Welcome back to another episode of Weiss Advice. I'm your host, as always, Yona Weiss.

Great to be here today with another awesome guest. We got Ray. Ray is in the house. How are you, my friend?

I'm great. Yona. Thanks for having me on, man. Excited about it.

I am great. Great to have you. Grateful for you to be joining us.

And it's been a while. Obviously, we've spoken a lot to LinkedIn and through the different challenges

that we've done over the years. But you have an incredible story. And like all of our guests,

something to do with real estate. But let's back up a little bit. I know you served honorably

in the armed forces. And I know you've had an incredible career with that as well,

prior to jumping into multi-family about 10 years ago. So why do you kind of lead with that?

Give us a little background and then we'll tell you from there.

Sure. I, you know, so I enlisted when I was 17, just out of high school.

Really just because of college. I needed some college money.

You know, I was going to play football. That was the dream. Got hurt. That didn't work out.

And I realized, you know, I had to do something. And so I went on and enlisted in the National Guard as a military police officer.

And really it's kind of been a good trajectory for me. It kind of set the conditions for my follow-on success.

One of the things that they teach you and basic is sort of how to persevere, right?

They work, they kind of take away a lot of the negativity about what you can, what you think you can and can't do.

And it stretches those limits. And that's kind of taken me a long way, even today.

Because I mean, it's there's there's always negative thoughts that come up and needs have to work through that.

So to keep it short on there, I served.

I went to Desert Storm. I was in the National Guard.

And came back from that. And as I was getting ready to graduate from college, I decided I wanted to jump back in as an officer in the military.

I just liked it. I liked to serve. And it was just something that I wanted to do. So after that, I did essentially a few years in reserve as an officer and then went active duty for over 20 years, served over 28 years.

So right towards the end of there, you know, I left just like I went in on my own terms. I left on my own terms. I had a chance to kind of stay in the military and sort of work towards the next rank, which was what it would have been for, but it's for me.

And I really decided I didn't want to do that. I really had other goals in mind. And that's where I am today.

Incredible. And quite a long time. I mean, spending your career, but also like you said, going in and leaving on your own terms really does say a lot, but, you know, thank you for your service incredible.

I mean, I was, I was a kid in Desert Storm. And I remember it vividly, you know, watching on TV and, you know, seeing the images, but, you know, in combat and doing that, I can't even imagine what that must have been liked.

I'm sure you've learned tremendous amount of lessons over the course of your career as an officer as well as, you know, everything else. And I'm curious to know like how what that transition was like, you know, going now full time in the real estate world.

It's really a new career, right? In a sense, because you've taken on investments, you've taken on the stewardship of of investors and leading a team as well.

I love to kind of hear, you know, kind of how that transition went for you as well as some of the lessons or maybe things that you've applied from your military career into the into the real estate world.

Yeah, not absolutely. And I've always had the real estate bug. I just, I just grew up with it, you know, and I believe it was my favorite game. And so even along the way, well, my military career, I was able to acquire some, some single family homes.

That really helped, because I mean, yes, there's a lot of ways that you can get into this business and this space without any money.

But it's incredibly difficult. And if you've got a family, if you've got commitments, you know, it's just hard to say, I'm going to stop, you know, earning this W2 and I'm going to go jump into this full time, right?

So there are some things along the way that you have to consider. If it was just, you know, you as an individual, it's a easier decision, you sleep in a car, you have to write and, you know, whatever to make it work, but other considerations.

And so I had that kind of a leg up that I wasn't starting completion scratch, but towards my last assignment, I jumped in a couple of LP deals in the multi families, I could learn essentially how they worked.

You know, there's always an opportunity for new people to come in and do mentorship programs.

In my case, I felt the best way since I had some some knowledge and obviously I had a good education, I had a chance to work, you know, and finish my MBA while I was in the military.

So I felt like the best way for me is just really understand, purely onion back on how, how, you know, multi-family syndications and another type of investments besides the straight single family work.

And so it wasn't completely foreign to me when I jumped out and started working on it essentially, I did a GP deal while I was still in the military.

And it was like my last year and typically the last year of your military career, they give you a chance to kind of get your bearings about what it is you want to do next.

So for me, it's pretty simple. I already had an idea that was just used in that time as wisely as possible. So I was able to get into a GP deal pretty quickly.

The biggest lesson for me was, you know, coming in is essentially, you know, I retired in 2019. So what happened in 2020, we really got into the whole pandemic situation pretty quickly thereafter.

And so I struggled a little bit trying to figure out how to grow my business using my background because essentially if you're going to raise capital, and I was one of the main things that I enjoy doing and enjoy then, you really have to have a base of people you can reach out to.

And so I really had to work on growing that base and going from a situation where I wouldn't even have a picture on a social media profile for security reasons to now like, hey, here I am.

You know, everywhere you go, you got to, you have to, you have to set those type of conditions. And so it took a long time to do that.

Then I think that the other challenge was obviously when, when the dynamics and multi family changed, it really, it really did cause some friction because you know, you had, you had deals where it works.

There's a lot of investors that pull back a lot of concerns. Obviously, we all know the best time to invest is when everybody is doing the opposite, right. Those are when the deals are happening.

But even even to this day, there's a lot of folks that are kind of holding on because they're not sure there's a lot of, there's a lot of unknowns. So how do you maintain your business along that, you know, along that time frame, not just when it's good when the tide is high.

And everybody is, you know, you just close your eyes and buy something and you're going to make money on it.

To now, you really have to squeeze the operations, you really have to pay attention to every penny.

And you know, on some of the deals that we have and I've got, you know, just under 500 under management, still that we're, you know, we haven't sold and are working through.

And you have to, you have to focus on that. While you're doing that, you have other partners in this business that are all going through their own challenges of how they're going to make money to support their families.

And so your partnerships with just kind of one of the lifebloods of the business is, is something that you have to maintain and that you have to react to, you know, because, you know, things change.

Not everybody's in the same position as me at having other assets that could kind of help me ride whatever storm, right. Some people didn't have that background or they didn't have the ability to do that.

They have to go back to work. I had a good friend of mine who was, you know, he was a reserve, a Colonel reserves, and he really wanted to do this full time.

But when the pandemic hit and then certainly after the pandemic, when things started going to Fed went, you know, lost its mind because, you know, forever, they said, oh, we're fine.

Nothing to see, nothing to see. So then, oh, we have an emergency here. We're going to, we're going to jump, you know, the Fed funds rate by what was at about five points.

You know, and so right on that time, he's like, Ray, you know, I gave it a shot, but I got to go back to, I got kids. I got small kids. I got to back to work.

And so every partner that we had that I had and have has to go to that dynamic and that thought process and figure out can they do it, can they sustain it, can they do it part time.

And so that I think it's been the biggest trouble is how to sustain operations while some of those partnership foundations are sort of cracking a little bit and really in bad situations, only the strong survive. And that's absolutely true.

Makes sense, you know, and there's there's always going to be uncertainty, but you're absolutely right that when there is uncertainty, that's kind of the time when to kind of pivot and see where other people are not looking and make the best investments there.

But yeah, 21, 22, those were years where, like you said, you just throw a rock and, you know, by, by an apartment with your eyes closed and, and make money on it. And unfortunately, a lot of people got in and there was what, what a friend of mine and someone on this podcast mentioned once there wasn't a real stable, there was a syndication bubble.

And, you know, to this day, we're seeing kind of the repercussions of that that, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people tried to get in because it was easy to make money and unfortunately a lot of people lost money and are, you know, still losing money, but you talk about how to save money and how to focus on the operations where you're making sure that every single penny has you mentioned is kind of under watch.

And I'm curious how you, how you're able to manage, manage that because it is a challenge, you know, what are some of the pointers or keys to making sure that your, your portfolio is above water and staying float.

I think one of the biggest things is it's just being, and just a full disclosure, I, I, there was not, except for one deal where we had to jump in my team has to jump in as a lead sponsor.

Most of the times we were in a general partnership role with, with asset management responsibilities.

So we were managing, but it wasn't, you know, my team alone.

But I think that the biggest thing that we tried to bring to the table was being honest broker for, for things, and you know, when, when information wasn't being provided,

pushed for that information when something looked like it wasn't quite right in the reporting, you know, follow up on that information.

And even more importantly for my team, because our focus being so much on, you know, on, on transparency, that's one of the things that in the military, we always, you know, we didn't take that for granted.

We just had to give information and we had to be forthcoming and, you know, come hell or our water, we had to give right information, factual information.

For me and my team, that transparency to investors, because I think, you know, there, there is this, you know, this tendency when things go bad to want to go put your hole and, you know, put your head in a sand.

And hope, you know, holding a sand, hope that it goes away, it doesn't, it doesn't go away.

It's only going to get worse. And so, so we, we, we tried to do that in all the deals.

I think one of the things that has helped a lot, especially when you, when you're looking at, you know, how you're dealing with, you know, some of these partnership struggles is a lot of the AI capability that's out there now.

I mean, obviously 2021, 22, I don't think anybody was really looking at AI.

There may have been some very sophisticated, you know, funds and, you know, billion dollar funds that were using something right to kind of automate things inside their companies, but AI was not, not prevalent.

I think that's helped. I think where people make the mistake with AI right now is that they, they think that it's the answer to solving the problem.

It isn't the answer. It's not something you do in lieu of doing something else. It's in addition to.

So, for example, whereas before my partners and I would, would all run underwriting separately and say, okay, wouldn't run them separately just to then compare to see where we are on our assumptions and what the final returns are, etc.

You know, you may have three people running the underwriting. So now that's obviously three for each deal, you may be spending three, four hours underwriting these things each.

So they say 12 to 15 hours of time that we're doing it. So if you don't have the partners to do that.

And even if you do, you now want to run that through AI systems that can then basically check your information. So now you have another set of eyes that can, that can, you know, basically give you that information, you have to be aware of the fact that it sometimes does it wrong.

You know, there are some, some issues with, you know, the, some of these whatever language model you're using and may or may not be the right one, you may not have the right inputs.

But assuming you are able to work through some of that, it now gives you some ability to replace some of those extra set of eyes that you had. It doesn't replace yours, but it replaces maybe some of the others.

That makes a lot of sense. And I think you're absolutely right. Very few people years ago were taking advantage of AI in the right way.

But nowadays, I think most people I'd say it's much, much more common to find that there's very few people that aren't taking advantage or utilizing AI in some form or another.

I think if you took a poll now, it would be the exact flip, you know, opposite of, you know, the usage of AI.

The question is, who's using it right and who's using it for, you know, for the right ways and, you know, building, not just using it, but actually building from it.

And that takes a lot of time, you know, you're putting it. It's not going to happen overnight. These are systems that I know, you know, prompts and things like that and can take, you know, weeks or months to build, you know, just programming and feeding into it.

But the more you feed into it, the more you get out of it. And that's what I found. You know, it's really interesting because in the same way that, you know, we talked about maybe 10 years ago or, you know, whatever you were saying, you didn't have a single social media presence whatsoever, right.

Well, so too, you know, it's the same thing. You put the effort in, you realize, you know, for me as well, I didn't have 10 years ago, it's social media, but you put in the effort, you dumbled down, you tripled down, you keep putting in and daily you put in efforts.

And you build that muscle over and over again. So I think in the same way, AI is, it has become a tool and so many different forms of it that is constantly changing rapidly, you know, growing that I think business models will continue to develop that way.

And I'm really, you know, happy to see how it may make big strides in the multifamily space in the real estate space in general, because, you know, it's industry commercial real estate in general that's a bit archaic, you know, it's so many things about it are still, even though we know we're changing the title insurance and, you know, insurance is in general, all these different things are still, you know, functioning the same way they did 50 years ago, right. And it's kind of crazy.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think people are, you know, there are some, some folks out there trying to crack the code. Obviously, what has been a detractor, but it's also how you can take advantage of real estate is, is the fact that some of that information is not clear and clean. And certainly you, there are, you know, some people that have access to it that can make the right decisions and others that don't that that won't make the right decision.

And so I think the cleaner the model gets, then it becomes maybe a little bit harder in some ways to really find that diamond and rough, but I think people will still learn how to, you know, figure out how to, how to, you know, work the system a little bit.

It's been a long time before I think it's, you know, something like the stock market where, you know, you buy and basically like a read and you're buying a unit and it goes up or down and that's all you're doing. I don't think it's any time near.

It could be wrong. You know, don't quote me on this one. You know, who knows what comes up next, but it's, it's the space that we are working in right now, when you have deals that are running, you know, anywhere from, you know, we've got a couple, I've got a deal that now is only a two year deal.

And then I've got some that are five years on the multifamily, you really don't have to think that far ahead to, you know, to, to, in your analysis, you still have to forecast for for that and obviously forecasting is, is its own, you know, difficulty, especially, you don't control the circumstances.

You know, the blacks want events that can happen that have happened, right? So some of that is difficult, but I think at the end of the day, AI is helpful. I think the way that people should approach it.

The way I approach it, let's put it this way that way is that, you know, I take a, you know, I take a bite of it at a time. Okay, I have a problem, right? I have, you know, let's just say, let's use LinkedIn. I obviously we do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn.

It's hard to keep track of people on LinkedIn. You connect with people for X reason, but, you know, you're like, okay, well, how do I ensure that I'm not dropping a ball with some of these connections that I have, because these are potential partners, their potential investors.

And what is it that I can I do to ensure that that I have some ability to basically trigger myself to respond and keep track of those things. It's, you know, it's, it's not automated. It's not like, you know, something's going to pop up and say, you haven't reached out to the Yona in three weeks, go reach out to them.

Look at what there are tools that can do that now. They say, hey, don't forget about Yona, you know, that that's an important thing. Now where people make the mistake is they try to completely automate it. So it's not even them.

And, you know, the tools aren't that good where people won't know the authenticity of a chat of a DM message. And I think that's where people, you know, some people are just trying to do it. So it's like fully automated.

I don't even, they don't even know the person to what I like. And in this space where, especially where asking people to provide significant amounts of capital, there has to be authenticity.

And if there isn't, you've lost potential customer for sure, because you know, you know, this is still a people business.

And are you, I mean, are you using LinkedIn? Do you find as, you know, a primary source for raising capital, making those connections or curious to know, you know, you talked about before, kind of starting out, finding your base and building that base.

How did you do that? And, you know, to this day, like what are, what are some of your practices?

Yeah, I mean, obviously it starts with LinkedIn. You know, there are tools within LinkedIn. I have sales navigator, which is an additional tool, but essentially you can find the type of folks that are interested in investing.

You're not going to convince somebody to invest. They have to want it, right? I mean, the minute you're trying to sell, you know, sell it, you're not going to get it.

You have to find somebody that is in the space and in a piece, in a place in, in time, where they have ability to invest monies to grow their wealth.

They may have sold the property, they may have sold the business, they may retire in me. In my case, a lot of folks, they retire the military.

They have their pension, but now they also have a job. So they have some additional income, and they need to do something with it because Uncle Sam will take it from if they don't write it.

You know, taxes, taxes of career, if you just let it sit, you know, certainly that's not the way to grow wealth.

So you have to do something. So my, my focus is, okay, who are the type of people that I believe would be good investors that would want to invest with me and partner with me.

And I still invest in all the deals. I don't, I don't raise capital on deals that I don't put my own money in. I mean, to me, that's, that's a fundamental piece of it.

And, you know, if I'm not putting my own money in, then, then, you know, how do I, yeah.

You know, potential investors, then I, and I try to look at what they're talking about and, you know, pay attention to what it is that they're doing, you know, before I even talk about, hey, I got these investments.

One of the things that, that I wanted to just kind of reemphasize is in the deals that I've invested in as an LP, you know, it's been extremely important to me to see that the sponsors have skin in the game and not just that they're going to reinvest the, you know, the fees that they're already collecting.

But actually from their own pockets and their own bank accounts, you know, in one deal, they're the sponsors didn't even take any fees. There were literally no fees acquisition fees are, I understand that, you know, for a lot of syndicators, it's important to kind of build a lot of that into there.

But, but there's one deal that I went in, they were very convinced that the deal itself was so strong that they wanted the numbers to speak for themselves.

And, you know, and that, that really sold it for me because it was like, okay, these guys know what they're talking about, they're willing to put their money where their mouth is and, you know, invest alongside.

So, those are, you know, huge and obviously when you're communicating that with new and potential investors, whether savvy or not, I'm sure you've dealt with plenty of people over the years who may be the first time ever investing in multi-family, you know, because you were that guy once upon a time as well.

And it's, it's scary, you know, to write that first check, you know, but especially nowadays when uncertainty has become even more prevalent, I think you have to be able to reassure them through your track record through, you know, the transparency, as you said, which is probably the most important part.

I think a big part of the communication has to be what can go wrong in deals. I think if you're authentic and you've been in this space for a while, you know that there are ways to lose money here.

That's no different than any other investment. This is, you know, I don't think that, you know, you can say, well, multi-family is bad and investing in stocks is good.

And vice versa, I mean, I think there's diversification and smart investors will not put all their eggs in one basket.

But at the end of the day, I think most people will understand that there are risks. And this is, that's just part of part of the business.

And obviously you want to mitigate those risks and deal has to mitigate as many of those risks as possible.

But to tell them investor, first of all, it's probably not legal to say, hey, there's no way you're going to lose money on this because the PPM, you know, the private placement on random for these syndications and just about any deal that I, you know, that I would do whether it's a joint venture or a syndication or whether it's through my fund.

There has to be acknowledgement by the investors that, hey, I know there's risks there, you know, there's a way to make a lot of money, but there is risk.

And so I think that that's important. But it's one thing to have it in the paperwork. It's another thing that to make sure you talk to people and say, just, just be aware here, you know, we are going into make money.

I wouldn't put my money in it if I thought we're going to lose money. But being, being clear, especially nowadays is extremely important because investors will appreciate it.

We had one deal where this was at the end of not last year, the year before, it was like the December of this would be 2024.

We were about to close on this thing and the rates changed, right?

You know, the lender at the last minute will throw a wrench in the deal. They got nothing to lose.

So they go, go bump the rate and now you're like, wait a minute, that was a good deal. It's no longer a good deal. It's an okay deal.

And so I actually went back to investors and I gave them the money back. I said, guys, the student got a little bit, you know, a little bit messy.

I'm not comfortable with it without for my money. And I'm certainly not comfortable with your money either.

You know, more importantly so because I tend to be a little bit more risky with my money because I've been doing it longer.

But an LP may or may not have that same risk tolerance. So I want to err on a side of safety. So I ended up returning money to the investors.

And one of the investors came back and said, you know, I appreciate that you did that. I mean, most people would not do that.

And so I'm looking forward to the next deal. And to this day, he's like, you know, Ray, when are we doing a deal, right?

And I'm not going to present bad deals to investors.

I think one of the biggest things when we talk about partners is that I've had to make a change.

I'm going to get into a lessons learned part for maybe I'll leave it there. But there are some things that I've really learned about that I'm doing a little bit differently.

Yeah, no, that's a great kind of transition. I'd love to hear a couple of those lessons because like you said, partnerships is probably one of the key ingredients, especially, you know, once your family is not.

You know, some of you really most people do on their own. There are a lot of times partnerships involve the team sports. So love to hear some of the lessons that you've, you've drawn out from some of that experience.

Yeah, I think on the partnership side, it's been the ones where I really had to be deep because one of the things that when you're in the military, you kind of, you feel like most people that are with you and around you, I'm going to tell you the truth.

That's the way we were trained, you know, when we weren't trained to tell you, you know, just the good news. We're trained to say, here are the facts.

And, and, and then we have to react from those facts. You plan, you plan, you plan, but they, you also know that your, the first contact, your plan will not survive the first contact. You have to adjust your plan based off of that.

You still have to plan.

Okay, I'll give you a good example. It's been a couple of years, but it really kind of highlights that fact, right, that statement.

So we are at a conference and at the, at the lunchtime, everybody kind of clears the area where, you know, the big area where they're having a conference and, and they go do lunch and, you know, for that hour, that place is empty.

There may be a couple of people here and there on the back that are maybe doing some networking that happens, but the stage was empty.

So I saw a group of individuals jump on stage and, you know, they were taking pictures, but it wasn't just pictures. They were pretending to be speakers at an event.

You know, at the event, right. And so in my mind, the way I look at that is basically there, there, it's like taking a picture next to somebody else's fancy car to pretend that it's your car.

For sure.

And these are the kind of, and these are younger folks, so nothing is young people, but, you know, to, to, to do that and then use that to potentially then sell it on your page.

As if you somehow were, you know, credentialed in some way or, you know, or capable or qualified to be on that stage is absolutely crazy.

But by guarantee you they used it. I mean, they used it. They may have said, hey, I spoke at this conference, but just having a picture there that makes it look like they were speaking is a problem to me.

And so you get a lot of those folks that you have to deal with. And so one of the things that I really had to work on is strengthen the way that that I vet potential partners.

You know, we, it's not just doing running a credit check. We used to do some basic checks and we, we go in and we talk to people and see what they they've done.

But we've kind of wrapped that up completely. So now I have an entire system of just vetting potential operators, because as I transition more into captain, the capital allocation space, I'm relying on operators to, to operate these properties.

And not just the good times, like we talked about, but in the bad times. And so we've really done a lot on my team to really increase the vetting and really outsourcing some of that, some of those, some of those checks.

And so that's what we use clear is a system that we use to basically run checks, not just on the individuals, but also on entities that those individuals were involved in.

So that, and that's, you know, we run that, they pay for it. I'm not going to pay for, you know, they want my money and my investors money. They're going to pay for that.

There is one way to really self select the some of the rotten apples out because the minute they know that we're going to run their checks and they're paying for it, they don't even go through the process. Right.

So, but even then you still get some folks that you have to, you know, you get their information and you start asking questions. You've already screened them. We screen them first. We asked the questions.

We run all the checks and then we combine, you know, compare that to that in addition to some other things, just the interviews and making sure and actually talking to some of their investors and in current and previous deals, just to get a full picture of them. And so a lot of that, I had to really work on to get all of that done.

And what that meant was we're doing less deals. And that, you know, if I depend on some syndication fee to run my business, then that means I'm going to be taking as many deals I can because if I don't get those fees, I can't, I can't bring home the bacon, right.

That's, that's not what I, that's not what I'm focused on. I'm focused on building relationships and making money, you know, building wealth.

And that's not, that's not a get fast key, you know, very people can do it in a get fast car away.

Let's take an extreme risk and they get lucky.

But, so I think that was one of the biggest things is really not just taking people at the word and doing some checks, really focusing that entire process of vetting into something that was important.

We vet the people, then we vet the deals, not the other way around because you can get caught up in a shiny, shiny object. We all love this property.

But unless the, the team that is running it is correct. And in the vastes of that, and we don't even invest. It's the jockey, not the horse.

Absolutely. No, that's huge.

And it really does show some of the points you're making there about just credibility and people taking advantage of situations in order to kind of prove credibility.

So unfortunate that there are people that fall for it because social media can be extremely misleading sometimes. And unfortunately, there are dishonest people out there in this business, like in any business.

And the, and you know, for better or for worse, some of those bad apples make it make a bad name for, you know, for the rest of us. And it's, it's unfortunate.

But you setting an example and kind of leaning the way and doing it the right way, I think is, is all you can do.

And building wealth over the long term is really what real estate is all about. It's not about getting rich quick and some of these people syndicators out there who are just trying to feed themselves through the fees.

Well, guess what? We saw a lot of people have their properties taken back by the banks, you know, in recent years. And it's, it's sad to watch.

We got a, you know, we have to lead by example, doing it the right way.

Ray, I want to transition now to what we call the final four. These are four questions that I asked all my guests. First of all for you is what is the worst job that you ever had?

Well, I didn't have many jobs in my life, you know, as far as, but I guess within the military, I would say if I were to take that because in the military, we get, we get transition from different, for different jobs.

When I was just going back to my days and, you know, way back, but it was certainly one that I did not enjoy.

It was, you know, we had, when we were in the desert storm, we had essentially a job where we would take the, basically the, the experiment and the waste from where people would do their business.

You'd have to carry that and take it somewhere else so that it could be disposed of.

And this is a daily task and privately is did not like that task one bit, right? You're carrying these five gallon jugs full of stuff, right?

I'm just trying to grow aside everybody. You have to take it somewhere else and it was just like, and I in my mind, I'm going to, you know, this is ridiculous. This is war, right?

There are those things in that, but to me, that was, that was one that really stuck out as something that I wanted, didn't want to do, but as part of a team, sometimes you got to do stuff like that, but I certainly did not enjoy that one.

I don't think there's anyone that would enjoy that.

Yeah, but you know, as a team, you got to do what you got to do sometimes, but I would definitely, if I had that, I would probably list that at the top of my list of worst jobs.

Second one is what's a book you've read that's giving you a paradigm shift?

Yeah, I think it's this, this is, I think a paradigm, if I were to say paradigm shift, I would have to say the castle quadrant.

By, you know, because that will really open up my mind about how to, how to move beyond just W2s and how to really kind of pay attention to some of these other aspects that were that are important, whether it's running in business, whether it's right, you know, having investments. And I think just thinking about those two separate ways to that, that really impact the person's wealth.

Much more than, you know, say a W2 job in the long run, I think it's probably the most, the most eye opening for me.

Yeah, that was an extremely powerful book and we've had that mention of the podcast a few times before, but the castle quadrant definitely top of the list over there.

What is a skill or talent that you would like to learn and this could be anything.

Yeah, I think, I think if it were, if I, there's something that I continue to focus on is really how to better do some of the marketing personally.

So I have a team that does a lot of marketing for me and I know that, you know, when you run a business, you don't want to work in your business, you want to work on your business.

I enjoy that aspect of it. I enjoy some of the graphic arts pieces, some of the technical aspects of the job. I really enjoy learning about it.

So if I had the time, I guess I would say that if I were, say if I were going back into the military, one of the things that I would want to focus on is maybe some cyber type work, you know, cyber analysis, something along those lines.

It's not those technical type of jobs. And so, you know, when you talk about marketing, it's not about the actual piece of it, but it's actually the system, the marketing system and how it all ties together.

Yeah, I mean, listen, marketing is is really the central core to any business and, you know, real estate, especially there's so much of the marketing, especially when you're raising capital and you want to make sure to get the deals to the right people in the right time.

It's huge. And sure, you can hire it out, but having an understanding of every aspect of the business is also there's incredible power to that as well. So yeah, definitely, that's a great one.

Fourth and final question, what does success mean to you?

Yeah, I think success for me is essentially when I'm able to, so I, one of the things that I, that I, the way I measure, measure in increments for me is how much passive income, and when I say passive, I don't mean just, you know, just from passive investments, but, you know, something that I, when I go to sleep at night, you know, is making for money for me, whether I do something in the morning or not, right.

Obviously, there are certain things that were, I'm still doing as part of the business to grow wealth, but the more that I'm able to outsource and the less that I'm, you know, personally doing on a day to day basis, I think is how I would measure, you know, success.

The more that can do that, the better I love traveling. So to me, if I can travel the world, you just take off and I last year, I did it a couple of times where I just left.

And I still had my, you know, my tools so I can keep in touch with certain people and do certain things, but the world wasn't going to end the businesses are not going to fall away because I was not taking a call on a Monday morning, right.

And so I think to me is that it's the time freedom. That's the one thing that we cannot control how much time we have left in this world.

And the older you get, the older I get, the more important it is, right. I mean, you know, I mean, there's a clock. You don't know what, you don't know when the clock is going to hit zero, but you know, every day you get a little closer.

And so having the ability to do the things that we want to do when we want to do them is how I measure success. And if I can pass that on to others, to family, to friends and other people that deserve that even better.

So I love, I love talking about it. I love teaching people. I don't do any formal mentoring. I don't have time for that at this point. I have other things that I like to do, but I'm happy to help and kind of pass some of that on because again, we don't get that time back.

You know, it is, it is finite.

100%. That's huge. And, you know, having lived a filled life up until this point, you want to make sure to utilize every moment you have absolutely right. The clock is taking a lot of us don't think about it too much, but it's there.

And we have to. So I appreciate you bringing up that point and sharing your perspectives.

Ray, it's been awesome. Love to, love to hear from you, love to hear your story and really inspirational to, to a lot of us. So thank you for joining us. And finally, where can our listeners find you or reach out to you if they want.

Yeah, the easiest is on my website. It's is mail ray rayas.com. I S M A E L R E Y. RAS R E Y E S dot com. And from there, they can just abandon it any of my other channels. So that's probably the easiest way.

Awesome. So we'll make sure to put all that in the show notes and really grateful for you to join us. This has been a lot of fun.

Thank you for having me. You know, and hopefully this this helps some people make those kind of hard choices and make good decisions. And I know that you're always pushing for the same. So I appreciate what you do.

Thank you so much. And to our listeners, thank you all for tuning in once again all the way till the end and remember until next time, the best advice comes only when you ask.