Twitter saying, "I don't see the point in real estate anymore to try to bust my making 6 7% when I believe Bitcoin is going to average 20 to 40% annualized returns over the next 20 years. Why am I going to do that?" But even even at 10, why take the risk, the work, the Everybody's different. whatever works for you. You're in control of your life. If you have a risk tolerance for Bitcoin and go for it, um, you know, I hope you make a fortune. I know guys that have made millions and millions of dollars of Bitcoin, millions and millions. And and I'm happy for him, but it wasn't my route. I focused on what I knew and I focused on necessity. People always need a place to live. People always need a place to shop. People always need a place to work. People need real estate is the world. You can't live without real estate. You know, if Bitcoin something happens and the computers go cuckoo tomorrow and everybody's Bitcoin can't find it or whatever the happened, uh computer chips or whatever break down, whatever the happens or somebody figures out a way to it up, someone turns it off. You know, you still got your house. You buy your house, you got your house, you buy that building, you know, the people going to pay your rent every month. I mean, listen, it's everybody. It's just like why didn't you become a doctor? You know, you choose your path in life and you choose where you want to put your efforts and your time and you you go for it. You know, it just, you know, it wasn't me. Even stocks aren't me anymore. My my youngest wants to, you know, we will over the summer for his benefit to trade some stocks, but I have no interest in it because I don't do six or 7%. I do value ad. I take garbage and I try to turn it into gold physically, mentally. I create it. I make it happen. I'm in control. I'm not just saying, "Oh, Bitcoin should go up. I'm going to make money." You're not What are you doing? You ain't doing I mean, to me, I like to make my money happen. Make it create it, you know. And uh just like, you know, you work for a living, you're you're creating your wealth. You're in control. If you make money, it's because you did it, not because you invested in Bitcoin. Yes, we got to have investments, you know, and you pick your and choose your investments. I choose mun bonds. You might choose Bitcoin. Whatever works for you is fine. It's your money. You earned it. Looking back, is there a life lesson or philosophy that you've adopted that you wish you implemented earlier in life? Sometimes I I could have took more risk and I didn't do it. I I always played it a little too. I didn't I could have bit off more than I could chew. Did I say that right? I could have bit more off and I could have chewed it. I could have swallowed I could have well I don't know if you like to swallow but that's another thing I don't that um the point is that you know my sons do it to me all the time and it actually gives me a physical pain. We're driving down the street. You know we could have bought that building 5 years ago for half of what it's now. You know we could have bought that bill. I could have bought Why do they say this to you? They just rub it in or what's No, but listen. you know, the facts are the facts and the truth of the truth. Did my kids tell me to buy more property back in the day? And I said, "No, I don't think so. The market's the market's already at a height." I didn't see it coming. I didn't see rents going from 800 to 1,600 in such a short period of time. You don't have a crystal ball. Now, I did pretty good, so you can't beat me down. But could I have done more? I could have done a more. I could have been a multi-billionaire. If if I would have leveraged all the assets, I could have leveraged a lot more stuff that I did. I had the down payment. I could have bought up a ton of, but I didn't do it. I didn't want to over, you know, bite off more than I could chew and I could have chewed it. But, you know, it could have went the other way. My do my kids always say, "Well, you know, it could have went the other way, Dad. You know, the market could have went down or it could have stayed the same and you'd be stuck with all this." So, you know, nobody's got a crystal ball. You don't know what the future is. You can predict it. You can sometimes apply logic to it. Like, yeah, if an Amazon place gets built up in an area where it's it's it's a deserted area and you know they're going to have 2,000 employees there, then you know damn well it pays to build, right? And you know it pays to build retail and you know it pays to create a community, a housing community. That's common sense. It's interesting. I hear that a lot actually when I ask people what their biggest financial regret is, especially people that are like doing well financially. They always say, "I wish I could go back in time and have bought more equity, more assets, and invested more aggressively." But I also wonder if that's a little bit of survivorship bias because they're here, they're doing great by all means. Sure, they could be doing better, but to do better, you have to have a completely different framework. Instead of being conservative and calculated that applies to every action in your life, you would then become risky and aggressive and then that's what it would take and you don't know where that would have also led you. And so it's like, but I came from a being a risk taker, but even though it really wasn't risk, I don't know, it's hard to explain, you know, I always tried to do deals that I knew for a fact I was going to make money. I knew that if I bought this property, I know I can raise the rents if I do A, B, and C to it and manage it better than the last guy. So, there was no risk in everything I did. You know, I always knew ahead of time, I'm I'm making money the day I buy this place because I know what I got to do. I know it's going to work because I already know what the market's going on. Now, to predict the future, that's a different story. Now, what about rising insurance costs right now? Because I know that's it actually came down this year. I just I just insured my whole portfolio and we got about a 15% savings. How did that happen? Because insurance got so high people stopped using it. In fact, you know what I stopped doing? If I didn't have a loan on the property, I didn't get insurance. I only got a liability in case I get sued if somebody got hurt. I said, I'll be the insurance company if there's a fire and it cost 50 grand or 100 grand or, you know, god forbid the whole place burns down, which never happens. I'll I'd rather take the risk than just give that kind of money to the insurance company. Insurance on apartments were always three $400 a unit. Right now they're 15 to 1,800 a unit. All right. In Florida, we get hit hard because of the hurricanes and all that. The problem is this. The insurance companies are the biggest crooks in the world. I'm sorry. It's true. Because they don't they don't have no risk. You know why? Because if they do get hit with big claims, okay, and I've seen it time after time again, they get hit here in Florida with big claims and hurricanes. What do they do immediately? They raise everybody else's rent and make us pay for it. That's what they do. So, they recapture all the money they paid out. I heard another strategy that they use is not to pay out the full amount. They claim some sort of loophole or whatever. that they expect a certain amount to settle and then the lawsuits they expect they're going to spend X amount fighting this and we're going to spend X amount fighting this so therefore it's better for us to fight this thing to try to settle for less most insurance companies like to settle if they can because they don't want to deal with lawyers and they don't want to run up legal fees we deal with this all the time I mean and the lawyers have driven the claims up so high now they make no sense they're just totally ridiculous with something a lawsuit that should be $100,000 is now $500 100,000. I mean, you know, it's crazy. The courts and the lawyers have gone nuts with lawsuits. Is there any solution to this? Stop. You know, the lawyers want make a fortune. You know, if somebody has a million dollar claim in a car accident, you know how much the lawyer gets? 30%. 40. Maybe they can negotiate 30. You're right. Imagine that. They're going to make 300 grand off somebody's car accident. The lawyers have driven the settlements all the way up to the top. And who runs the courts? Who are the judges? Ex lawyers, they control the whole system. The system is is is, you know, they're not going to go against their own people. And lawyers kind of have this like bond. Well, the hard part is that it costs so much to defend a lawsuit, even if it's bas. Yeah. Lawyers are charging ridiculous money an hour now. And then they got to hire people. They got to charge for this. It's crazy. Well, you know, a good lawyer is going to charge 500 bucks an hour now. It's ridiculous. An hour. Do you think it could ever be feasible that we implement a system in the United States where if you pursue a lawsuit and you lose, you are responsible for the other person's legal fees. you know, sounds logical, but technically sometimes you can lose and really not, you know, deserve to lose deserve to lose or maybe it was a you shouldn't have lost so much or, you know, I don't know. I I try to stand in the court system because it's just very very tricky. But do you think that might cut frivolous? I feel like instead of having to frivolous lawsuits, yeah, publics, you know, publics, right? I think they get sued like I don't know how many if you count all the lawsuits they have for slip and falls and most of them you know like constantly like every day they have lawsuits coming in. It's crazy. It would be interesting instead of having to resue for legal fees to sue them back for legal fees. It could just be a part of the dismissal process where the jury then decides okay you sued it was frivolous to this degree 70% frivolous you pay 70% of what you're going to have. But then if somebody sues you for a frivolous lawsuit, nine times out of 10 they ain't got to pot the pistons. They ain't getting anyway. That's true. So what's the point is The problem is is you got the you got the people in life that are always trying to over and and and and and have some slick way of beating the system or doing something that's crooked or doing something that's shady. And they're the ones that ruin if everybody really tries to do the right thing. What if there's a a database for lawyers and you can go back and see their history of performance in the court of law and that evidence and data could be used? Maybe. No, because most lawsuits settle outside of court. They're not going to go to a jury trial. It's easier just to settle and get 20. Either way, we don't use I don't think we have a solution. Paid regardless. Yeah. Unless they took their own contingency and lose. To single guys out there, cuz that's a lot of our demographic is like men 18 to 35. You have had plenty of experience dating, right? What would you say not dating? Mating. Okay. What would you say most guys are getting wrong in terms of dating? You know, you can't get too caught up in a relationship at a young age. You just can't. What is a young age? How it holds? 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 18 to 25. And then it depends on what you've accomplished while you're 18 and 25. You can't get into a relationship unless you got your together and you got your life on track and you're, you know, you're you're moving in the direction you need to be and you're you're self-sufficient, you know, and you're stable and then the other person should be stable, too. I mean, you know, and then, you know, I mean, really, you shouldn't really be getting I wouldn't see people having kids till like 30. I think 30 is really the right year to to maybe start thinking about having kids if you're successful and stable and comfortable in your life. Isn't that early? Because if you're 20, let's just say you're 26, you got your life together and you meet someone. Then it's also like, well, you got to date him for a few years and then you got to get married and then it's like another year and then and then you're 35. Okay. Whenever Listen, everybody's different. You never know. You know, it's all about meeting somebody that's going to make your life pleasant and productive, whether it's moneywise or home life. Like my wife, she don't work, but I still feel like she's productive because she's got her responsibilities. She's got the house, she's got the kids, she's got our life, she's got she's involved. Okay. Uh, you know, it's got to be people that and and we're opposites. 100% opposite in every way. Imagine that. Mhm. You know, it's funny how you say, "Oh, this person likes doing this and I like doing that." Me and my wife are opposites and it works. I mean, everybody's different. We're all human. But, you know, you really shouldn't get caught up in a relationship till you got your own together and you got some money. You got your career going. You got your goals set. You're on the right track. You take care of yourself. You know, and you know, cuz dating, you know, you can start dating, you can start spending money. you know, you want to wine and dine, you want to have a fancy car, you know, you want to have a nicer place. A lot of people don't want to struggle. They don't want to they want it right now. They want to live it now. And that's how they up their credit and uh, you know, and and then put themselves in a hole they can't get out of. That's the worst thing in the world is to dig yourself in a hole where it's almost impossible to get out of. Do you think guys should pay for taking a girl out every single time? I mean, yeah, I think that um, you know, he's still a man, okay? You know, I mean, I think, you know, it depends. I mean, you know, to me, yeah, you're a guy and you're dating a woman. Listen, no matter all the crap that goes on these days, it's still pretty much expected. You know, it's funny. All these women, women's lib and they want to be equal, but you when you go out to dinner, they sure want you to pay the bills, don't they? Yeah. Um, so, you know, I don't know. It's just it's it's the human custom I think that's been just the man's a man still, you know, and typically, let's face it, you know, men make more money than women and men women ain't going to do a lot of jobs men do. So, are there certain things though in a relationship that you would say look out for this, beware of this that you've learned this is like a bad characteristic or red flag. You got to know when the flags pop up and the signals pop up. You got you got to know. So, what are signals that you should be privy to? Anything that you feel is not you know, conforming with your life. I mean, you know, when you stop seeing like people, you know, like, you know, you like a girl and she's whatever, super hot and she got a lot of good qualities, but maybe she drinks too much, you know, maybe that's, you know, not, you know, a good sign. You know, if they overindulge in anything, you know, no moderation or, you know, I mean, you know, the person's got to match you and what your goals are in life. you know, if they want to constantly worry about party party, then you know, you know, it's not gonna get you nowhere. It's going to take you down the wrong road, you know, cuz the party's over the next day and you forget all about it anyway. So, what the hell? How much more did it motivate you to make money and be successful having a wife and having kids? I mean, you know, having the kids definitely was a motivation knowing that I need money. I got to put the I got to pay for these kids food. I got to pay for these kids. I got to have a decent place to live. I got to have a decent car to get around with. I got to have them in school. I It cost money. Kids are not cheap, you know, and you don't want to, you know, have a kid and raise them like uh, you know, a piece of like I was raised, you know. See, coming from such a bad upbringing made me, you know, have a more bigger desire to really do well for my kids and give them a good life. We're going to go on to some rapidfire questions if you're ready. Perfect. Yeah. So, what's the most ridiculous thing you've ever bought that you absolutely love? Probably my statues. Like the pelican out there. There's a pelican out there that looks over the beach and is an eagle. How much were those? I don't know. Somewhere between more than five, less than 10. Batmobiles. Cars. Yeah, Batmobile is definitely I had a lot of them. I had the ones from the movies with the wings. I had the one where it shot fire out the back. I had the machine that came up and shot, you know, you get in these little kicks, but I made money on it stuff, too. Yeah. You know, creating this thing. Um, I mean, I've done crazy things, you know, mostly cars. What's one thing you refuse to spend money on, no matter how rich you are? Refuse to spend money on air. I hate that when you go to a gas station and now you got to put your card in. You don't pay for air. I thought it's free if you just go and ask for it. It's in California. No, but now they got machines on every gas station. Yeah, I always used that might be a California thing though. I just walk in and ask, "Hey, could you turn on the air?" Sure. No, they got machines normally in gas stations and now you got to pay for them right there. Yeah. There's always a compressor in the ground. Give us some kind of convenience for ripping us off on the gas. I always walk in and just ask and the guy's like, "All right." Clicks the button, it turns on. Not here. It's air. You got paper here. Which do you enjoy more, the chase and negotiation and structuring of a really good deal or the moment you close? Finding the deal. Once you find a deal, everything else is programmatic. Programmatic, whatever the word is. So, it's the once you find that deal and you know you got that deal, everything else you get, you close the deal, you got the money, close the deal, you fix it up, you know, then you can start making moves. But finding the deal is the key to real estate. Everything else is easy. You can hire somebody to fix [ __ ] You can hire somebody, you know, to manage [ __ ] You can you can, you know, finding that deal with value add a component. In one sentence, what is one piece of advice that you would love to give to your 20-year-old self? Focus on making money and not, you know, having a good time. You know, worrying about having a good time. I mean, that's the biggest problem that 20-year-olds do. You know, they're just, you know, and it's natural. It's human nature, I guess. You know, you can have a much better time when you're 30 and you're rich. Okay? Spend your 20 to 30 years, 20 to 30 to 10 years doing everything you possibly can to get ahead so you won't have to work so hard when you're 30. And then when you're 40, you'll be even better. And when you're 50, you'll be even better. I mean, really put the time in because you got the most energy when you're 20 years old. I worked well, you know, I partied, but when I first started, when I was 20, I know damn well, I worked constantly for the time I got up, you know, except the weekends you party. Um, I was working probably 16, 18 hour days. And you would have wanted to work on the weekends to add that time. I did work on the weekends and I, you know, really started getting hooked on, you know, knowing, hey, I got to get the [ __ ] done because the quicker I get it done, the quicker I can make that money. So, you know, but partying was always the biggest problem when I was chasing, you know, when you're chasing, you know, out dating and, you know, all that and going out and clubs and drinking. What do you feel? How do you feel about that, Jack? It's really a waste of time. Yeah. I mean, you can do a little You can do it in moderation, but you can't do a lot of it. And you can't get hooked up on what your friends are always doing and trying to keep up with your friends. You know who's having money in the bank. I'm telling you that'll protect you for the rest of your life and lead to a great life. I mean, I don't party and go out that much. It's a pretty but I'm talking like pedal to the metal like head down 10 years 20s. I disagree. I think 10 years is a really big sacrifice. I think if you're like you should do everything within reason. So, like if you know the general idea of the life that you want to live when you're 30, when you're 40, when you're 50, when you're 60, add on like 30%, maybe 40%, and shoot for that. Oh, I'd say double it. It's like I got friends, people I, you know, friendly with, and they say, "Oh, yeah, when I was 20, I was backpacking and traveling the world and, you know, and all that great experience and sleeping in host." And you know, they claim it was a great time, but today they're broke. If I want to go travel to all the places you were backpacking to and all that. I'm going to get on a plane. I'm going to stay in a nice hotel. I'm really going to enjoy the place and enjoy the experience. You should have been working when you were 20 years old, not sleeping in the street and traveling all around. I mean, you know, but and now and now they cry to me how broke they are. Well, you're broke because you controlled your life. Okay? You know, and well, in fairness, we hear a lot of the other side of the token as well. So, a lot of other people say, "I wish that I enjoyed my 20s a little bit more." Gary Vee, actually, we asked him like, "Well, what is if you could go back in time, what would you have done?" And he's like, "I just wish that I would have let myself enjoy my life a little bit during the 20s." If he did, then he might not be enjoying as much now. True. Yeah. But then again, your body, he might not have what he has now to help his if he has kids. I don't even know what you're talking about. But, you know, you know, listen, I don't know. I think you got to earn. You earn and you make [ __ ] happen. Then you enjoy life. That's the way I think it should be. I agree. But I don't think I made my mistakes, don't get me wrong. You know, I don't think it's zero like on or off like a life. You find a balance. Moderation. Everything is good in moderation. Drinking is fine. Uh, eating is fine, traveling is fine, everything, partying, whatever in moderation. But the main focus of your life has to be moving ahead because the clock's ticking and one day you're not going to be able to do it. Time is up. Clock's ticked and you're done, you know, or you're too old to do. So time is so valuable. People don't appreciate the value of time. That's the biggest problem that people don't realize because by the time you know it, you're going to be 30 and you're gonna say, "Oh, I still ain't got my together, you know, or I don't have money in the bank and I don't have, you know, where I I I really wish I was at." I would agree with that. I think it's the main focus that you should have in your I'm not saying you should never go out to a restaurant. You should never go on a date, you know, but you do it within, you know, you have a little entertainment in your life. Yes. It's important. You're human, but you can't do too much. Yeah, I think I think I sound more like a contrarian than I actually am because I I agree. It should be the main focus. It just shouldn't be the only focus. Everything is right in moderation. Everything is right in the proper place. You know, you have a proper time set aside to focus on growth. You have a you have a certain time where you have to maintain your responsibilities. You have certain time where you can spend with your kids. You know, you have to allocate your time accordingly and logically. But growth has to be a driving most important thing. You never sacrifice the time you need to spend growing and pushing to get ahead uh on stupid that ain't going to do for you because you the next day oh wow I went to a concert big deal. You had a good time at a concert. Is it how's it going to help you tomorrow when your ass is broke and you spent all the money on a concert? I mean, you know, you got to think logically and sensibly, and hopefully one day you will. I hope so, too. Ben Mala, thank you so much for coming on the ice. Thank you for coming to my house and occupying it. Thank you for having us here. I got to say, I've seen this house in plenty of different videos. This is way more impressive. And I had very high expectations. This is way better. It's beautiful than I thought. All could be yours. What price? As long as it has a three in front of one, two zeros, two zeros. How about it could be a three in front of the one? 13. Well, cuz you're a cheap bastard. That's one of you always want a bargain. You want a bargain, but you know, that's fine, you know, but the people I'm going to sell this house to are not really going to care that much. They're they're going to say, "Well, I'm paying what the going rate is if I wanted three lots on the Gulf of America. My wife's pissed about that." You know, why does he do that? Does he do that just to irritate people of Gulf of America? Probably. Is that just part of his obnoxious talking point? Now, we're talking, don't get me wrong, he does things on purpose cuz he knows he likes to shock you. New Yorkers like to shock you. They like to stick it in there and start some That's the New York mentality. I think he just likes and it it helps a lot, but sometimes he goes a little too far. Also, it's like cementing his legacy. Like, if that sticks, then he's the guy that turned into Yeah, I'm the guy that changed it to Gulp America. Anyway, it is what it is. But, um, where we at? I was saying thank you for coming on. Thank you for inviting us into your house. And uh guys, if you're interested in some consulting, Mhm. go to benmemaller.com and consult with Ben, okay? Because you're not I'm not bragging, but I'm just going to tell you right now, you're not going to find anybody with 30 years experience, has accumulated all the real estate wealth I have, that's going to give you a straight answer, not with a hidden agenda, um, and looking to take anything from you, just help you out and get you on the right track and answer questions if I can. And if I can't, I'll try to find the answer or, you know, find somebody that does have the answer. And you need to raise prices cuz I think you're underelling yourself. But if that's you're looking at a crazy opportunity for you guys arbitrage opportunity to book your call and then upsell it somewhere else and then profit the difference. I'm not looking to get rich. You know, I already am considered rich, I guess. So, you know, it helps a little, but I like helping people. Okay. Imagine if the whole world helped each other. Can you imagine that? How better a world we'd all live in? I don't even know. Why are we fighting wars anymore? Why are we Why are we even going to violence and destruction and all? Why are there so many [ __ ] world if you were in charge? Can't they solve any problem by pretty much money, you know, or you know, necessity they need? I mean, I don't understand. I don't understand. Makes no sense to me whatsoever how they can take something that's running and good and destroy it. Blow up buildings, destroy people's lives. Where where does it benefit? I don't understand. There's no benefit in it. There's no there's no p there's nothing in it for anybody. And then if you do win, all right, now you're stuck at a bombed out place. Who what the is the point? What is the problem here? And whenever people have conflict, they need to sit down. Okay? And there's two sides to every story, but you know, the problem is that I think we're dealing with people who are just irrational. The Middle East has always been irrational. They just then they're not rational. And then the communists are not rational cuz they want to control everything. It makes no sense to control people for what? You're not here that long. What is Putin in the 70s now? He ain't going to be around that long. Is he in the 70s? He's in good shape. He's in good shape. Wow. But you know why? Why? I I I there's no reason in the world to kill people and destroy people's lives. There's no logical reason for that. I can't think of one. I just don't I can't. When things are peaceful, let them be peaceful. If you have differences, then figure out how you can work those differences out. But to kill people and destroy places makes no sense to me whatsoever. It just makes no sense. humans. I'm sure with all the technology we have, we're going to planets and all the AI and the computers and all the we, you know, let's face it, humans evolve very quickly lately, too. If you notice, I mean, think back only 50 years ago, how the world was so different, but we can't be human and treat each other with respect and, you know, and just get along peacefully. I don't understand it. It's like we're animals, you You know, we got to get rid of that animal animalistic mentality, okay? And not even let it be tolerated in society, you know, and all the criminal. There's no room in this world for criminals. People that want to hurt you or, you know, rob you. There's just no room for that. There's just no room in the world anymore. I'm surprised that we we haven't evolved into a more peaceful society. You know, it's unbelievable. You guys got to vote Mala 2028. Not the job for me. I feel like you'd be a good president. We'd at least have really good infrastructure and housing. Good negotiations, too. Department of HUD. Yeah. I mean, listen, affordable I believe in everything. I believe in affordable housing. I believe in helping people and it makes the world a better place. But the people that don't want to act right, there's no room for them in society. I'm sorry. You know, how many millions of people are in jails? It's ridiculous. And why are they there, you know, and how did they grow up? And how did they get there? We need to change our whole society and eventually all the cuckoo and bad people will just eventually die off from hopefully natural causes or whatever or kill each other and and then you just have good people left in the world. I don't know. It's I don't know. I don't know the answer, but maybe you guys do. Maybe one day. You're a new generation. We'll work on it. You're the new generation. AI will figure it out. AI. Guys, thank you so much for watching. It really means a lot. Thank you, Ben, for inviting us in your house. And until next time, see you guys.