Podcast Episode 58 Transcript

Episode 58: Venturing Into New Land: Learn How To Buy & Sell Land & Find The Right Investors

Participant #1:
The problem when you buy package deals is that there's always bad lots in them. So what I normally do with those lots, cause I don't want to kill the deal, right? I'll donate those lots to one of the organizations within the same county. And then what happens is, guys, this is a huge older nugget that I'm about to drop on you. A lot of the political people sit on the United Way board or whatever that non for profit organization is for that area. You now become their biggest contributor. When they sell that lot, they want to have lunch with you. They want to talk to you. They want to know who you are. This is your end.

Participant #1:
Welcome, everyone to the Prendamano Real Estate "PreReal" podcast. We're joined today by Daniel Borrero. We have a Staten Islander in the house. Actually, he's got an amazing story. He's the founder and President of USA Land Ventures. He's an investor that's been involved in countless units from fix and flips to buying packages of land, breaking them up and selling them individually. He is a renowned speaker in teaching Realtors how to find the investor. Think like the investor to target them so that they can generate repeat business. Really excited to have them on the show today. Daniel, thank you so much for the time. No, thank you. I'm humbled to be here and thank you for the invite. Guys, it's our pleasure for the folks out there. Daniel is a great follow on Social, so we'll go over the Tags and they'll be in the links below. But I enjoy watching you on social. You've got that kind of thing about you. Thank you. Comical side and a pretty serious side, and you pull it together really nicely. I appreciate that. Well, we appreciate watching it. So, Daniel, you're a very accomplished investor. You're a thought leader in the space, everything from doing the actual transactions to teaching empowering and imparting leadership to those who are trying to grow in the business. Fix and flips and buying land packages, something I had done back in 2008 910. People like to get a flavor of how you kind of came to me in the real estate game. Can you walk us through the early years? Was real estate always top of mind for you? Yes. It was one of my goals. So it's funny, since I could remember, I always wanted to be wealthy, right? How was I going to get there was the objective. How did I make that happen? So when I came out of school, when I graduated from College, I actually went back to my old neighborhood where I felt most comfortable. And I opened up a video store. That was that was my first business, which was right across the street from where I literally grew up in my father's, Bodega since the age of nine. So it was in Fort Greene, Brooklyn Fork, Green, Brooklyn. Many of you may be familiar with it today, it wasn't what it is today. It was considered to be the okay corral. Back then, I can't tell you how many people thought I was nuts, including a lot of members within my family. And within four years, I was able to save enough money to buy my first property, which was on the Delphi Street between Myrtle and park. It's a two family home, pre walk construction brick. I bought that for $72,000. It's worth today about 2.6 million. Wow. Only because of where it's location. And I constantly tell everybody the real money in this business is on the long term. Hold your fix and flips are great for short term capital, but the real money is in the long term. Hold on the asset appreciation. So having said that, I bought my second property in Parksville, Brooklyn. At the time, it was a two family with two stores. It's now four family with two stores. We added two apartments to it. We went up, and that also is a phenomenal piece of property not far from Barkley Center. And it just so happens that my dad, who had the Bodega across the street across the street from him. There was a lot that was constantly being dumped on garbage. And no matter who we called, it never stopped. Right. And so he said to me, find out who owns it. Let's try to buy it from them. We ended up buying it from the woman who owned it. It was only a block away. She lived a block away for $70,000. It was two lots together. We rocked it, we fenced it, we cleaned it. And literally, we just had no intent. We didn't know what we were going to do with it. We just knew we wanted it cleaned and we didn't want any more dumping there. And within the same week, people coming into our business, whether it be my father's Bodega or my video store, asking us if they could park their cars there. So the light bulb went off. Right? Wait a minute. So we could actually charge people to park cars here. And we ended up parking 20 cars. So within a year, we had a developer approach us. They paid us $160,000 for something we bought for 70 a year before, and we were like, all right. So I went across the street and I contacted the owners there, bought two lots of them on the opposite side of the corner. They didn't know what I was negotiating. What for? They thought I was doing them a favor by this, right? For $70,000. So we bought that for $70,000. When we closed, I fenced. I cleaned. I moved my people who are paying me to park their cars across the street to the new lot. And that fit 21, 22 cars, two additional cars. Literally. Within the year, we sold that for 335. When they saw the development happening on the corner where the first property we sold took the money again, did the 1031 bought a property around the corner, another vacant lot that was double the size. Two lots. That was double the size there we were fitting over 25 to 30 cars, same thing, $150 a month. We cleaned it, we fenced it. The difference. We took and we bought two more buildings. We use it as down payment money. Two more four family properties in the same area in four green and as well as the lot across the street right around the corner. Five and a half years later, we sold that for 1.6 million. Wow. And then did the same exact thing. Again, we took all that money. And instead of buying more lots, we went and bought more property. We started sprinkling it all over for green and using it as seed down payment money, 25% down on other properties. So from really a very early age, this was just kind of in your blood, right? Pretty much. Yeah. I knew I wanted to get into it. We just didn't know how. But it was funny. I didn't even know what a 1031 was when I did my first land deal. It's when my attorney, Mr. Schumann, said, you need to do a 1031. And I was like, what is that? You know, so I can't say we were brilliant. But what I can say is that we were disciplined. We didn't use any of the profit money to enrich our lives with consumer items such as cars or homes or vacations or furniture. We literally took every red cent and reinvested it into long term cash flow. So delayed gratification. Totally. Yes. That is something that is lost almost entirely on folks. In many cases today, they don't understand how critically important it is, especially when you're starting that you resist that urge to go out and to buy the new whatever it is, the new car, the new house go on those vacations. It's so critically important, because if you're going to get in this business and you're going to stay in this business and you're going to compound those initial first few deals really provide an absolutely springboard. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Yeah. Well, I hear it all the time. How do you get to that level? How do you get started, folks? That's it. If you're going to jump into the game, you've got to be super disciplined and really make sure delayed gratification. It can't be like part of your principles. It has to be the principal. You've got to take the money, take the profit, and roll it over. All of us entrepreneurs, if you will. Daniel, share some sort of common thread. The entrepreneurial spirit is something we talk about a lot today. There's a lot of folks after Coronavirus that are kind of trading the nine to five to pursue entrepreneurial interest. Do you think that that's something that can be taught or is this something that's just born in some folks, I think we could teach it as much as we can. Unfortunately, though, most people don't adhere to it. So it's funny. I get people all the time who come to me for advice about entrepreneurial, whether it be the real estate side of the business, any business, and I tell them to an extent I even try to discourage him. It's because this is not an easy life. Actually, if thinking back throughout my lifespan, I start to think, Well, I must have been insane. This is an insanity lifestyle, right? I don't have to tell you when you're sleeping, you're thinking right. How many times I'm sure you've had the same situation where you're thinking about your business. And while you're sleeping, you come up with an idea and you have to wake up and write it down before you forget it. Right. While you're taking a shower, you're thinking about all the phone calls you have to make or the workers you have to speak to or the contractors or the leads that you have to follow up on. There's always a dilemma that you're resolving. That's what we do as real estate investors. We're resolving people's problems. And as a result, we get paid handsomely for it. But we are problem solvers. And if you're not a problem solver, if you're a drama Queen and you try to make things bigger than what they are, don't become an entrepreneur. Yeah. So without question, we would just review and core values here. And problem solver is something that came up over and over and over. We're empaths. We have to feel what the other person is feeling, right. Understand what their mindset is. Their mindset has to be bigger than your mindset. People ask all the time the secrets of being a great deal maker. If I could impart any gift to people, it would be an empath empathy if you know how people are feeling, you know what they want to hear when they want to hear it, how they want to hear it. And your job is to bridge that gap. Right. But that comes with a heavy toll. It's not something that you can shut off. It's not something that just goes away. And I hear this sort of stuff. I'm sure you do all the time. Oh, you're addicted to your work, and this is all that, you know, and it's not something you can turn on or off. It's error. It's not right. It's either you got my accountant, Mr. Hyde Cart. He was my accountant until he was 92 years old. And he used to say, either you have it or you don't. That's it. That's it. You can't teach it. Either you have it or you don't. If you have it, we could teach it. If you don't have it, we could teach it to me. You're blue in the face. You'll never get it. And it comes with immense sacrifice. Yes. The countless parties that are missed and the events with the family and just time and time again, unfortunately, disappointing family members because work is just almost all consuming. But the reality is the first seven years that I opened up my video, so I didn't take one day off, not a Christmas, not a Christmas Eve, not a New Year, not a New Year. I was open every single day the first three years I worked by myself, with the exception of my girlfriend, who is now my wife. When she came home from work, she would bring me dinner and we would eat together beyond accounting between customers. And she would work with me until 10:00 at night. The reality is entrepreneurship gives you the financial freedom. But it doesn't give you the social freedom that everyone thinks we have until you reach a certain Plateau. Of course. Right. And then at that point, yeah, of course. Then you reap the rewards of your hard work and your sacrifices. Yeah. Without a doubt. So it's funny you're talking about not taking a day off, and that's not at all foreign to me, right. That makes complete sense. Well, of course he didn't take a day off. He started a business, right. We do a lot of business coaching now. And one of the exercises I've talked about this briefly before was to have my wife fill out some of the questions that the coaches were asking. And I've been married now for 14 years. And one of the questions was when was the last day off? Was it a week ago or a month ago when you were off where his phone was off and not answering calls? And she responded, We've been married for 14 years. He's never taken a day off, including our wedding day when he had meetings in the morning. That's so funny. I had two meetings a day. It's crazy, right? Yes. It's crazy. I'm working hard now to try and find the balance. You do get to a point. It is difficult. I'm not going to kid you. It is difficult to find a balance. But as I get old, I'm starting to realize you got to smell the roses. Listen, we all have different values. As far as what makes us feel rich. A car does not make me feel rich. A nice car. Actually, it angers me when I spend a lot of money on a vehicle and it's sitting in the street because it's depreciating. I'm thinking about all the other things I could have dead with that money to make me more money. But my vacations, for instance, I take three vacations a year with all my children and my wife. And listen, the reality is my kids are adults now, but I love watching them enjoy the fruits of my labor while we're on vacation because that's a memory that doesn't depreciate. So those are the things that make me feel rich. And now at this time in my life, I could do that. But it's as a result of me sacrificing. But alongside, like you mentioned, your wife and your kids do as well sacrifice alongside of you so that you can achieve your dreams, no doubt about it. And we all have different love languages, right. Things that make us tick. And seldom is it the material things for the entrepreneur that really is what drives them. Those are things that come along with it. And it certainly is a nice thing to be able to fall back on. But more often than not, it's not what makes us tick. No. Your Instagram. As I had mentioned earlier, you're a great follower, and you talk about your dad a lot and him being a mentor. I was wondering if there's a few things you could share. Some of the things maybe he's taught you over the years. Yeah. It's funny. I just did one. And I mentioned about shining apples. And my brother called me up, and he says we need to do a video just specifically on shiny apples. So my father had a really big deli side of his business. He was closer to the Navy yard. There was a lot of ships being built back in those days. He used to sell tons and tons of sandwiches. And my brother and I our job because we were there all summer. We would get there at six in the morning with my dad and our job. He would pick up three cases of apples every morning. On the way in, everything had to be fresh. Right. So we'd leave the house at 430 in the morning, he'd pick up his produce and we get to the store and we'd have to wash the apples. And then we'd have to take Western oil with paper towel and put a little Western oil on it. And we shine each Apple. Right. And he had a big display right in the refrigerator, in the front by the cold cuts and another one on the counter and heat sell, literally. I don't know. I don't remember how many apples were in those things, but at least 100 and 5200 apples a day. Right. So we were shining apples. And then when I was 14, my dad took off a week and I was in charge of the store. That was my first experience of being the real boss. Right. And that week I told my brother We're not shining apples. Well, do you know we only sold maybe a half a case of apples a day? I believe it. So by Thursday, we need to start shining out. So, guys, the point is, I learned how to flip property by shining apples. All you're doing with properties is shining it, giving that curb appeal, cleaning it up, doing all the things that the previous owner was too lazy to do or maybe was incapable of doing it either for physical reasons, economic reasons, whatever the case may be, all we're doing as real estate investors on a daily basis is two things resolving someone else's problem and then shining the apples. I love it. Yeah. And I learned that from my dad shining apples. So do you work with other family members now? I do. So my brother David and I, we work together. My younger brother, Derek, he's involved with some of the properties that we do own because he was involved in the earlier years. So we're partners with that. But primarily, I take care of all the properties. I pretty much run the day to day operation on the properties. My partner that I'm on a daily basis with is my brother David. We do everything together on fix and flip as well. In the state of New Jersey and Florida. We have many doors that we hold. As I said, multiple times. The real money in this business is in the long term hold. And we love the condo side of the business, especially in central Florida. We've got over 150 doors there, so he handles the day to day operations as far as maintenance is concerned and repairs and the renovations of that side. So can we talk a little bit about the portfolio? Buying and selling a couple of lots when you were younger is one thing. Growing it and scaling it is an entirely different animal, especially when it's not a localized portfolio. There's a lot of challenges that come along with that. Can you walk the audience through? Kind of just the gap between having a few lots in Brooklyn to hundreds of doors down in central Florida and literally thousands of flips along the way. There had to be a hell of a story in between. Right. So we were doing extremely well in the early 90s in New York, but it got to the point where the fundamentals didn't make sense. There were no fundamentals. The numbers weren't making sense. And we found ourselves stagnated. And my brother in law, who's an incredible businessman out of Miami, kept talking to me about Cape Call, Florida, and my dad was after about six months. He says, look, every time he comes to New York, he's talking about Kate Call. He obviously knows what he's doing. He does. Well, let's take a trip out there. So I said, sure, let's go. And I bought my first six properties for $3,000 a lot. There was absolutely nothing there. You could drive for 20 minutes. You saw no house. Cape Core, Florida is out of Lee County. You could fly into Fort Myers. The woman there that my brother in law introduced me to this day. I still do business with her. Her name is Lucy Kiniones. And I said to her, Why would anyone buy here? Because I'm coming with a New York mentality, right. And she says, Come here. Five years from now, there'll be nothing available. So I bought six lots. We go back. I talked to my brother six months later. He said, yeah, go buy six more lots, whichever ones you pick is fine with us. And now the prices are doubled. There's $6,000. And again, it didn't make any sense. But I bought them anyway. So the first six lots, I actually put three lots each under my daughter's names in their trust accounts. And those lots when they were ready to go to College, I sold them around $55,000 a piece, literally. So I have degrees behind me. Only one of those is mine. The rest belongs to my kids. And that's their gift to me that you pay for it. So you might as well have it. So it reminds me, though, every day when I walk into my office, what I do this for, but literally, those three lots each paid for the majority of their College education. So essentially, that $9,000 gave me back $165,000 in return. Wow. Each. Right. But it didn't make sense the way it raised so quick. So we started moving more north. We started looking for other areas in Florida, where it did make fundamentally sense. And back then, we didn't have the Internet that we have today. So we had to do a lot of traveling. And we did a lot of research as much as we research we could do from here. And then we get in a plane and then go confirm our research. So 90% of the time, whatever we thought was there, we came back not buying, because once we got our feet on the ground and we were driving around and we started talking to people and going to the building's apartment and asking certain questions. It didn't make sense. So we ended up in an area called Sarasota County. We bought a lot in Northport and in Punta Gorda, which is a gorgeous area. But the developers were right on our heels. They were coming in right behind us. Right. And they were always bringing in up the numbers. So as we kept going up north and now we're up in Putnam County, we're buying heavy. There real heavy right now. The numbers all make sense. There's a lot of everything around. It is blowing up every single county behind it is around. It is blowing up Marion County, which is Ocala Flagger, which is Flagger Beach above you have St. Augustine above that, you have Jacksonville. And then they're doing a lot of road expansions that is making it easier for commerce. So these are all the things we look for, right. If the big box stores are opening up, we look for road expansions. We look for hospital expansions. We look for what the big boys are doing because they're putting in millions of dollars. Right. And then that's how we decide where we're going to buy. So in 2010, we started buying a lot around Lake Mary, which is central Florida. And the reason we were buying in there was because we had done our research. We had been speaking to a lot of people. We were going to a lot of Council meetings, and we knew they were going to really start developing the medical center that was there. So we were buying lots there at 3000 $5,000. And then when they went up to 30 40, we sold them. So are you buying these lots that are in play in subdivisions already, or are you buying big pieces that I don't acquire? It totally depends if it's in a subdivision. It depends on the HOA if they're organized or not, if they're not, I don't buy in it. It also depends if the HOA is already charged the previous owner for the water and sewer coming across their land in front of their land because we don't know what that is. And that's a big variable. So I'm not going to sell that to an investor that may get stuck with that unknown variable because at the end of the day, I've been doing this since 1989, at the same office phone number since 1985. I'm not going to change my number. I'm not going to hide from anybody, right? So we want to make sure that when we sell to another investor that I can't guarantee they're going to make money. But I can guarantee that I'm selling it with good faith that everything around it indicates they're going to make money. Got it. Gosh. There's so many questions I want to ask. Are you doing these kind of one off acquisitions or are you buying packages distress. It all depends. So we have people that go out there, literally. They get paid per deal. They're on the team, and I don't care if it's one lot. I don't care if it's 150 lots. I'll buy them all as long as the numbers make sense. The problem when you buy package deals is that there's always bad lots in them. They're either severe flood zone or they're either wetlands or they're either locked in, meaning that there's no access to it because there's lots all around it. So what I normally do with those lots because I don't want to kill the deal, right? Yeah. I'll donate those lots to one of the organizations within the same county. So Voice Club of America. If the camp is near their United Way, every county has their own United Way. And then what happens? Guys, this is a huge golden nugget that I'm about to drop on you. A lot of the political people sit on the United Way board, whatever that non for profit organization is for that area. You now become their biggest contributor. When they sell that lot, they want to have lunch with you, they want to talk to you, they want to know who you are. This is your end. So I don't sell the garbage lot because I don't want it associated with me. I donate it, I get the tax write off and it gives me good will in the community. So he said that was a huge nugget, and I have to put an exclamation point on that, especially if you're in a location that's not your kind of home turf. When you have the ability to sit down with the movers and shakers the decision makers, the policy makers in a location that's new to you. That's where you're able to glean a lot of that information. That's where you're able to understand and see where is the growth and what is the opportunity. You had said. You felt it in the 90s. Certainly, we feel it today. The barrier to entry in New York for real estate is extraordinarily high to me. To be honest with you, it's got to be a really sweet deal for me to buy now in New York. Look, everything I have is long term, and I don't sell anything I have in New York, with the exception of it having been vacant lots. I don't sell anything with a structure. I shouldn't say that. Four years ago, I sold on a deal on Spring Street, but that was because it was such a ridiculous number. It would have been foolish for me not to sell. And I took that money, and I turned that into an 18% cap rate, moving it over to central Florida. 18 cap, and it's increased in asset value at about 13% per year. Wow. So about four or five years ago, we started screaming it from the rooftops that there was a decentralization of real estate happening in the major cities across the country. Right. We started to see a new metric that traditionally wasn't really accounted for in the analysis. And that was legislative threats. We started to find that the legislative threats were becoming so profound that it made sense. We told all of our clients we do a lot of consulting work, get out of multifamily, get into logistics and property. If you wanted to stay local or decentralized and go look at some of these emerging markets that are all the rage now, right. If you look at the top ten growing markets four, 5810 years ago and you look at what they are now, they're completely different. So if you're an investor, that is either doing a friends and family raise or they're trying to scrap together money and they're getting started. You can't start here anymore, right? There's. Not that you just to start. If you don't have a couple of million Bucks, you just can't do real damage. So for those who are looking to pick an emerging market, it seems like they're everywhere now, right? Are there certain metrics that at the global level, you look at that give you a kind of a sense. You know what? I need to get boots on the ground and go check things out there.

Participant #1:
I'm in a different position in my life right

Participant #1:
now. When I look at a deal, I look at the deal for every reason why I shouldn't take the deal, not why I should. I'm not sure if I that makes complete sense. Right. There's a certain measure of risk that every investor has to understand going in you're now at a place where your threshold for risk has changed and you're looking at the reasons not to buy a deal. And if you can't seem to find enough reasons to not buy it, then you go ahead and take the step. Right? Precisely. And it's not as much about the risk anymore as it is about the time that it's going to consume. Because like I said earlier, you get to a point in your travels that it's time to smell the roses. Right. So now it's all about how much time is that going to take? And does it justify the possible income that I can make? Right. I do look at a lot of emerging markets. I got to tell you, Connecticut, there's a lot of places in Connecticut that are really still good if you're under four units. Dayton, Ohio, another great place. The cap rate is huge. I would tell you, Central Florida, but the numbers have creaked up so much. The crap rates you're looking at about 6%, maybe eight, if you're lucky, don't go anywhere. Okay. I shouldn't say that. A lot of people out here teaching it's all about the cash flow, and I don't teach that. My teaching is it's all about the asset appreciation. The cash flow is just the extra the cash flow is paying you to manage that property while the property's appreciating. If it's not going to appreciate, there's no reason why I'm going to get into it. And if you're not walking in with a minimum of 30% equity on the deal after your renovation cost, that 30% equity after your renovation cost is your profit for having taken the time out for the renovations. Okay. So you're not looking at deals, and I want to touch on that for a minute because I think there's a lot of people that are taking that other advice that are in for a world to hurt when the market changes. Oh, my God. This market right now you want to play in it and you're going to be left without a chair when the music stops, without a chair. I couldn't agree more. So you're not looking at a deal unless after you've completed the repositioning or the fixing or whatever it is that you're doing, you've got automatic 30% equity off the hop, and then you're in a market where the appreciation potential is going to outweigh the cash flow benefit in that moment. Absolutely. Okay. And what a lot of people are doing now is they're buying cap rate deals just because interest rates are so low, they're enjoying that Delta. But when the markets turn and rentals soften and rates shift because a lot of these products that I see people are opting to save a half a point to three quarters of a point or a point to get a variable rate instead of locking in to historically low free money interest rates. It's insanity when I hear people tell me that I just had a student called me yesterday and asking me if they should do that. And I said, Why in God's name would you do that? You're at 3.5% and say, What's a half a percent less? I said, What's the cap over the term of the loan? He says, Well, it could go up no more than eight points. So you're looking at maybe eleven points. Why would you do that? I said, do you realize what it's really costing? What, that three and a half is really costing you after you take the tax deduction, what is it costing you? Two point 75%. That's free money. Free money. I mean, when I started 1989, my first mortgage was Green Point Savings Bank at 18.9% with six points. Guys, this is free money. Yeah. And it's not going to be free forever. No. Okay. I know a lot of people have been talking for years about rates going up. They're going to go up. Inflation is here. Inflation is coming. It is absolute insanity. If there's any takeaways from this. If you've got those opportunities to lock into fixed product and the banks are going to discourage it because the banks aren't stupid, they're going to try and incentivize you and put you in a position where you're jumping for that variable opportunity today because the banks aren't in it for a two, three, five year run. They're in it for the long haul. And rates inevitably are going to go back up. When I started, it wasn't quite as high as you. But the first deal I did was, I think, either 11.5 or eleven point 75, and it was a couple of points. And it was a good rate at the time. Yeah. So that was like 1998, I think. Probably right. And it made all the sense in the world back then because prices were reflective and rates go down, prices go up. This is a cycle. Guys, look, guys, I love inflation because I do much better when inflation rate is high, because I saved my money. I lived below my needs. So now when I go and I go to make a deal, I'm coming in with all cash. Doesn't matter to me if the inflation rate is high or the interest rates are high because I'm not going for a loan most of the time because I'm using my own cash. When the rates come back down, I'll refinance that property, take my cash back out, and I'm ready again for the next cycle. So are you investing in any commercial, like retail, office buildings, any of that type of product? I don't want to. Only because again, let's go back to what I said earlier. Not that it's a bad deal, but at this point in my life, it's all about where am I going to spend my time most effectively with the biggest return and still work less, if that makes sense, right? Sure it does. So I do like buying commercial. What I really like buying, though, is mixed use properties. That way, I'm laying out my risk among residential and commercial simultaneously. So I love if I buy in city environments. I love to buy mixed use properties on Main Street. Always buy mixed use properties.

Participant #1:
Neither am I. We're not spring chickens. Right? So something amazing about you is you've got a crush social media program. They got tremendous followers, great engagement, great reviews. You and I weren't born with cell phones in our hands. No. And I have a full service brokerage here, and we're constantly bringing in the young guns. And even though it's second nature to them, we fight constantly to try and get people to produce more content. How did it become, like, such a natural thing for you to do the social media thing? It's not as natural as it looks. Trust me, you do a hell of a job. My kids have been telling me for years to get on social media, and I was like, Absolutely not. No way. I don't want anyone knowing what I do, right? I was always that person who wanted to fly below the radar. My brother, on the other hand, was the person constantly arguing with me. Like, listen, we need to show people who we really are. They want to do more business with us. And I was always resistant to that. And one of my daughters who's actually, when she graduated, she got into the digital marketing sector and she does extremely well. And she set up all my accounts for me. And she just kept pushing me. And she says that because she would forward me links of other people giving advice. And she said, what do you think about this? And I said, this guy is crazy. Why would anybody listen to this person? And she says, this is why you have to do it. And it turned out that I didn't realize how much I was going to love helping people achieve their success, whether it be through real estate or anything else, because the reality is you and I both know there are certain basic aspects of entrepreneurship that goes across any business, right? And I really enjoyed watching people grow. I couldn't get asked in Clover after the first two months, I got bored because I caught up to all my work. So I really dug deep into social media. And I'm not going to kid you. I learnt a lot. And yes, most of my content is all me 99% of my content. It's just me on my cell phone, on a job site, on my travels. What I'm doing on a daily basis because I wanted people to understand the truth. This is not an easy business because I'm not selling anything. I don't charge for anything. I'm not selling mentorship. This is all free. I even do a free mentorship class every Wednesday night to anybody that wants to join. All they got to do is go to my website, sign up and they'll get a link every week. Thank you for that, by the way, because most times people are selling stuff, and I think that you hit the nail on the head. That's probably what's so different about you. Is it's just authentic. You're telling a story. You do a series of videos which I like. You show different parts of the renovation at different times, from an initial walk through an acquisition to some of the problems and challenges that you come. You don't hide that stuff. You show the genuine side of what you can encounter in this game, and then you show on the disposition side you've had your attorney on, like, you've really kind of opened it up. And again, I appreciate that, because a lot of people, they don't show that everyone's always in a suit. And at the closing table smiles and checks. I'm showing you me. I'm sitting in my work van, and it's a dusty old work van. No, I want people to know the truth. It's not as glamorous as it appears to be, but it's extremely rewarding if you could stay the course. Yeah, the real estate podcasting. And just in general, the podcasting. Are you enjoying that part of it? There's, like a whole community and a subculture I found in podcasting. What's your experience? So I'm not doing the podcasting. It's literally a Zoom meeting every Wednesday night. With the exception of the summer months, I'm only doing it twice, twice a week, twice a month, rather, because it's summertime. I want to take it easy. It takes time. I do a lesson plan prior to doing this. I actually have a lot of guests on people. I've actually done business with mortgage brokers, real estate brokers attorneys explaining what's the difference between an LLC, a partnership agreement. I actually have people on that. I actually do business with other real estate investors that may be in a different part of real estate investing that I'm not in. For instance, like deed in lieu of trust. For instance, I don't do those. But if you go south, if you go out west, that is actually a common practice. But I don't practice in those areas. So I brought in people who actually do. So I try to educate not only on what I do, what I'm an expert in, but I'm not an expert in that field. I try to bring other people in that I've actually done business with that do practice within those fields that I don't normally practice. Is there even an opportunity to do business with you at this point at your level, do you take investors? Are you just looking for deal people? I'm constantly looking for deals. And one of the things that has happened that I was a little surprised that when you do the right thing, I guess it comes back to you. So I've had students go out there look for deals, come across a deal that they can't handle. My brother and I will step in. They get paid as a wholesaler. But what they also get is they get to stand next to us on a daily basis while we bring that property from the beginning to the end. And they're learning the entire process. I found deals that I would have never gotten essentially what's happening. Well, it's around world, right? And when you put good out there, it absolutely comes back to you. And I know you've been on several podcasts because we've listened to them, and we've actually been on some of the same shows. And for me, the podcast was something that was way out of my comfort zone. We started this during Coronavirus, same thing. We kind of caught up and we were like, shit. We got to do something right. We got to keep busy. So we started the podcast during Coronavirus. It's grown exponentially. And I got to tell you, your guests are phenomenal. You're bringing in some super good guests that are bringing tons of value to the public. Thank you. I actually think I want to write, like, a book about the first year. There's a subculture in a community of people that are so willing to help. They just want to get on and talk like yourself and share what are legitimately. And he's got this on his social media guys. You'll see Golden Nuggets or the nugget drops like you'll see the Tags and listen to them because they are gems. They are legitimate Golden Nuggets. And people are there's this whole culture of folks that are just so willing and eager to share and help. It's been an amazing. This last year has been unbelievable for me. Just through the podcast alone. You know what I found, James? And this was one of the other sides of the business that I was pleasantly surprised with the people out there like yourself and me. It's unbelievable how much we enjoy talking to each other. And I'm not going to kid you. I thought in the beginning there were my competitors, but in reality, the more I talk to my competitors, the more I'm actually learning because they're doing things differently, right? And I'm doing things differently. So we're picking up things different from each other. And this goes across not only locally but nationwide. Like Mark, for instance, he's out of California. Wellbeing, he's out of Connecticut. Chris Haskins he's out of Virginia. I can't tell you how much I've learned, but I've learnt more from the younger generation, the 40 and younger because they've embraced technology because I guess it was so easy for them because they grew up with it. And they're actually teaching me how to be more efficient with new technology that I was too scared to do. Earlier. They've taken me out of my comfort zone. And I got to tell you, I'm loving it. And I only wish I could live another 50 years so I could see how this entire landscape of a business is going to change over the next. What we see today will not exist even 20 years from now. I couldn't agree more. I think that real estate has been one industry that while it has changed with technology. If you think about how everything else we do, from what we eat and how we treat our health and how we travel and how we communicate, it has been profound change. And real estate is that kind of clunky industry that's starting to take those little steps. But, man, I think we're in for a revolution. I think it's going to be exciting as hell. We're developing apps that are deal source apps. Now, there's so much neat stuff. And you're right, having the younger guys around to kind of teach you these different tips and tricks and little Nuggets that they have in the digital space. Yes. Right. It's pretty wild stuff. It is. Listen, think about this. Could you imagine 1998 when you were doing your first couple of deals? Docusign? No, or Zillow? Think about that. Right. How far is the MLS? I find that the MLS has come far, but I don't think the MLS has actually kept up with the speed of the change in the industry. Yeah, they haven't. And when I started, there was no modems. There was a book. You got the book and you sat and you literally and people ask me, what do you mean, you got a book? How did you know what was new? You read the damn book, right? When the book came out, it was this thick and you sat and you flipped through and you put little cards in for the different clients, and you wrote it down on a piece of paper. When you wanted to research land, you pulled the microfilm, you put it on and it made the image. And we used to take tracing paper and we would trace it out, and then we would send it to clients. And we were the innovators back then, right. And if you wanted to read articles, you have to go to the public library and take out the micro features as well. And then look it up and try to get your information that way. So listen. Like I said, I wish I could live another 50 years just so that I could watch how things have things changed and sit there and enjoy it. I'm not going to kid you. I'm loving it right now. I get to meet people like you, right? Absolutely. I've never been so social, actually, until I've mastered this platform. Me either. But I think we both were probably head down guys. That same thing. I resisted any notoriety to me. It was you keep your head down, you keep your mouth shut and you work. That's how we were taught, right. But when you lift your head up. There is quite an amazing world out there. And I can't be more appreciative for guys like you taking the time that I've had so much success to come on and to share with the audience some of the tips and tricks. Daniel, this has been an absolute pleasure for me. I was really looking forward to this, folks. It's Daniel Borero. He's the President and founder of USA Land Ventures. Definitely check him out on Insta. Facebook, LinkedIn all the platforms. He's a really great follow. So, Daniel, thanks again for the time today. I really appreciate it. No, thank you for having me. And I got to tell you, I'm extremely humbled to be on your podcast. Like I said, you do a great job. And I'm really impressed with all the guests that you have on. Thank you very much. As always out there. Everyone keep the comments, suggestions, criticisms. All of it keeps. We love it all. Stay safe, everyone.