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

Bizee: Start your business with confidence at https://Bizee.com/ich Oracle: Right now, with zero commitment, try OCI for free at https://oracle.com/iced Notion: Check out Notion, the best AI tool for work, right now at https://notion.com/icedcoffee Chime: Open your account in 2 minutes at https://chime.com/coffee Follow Ben Mallah : On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@UC94m18wtI9QAYrXKXqFPWDg On Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/realbenmallah/ Website/Consulting - https://benmallah.com/ Apply To The Index Mastermind: https://entertheindex.com Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [email protected] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:34 - Ben’s childhood 00:04:06 - Net worth today 00:04:49 - RE investing diminishing returns 00:08:20 - Who shouldn’t buy a home 00:10:31 - Have home prices peaked? 00:11:08 - Housing market forecast 00:11:51 - Tariffs' effect on housing 00:14:57 - Who’s buying and selling now 00:16:17 - Current investing strategy 00:18:02 - Sponsor - Bizee 00:19:05 - Why bonds over index funds 00:23:02 - RE deals from YouTube 00:25:19 - Motivating his kids 00:29:16 - Does wealth = Happiness? 00:30:39 - Is too much money a problem? 00:32:58 - Biggest opportunities now 00:35:46 - RE negotiations 00:37:21 - Sponsor - Oracle 00:42:42 - Negotiation tips for beginners 00:44:28 - Emotional vs. strategic purchases 00:49:24 - Ben’s negotiating skills 00:52:22 - Weirdest thing he’s negotiated 00:55:38 - Consulting FAQs 01:03:28 - Sponsor - Notion 01:04:50 - Sponsor - Chime 01:07:08 - Balancing $ security & enjoying life 01:10:24 - 1031 exchange benefits 01:12:01 - Has capitalism gone too far? 01:14:53 - What holds people back? 01:21:16 - Have you always been motivated? 01:24:08 - If you started over today 01:27:05 - Why make YT content? 01:28:30 - BTC in real estate 01:33:00 - Life philosophies 01:36:25 - Rising insurance costs 01:41:11 - Dating advice 01:44:29 - Dating red flags 01:45:29 - Did wife and kids motivate you? 01:46:07 - Rapid fire questions *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  We've been delaying, we've been praying. Eventually the music has to stop.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  The housing market is flashing red.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  We're at a standstill. They can't even sell it to break even all these newer buildings right now.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Homes for sale in the U.S. surging to 500,000.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  The loan is due. What are we gonna do?

• 0:46Graham Stephan?

  How are you finding good deals right now?

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I'm looking every day and I'm low balling, baby.

• 0:51Graham Stephan?

  How do you low ball them without offending the seller?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  There's no offending in business. I'll sell Jimmy Hart to get that house. You wake up in the morning, what the? What are you gonna do? That's the question. You gotta be a machine.

• 1:04Graham Stephan?

  Have you noticed any effects on the housing market from the tariffs?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Tariffs, the tariffs, the tariffs.

• 1:09Speaker 04

  Tariffs is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary.

• 1:12Graham Stephan?

  What do you think of the biggest opportunities right now? Speaking of timing.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  I mean, opportunity's always out there. You gotta look for it and you gotta be persistent. I love it. I just absolutely love it. If somebody was a genius, they could figure out and do all these.

• 1:30Graham Stephan?

  Ben Mala, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  That's all you got to say?

• 1:35Graham Stephan?

  I'm just thanking you for coming on the show.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  But remember, this podcast is sponsored by Carpool Tables, baby. You better get one. Can you put one in?

• 1:46Graham Stephan?

  How much did this cost right here?

• 1:48Speaker 01

  They start at about 20 grand and they can go up to maybe 50, depending on what you want.

• 1:53Graham Stephan?

  And how much did you?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Ford Mustang, 65 Mustang. You can get the 69 Camaro. This was a copy of the Indianapolis 500 pace car that Mario Andretti 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.

• 2:17Graham Stephan?

  Could you do a Ford GT?

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Real bumpa.

• 2:21Graham Stephan?

  But not real wheels.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  The wheels are real, but they're shrunken down. Okay, but the fenders are, I mean, um, the grill's real, the bumper's real, the headlights are real, the emblems are real, and they're licensed by Ford and GM.

• 2:35Graham Stephan?

  So what's your affiliation with them?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  With who?

• 2:37Graham Stephan?

  With, with these pool tables?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  I created it!

• 2:39Graham Stephan?

  You created it in another company?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I'm the creator. I did it because I wanted one in my house. Because the, the, the long story, the short story, the long story is this. Everyone was about three years old. All right, I wanted to get them a car bed. Why? Because 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.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  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 cheapskate. I told you about my father, didn't I? Well, it was the ultimate cheapskate. You know, he'd take two ply toilet paper, make two rolls out of it.

• 3:51Graham Stephan?

  So would he save money then and invest that money, or what would he do with all of his excess money?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  He did stash it away, you know, he put it away in like in, you know, bonds and like that or whatever. He did piss some 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'd rather live with the ketchup bottles upside down, putting water in it and shaking it up to get every drop of ketchup.

• 4:23Graham Stephan?

  Sounds like me.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  You do that, don't you?

• 4:25Graham Stephan?

  He likes to shake it in a bottle.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Laziness because you're too lazy to go buy another one.

• 4:28Graham Stephan?

  He just does it for the thrill of shaking the bottle.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Whatever turns him on. And you know, so anyway, that was where we grew up.

• 4:35Jack Selby?

  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?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  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 it hasn't been a lot of opportunity in the past few years.

• 5:19Jack Selby?

  Why not?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  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 cap. Who the, can I say?

• 5:40Jack Selby?

  Sure.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Who the wants to own a 50 or a hundred million dollar 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're, you're losing money because it used to be you borrow money at 4%, right? And if you had to say a 6% return, then you're making money on the banks, you're making that two point spread. You got that? 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 because rates went up.

• 6:21Jack Selby?

  So why aren't prices coming down faster?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Well, because, you know, we live in a world now where they keep finding new tricks and, you know, and they don't want 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? 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 when I preferred stock. The loans weren't worth, they were only worth 50 cents in a dollar.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Well, then the bank's only worth 50 cents in a dollar. And eventually, if they hit such lows, then the bank just goes belly up.

• 7:15Jack Selby?

  So you think someone is going to forgive some of this?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  The price goes to zero. Remember, you weren't around in 2008. I used to trade Citibank at a dollar.

• 7:25Jack Selby?

  What happened? It's worth a lot of money, man. You would have made a fortune buying a dollar.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  It's a cycle and you just gotta ride a roller coaster.

• 7:34Jack Selby?

  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?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I see it happening every day. Every day, I'm seeing more and more, and there's a ton of shit 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 at a 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 banks are going to come to the point and say, okay, the loan is due. What are we going to do? We've been delaying and we've been praying and we've been doing all the, you know, we can't. Eventually, 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

• 8:32Speaker 01

  and then these loans will be good again. And the properties will meet the debt ratio and then they'll have cash flow. Okay, but right now, at the new rates, they'll be in the negative. Okay, because your 4 is now a 7 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.

• 8:50Jack Selby?

  Now, for the average person who's interested in the real estate market, who should not buy a home?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  If you can rent a property right now for less money, the equivalent property than owning it.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  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 gonna be a 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 a, you know, has their own risk tolerance. And, uh, you know, and you gotta just decide what's best for you.

• 9:37Graham Stephan?

  Do you think that people need to own a home anymore? Do you think that maybe it's this-

• 9:42Speaker 01

  A home is personal. It's not business. So, you know, it's like this house. This house is somewhat personal, but to me, it's business, everything is business. Um, but, you know, a home is only personal, you know, because you got kids, you got wives, you got two cars, you got all this 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, you know? What's the point of working if you're not gonna enjoy your life?

• 10:10Graham Stephan?

  See, I almost think that this myth of homeownership is gonna 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.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  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 a mortgage. What happens in 20 years? You're sitting around with a house, it's gonna be worth a half a million bucks or more, and you're not gonna have a mortgage on it. So it's a good thing for people that have trouble saving money. You know, and you know, look at the appreciation, you know, from the house and uh, it's it makes sense for the average person, yes.

• 11:01Graham Stephan?

  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.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  I know I have a crystal ball, but I could tell you, you know, you don't know. I mean, 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, 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 the home, you know?

• 11:38Graham Stephan?

  What's your overall read right now of the housing market?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  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 from like it used to be at the same time, right away, and there's not bidding wars going on anymore. Rates are up, you know, and that's the thing, you know? Typically, if 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 eight, nine thousand a month.

• 12:21Graham Stephan?

  Have you noticed any effects on the housing market from the tariffs?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Tariffs, the tariffs, the tariffs.

• 12:27Graham Stephan?

  Have you noticed anything?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  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, it's a game, okay? It's a game, all right? People in the, in the market just forget about tariffs. Tariffs is 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 and get jacked up to the roof, then yeah, of course the goods are going to be more money, okay? Do we get wood from China? I don't know. I don't think we get wood from our own country.

• 13:08Graham Stephan?

  Canada.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Canada, okay, well, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, listen, shit happens and it happens, you just got to deal with it. But I can tell you right now, the home builders, I know for a fact. A lot of home developments they built were converted to BTR, which they said, you know what BTR is?

• 13:29Jack Selby?

  No.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Built to rent.

• 13:32Jack Selby?

  Oh.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Oh. Because they couldn't sell them.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  It's true. I was showing on my computer, they were on sale right now, the whole thing. You want to buy the whole development of houses.

• 14:13Jack Selby?

  So they're having trouble selling these houses. Why were they having trouble? Is it just like the rates and pricing?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  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 a hundred 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. So, you know, if they got bridge loans or if they got a bridge loan, they could have fixed it. Anyway, the point is when they started this project, rates were low and people were buying a lot of homes. Why?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Because there were home loans for three and a half percent. Okay. So that means you're going to pay $3,500, you know, on a, what is that? It's, it's 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 stopped buying homes.

• 15:25Graham Stephan?

  There's a lot of home builders in Las Vegas right now. 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, the free upgrades.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  If you buy this house today, we'll give you a free dishwasher and it'll be stainless steel.

• 15:39Graham Stephan?

  Or they're discounting the price of premium materials by 50%.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  That's where it starts. 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, they got debt, which they do. They're gonna have to discount that and hopefully walk away with their pants still on.

• 15:57Graham Stephan?

  So who right now is buying and selling in the real estate market?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  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 gotta put your money to work. They gotta tie that shit up. Okay. Yeah. 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 gonna 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 too underwater, you idiot.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And, you know, whatever, and then you only get 5% on your portion. So, um, right now, we're gonna stand still, 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 gotta get rid of shit. 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 loaned 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 they'll relatively happily ever after and they'll do it all again.

• 17:17Graham Stephan?

  So how are you adjusting your own strategy right now?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  What I'm doing, everybody's got their own personal way. 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.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  And would it make the same amount of money if I put it in, say, tax-free mutual 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 tax-free mutual bonds, and what's the difference? Well, I might take less money. Why? You know why, right?

• 18:17Jack Selby?

  Why would you take less money? Because you don't have to pay taxes on tax-free mutual?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  No, I take a little less money because I don't have the responsibility and the time and the work and the liability of owning a big hotel. When I could have the money safely sitting there getting 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 and 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 will tell me, you know, they, they can't sell right now because the, the sellers know, but they don't want to swallow the fact that their properties don't cash flow. And the banks aren't ready to do any negotiating, short sales, you know, waiting, you know, we're just waiting and waiting.

• 19:03Jack Selby?

  So we talk to a lot of entrepreneurs on this show, just like this episode with Ben Mala. 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 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.

• 19:26Graham Stephan?

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• 19:43Jack Selby?

  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/ICH. We also have a link down below in the description that is busy.com/ICH, B-I-Z-E-E.com/ICH. Seriously, guys, used it myself, highly recommend it. Why do you buy bonds instead of index funds?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Index is taxable too. Yes, but they can grow at more than 5% and probably more than 37%. What? They could also not grow. 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? Cause they're 100% safe and they're tax free. 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 low balling, baby. I'm low balling that everything. And if you don't like the offer,

• 20:49Speaker 01

  then write me the one you little 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 gonna get out of it. You gotta play the game. So how do you low ball them without offending the seller?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  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 in 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 gonna give me half a million credit.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, it's a, it's a game you play. But I'm gonna have major 1031 benefits by buying that, you know. So, you know, there's a lot of factors involved. You gotta 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?

• 22:16Graham Stephan?

  No, here's the thing, you could say as much as you want for the members version. If you guys want to see these episodes completely uncensored, join the membership and we're not going to bleep anything. Everything.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Bleep, beep. 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 it is. That's what their fat is.

• 22:40Graham Stephan?

  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 Rite 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?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  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 them an offer on their 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.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  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 when they probably wouldn't respond to him.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  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. So they know this guy's 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.

• 24:02Graham Stephan?

  How often is it that someone comes to you with a deal from YouTube? That they just want to sell you something?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  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 were going to visit.

• 24:16Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  In Georgia.

• 24:17Graham Stephan?

  Okay.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  I do get opportunities, but they're mostly out of state. You know, anything going on in Florida, I pretty much know about.

• 24:22Graham Stephan?

  Got it.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  And I don't really want to branch out, you know? But I I don't do deals from, you know, I don't get a lot of deals from YouTube now.

• 24:29Jack Selby?

  So you're saying you're trying to get more liquid, but at the same time, you're still buying a lot of deals.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Well, I'm always gonna be buying if the deal makes sense. 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 two hundred fifty units over there, I'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. Oh, so I'm not gonna pick on Jack. I'm sorry.

• 24:56Jack Selby?

  How, well, how?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Or they could be like, Jack can do nothing.

• 25:01Jack Selby?

  How do your, how do your kids stay motivated to actually go and kill managing a two hundred fifty unit apartment complex?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 25:09Jack Selby?

  But how do they? Like, how do they, how did you foster this?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  They're gonna hire onsite manager. They're gonna have an onsite maintenance person.

• 25:16Jack Selby?

  But still, well, Jack is saying.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Nothing to fucking do. What is there to do?

• 25:19Graham Stephan?

  How are they so motivated? How are they motivated to do something?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  They're hungry.

• 25:23Graham Stephan?

  Why are they hungry when you've done so much that they could theoretically just be a bit lazy?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  My kids came from nothing, the older ones. And they're hungry and they want to do it on their own, too. They want it. 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 figure, I couldn't, 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. They can enjoy their life. I mean, I'm gonna get, I'm their example. Well, look where the fuck I live.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  They all live in million dollar houses, not like this, but they live in multimillion 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?

• 26:17Graham Stephan?

  What about your youngest?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Who, my youngest?

• 26:19Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, your youngest, he grew up in affluence. So how do you cultivate that like, that hunger?

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Well, he's not spoiled. I mean, you know, he appreciates whatever he gets and I, I still, I don't, 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 go, you know, like it, this is gambling. That's why you like the stock market. Who are 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.

• 26:59Graham Stephan?

  Is he born with it?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  He likes to spend money.

• 27:01Graham Stephan?

  Or that was taught?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  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 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, you know, whatever 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?

• 27:41Graham Stephan?

  No.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  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?

• 27:50Graham Stephan?

  Motivated, hungry.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Motivated.

• 27:51Graham Stephan?

  Now, what would you say to parents whose kids are not hungry or motivated?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  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 Junior 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 shit over and start collecting the rent to make sure it's fixed. And he did.

• 28:35Jack Selby?

  Why did he do it?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  He was nineteen. He was nineteen.

• 28:38Jack Selby?

  Why did he do it? Did you like offer to pay him a lot of money?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  He had no choice. I mean, it was either that or I had to walk away from him. I mean, I wasn't gonna keep paying fifty grand a year for him to party in school. You know? I mean, what are you gonna do? You're not going to school. You're not getting, you're taking courses, 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 in this way, I'm also protecting myself. By, by helping my kids, I'm protecting myself. Because now I'm, I'm almost sixty 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'll have the experience to do that.

• 29:18Jack Selby?

  Did he resent you at all during that time where you pulled him out of school?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:22Jack Selby?

  How did he feel when you said, sorry, no more partying, but you have responsibilities? Such an abrupt change.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Listen, he, he, he, he did what I asked him to do. I told him, go over here to Largo, 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. Cause he remembers being dirt poor. I remember, you know, living really rough with my, I had him when I was eighteen. So I was, you know, bad shape. You know, I was, you know, I was in the army and, you know, barely having big 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.

• 30:02Jack Selby?

  Do you think?

• 30:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:17Jack Selby?

  Does being rich make you happier?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  I mean, I've, I've lived without money, I wasn't very happy, so. I mean, you know, listen. It depends when, 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.

• 30:54Jack Selby?

  At what point do you notice that quality of life change most dramatically?

• 30:59Speaker 01

  I mean, when you feel like you're not worried about the dinner bill anymore. I remember accounting the pennies to buy lunch for my kids. Pennies. Making sure I have enough to pay the California tax when you get two tacos for a dollar. At Jack in the 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 having that stability in life.

• 31:40Jack Selby?

  Is there ever a point of having too much money where it just invites problems?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  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 to 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, using a plane, a couple of thousand an hour, whatever. Uh, you know, I want to go on my boat and it cost, uh, Three dollars a gallon, I need twenty eight hundred gallons of gas 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 ain't give a, I saw what it was. It was logical things. We don't piss money away. We don't waste money.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  I'm not a degenerate gambler. Uh, you know, so, you know, look, I got a, I got a carpool table, you know, it's nice.

• 32:36Jack Selby?

  And, 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.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  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 thirty five, I should be worth thirty five billion. That was my weird way of, of, of, of setting my goals. And then when I'm forty, I should have forty million. And then when I'm fifty, I should have fifty billion. But maybe the timing was right for me, because a lot of timing has a lot to do with it. Or call it luck, I don't know. I don't really believe in luck. I believe in timing. You just happen to be at the right place, the right time with the right money, do the deal, you know? And then it grew to be, you know, I, I exceeded my goals, put it that way. Okay.

• 33:28Jack Selby?

  But even once you exceeded all of those goals.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  I didn't really think about it anymore. You don't think about it. You just keep accumulating it. You just keep doing it. If you're hooked on what you do and you're hooked on growth. Where money is the reward of busting your ass and making deals and making shit happen. I mean, it comes, that's the reward and your bank account grows and your wealth grows. But it, you know, was that money driven? Yeah, because money was the reward, but I always had the hunger 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.

• 33:59Jack Selby?

  What do you think of the biggest opportunities right now, speaking of timing?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  I mean, if somebody was a genius, they could figure out, do all these empty office buildings, but I ain't seen a genius yet. I mean, opportunity is always out there. You gotta look for it and you gotta be persistent. I mean, you know, I was on the phone today with the same deal. It was a hundred and sixty thousand a unit about three or four months ago. All right. And the broker's calling me today saying, you know what? I get the guy that had a hundred thirty a door. It's thirty thousand a unit. It's a couple of hundred units. That's six million dollars less he's willing to take. But even at buck thirty, I didn't like it. And you know, I'm more comfortable at about a buck ten or a buck fifteen. You know, I gotta be comfortable with the deal. So, you know, but, but the point is I'm gonna keep waiting

• 34:46Speaker 01

  or I'm gonna keep making offers and I'm gonna keep low balling. 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 gonna sell. If I ain't spending my time finding deals, then I'm gonna be selling deals.

• 35:01Graham Stephan?

  What would you stay away from?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  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 of business to be in it, it would be very dangerous. Um, so, um, offices. Uh, you gotta know what you're doing in industrial. I mean, you know, it's all about finding a deal. Apartments are great. Retail's another animal. All right. The only, there's only one way you're gonna make money on retail. You gotta buy it with vacant space. 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 ten shops. Okay, but only seven of them are rented. You're buying that property

• 35:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:01Graham Stephan?

  I always see those places that have like a fifty percent vacancy and they have these pro forma rates on them. That they're just trying to price it.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Because they're living in a dream world. All right. Nobody buys on a pro forma. Okay, no, that I know of that has any sense of 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 two hundred dollars more a month. Okay, so yes, that's, and apartments, yes, you can't buy in a pro forma if you're a hundred percent sure that that you could raise the rents and the market's higher by throwing in some new appliances or whatever you gotta do. But pro forma typically you don't see ever in retail. If you do it and the seller's just dreaming and he's got his head stuck up as you know what.

• 36:48Jack Selby?

  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?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  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, alright? 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. Alright? Because as long as you know, you know that the guys are crooked and you know, you gotta 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.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  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 me, 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. Alright, 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.

• 38:23Graham Stephan?

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• 39:07Graham Stephan?

  Yep, in test after test, OCI has lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all of your biggest workloads. So right now with zero commitment, try OCI for free. Just head to oracle.com/iced. Again, oracle.com/iced with the link down below in the description. Thank you again to Oracle for sponsoring this episode. 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.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  No, I've never seen it happen on buy side or the sell side. It doesn't matter. It's all numbers. There is nothing, you know, personal about real estate. It's numbers. How much money is coming in? How much money is going out?

• 39:53Graham Stephan?

  But you're talking about commercial real estate. How does, how does this apply to residential?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  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, you're buying from our owner direct. Okay, you know, that's different. I guess if you're buying from somebody and you smooth them over and you win them over.

• 40:14Graham Stephan?

  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 the letter we got and they seemed perfect. They were going to take care of it. They were going to make this their own.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  And they did a deal and they fucked them.

• 40:46Graham Stephan?

  Yep. They tore the house down immediately after closing.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  You know.

• 40:51Graham Stephan?

  They had pulled permit. They were getting everything started the second the deal closed.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Reminds me of that old nursery rhyme or whatever, the old, the old kitty thing with the three little pigs. They'll huff and they'll puff and they'll blow your house down.

• 41:06Graham Stephan?

  But, uh.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Similar situation happened here. Similar situation happened right here in Clearwater Beach, right on the main ocean front here. The developers came in, this little old lady owned this nice house right on the intercoastal here. And some developer came in and 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 and make her sell. She wouldn't sell. And she actually stuck it to them. She, I don't know 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

• 41:51Speaker 01

  residential house, ever. And to this day, you get all these apartments and condos all around it and her house sitting right down on the tip of the land on water. I always think about that whenever I drive by on 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, 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?

• 42:22Graham Stephan?

  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.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Would you do that?

• 42:50Speaker 00

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• 43:19Graham Stephan?

  Depends on the person. I think it really depends on the situation. I think, I think there are certain months where I'd be like, alright, screw it.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:26Graham Stephan?

  Over five, 10 bucks.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  You're such a lawyer. Okay, you're such a lawyer.

• 43:30Graham Stephan?

  Okay, maybe not millions.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  You are the biggest penny pincher I know. You're not shaving off a fucking penny. Who are you?

• 43:37Graham Stephan?

  I might, I might.

• 43:37Jack Selby?

  Graham sold me a T-shirt that didn't fit him and hardly fit me.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 43:41Jack Selby?

  And he never wore it once. And he sold it to me for like, near market.

• 43:44Graham Stephan?

  It was a great value.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  He lives in Vegas now.

• 43:46Jack Selby?

  I wore it like three times and gave it away for free.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  He's still trying to play the old California, uh, softy, whatever, or what do you call it? Radical, liberal, whatever the hell they are. Anyway, the point is this.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  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? Well, how much, you know, it's, it's all about me. It's not about you.

• 44:14Graham Stephan?

  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?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  You gotta, you gotta start low. But I'm not saying go ridiculously low, where it's, you know, just total nonsense, where somebody wants uh, 500,000 for a house and you get it off from 250. No. But you have to, you know, get it to a point where you know you're gonna be happy as the buyer, and they're gonna 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 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,

• 45:00Speaker 01

  she was an old lady, inherited a bunch of apartments from her father, and 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. 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 are you, stupid lady? You should have went in there and fixed the place up. You should have raised the goddamn rents.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  You should have added value and you would have made more money. But you didn't want to do it, you lazy old bitch. What the fuck 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?

• 46:00Jack Selby?

  You said that in transactions, the only thing of importance is dollars and cents. When in your life have you made emotional based financial decisions? Have you ever had like a crazy rich person purchase that didn't make any numbers sense? But you just did it anyways?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Well, you buy personal things. That's different. Real estate is not emotional. Never, ever. I never bought a place because I, oh, I like this place. I like the numbers. Now, cars, you know, boats, that's, that's totally emotional. That's a hundred percent emotional.

• 46:34Jack Selby?

  What about other rich guy purchases? Like this would be an ex, like, I don't know how much that lion costs, but I can't imagine that it's very inexpensive.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Anyway, these are just things that bring you some sort of pleasure. You're like a painting. Why do people spend a hundred million on a piece of artwork or five million to 10 million? Why? Because they feel like they, they enjoy it. They like it. That's emotional.

• 46:59Jack Selby?

  Tax evasion.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  You know?

• 47:01Jack Selby?

  Tax evasion, money laundering.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Money laundering. He's always got a, he's 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 a conspiracy.

• 47:16Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  You're a conspiracier.

• 47:20Jack Selby?

  So what are some of the crazy rich person things that you've done?

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Crazy rich person things?

• 47:24Jack Selby?

  I saw, I saw-

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Came up and created a carpool table. Um, I mean, not much. I don't do crazy-

• 47:31Jack Selby?

  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-

• 47:39Speaker 01

  What was the 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 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 in the United States Army. You know that. I know how to coordinate things. It's all about managing, coordinating things,

• 48:21Speaker 01

  making shit happen without wasting money or time.

• 48:25Jack Selby?

  Okay. I was under the impression that you literally just flew cigarettes and the barber.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  I flew them in because, I mean, yeah, 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.

• 49:00Jack Selby?

  What is the cost of owning a plane?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  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 shared the cost of the plane. You know, you could buy planes anywhere from a couple of million up to, who the fuck knows, 50 million or whatever, you know? Ours is probably worth, I don't know, a couple, a few million. Okay. It's good enough for what I use. I used to have two planes. I got rid of one, uh, 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 of million, a few million. Then we're into it for, say, 750 apiece or a million apiece.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  And you know, we pay for, we split the expenses and we pay for what you use. If I'm gonna fly somewhere, I gotta pay for the gas, I gotta pay for the pilot.

• 49:51Jack Selby?

  How expensive is the gas and pilot?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, uh, the gas is gonna run about, if I go to Fort Lauderdale and back, that's about five hundred miles. That's gonna cost me twenty five hundred dollars. So what's that come out to be? About five dollars 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 twenty five hundred bucks an hour with gas and pilot. You know, well, no, not an hour, because pilot you got for all day. You know, you can use a pilot for up to the twelve or fourteen hours a day. But after that, you gotta give him a break.

• 50:25Jack Selby?

  For how long? Twelve hours or twenty four? Eight hours?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  I think so, or something, but anyway.

• 50:31Jack Selby?

  Are there any safety issues of having your own plane? I, I hear just the standard a bit lower.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  They're all being, we have a management company that manages the plane. They beat all the requirements to make sure you get all the inspections and they check on 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 they're in good shape.

• 50:56Jack Selby?

  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're getting an Uber somewhere in like the Bahamas. And the guy was like, oh yeah, it'll be thirty five dollars. And you're like, how about twenty? And then the guy's like, okay, yeah, we'll do twenty. And then you're Gilligan, you know, you're like deckhand or whatever. He was like, it's thirty five dollars, like, but.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  The guy that makes, you know, twenty bucks an hour, whatever he makes, you know, yeah, big shot with my money, right?

• 51:27Jack Selby?

  So do you negotiate every single price that comes your way?

• 51:31Speaker 01

  I mean, 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 wanna make a lot of money in life, you can't go around wasting it. You gotta, you know, so yeah, I have that, you know, or 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 five dollars a head, it's thirty dollars, man. Well, what the difference whether it's four of us? If you order an XL Uber, you could have one, two people because they want a big vehicle. You have six in it.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  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 five dollars a head.

• 52:25Graham Stephan?

  When is it ever not worth your time to negotiate?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, it's always worth a try. But if the person is just an that doesn't want to negotiate, and 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, you got six little kids. What are you 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 a hundred dollar bill. The rest of the week, the lady treated like royalty. Kids can do whatever the hell they want.

• 53:13Graham Stephan?

  You know, it'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.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  If it's a car,

• 53:37Speaker 01

  you know, the price is the price. What are they gonna do, throw in free oil changes? Maybe. But I don't know. I mean, listen, every situation is different. But I don't believe in overpaying for because saving money.

• 53:51Graham Stephan?

  Making money.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Thank you. He learned something today.

• 53:54Graham Stephan?

  What do you think is the weirdest thing that you've negotiated?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  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 gotta 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.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  And that's the one time the video actually hurt me.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  He said, I'll take your offer. But you gotta 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've ever had. And um, it was signed by the real Batman and Robin everything. It wasn't a run for the TV show, but it was worth, it was worth a couple hundred grand. And I thought about it. And 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,

• 55:11Speaker 01

  he probably could have sold it on the market if he would have, you know, I mean, the place needed a couple of little things done there, 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 on the 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, they don't want to go in front of their board

• 55:55Speaker 01

  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 move on. So I've had most of my success with banks buying foreclosures, buying, uh, doing short sales, uh, 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 benefit is when

• 56:37Speaker 01

  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 gotta have management companies. Then they gotta have receivers. Then they gotta, 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 them 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.

• 57:10Graham Stephan?

  So you've been doing a lot of consulting lately?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:13Graham Stephan?

  What's a common question that people come to you with?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  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 a hundred million that can sell with me. I got people that have nothing. They're first getting their first house. They gotta go to FHA. You know, I got some

• 57:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 58:03Graham Stephan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Get your license. Okay. You go buy that house and you represent yourself and you found a house yourself. Well, FHA is three and a half percent down. The commission's three percent. How much are you gonna put down on that $200,000 house? Thousand bucks?

• 58:20Graham Stephan?

  Does FHA allow you to use commissions on a closing towards a down payment?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  They, of course, because number one, it's in the, it's in the closing. The money's going to you.

• 58:30Graham Stephan?

  Correct.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  To a money you earned it. And FHA loans to real estate people and agents and everybody. Yes, they will. Because if, if you, if you show them, you know, they're not illogical.

• 58:41Graham Stephan?

  That's why.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  It would be illogical. For them not to. That's what I was doing. You're earning it. When I was an agent, I would use my commission. It was a hassle. Well, back then, things have changed a little. Yes, sure. Back then, you always had idiots always questioning everything, you know. But 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? 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 have consults with people that just, they're trying to be big shots and they didn't earn it. We had the video about the guy in Vegas.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  He's driving a Lamborghini, okay, but he ain't got no money in the bank. Does that make any sense?

• 59:30Speaker 01

  They're 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, a hundred grand. Sell the Lamborghini and get your shit together, you know? You don't need it and you don't want, everybody wants to be a big shot before they earn it, you know? How did he justify buying the Lamborghini? How do you justify it? 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 younger, I bought a Ferrari. I should know more what. Okay, I really wasn't financially ready for it. When you're young and 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.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  And you have to, you know, you have to discipline yourself that, you know, yeah, it would be nice to have his Lamborghini and yeah, you know, I could have, 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 them, 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.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  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, I'm they're gonna pay the fee because, you know, my time is valuable. I could be working on a $10 million deal. Uh, Rafael 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 the phone, it's worth, uh, whatever, five hundred million or whatever, and get really

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  good advice. To me, I become your friend. I'm like a friend. I'm a real friend that you can trust and call to get solid, logical advice on your real estate.

• 1:01:50Graham Stephan?

  See, I honestly, I was, I was telling you off camera. I, I think you're underpriced for where you are. I mean, if, if anyone books you, it's at a bargain. Like they are getting the better deal.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  That's it. That's good. Well, now I can help people that don't have a lot of money.

• 1:02:04Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  You know, because sometimes people do get on the phone and I feel bad. And I'll say, well, okay, because right away I'm going to ask them, what are you making? What do you own? What do you got? I gotta 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 spend. So I try to really help these people. And I've gotten so many compliments and so many people have come 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,

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  which I love, and they were just thanking me, 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,

• 1:02:59Graham Stephan?

  I get a test of this. We, we were in the Bahamas and someone came up and you invited them on the boat, him and his wife.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  I'm nice to everybody. If you're nice to me, I'm nice to you.

• 1:03:09Graham Stephan?

  Carla made them margaritas.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  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 asshole yet. Well, okay, there was one Hasidic crazy Jew, but he was mentally ill in New York City once. And I had to tell him, go away.

• 1:03:32Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  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. And 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 to 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,

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  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, it's a nice house and, you know, enacted 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 notice my son, every time my youngest son talks to any adult, it's always yes, sir, no, sir. You know, and very respectful and it really brought our, our, our quality of life and the way we felt how we lived a lot better.

• 1:05:01Graham Stephan?

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• 1:05:09Jack Selby?

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• 1:05:14Graham Stephan?

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• 1:06:23Graham Stephan?

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• 1:07:23Jack Selby?

  or Stride Bank, N.A., members FDIC. Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply of out of network ATMs, bank ranking and other ATMs. According to U.S. News and World Report 2023, Chime checking account required. Thank you so much to Chime for sponsoring this episode. What about your mentality to other things such as like relationships or making money? Or other things, has those mentalities changed as well? Going from being broke to now being very wealthy?

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  I mean, when you start making money, you ain't got time to be around losers. People that are just negative or people that are going the opposite way. I have no tolerance. Whether I'm in business with these people, doing with them or not. I can't even be around people that just don't give up. They don't care. They're just going through life, not trying, and they have the ability to try. 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 had, and they had me to back them and they still didn't do it. But they're worried about stupid like partying and chasing women or whatever, chasing men or whatever. You know, their priorities aren't in order. Their kids ain't living like they should.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:08:41Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:09:09Jack Selby?

  Few grand.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Five grand, 2,500 there, because I had to send the plane back. It 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, pressed him, pressed his friends, you know, made us feel like we're, it was 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 Phantom sitting in the garage.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  And when the rates were going up and I'm saying, oh, what the, I have five hundred thousand dollars sitting in the garage. I barely even used a goddamn car. All right. I went through the whole car phase, you know, so I sold it. Five hundred grand, you know, sitting in the bank at that time is five percent even in a money market account. That's a couple of grand a month.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just like doing what's practical and logical. That's where I try to live my life. Do I live in a thirty million dollar house? Hopefully it's thirty 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.

• 1:10:31Graham Stephan?

  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?

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Like what?

• 1:10:40Graham Stephan?

  Could just be any.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Like a boat?

• 1:10:42Graham Stephan?

  Sure.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:10:50Graham Stephan?

  I know you need those losses. So if, if I buy it low enough.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  That's not that, you keep mixing personal with, with, with, with taxes.

• 1:10:59Graham Stephan?

  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 law, a substantial loss.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  You have to do that when you buy it. I think you had to already be in a business. We'll talk about that.

• 1:11:12Graham Stephan?

  You could transfer it to a Montana LLC for the purposes of chartering.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  You guys can come up with all you do this and do that and do this. I don't do all that shit. You know why? Cause I sleep at night and no one, the IRS will never with me.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  They got nothing to go 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 clear cut. 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 gov, 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.

• 1:11:57Graham Stephan?

  How much do you think you'd have if you couldn't utilize the 1031?

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  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. It's fine. And I'm, you know, it's definitely a possibility I consider sometimes, but I'm not going to do a whole 50 on 1031. So I don't know, I may pay, I may not sell. 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 gotta make, you gotta do your homework. You gotta sit down. You gotta calculate. You gotta calculate the tax ramifications on it. You gotta calculate the appreciation, recaptured depreciation, cash flow.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  There's a lot of things you have to consider before you decide to buy or sell a property.

• 1:12:48Graham Stephan?

  What do you say to the people who want to get rid of the 1031 exchange?

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  They're absolutely at 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 1031 and enforcing me or not enforcing 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. Like it's, it's, it's a ticket to growth. You know, without the banks and without the 1031, I would be a garbage man today.

• 1:13:35Graham Stephan?

  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?

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Listen, if people are getting wealthy legally.

• 1:13:49Speaker 00

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• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  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. You know, so how can you knock somebody? 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 a percent down because your license could, or you want three and a half percent?

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  You know, you could go out and buy a fourplex for three and a half percent down. Right? 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.

• 1:15:44Graham Stephan?

  And 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 together.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  It's always been rich and poor. So now more people are rich? Is that what you're saying?

• 1:16:05Graham Stephan?

  More people are rich and, and more, more people are richer.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  I've never seen unhappy people being rich.

• 1:16:09Graham Stephan?

  You have the rich extremes, more extreme, and the poor more poor, basically. There's becoming such a bigger divide.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  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 worry about stupid shit. Okay, or they get hooked on drugs, or they get hooked on gambling, or they get hooked on alcohol, or they're worried 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?

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  What are you doing? What do you got? That's what matters. You gotta 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 gonna take it. And that's what I did. I just kept taking opportunities and, and, and, and maybe going a little fervent than the average person wanted to go.

• 1:17:27Graham Stephan?

  So what's holding so many people back?

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  Mentality.

• 1:17:30Graham Stephan?

  And what's causing that mentality, do you think?

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  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 gotta 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.

• 1:18:41Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  The problem with where I grew up was, they had the ability, they had the intelligence even, even though they weren't educated. On, you know, I grew up on the streets, but they just didn't have to leave that world and apply the energy that they had and the talents they had, you know, from the street, they didn't have to apply it in a legitimate way. If they were to take the effort and been a little more patient and put it towards something positive and legal, then they all would have been multimillionaires. You know, I ran into a guy the other day, and this guy, he made me a lot of money, he made himself a lot of money. I won't say his name, but he was a Cuban guy from Miami.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  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'd 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 shit out of Orlando, and he was just finding buyers, doctors, these people, and been 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, he, I said, why aren't you here? You, you should be running this building. Let's get these units turned over.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Let's get the carpet guy in here. Let's get the, you know, get on top of the rents we gotta collect. You know, what are you doing? Oh, I'm, 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, he always hustled and made a good life enough to living, but he never made, you know, where he could have been. He could have been major, major.

• 1:20:44Graham Stephan?

  Does that frustrate you to see that, that people can't live up to their

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  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 gotta get off the road. Or you gotta get off, 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 eh, put it this way, money can't buy it. I'm not gonna 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.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  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 wanna call them. And they 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, it feels so good about themselves that they'd be dead or in jail like I was gonna be. You know, if I didn't leave New York, I would be dead right now, guaranteed, guaranteed. Or rot away in jail if I was lucky. I mean, you know, it's it's a mentality. You gotta want it. You gotta want a good life. We're not here that long.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Listen, you know, who knows? 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I probably won't even be here. Okay, it's gonna 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 it 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.

• 1:22:46Graham Stephan?

  Do you ever have concerns that maybe a few generations down, they just start wasting the money?

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  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 they 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 gonna do? That's the question. Do you know what you're doing? Are you doing something smart? Are you doing something that's gonna lead to a better life? You know, are you helping anybody? Are you making money? And it's up to you.

• 1:23:21Graham Stephan?

  But how do you ensure that your like great grandkids don't go and take that money instead of going to college? They go and buy like a.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  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 gonna set their kids up like I set my kids up. And then their kids will be, and we'll all keep living and growing in that same mentality. Okay, by, you know, our living experience.

• 1:23:50Graham Stephan?

  Has it always been very easy for you to become motivated? Or have there been spells where you've lacked motivation for a couple of months or a year?

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  I've always been motivated about making money because I knew money would make my life better. Okay, 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.

• 1:24:21Graham Stephan?

  Do you notice any difference between generations?

• 1:24:25Jack Selby?

  In terms of motivation and work ethic?

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  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 my 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

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  know, and they suffered and they struggled when they were young. So now it paid off in the long run because 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 gotta make them appreciate it and realize it didn't come out of the air magically. We earned it. Okay?

• 1:25:37Jack Selby?

  What childhood experience impacted you the most in terms of how you behave now?

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  I mean, by growing up so bad and in such a terrible place, I always wanted a better life. 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.

• 1:26:01Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  I've slept on trains. Okay. I, I, I've been around, I've watched people get actually right in front of me in Manhattan, in New York and Hell's Kitchen.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  I mean, the whole life experience of me growing up was no fond memories. Just negative, negative, negative of 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.

• 1:26:41Jack Selby?

  If you were to restart today, how would you do that? If you wanted to make a hundred million dollars over the, over the course of a lifetime, assuming you're starting over right now?

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  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 then 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 and 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?

• 1:27:35Jack Selby?

  Self-employed?

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Self-employed, proprietorship, whatever. You have to be your own person and your own, create your own growth. You can't let somebody else, you can't work for a paycheck for the rest of your life. You can't, you know, you gotta have some opportunity. Okay, it's like he's got opportunity. The bigger you grow, the more he grows.

• 1:27:54Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Entertainment I do, of course, you know, it's just, we enjoy it.

• 1:28:04Jack Selby?

  Well, it's highly lucrative. You're making a lot of money.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it makes good money, yeah.

• 1:28:07Jack Selby?

  If you were to restart today, where do you think the most opportunity would lie and what you would pursue?

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  I mean, nothing would compare to real estate.

• 1:28:14Jack Selby?

  That you'd still do real estate a hundred percent?

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  It's the only, it's the oldest profession in the world next to, you know what? You know what the oldest one is, I'm sure.

• 1:28:21Jack Selby?

  It's the one that Graham is a frequent patron of.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  But they had to, hey, they had to go rent the space somewhere, right?

• 1:28:29Jack Selby?

  True.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  It was a second, but um, I don't know. I always looked around and the real estate's always been the most solid way of, of, of making money. Listen, I could have been in the car business and buy cars and fix them and flip them too.

• 1:28:42Jack Selby?

  I could see that.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  I did. I used to survive before I owned real estate. I'd sell one Mercedes a month.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Cause 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's impossible in San Francisco. And people would sell their cars just to get rid of it. I'm tired of paying for parking. I'm tired of dealing with it. And I'd buy them. I'd drive it over one bridge, Bay Bridge to Oakland. I'd put it in a newspaper ad and some doctor out of Hayward 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?

• 1:29:22Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  I mean, eh, for one month, I'm gonna owe the bank, uh, you know, eh, I think the cars were like ten grand. I'm selling for fifteen. Ten thousand dollars, even at ten percent is a, it's a big thousand bucks. It was like nothing. I was using a bank's money.

• 1:29:39Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I always, I wa- I wanted to be an actor when I was young. I liked entertainment. I always liked being into, 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 ballplayers. Okay. And you can look at all these 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

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  miniscule 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 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. So 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.

• 1:31:05Graham Stephan?

  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.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  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, even with the dollar.

• 1:31:48Graham Stephan?

  Why didn't he buy it?

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  I think he was in college.

• 1:31:51Graham Stephan?

  Why didn't he buy it?

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  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 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'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...

• 1:32:26Graham Stephan?

  Do you think it's worth it to take the time to understand it? Or to diversify 3% into it?

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  It's always good to diversify. Because when you diversify...

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  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 it may be 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.

• 1:32:59Graham Stephan?

  What's?

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  I don't play the stocks anymore.

• 1:33:01Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:33:08Graham Stephan?

  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 ass making six, seven percent when I believe Bitcoin is going to average 20 to 40% annualized returns over the next 20 years.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  I don't do six.

• 1:33:30Graham Stephan?

  Why am I going to do that? But even, even at 10, why take the risk, the work, the?

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  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, 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 I'm happy for them, 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 happens, uh, computer chips or whatever break down,

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  whatever the happens or somebody figures out a way to it up.

• 1:34:22Graham Stephan?

  Someone turns it off.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  You know, you still got your house. You buy your house, you got your house. You buy that building, you know, the people are 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 you choose your path to 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, and 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 seven percent. I do value add. I take garbage and I try to turn it to gold. Physically, mentally, I create it, I make it happen, I'm in control. I'm not just saying, oh, Bitcoins should go up, I'm gonna make money. You know, what are you doing? You ain't doing.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  I mean, to me, I like to make my money happen, make it, create it. You know, and 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 gotta have investments. You know, and you pick your and choose your investments. I choose mini bonds, you might choose Bitcoin. Whatever works for you is fine. It's your money, you earned it.

• 1:35:34Jack Selby?

  Looking back, is there a life lesson or philosophy that you've adopted that you wish you implemented earlier in life?

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:35:56Jack Selby?

  Could have swallowed it.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  I could have, well. I don't know if you'd like to swallow, but that's another thing, I don't like to do that. Um, the point is that, you know, my son's doing to me all the time and it actually gives me a physical pain. We driving down the street. You know, we could have bought that building five years ago for half of what it's in is now. You know, we could have bought that bill, I could have bought.

• 1:36:17Jack Selby?

  Why do they say this to you? They just rub it in or what's the?

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  No, but. Listen, you know.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  The facts are the facts and the truth is 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 eight hundred to sixteen hundred 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 than 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.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  But, you know, it could have went the other way. My, 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 these. 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 gonna have two thousand 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.

• 1:37:44Jack Selby?

  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.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  But I came from a, being a risk taker. But, you know, 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 gonna 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 today I buy this place because I know what I gotta do. I know it's gonna work because I already know what the market's going on. Now to predict the future, that's a different story.

• 1:38:59Graham Stephan?

  Now, what about rising insurance costs right now? Because I know that's

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  It actually came down this year. I just, I just insured my whole portfolio. And we got about a 15% savings.

• 1:39:10Graham Stephan?

  How did that happen?

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  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 costs 50 grand or a hundred 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 at 1800 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?

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:40:14Graham Stephan?

  I heard another strategy that they use is not to pay out the full amount. They claim some sort of loophole or whatever. They expect a certain amount to settle. And then the lawsuits, they expect they're gonna spend X amount fighting this. And we're gonna spend X amount fighting this. So therefore it's better for us to fight this thing to try to settle for less.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  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've been just totally ridiculous. With something, a lawsuit that should be a hundred thousand is now five hundred thousand. I mean, you know, it's crazy. The courts and the lawyers have gone nuts with lawsuits.

• 1:40:56Graham Stephan?

  Is there any solution to this?

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Stop, you know, the lawyers want to make a fortune, you know? If somebody has a million dollar claim in a car accident, you know how much the lawyer gets?

• 1:41:09Graham Stephan?

  Thirty percent?

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  Forty. Maybe they can negotiate thirty, you're right. Imagine that. They're gonna make three hundred grand off of 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.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  They control the whole system. The system is, is, is, you know, they're not gonna go against their own people. And lawyers kind of have this like bond.

• 1:41:38Graham Stephan?

  Well, the hard part is that it costs so much to defend a lawsuit, even if it's baseless.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Lawyers are charging ridiculous money an hour now and then they gotta hire people. They gotta charge for this. It's crazy. Well, you know, a good lawyer is gonna charge five hundred bucks an hour now. It's ridiculous. An hour!

• 1:41:51Graham Stephan?

  Do you think it could ever be feasible that we implement a system in the United States? Or if you pursue a lawsuit and you lose, you are responsible for the other person's legal fees?

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  You know, sounds logical, but technically sometimes you can lose and really not, you know.

• 1:42:11Graham Stephan?

  Deserve to lose, yeah, right.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  Maybe it was a, you shouldn't have lost so much or, you know, eh, I don't know. I, I try to stand in the court system because it's just very, very tricky.

• 1:42:21Graham Stephan?

  But do you think that might cut down on frivolous lawsuits?

• 1:42:24Jack Selby?

  I feel like instead of having to resue.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  And then you had frivolous lawsuits.

• 1:42:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Publix, you know Publix, right? I think they get sued like, I don't know how many, if you count all the lawsuits they have, it's slipping falls and most of them. You know, like constantly, like every day they have lawsuits coming in. It's crazy.

• 1:42:41Jack Selby?

  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 the

• 1:42:55Graham Stephan?

  Here's what you're gonna have happen.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  But then if somebody sues you for a frivolous lawsuit, nine times out of 10, they ain't got a pot to piss in, they ain't getting shit anyway.

• 1:43:03Graham Stephan?

  That's true.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  So what's the point?

• 1:43:05Graham Stephan?

  There's no risk for someone with zero.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  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 shady, and they're the ones that ruin it for everybody, really, tries to do the right thing.

• 1:43:21Jack Selby?

  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?

• 1:43:30Graham Stephan?

  No, because most lawsuits settle outside of court. They're not gonna go to a jury trial. It's easier just to settle and get 20.

• 1:43:36Jack Selby?

  Either way, we don't need to solve this. I don't think we have a solution.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  The lawyers get paid regardless.

• 1:43:41Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Unless they took it on contingency and lose.

• 1:43:44Jack Selby?

  To single guys out there, because 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 most?

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Mating, not dating.

• 1:43:57Jack Selby?

  Mating, okay. What would you say most guys are getting wrong in terms of dating?

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  You know, you can't get too caught up in a relationship at a young age. You just

• 1:44:05Jack Selby?

  What is a young age? How it holds?

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 18 to 25. And then it depends on what you've accomplished while you're 18 to 25. You can't get into a relationship unless you got your shit 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.

• 1:44:47Graham Stephan?

  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 gotta date him for a few years, and then you gotta get married, and then it's like another year, and then, and then you're 35.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Okay, whatever. Listen, everybody's different. You never know. You know, it's all about meeting somebody that's gonna make your life pleasant and productive. Whether it's money wise 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 gotta be people that, and we're opposites, a hundred percent opposite in every way, imagine that. 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.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  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, cause dating, you know, you can start dating, you can start spending money. You know, you wanna wine and dine, you wanna have a fancy car, you know, you wanna have a nicer place. A lot of people don't wanna struggle, they don't wanna, they want it right now, they wanna live it now. And that's how they up their credit and, uh, you know, 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.

• 1:46:19Jack Selby?

  Do you think guys should pay for taking the girl out every single time?

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  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, it, it, listen, no matter what 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 wanna be equal, but you, when you go out to dinner, they sure want you to pay the bill all day. Yeah, um, so, you know, I don't know, it's just, it's, it's a 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 gonna do a lot of jobs men do.

• 1:47:04Jack Selby?

  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 a red flag?

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  You gotta know when the flags pop up and the signals pop up, you gotta, you gotta.

• 1:47:15Jack Selby?

  So what are signals that you should be privy to?

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  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, in their own 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, party, then, you know, you know, it's not going to get you nowhere. It's going to take you down the wrong road, you know, because the party is over the next day and you forget all about it anyway.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  So what the hell?

• 1:48:04Jack Selby?

  How much more did it motivate you to make money and be successful having a wife and having kids?

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, having the kids definitely was a motivation, knowing that I need money. I gotta put, I gotta pay for these kids' food. I gotta pay for these kids. I gotta have a decent place to live. I gotta have a decent car to get around with. I gotta have them in school. I 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.

• 1:48:43Jack Selby?

  We're going to go on to some rapid fire questions. If you're ready. Perfect. Yeah. So what's the most ridiculous thing you've ever bought that you absolutely love?

• 1:48:54Speaker 01

  Probably my statues, like the pelican out there. There's a pelican out there that looks over the beach and there's an eagle.

• 1:49:00Jack Selby?

  How much were those?

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  I don't know. Somewhere between more than five, less than 10. Batmobiles, cars.

• 1:49:08Jack Selby?

  Yeah, Batmobile is definitely.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  I had a lot of them. I had the ones from the movies with the wings. I had the one that shot fire out the back. I had the machine that came up and shot. You know, you're getting these little kicks, but I made money on this stuff, too. You know, creating this thing. Uh, I mean, I've done crazy things, you know, mostly cars.

• 1:49:27Jack Selby?

  What's one thing you refuse to spend money on, no matter how rich you are?

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Refuse to spend money on?

• 1:49:34Jack Selby?

  Air.

• 1:49:36Speaker 00

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• 1:50:06Speaker 06

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• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  I hate that when you go to a gas station and now you gotta put your card in. You don't pay for air.

• 1:50:41Graham Stephan?

  I thought it's free if you just go and ask for it.

• 1:50:43Jack Selby?

  It's in California.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  No, but now they got machines on every gas station.

• 1:50:47Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I always just go and walk in.

• 1:50:49Jack Selby?

  That's, that might be a California thing though.

• 1:50:51Graham Stephan?

  I just walk in and ask, hey, could you turn on the air? Sure.

• 1:50:54Speaker 01

  No, they got machines normally at the gas stations and now you gotta pay for them.

• 1:50:58Graham Stephan?

  Right there, yeah, there's always quarters.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  It's a fucking compressor in the ground.

• 1:51:00Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, but I always, I walk in.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Give us some kind of convenience for ripping us off on the gas.

• 1:51:04Graham Stephan?

  I always walk in and just ask and the guy's like, all right. Clicks the button and turns on.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Not here. It's air, you gotta pay for air.

• 1:51:12Jack Selby?

  Which do you enjoy more? The chase and negotiation and structuring of a really good deal or the moment you close?

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Finding the deal. Once you find a deal, everything else is programmatic. Programmatic, whatever the word is.

• 1:51:25Jack Selby?

  So it's the...

• 1:51:26Speaker 01

  Once you find that deal and you know you got that deal. Everything else, you get it. You close the deal, you got the money, close the deal, you fix it up, you know, and 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 shit. You can hire somebody to, you know, to manage shit. You can, you can, you know, finding that deal with value add components.

• 1:51:51Jack Selby?

  In one sentence, what is one piece of advice that you would love to give to your 20 year old self?

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  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, you'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, 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.

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  I worked constantly from the time I got up, you know, except the weekends you party.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  I was working probably 16, 18 hour days.

• 1:52:53Jack Selby?

  And you would have wanted to work on the weekends to add that time?

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  I did work on the weekends and I, you know, really started getting hooked on, you know, knowing, hey, I gotta get this shit 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 chase, you go out dating and, you know, all that shit. Going out and clubs and drinking.

• 1:53:14Jack Selby?

  What do you feel? How do you feel about that, Jack?

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  It's really a waste of time. You know, 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.

• 1:53:32Jack Selby?

  I mean, I don't party and go out that much.

• 1:53:35Graham Stephan?

  But I'm talking like pedal to the metal, like head down, ten years, twenties.

• 1:53:40Jack Selby?

  I disagree. I think ten 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 thirty, when you're forty, when you're fifty, when you're sixty, add on like thirty percent, maybe forty percent, and shoot for that.

• 1:53:57Graham Stephan?

  Oh, I'd say double it.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  It's like, I got friends, people I, you know, I'm friendly with. And they say, oh, yeah, when I was twenty, I was backpacking and traveling the world and, you know, and all that great experience and sleeping in hostels 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 gonna get on a plane, I'm gonna stay in a nice hotel, and I'm really gonna enjoy the place and enjoy the experience. You should have been working when you were twenty 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

• 1:54:42Jack Selby?

  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 twenties a little bit more. Gary Vee, actually, we, 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 twenties.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if he did, then he might not be enjoying as much now.

• 1:55:02Jack Selby?

  True, yeah, but then again, your body can do

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  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, and, you know, listen, I don't know, I think you gotta earn, you earn and you make shit happen, then you enjoy life. That's the way I think it should be.

• 1:55:20Jack Selby?

  I agree, but I don't think

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  And I made my mistakes, don't get me wrong, you know.

• 1:55:23Jack Selby?

  I don't think it's zero, like on or off, like a light switch.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  You could do a little, you know.

• 1:55:26Jack Selby?

  You find a balance, yeah.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  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 gonna 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 gonna be thirty and you're gonna say, oh, I still I got my shit together. You know, I don't have money in the bank and I don't have, you know, where I I really wish I was at.

• 1:56:12Jack Selby?

  I would agree with that. I think it's the main focus that you should have in your twenties.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:56:27Jack Selby?

  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.

• 1:56:34Speaker 01

  Everything is right in moderation. Everything is right in a 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 a certain time where you 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 on stupid shit that ain't gonna do for you because the next day, oh, wow, I went to a concert. Big deal. You had a good time at the concert. How's it gonna help you tomorrow when your ass is broken? You spent all the money on a concert. I mean, you know, you gotta think logically and sensibly.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  And hopefully one day you will.

• 1:57:24Jack Selby?

  I hope so, too. Ben Mala, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  Thank you for coming to my house and occupying it.

• 1:57:30Jack Selby?

  Thank you for having us here. I gotta 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 than I thought.

• 1:57:38Graham Stephan?

  It's beautiful, man.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Well, it all could be yours.

• 1:57:42Jack Selby?

  What low price?

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  As long as it has a three in front of one.

• 1:57:46Jack Selby?

  Two zeros, two zeros.

• 1:57:48Graham Stephan?

  How about it could be a three in front of the one thirteen?

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  Well, cause you're a cheap bastard.

• 1:57:54Graham Stephan?

  The one in front of the one.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  You always want to bargain, you want to bargain, but you know, that's fine. You know, but the people I'm gonna sell this house to are not really gonna care that much. They're not gonna 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 it just to irritate people in Gulf of America?

• 1:58:19Graham Stephan?

  Probably, yeah.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  Is that just part of his obnoxious ego?

• 1:58:22Graham Stephan?

  Point now we're talking about.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not the guy, but he does things on purpose because 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.

• 1:58:36Graham Stephan?

  I think he just likes being targeted.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  It helps a lot, but sometimes he goes a little too far.

• 1:58:40Jack Selby?

  Well, also it's like cementing his legacy. Like if that sticks, then he's the guy that turned it around.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm the guy that changed it to Gulf of America. Anyway, it is what it is, but um, where were we at?

• 1:58:50Jack Selby?

  I was saying, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting us into your house and uh, guys, if you're interested in some consulting.

• 1:58:58Graham Stephan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Go to benmallah.com and consult with Ben. Okay, because you're not, I'm not bragging, but I'm just gonna tell you right now. You're not gonna find anybody with 30 years' experience, has accumulated all the real estate wealth I have, that's gonna 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.

• 1:59:29Jack Selby?

  And you need to raise prices because I think you're underselling yourself.

• 1:59:31Graham Stephan?

  But if that's an opportunity, you're booking at a crazy deal.

• 1:59:33Jack Selby?

  That's an opportunity for you guys.

• 1:59:35Graham Stephan?

  This is arbitrage opportunity.

• 1:59:36Jack Selby?

  We're not taking any money off this, by the way.

• 1:59:38Graham Stephan?

  If someone could book your call and then upsell it somewhere else and then profit the difference.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  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 fucking idiots still in the world? If you were in charge, Ben. 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 war. 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.

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  Where, where does it benefit? I don't understand, there's no benefit in it. There's no, there's no positive, there's nothing in it for anybody. And then if you do win, alright, now you're stuck with 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're just, they're not rational. And then the communists are not rational. Cause they wanna control everything. It takes no sense to control people. For what? You're not here that long. What is Putin in the seventies now? He ain't gonna be around that long. I see the seventies. He's pretty ripped though. He's in good shape.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  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 this. We, you know, let's face it, humans evolve very quickly lately too.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  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 know, we gotta get rid of that 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.

• 2:02:34Jack Selby?

  You guys got to vote Mala 2028.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Not the job for me.

• 2:02:40Jack Selby?

  I feel like you'd be a good president. You'd be great. We'd at least have really good infrastructure and housing. Good negotiations too.

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  I could have tried to come to the Department of HUD, yeah. I mean, this is 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 just 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 cuckoos and bad people will just eventually die off from now. Hopefully natural causes or whatever, 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 all the answer, but maybe you guys do.

• 2:03:28Jack Selby?

  Maybe we'll do.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  You're the new generation.

• 2:03:30Jack Selby?

  We'll work on it.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  You're the new generation.

• 2:03:31Jack Selby?

  AI will figure it out.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  AI.

• 2:03:33Jack Selby?

  Guys, thank you so much for watching. It really means a lot. Thank you, Ben, for inviting us in your house.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:03:39Jack Selby?

  And until next time. See you, guys.