EP 229: Diversifying Your Portfolio: Real Estate, Startups, and AI Investments with Akash Jain

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All right, welcome back to the Gentle Art of Crushing it podcast. My name is Randy Smith and I'll be your host today. And I'm really excited to have Akash Jain with us today. Akash is the managing partner of Multi Asset Generational Fund and he is a multi family operator and a guy that I have been seeing around conferences for years. So Akash, welcome to the show.

Randy, thanks a lot for having me. Happy to be here.

Fantastic. Well, we're shifting kind of the model of the podcast a little bit where we come out of the gates and we ask kind of a, kind of a tough question, the money question right away. So I'd love to get your perspective on today's market conditions and how they are impacting opportunities for the passive investor. So curious what your thoughts are there.

Great. No, hey Randy, a very important question and very timely. So as well, you know, I generally attend about seven to eight conferences a year, a lot of multifamily conferences and a lot of my thoughts and where I'm going to be investing next is based on what I hear and what I learn in these conferences. What are the pundits and the gurus and the economists saying in these conferences? I recently attended another conference here in Dallas and I live in Dallas and so it was very nice to have a conference in Dallas. And I listened to real page analysts at a conference and they were talking about the supply side and the demand side. They're talking about specific pockets within our country as to where there's a lot of supply coming into the market. Demand may not keep up with some of those particular specific markets. They were cautioning us against some markets in the immediate term, some markets such as Austin, where there is going to be a lot of supply coming but not as much demand. So there is going to be some rent compressions in those particular markets itself. But then they were also talking about markets such as my near and dear to my market, which is very near and dear to my heart, which is Dallas. They were talking about a lot of supply coming into Dallas, but at the same time the demand keeping up with it as well as one of the things that I've also found within the Dallas market itself is yes, that supply is coming, but that is coming in the class A luxury segment. There's a lot of class A demand coming, a lot of class A supply coming. I particularly, I specifically invest in class B and C properties and the rent compressions in those B and C class properties is not as much. And so that's good news at least for my investors and for some of the passive investors in the DFW market marketplace. So that is what I am looking at from a trends perspective. Yes. You know, hey, there is a, there is a supply and demand conundrum, if you may, but not in the asset classes that I am playing in. At the same time, when we look at what Fed Federal Reserve is doing with they had an interest rate cut very recently and we're expecting another interest rate cut obviously depending on how the election results, which way the election results go over the next few months as well. So that is actually also good news. And because of a lot of this, I see the next three months for this year and the next six months into the coming year as being opportunities not only for your passive investors, but also for a lot of acquisitions for sponsors and people who are actually in the business.

Are you interested in real estate investing but don't know where to get started or think you don't have the time or money? Are you stuck in your W2 because the golden handcuffs make it hard to walk away? If this sounds like you, check out impactequity.net and schedule some time to talk with the founder, Randy Smith. Randy went from massive income to leaving his W2 through passive income and he can help you do the same. Www.impactequity.net yeah, I love it. Love it. So, yeah, thank you for, for jumping into that right out of the gates like that is kind of the beef of this conversation that we want to get to, like what's going on the market today that's going to impact the past investors. So I agree with you. I've heard Austin for a couple of years now. I really like that you talked about dfw. A lot of people have been talking about these, these, all of these new start or the new starts have decreased so dramatically over the last few years. There's going to be very few new starts coming in the next couple of years. But then this tidal wave of new doors that are hitting the market are of course class A. You know, you can't develop Class B or class C. It's all going to come on as Class A. Now a lot of the economists that I talk to, they talk about how the new A class inventory ultimately bleeds down because, you know, B and C class do get impacted by that new onboarding because of some of the concessions that come on board to actually to bring up those, those new class A's. So I'm, I'm curious, how are you guys handling that kind of trend that we're seeing new, new concessions in, in class A.

So you know, like, I think with the concessions, yes, that does impact some of our class B and the upper echel B and class C. However, you know, hey, with the way the economy has been Randy, you know, hey, people are hurting. People are hurting and they want to spend as little as possible that they can get away with on housing. That's why the American dream is no longer an American dream, if you may. The house ownerships and the, has gone down drastically and people are, people are having to rent. And when there is economic pressures, the class A gets impacted the first, class B the second. And obviously, you know, hey, everybody, everybody moves down, you know, from class A to B and then B to C. Where is the guy who lives in a C going to go? Right. Either they move back with their parents or they are on, you know, hey, unfortunately, having to be homeless. Right, sure. Which is very, very unfortunate. Now from a concessions perspective, we obviously we are having to be very aggressive with the way we have our marketing going as well as what we are doing is we are not offering as much concessions. But what we do is we go talk to our residents and talk to upgrading their units a little bit. So a lot of the times when we have lease renewals, we will talk to residents and talk to them about, hey, how would you like newer appliances? Everybody likes a new appliance, right?

Sure.

And so maybe we are not raising their rents for that particular year, but we will raise the rents by $75 and offer them new appliances. So it's benefiting the property where we are upgrading the property, upgrading the unit with better looking new appliances. At the same time, we're increasing our NOI without impacting that residential too much. That's the kind of balancing act that we are playing. We also sometimes will ask a classic, a resident who is in a classic unit saying that, hey, let us move you for a few days into another unit while we upgrade your unit to a more modern unit. We'll spend five, seven thousand dollars on that unit. But then, you know, hey, we'll upgrade the rent by another $150 as well, so, so again, benefiting the property, making it better for the resident, at the same time impacting iron or so those are some of the tools that we are trying.

Yeah, thank you for getting into that. I've not heard those strategies shared that often. Quite often in the value add space, you hear people not getting evicted, but saying that you have the ability to move to another unit, but it's going to be 3 or 4 or $500 more per month. And it really kind of puts a bad taste in the mouth from the renters on what these operators are doing. So I'm excited to hear that you guys are leveraging some strategies that impact your long term tenants that are paying as planned. Like really your ideal type of tenant and you're able to get a few more dollars out of them, but you're providing a better living environment by either adding the appliances or doing the full rehab and letting them keep their address. I've, I've been hearing a lot about the impacts. This is kind of a tangent, but hearing the impacts of people that have to move every 12 to 18 months, like the long term impact on those people economically is really devastating if they do that. So by working with your tenants to be able to, to stay in their residence and keep the same address, that's really probably creating some very loyal tenants that will be with you for years and years and years to come, I would imagine.

No, it's been helping us quite a bit. In fact, an example would be we currently had one resident who actually fell behind by a month. And this resident has been in our community for 20 years. And the management team said, hey, it doesn't make sense to ask her to leave because she has called our property her home for the last 20 years.

Yeah.

So we worked with her, we gave her an option to pay us on a weekly basis. And she had $1,000 delinquency and we paid her. We made an option to get her caught up and pay $100 every week to get caught up. And not only that, we also told her that, hey, we're gonna provide her with a privacy fence on a balcony. Okay. And we were gonna increase her rent by $75. Actually. She, she was very happy and ecstatic about it because she, we would see her sitting outside on a balcony all the time, but with no privacy whatever, you know, hey, everybody walking by would see her. Right? So she was like, very, very thankful for that. So not only that, we, you know, hey, we brought the delinquency down. We helped her, we helped our relationship with her, you know, she was a 20 year resident. And at the same time we kind of, you know, he got another noi boost for the property itself.

I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's, it's great to hear that you're doing those types of things. I think we get so stuck as passive investors thinking about IRRs and cash on cash and equity multiples that or dealing with K1s that we forget that these are actually people living in these units. So thank you for that. So let's do this if we can. We kind of jumped in kind of to the deep end on the front end. But tell the audience, if you can, a little bit about yourself, like how long you've been doing this, what's your portfolio look like, what you do prior to apartment investing.

Sure. Randy. You know, hey, obviously, first of all, thank you for having me on your podcast. I have been a fund manager. I'm a fund manager and investor as well as a family man. Right. I have a beautiful wife that I have been married for 29 years. She was my high school sweetheart. And you know, hey, I've been a mother of my two boys, 23 and 15. We live in Dallas. I love multifamily apartment complexes and investing in multifamily apartment complexes. The word family within multifamily means a lot to me. And when we talk about multifamily and buying properties, we are actually not buying properties, we are building communities. And it's very, very important to me that everything that we do in our communities is geared about around the tenants. Even the property management company that we choose is around how their values need to match that of ours. We need to take care of residents. Well, that's a little bit about multifamily. But then prior to what I used to do prior to that I used to run, I was a mergers and acquisition start and strategy consultant. I did that for about 18 years. After that, for about seven years or so, I ran my own healthcare company here in Dallas. I had a labs, pharmacies, weight loss clinics and imaging center. My wife, she's a physician. I used to help her run her practice as well. In 2019, we exited from our healthcare companies and I became a full time investor. Even though I have been investing in real estate since 1999. But it's only in 2019 that I became a full time investor. And since then we have been investing a lot of our money into real estate and into alternative strategies. And as we were doing that, a lot of our friends and family asked us hey, can we invest alongside you? You are doing a lot of this investing and that is how I started my fund. I'm in my second year of my fund and we invest in multifamily in other asset classes, which I myself don't run. The multifamily properties is what I sponsor. But I do want to invest in other asset classes when I'm not a sponsor. And then startups is also very near and dear to me. I have invested in more than 200 startups over the past seven years.

Wow.

And so I invest a lot in startups also.

Interesting. Okay, so, and that's, that is, I would say emerging. I mean investing in startups has been, been around since the beginning of time, but it's, it's new to my arena and something that I'm looking into more and more. Can you talk about that a little bit? Is it a similar type structures when you're investing in startups as it is when you're investing in commercial real estate? Or do those structures look different for the passive investor?

So you know, when for a passive investor structures are very similar. It is also, a lot of these startups are also funds. They are also, you know, created as funds. However, the risk profile is very, very different. The startups are very, very risky. Any investment in alternatives is risky.

Okay.

However, in apartment complexes, in real estate, you may have some cash flow. Okay. Apartments always have cash flows, right? A lot of, a lot of our apartments, if they are not new builds, have cash flows.

Hopefully they have cash flow. Right?

Hopefully they have cash flows. Yes. Yeah, it's cash and cash generally. Right. And you know, and you will probably generally get 15 to 17, 18% returns in most of your real estate type investments. Startups is boom or bust. You know, hey, you could, you know, hey, there are, there will be some startups where you will 100x your money. There are some startups you'll 10x your money. You'll, there's some startups you'll be zeroing. You'll be zeroing your money. So a lot of the times my, my, you know, what I typically do is I'll invest in a fund where they are going into multiple different startups, not just one startup.

Got it.

So that is what I typically am doing on the startup side. I'm a general partner in a Silicon Valley fund as well. And so where we typically do 250 to $350,000 checks to these startups is a $15 million fund. And you know, hey, so that's what we do on that, it's all AI based, tech based startups that.

Okay, okay, so technology and AI based, which is obviously this huge emerging class that is dominating the stock market, at least the top four or five players in the stock market. Right. I'm curious, what are you seeing in that space? What do you see coming in the future? What are you excited about with AI?

So you know, there's a lot to be excited about in AI, but also there is a lot of ideas which may not pan out. You know, hey, obviously in the stock market those are publicly traded companies, your Nvidias of the world, if you may. And they're doing very well right now. Right. Even on the startup scene we see a lot of startups because the AI being the buzzword, everybody and anybody is putting their ideas to work. And what we're seeing on the startup scene is a lot of deckware, not a lot of finished product. People are, entrepreneurs are coming, they're wanting the money, they're wanting the money to fund their startups. What we typically like to see is we typically would like to see at least a finished product or a product which has some validation from the market. Some beta customers, alpha customers, some potential for revenue. So again, I think seeing a lot of great ideas, a lot of outside the box thinking, that is what I'm most excited about. We are seeing startups in FinTech, on the AI side, in PropTech and some things which are near and dear again to our hearts is properties and whatnot. Proptech is very big, Healthcare tech is very big in AR with AI. That is what we are seeing and I'm very excited about what the future holds. I think there'll be a lot of intelligent bots that will be entering in our world very soon.

Yeah, I'm fascinated with the space. I was at a conference as I mentioned over the last three days and we had a speaker that wrote a book on the space and what he sees is the very large majority of people coming into the space are focusing on solving for the 80% of small business or large business that really produces the 20% of the results. So they're chasing after very low dollar per hour activities as almost like an outsourcing VA type of a solution in the AI space where he feels that the, the better option is to focus more on strategic planning and like use AI as a partner to help strategically plan for your business and refine your strategic plan which could solve for, you know, it's that 20% that actually creates 80% of your revenue. So I think it's interesting how you look at it. And then obviously the, the companies that you're solving for or that you're potentially investing with, like, I think it'd be important to look at those people. Are they solving something that is very unique or is there going to be just a very robust number of people that are coming in to try to solve the same solution because they all have access to the same tools today. And it really just comes down to how you manipulate, you know, the gbts as well. So, yeah, interesting to see. I think there's going to be some, some huge wins in the space. There'll probably be a lot of lost dollars as well. So I'm, I'm curious, when you're looking at kind of capital placement with your fund, like, there's got to be a huge amount of diversification that's going to occur because you're going to see a lot of losses with and maybe just one or two that are, that are 100x or 10x. So how do you decide, like where to put the money, how much money to put in those deals, and what does that diversification strategy look like within your fund?

So, you know, like, that's a very interesting question, Randy, again, and I think it's a very difficult one to solve.

Sure.

You know, hey, none of us have that crystal ball as to which one is going to be that 100x or the 10x. Right. But it also depends on a lot on experience. Right? Like, hey, I have a computer engineering degree. That's my bachelor's degree. Right. So tech has always been close to me. Not only that, you know, hey, I'm not the only one who's in our fund, Right. I have a few very capable general partners. Some of these people have hundred xed their monies in the previous startups that they worked in. Right. So we have a managing partner who has done this several times over. We have other partners within the fund itself. So we have a. We don't work. It's not, hey, Akash said that this startup is going to do well, sure, let's invest 200,000, $350,000 into this. So we actually work as a committee and all of us look at that startup, that idea, that entrepreneur. And it's not just the idea of the entrepreneur, it's all of the above. Right? Hey, what kind of an entrepreneur, who is the entrepreneur? Have they done this before? What is their background? What does the team look like? Do they have a solid technical team, solid CTO for this startup or not? Do they have a Sales and a marketing engine to go capture that market. How big is that market? You know, are we, are we solving the problem for a tiny fraction of the, of the world or are we solving the problem for a lot of, you know, what, what is the market size look like?

Sure.

And out of that market size, what is the market that we are going to capture with this, with this idea, with the startup? Right. How developed is the product? Right. Hey, or is this just an idea, a deckware, or is there some kind of tech which is built around it? Where is that tech being built? What is the IP on it? Are there any patents pending? Have any patents been, you know, asked, approved?

Sure.

Approved or approved or even pending for that matter. Are there any proof of concepts? You know, hey, have we gone into the, have we, has any of the customers looked at it? What is their take on it? You know, hey, have, do we have any alpha beta customers on it? Even if we don't have any customers, do we have any testing clients on it? So it's not just one thing which will fit the mold, but all those factors play a role in our decision to invest in something like that. Not only that, you know, hey, when you're, when somebody is raising a few million dollars, one or two million dollars, even for a seed round, right. $250,000 checks is a substantial amount. But at the same time, we also look at who else are they seeking funding from? Are they a Y Combinator company? Is there anybody else who is leading the round or not? Right. Is it only our money that is at risk? Is there somebody else who has done that due diligence or not? Okay, so those are the few factors which actually go into deciding, hey, how much money? Should we go for it or not? So it's a very fascinating world, a very different world than what we see in real estate. But again, real estate also, we do a lot of due diligence. Right. We look under the COVID So similar kind of due diligence is done on the startup scene as well.

Yeah, very good. Yeah, thank you for walking through that. It's a space that I'm starting to look at more and more with a potential, a percentage of my portfolio. I'm thinking about putting into that space as well, with the understanding that this is riskier, but there is potential for much higher upside as well. So I'm curious, in your fund today, it sounds like you have real estate and technology in the same fund, is that correct?

So with multi asset generational, I do have both real estate and technology, but then I also am a general partner in a separate fund which is primarily AI based in my current in the multi asset generational. We actually have an investment which we are making in India. In India in tech based startups. So that is a fund that we are raising for. That is some money we are raising for a tech based fund in India. But that's a fund of fund model.

Yeah. Interesting. So prior to this conversation I didn't realize that you were investing in all these other spaces. So this has been fun to learn about this. I will dig in more to your website and get to know you guys more. You and I met at a multifamily conference so I just assumed you're a multifamily guy through and through. So this is exciting to hear because it is something that's of interest to me. So. Well, let's, let's shift if we can a little bit. The very large majority of the topics that we cover is around multifamily. So I know you're an operator in dfw. You go to a ton of conferences around the space. We already talked about what you see kind of going on in the market. But maybe can you walk us through some other trends that you're seeing in multifamily or even kind of the state of your portfolio that you currently have.

Happy to Randy. You know, hey, currently I own about 600 units. A lot of it is around DFW metroplex. Primarily investor in the C class value add deals. One of the fundamentals that I live and abide by is buying right. I think that is one mistake that you cannot come out of. If you do not buy the property at the right price at the right basis is very difficult to get past that. So that is what I focus a lot on. I look at a lot of deals. I scour the Crexes and the loopnets of the world. I have relationships with almost every big brokerage firm within the DFW Metroplex and I look at a lot of their deals. I tour a lot of deals and I'm looking for that diamond in the rough that finding that right basis. So I have a big, I'm a big basis player. Let me give you an example, right? We currently operate a property which is a 345 unit property in Dallas. We bought it at an amazing basis of 102k a door.

Wow.

And that property, we have now held it for 20 months and this year alone we have sent more than $1 million in distributions for that property. Last quarter on, you know, the quarter that Just went by. We sent, as we sent out more than $500,000 in distributions to our investors. And I'm getting goosebumps as I say that because it's such a, such an amazing feeling when you, when other people are having, you know, capital calls and, or not making distributions and when you can send a 6.4% distribution to your investors. That's an awesome. And that's that, you know, so in my properties, that's what we are seeing. We're seeing. We continue to provide value add. When I say value add, we'll try and find some items for force appreciation and that is what we are always looking for. Cable contracts has been doing well for us. We are able to, you know, subsidize the cost of cable and wi fi for our residents by at least five to seven dollars on what they're paying in the market because we get it at such a cheap price when we do bulk pricing and still make 20 to 25 bucks a pop. So that's doing well for us. We recently created a clubhouse within one of our properties. That clubhouse is renting for $250. Evening, mostly on the weekend. That's another noi play for us. The laundry rooms are a big noi play for us. The reserve parking. People like to park in front of their house or their apartment. That's a big play for us. So, so we are trying to maximize not just the rents is on. There's only so much you can go do with rents. Right. A lot of our play has been amenities and charging for those value adds and additional facilities that you provide with the residents.

Yeah, very good.

That's a plan for us.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's clear in the distributions you're paying to your investors that, that, that strategy seems to be working where there's so many folks that are getting paused or have paused distributions or, God forbid, capital calls, so. Well, very good. Well, what is 2020? The remainder of this year and moving into next year. What is the focus and the goal for the organization?

No, you know, hey, we have been in an acquisition mode this year. This year so far we have closed on four properties and our intent is to close on at least one, if not two more by the end of the year. Hopefully we'll get there. And the same thing holds true for 2025. We are going to be in an acquisition mode at least for the first six to nine months of next year as well. And a lot of this is an opportunistic play. We see that 2020. We actually predicted 2024 to be an acquisition year for us. We also predicted 2025, the first half to be again, just because of the kind of deals we're seeing in the market. You know, I think there are some famous quotes when, hey, everybody else is fearful. You should be opportunistic about it. And that's what we're trying to do. There is a lot of dry power, a lot of people sitting on the sidelines and where we are going and snagging properties at 20, 30% discounts. And it's a basis play for us. We are picking up the properties at amazing basis. That's what we are doing and that's what we continue to. We will continue to do in 2025. Randy, I think I can't hear you anymore.

I hit the. I hit the mute for a cough. My apologies. But yeah, it sounds like it's been an interesting year, exciting year for you guys and next year is looking the same way. I'm curious if we can. It looks like we are kind of hitting our time here, but I do have a handful of questions that I'd love to jump into if you do still have a few more minutes.

Sure. Absolutely.

Perfect. Perfect. Well, let's do that. So, you know, as we talk about on this, this podcast, we are geared towards the newer, newer passive investors. So talking to that avatar, what would you say would be one of the best educational resources that they could look at to continue to get educated in this space?

See, I think I started, you know, 20 years ago. I read a book called by Robert Kiyosaki. Right. Rich dad, Poor Dad. Right. Both my kids 23 and 15 have read that book. I have several copies in my study here and whenever the best. And I'm getting goosebumps as I say this as well. Right. Hey, if I meet a kid who is a teenager, that is my gift to them. And hey, I believed in that book. So that is the number one. If your passive investors haven't read Rich Dad, Poor dad, that will help them with that mindset of Rich Dad.

Love it. Okay, I love it.

Then the cash flow quadrant is another one from the same author, Robert Kiyosaki. Two of the some of the best books around. How to think about cash flows, how to think about real estate, how to ensure you are creating generational wealth. There is a reason my fund is called multi asset generational. I invest in multiple different asset classes in alternative assets and I'm helping create generational wealth. So that is why it is multi asset generation. Multiple asset classes helps me with the diversification that I'm talking about. And all I'm doing this for is to create generational wealth for me, my kids and my family and our investors, of course.

Yeah, very good. So it sounds like you, you continue to stay on the cutting edge with technology. I'm curious, are there, are you a podcast listener and if so, any podcasts you care to share with the audience that helps you keep up to date and abreast of what's going on in the marketplace.

So you know, hey, obviously Randy Smith's podcast guys, you know, keep listening to that. You know, I'm a, you know, Sam Silverman is a good friend.

Yeah.

And also, you know, he runs a podcast. He talks about, you know, hey, how to do capital raising among other topics. So that's a, that's a, that, that's a podcast I keep up with as well as, you know, hey, Joe Fairless podcast as well. All right, so those are two or three which will keep you abreast from a multi family apartment complexes from the how to invest in them. I think Randy, your podcast and guests that you bring to the. To your podcast. Not only that, I think some of your blogs around how to use your retirement accounts and by the way guys, Randy didn't pay me to say all this, but his blogs around how to use your SDIRA to invest in multifamily apartment complexes, those are some of the very good resources for you to look at.

Awesome. Well, thank you for that. Definitely. Let's if we can. Since you're in the trenches and you're having conversations with investors and doing due diligence yourself, are there one or two due diligence questions that you think LPs should be asking that maybe fall to the side during their due diligence process?

So you know, one of the things that I ask, you know, hey, when, when any of when I'm investing in any of the. As an, as an L to my sponsors is, hey, if you lose my money, I hope you don't. But if you lose my money, what are you going to do about it? Okay. And a lot of the times, you know, the, your GPS are stunned.

Sure.

By that question. They're like a lot of the lot of the people don't have an answer for that. Yeah, hey, we hope you don't. But what if. And my answer to a lot of that is, you know, I'm a relationship guy. Right. To me, relationships tops everything. And I generally am the largest check writer in any of my deals in the deal that we just closed in May, we were raising three and a half million dollars. I wrote a check for $430,000 in my own money. In the deal that we closed 20 months ago, that was a $18 million raise. I wrote a check for a million dollars. So I actually tell my investors, tell my LP friends, hey, I am the biggest check writer. My money is as much at risk and I care about your money more than I care about my money. Then that's why I am making sure that my money is going alongside yours. Not only that, if God forbids, something was to happen, I want to be able to look at you in your eyes and tell you exactly what happened. And you will not hear it in the email, you will not hear it from the third party. You will get a call back from me with the full explanation of what happened and how we can work on another deal together where we'll try to make you whole. Obviously, you know, hey, it becomes very difficult for any GP to give any LP money out of their own pocket because, hey, the GPS have lost their money as well.

Sure.

But at the same time, you can rest assured that I care about your money more than I care about mine. At the same time, when we bring out a next deal, we'll make sure you get all the discounts possible, all the preferential treatment possible as well as we'll bring a deal where you are going to get hold. That's my advice.

I love your answer. I love your answer. It is. The more I am around in this space, the more I know that some deals do go bad and it talks to your diversification strategy and why it pays to be diversified across asset classes and deals and operators and even different technology as well. So I love the fact that you're the largest check writer and that you're going to feel the pain and have those one on one conversations. I've received the emails talking about capital calls and pause distributions and I do my, my very best as well to, to make phone calls when, when the unfortunate happens. Fortunately, we've been, we've not been in a position where we've lost capital. We've only paused one deal, but it looks like that one's. That one's going to be coming back. But those are not fun conversations to have and as you said, like, I would rather lose my own money than somebody else's. Very good answer. Awesome. Thank you. Uh, well, let's do this. Let's. That, that was kind of a deep question, kind of a hard question. Let's. Let's finish with a couple of fun ones. Um, do you have a recent bucket list item that you've checked off your list or one that you're hoping to in the near future?

So, you know, I, I love to travel, Randy. You know, hey, that is, you know, like I was talking about, you know, hey, I love vacations with my family. That's, you know, hey, the family time is why I do what I do. And so we recently won a trip to Japan, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. And my first time to Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. That was a bucket list item that we just checked off of.

Fantastic. Yeah, I have, I have not gotten to any of those locations and they are certainly on my bucket list. So. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And Family Travel 101 travel with the spouse is definitely all over my bucket list, so. Very good. All right, and then our final question. We always ask Akash, if you had 100 grand that you had to invest today and you couldn't put it in your own deal or mine, I'll throw that out there. Where would you place that $100,000?

So again, I'm, you know, hey, I'm very, very bullish on the multifamily space. The second item on the real estate side I am bullish on is some of the retail sector. Okay, okay. When I say retail, I'm not very bullish on all the big box stores, if you may, but the retail mouse, the small strip malls, you know, your services are not going anywhere. Everybody's gonna still not gonna need a haircut, their nail salons and so on and so forth. Right. So I'm very bullish on that as well. However, I love the AI space. And so that is what my if, you know, hey, if I, from a risk perspective, I can tolerate that risk. I'm going to put my money that next hundred thousand dollars in an AI either private equity or wedge gap.

I love it. Well, very cool. Akash. This has been a lot of fun. We talked about topics that have not talked on this podcast before. So thank you so much for being on the show. This has been a lot of fun.

No thanks, Randy. It was a lot of fun for me as well. And thank you for those deep questions. Hey, I think you seldom get either ask those questions or even ask those questions. So I appreciate that a lot. And you know, hey, hopefully the listeners enjoyed what we talked about and thank you for having me on your podcast. Thanks.

Fantastic. Well, we'll put your contact information in the show notes, of course, but if you're at conferences. You're going to see a cash out there for sure. He's all over LinkedIn. Certainly reach out to him and connect to learn more about what he's doing. So to the audience as well, we encourage you just continue that education journey. Continue to get educated in this space. But more importantly than that, make the decision to invest in your first or your next passive investment. Both Akash and I are so convinced that once you do, you will wish that you had just started that much sooner. So thank you again for listening today. Be sure to like and subscribe on whatever channel you're listening and be sure to join us again next Thursday for another great episode. Thank you.

Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Another episode of the Gentle Art of Crushing It. It was an amazing episode. We know we sure learned a lot and we hope you did as well. We want to take a second and thank you so much for viewing or listening to this episode. And please just know that we only ask for one favor and that is to make this life magnificent. Thank you and have a wonderful day.