From $300K to $1.5M

you today. Uh, Lincoln Archibald here. Uh, we've got Alex Alexander with us today. Um, we are going to be having a lot of fun. Um, Alex, welcome on. How you doing, man?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on, Lincoln.

Yeah, great. Um, well, look, like, like we had— like, we, we like to start these every time with you just talking a little bit about your background, introducing yourself, how you got to where you are today. So let's kick it over to you.

Sure. So I, um, I live in Texas. I live in Dallas, Texas now. I actually grew up in a little small town called Midland, Texas, and it's out in the oil field way out in West Texas. It's what Friday Night Lights was written about, is that town out there. And I grew up in a, in a trailer park out there by the airport. It was called Airline Mobile Home Park, and I grew up on Continental Avenue. And so that kind of got a start for me in understanding Trailer parks, mobile homes, all that kind of thing. And whenever I left high school, I went into the military. So that was a lot of travel. I wound up in a military band. And so I was singing in a band and traveling to 120, 130 countries. And we did that twice. And so that was a lot of fun getting to travel everywhere. And so once I got done with— I joke with people, I've had quite a few careers, kind of like Forrest Gump, you know.

Interesting.

And so this, this latest ones, um, are real estate. And so I got started in real estate in Hawaii. I was living over there for about 10 years, and I'd actually had kind of a financial reversal. I had a bunch of businesses I started, didn't go well, just back to back to back kind of failure, failure. And it was just tough. I just kept going and kept going, and eventually I found this deal and I found a mentor. And the guy didn't even know he was mentoring me. He didn't plan on mentoring me. He just sold me a piece of property, and it was the most terrible piece of property you've ever imagined in your entire life. It was a junkyard. It had like 5 abandoned cars, had like over 100 tires just strewn about this beautiful acre, and just trash. They had never taken the trash out. I'm sure there was a lot of drugs and situation in their life, and they had never taken anything away from that property. It was like 10 years of drug addict trash on the property. And so I bought this property from this old guy who was 84. Bob told me, he said, look around, look at all of this. This all belongs to you now. And so I bought it for $200 down and $200 a month. He gave me this super easy deal.

Okay.

And I lived in a van on the property in order to be able to clear it and get all the junk off. So there was no place to live. So I'm camping in a van and cleaning up the property until I could build a tent. And I lived in the tent until I could build a house. And I built my own house on that property. I dug my own septic, water, solar, did it all myself. And so I did that for quite a few years. And in the process, I bought from the same old guy the next piece of property. So now I'm taking in 2 rents. And I tell him, look, Bob, I, I can't send you a check. I need to bring you cash. I'm gonna bring you— and because whenever I got there, I knew he'd get to talking. He liked to talk and tell stories. So we got to talking and he turned into a mentor. Every month I'd go and take him the money for the properties and give me about an hour worth of mentor. And he basically mentored me for about 4 years on how to copy him exactly. And the reason I really chose him is I realized that he had been making $40,000 to $50,000 per month for the past 40 years. Now, a lot of people are able to make, you know, that amount of money— $300,000, $400,000 a year— that's top 1% of income earners in the country. But most people don't get to that level and stay there for a long time. Divorces, gambling problems, drinking, DUIs, a crash, a medical issue, their business just fails because the market changes completely. But he was able to stay steady with that money every single month for 40 years. And so I started just copying it. I copied everything from his lifestyle of cold showers to the walks that he takes in the morning. I just copied everything that he would tell me about himself. And by doing that, I wound up owning 14 acres, 14 different properties there in Hawaii. And then I met my next kind of mentor and business partner and friend, and that's Brent Mock. And he's over in Houston. He's an amazing real estate investor and mentor fund manager. Actually, Brent's in y'all's program too. Brent's, uh, Brent's, uh, been in the Wycombe program.

He's one of the, one of the early guys into our program. That's awesome. I didn't know, I didn't know he was— you had a close relationship with him. That's awesome.

We met in Maui at an executive retreat out there, and he was interested enough to fly back out to Hawaii to see the land. He hiked up on the land with me. We spent 3 days hiking around, and then he went and raised the money, and we got $300,000 to buy 36 1-acre lots, an entire city block. We bought a whole block of raw land.

In Hawaii?

In Hawaii.

Oh, awesome.

Yeah, so we bought it for $5,000 per lot because that's what was owed back on the taxes, and I found the kids who had received it from their parents Tracked them down, talked to them, had a relationship. It took me about a year having a relationship with them to get them to even consider and agree to sell it to me. Yeah. And so Brent raised us the money. We got another partner, Aaron, that's an amazing syndicator guy, that the two of them teamed up and raised the money. It was only $300,000. It's a pretty small amount of money, but we bought that land. And with that, within 6 months, I had turned that into $1.5 million worth of receivables. Because what I did is I took that land, I excavated it, and then I sell it on payments. So I had this whole internet website system set up to where it's a dashboard. I just make a listing, it goes out to— it gets syndicated out to like Trulia and Zillow. And then people come and they, they come to my website, they want to buy this land, they apply online, they sign their contract online right there on the website, they make their payment right there online on the website, they get an automated email Mm-hmm. It gives them a barcode. They can take that barcode, and it actually comes in an SMS. They can take that barcode, take it to Walmart. Walmart will scan it. They can give them cash, and it goes straight through to my bank account. So I set up this whole automated system, and it's, uh, it's basically just regular property management software, but I really tricked it out and dialed it in for my, for my system. And, uh, now I have 50 properties over there. I think we have 56 right now still. And those, those people pay. We sell them $500 down, $500 per month. Everybody can qualify because everybody deserves a chance to try to own a piece of land. Yeah, that was a big, uh, that was a big motivation for me for a bunch of years.

So sorry, I'm gonna cut you off there. I don't like— what are you doing with the land actually? So you're exca— you're rent leasing it out then, or, you know, is this for RV parks? Like, what is I, I think I missed maybe a step there of like, you know, what's, what's the actual—

I sell it rent-to-own. So this is owner-financed land. So I tell them, look, here's this piece of land, you can't come up with the money to go— well, you can't get loans on these properties. They, they're technically in a lava zone because it's on the side of a volcano. Yeah. And so it's hard to get insurance, loans, all that kind of stuff for these properties. So I'm solving this problem that people want to own land They, they don't have enough money to buy the land outright, and they don't— can't get— go get a loan. So I'll give them an owner finance loan, high interest, and that way they can pay a tiny amount down. And one of the things I say is, you know, we charge a lot of interest, and it's really expensive to give everybody a chance, but we're willing to do it.

Yeah.

So yeah, they're sold on— it's called contracts for deeds. So I got them on CFDs, and whenever folks finish paying off I do the title transfer and send it to them.

Yeah, no, that's great. And you said you've got about 56 lots now that you're leasing?

Yeah, so that's maybe 120 people having a place to live that couldn't, couldn't have done it before. Yeah, we deal a lot with Micronesians and Marshallese people, Hawaiian people, local people there in the area. Yeah, a lot of them want to own land. They have a real strong connection. They call it the aina. And it's very spiritual for them to own land, to be a part of it, to treat the land good. Actually, I'll give you a little bit of cool Hawaiian stuff. The motto, the state motto of Hawaii is "Huamau ke ia o ka aina i ka pono," which means the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. And that's really something deep to those people. And I was able to buy this land and. Help them own it. Actually, we had about 20 Marshallese folks that came in and bought a whole bunch of land in the same area. And so in 2019, I put some money together and hired them all and helped them build a church. And so it was really neat for them to get to have that right there in their neighborhood. They built it themselves, you know, and they actually got paid to do it too. So it was, it was a really neat experience.

Well, that's great.

You asked about how does this relate to RVs, and that's That's a really good question. I used to always say I run the only RV park in Hawaii, so it's really hard to get your RV there.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's the same thing. I own the land, people live on it. They don't own the land, they just pay monthly, but they own what's above the land. I just own the land underneath, so then whenever they pay it off, I transfer it to them. But the way it winds up operating is a lot like a mobile home park or an RV park.

Yeah.

And so I started to realize, you know, whenever you shrink down the unit of sale, you increase the value, you increase the price per unit that you're charging. Like if you go and you buy a Coca-Cola at the grocery store, the big old 2-liter Coca-Cola, and it's like 99 cents, and then you go to the group— to the gas station and you buy the little tiny one, it's like $3.50. You're paying more per unit, you're paying a higher price per unit. And it's the same thing I realized with land. If you take a piece of land and you cut it down and you make it smaller into these little small parcels, like just even a parking space where you park an RV, that's the smallest unit of land. And then also you want to rent it for the smallest amount of time. So instead of selling it, it would be one-time payment, or renting it per month, which would be a lower payment, you rent it by the day. So it's like a hotel. You pay way more for a hotel. over the course of a month than you would for an apartment. And so I started to realize this: if I can shrink down the amount of land that I'm selling, I get the highest unit price, and then I shrink down the amount of, uh, time. And that's how I came up with being an RV park. We started about a year ago.

There we go. So Alex, let me ask you, you know, as you transitioned into this career line and started doing deals and, you know, Raising money, what are some of the biggest things you learned just throughout that process of going out and raising money to take down land or different types of investments? What are some of the biggest things you've learned throughout that process?

I think the biggest thing I actually learned from you, which was to go and get a partner. I was really scared for a long time to partner up. The amazing thing about the Black Card Group and the training The part that worked for me was realizing there are those 3 characters you need in a fund. If you're gonna go start a big fund, you're gonna raise $100 million, $10 million, even $1 million. A lot of people are looking at it, they're like, you're just, just you? Like, just one person? And a lot of investors think that way, and that's actually kind of a smart way to think because, you know, more eyes are gonna catch more mistakes, all that kind of thing. But yeah, we, I, after I've been in the Black Card for about 4 months, I really focused up on finding a capital raiser to partner with me. And my partner, his name is John McGaw. He's in 8 syndications right now as either the lead LP or GP of the deal. So he's phenomenal amounts of experience and just really a smart guy and connected. He's got about 3,000 investors on our list that, uh, we get access to.

Yeah.

He's a really, really great addition to my team. And just like you guys taught me, This is what I learned. This is a great one, is that you can kind of draft off of and you can borrow their reputation. You know, they're borrowing your energy. Usually those folks you're talking about that you're going to do this with are going to be older, possibly more experienced, more mature, or whatever. So they're drafting off of your youth and energy, creativity and vitality, and you're drafting off of their experience and what they've done and their track record. So that's how the team Teamwork goes together. That's one of the big things for you guys, actually.

No, I think— no, I love that you bring that up. You know, so many people think they have to go out and, you know, take down deals by themselves, or, you know, especially everyone feels this sort of imposter syndrome, like, well, I haven't done it, you know. So go find someone who has, you know, leverage their resume. And, uh, you know, as soon as you partner up with someone, you know, it's as if you're one, right? I love what you said there. Somebody's got to put in the sweat equity. Somebody's got to put in the work. If you're that type of individual that wants to get these deals done, you've got the ambition, you've got the work, go make it happen. I think that's great. I think that's awesome.

You and Bridger worked really well together too. You got offsetting skills that complement each other. You fill in his lacks and he fills in your lacks.

Yep, exactly, exactly. So let's see, so tell us a little bit about your capital firm. So you're, you're going out and you're syndicating deals right now. You know, the plan is to launch a fund here within the next 6 to 12 months. You know, walk us through kind of psychologically how you're approaching that, why you're thinking about a fund, uh, you know, and, and, uh, you know, how the structure is, uh, and, you know, going to enhance your syndication business.

Well, I learned that, uh, at first I wasn't doing syndications, I was just doing deals on my own. And I started to realize I've got to figure out how to team people up. And so I started— whenever I looked into syndications, that's whenever I found Bridger and you guys in the program. I got involved, and the first thing I wanted to do is I'm going to launch a fund right away. I'm going to launch a fund. And I started looking at how to do that. And then we started to look at it, we were like, well, really, this would be way stronger if we do a couple of syndications first and have a track record as a team. Because right now I have a track record in Hawaii, John has a track record of his businesses, right? And so we want to put it together and as a team. And also we have Stephanie who runs Buzzworthy Property Management. That's our, um, they're, they're actually a third party, but they're kind of in-house because we, we work with— she works with us exclusively. And so that we got that, um, on On board, but anyway, we started looking at RV parks because we realized this is what happened with hotels, and this is what happened with storage, and now it's happening with RVs. And let's get in on the front end of this because if you look at hotels maybe eighty years ago, you know you're looking at Conrad Hilton, and he's putting together private equity groups to buy small mom-and-pop hotels and turn them into Hilton hotels. And now they have all the different brands. It's spread out to Economy Inn and all the different brands. Those are— each brand is a private equity group, and they're, they're buying up smaller properties, putting them onto their platform with a private equity role at play. They put them onto the platform, which is like a website, operations, you know, being really plugged into a good management service, and then they just scale the business up, get a whole bunch of them, and then sell them off to bigger private equity firms. And so we realized that's, that's exactly what happened in hotels. And now if you have— if you listen to Ian Bernstein, is somebody really interesting to listen to talk about RV parks. He says, uh, RV parks today are what storage parks were 25 years ago. So if you're kicking yourself because you didn't get into storage, don't be kicking yourself again next year. This is the time. You didn't argue?

No, I think that's spot on. Hey, well, that's great. I mean, you talked to us a little bit at the beginning. I know you've shared some of the stuff you've learned throughout this, but what's something you wish you knew when you were just starting out, just getting into the investments world, just either thinking about taking down your own deal or just getting into this alternative asset landscape? Which is something you wish you knew right when you were starting out?

I wish I would have thought of it as a long-term lifestyle more than a career or a job, because if you let it work on you, all of the personal development that comes along with running a business and being in private equity, being around other high-performing people, all of that starts to improve your life, start to like get more healthy, You know, you start to feel more younger, you're making more money. So all this kind of stuff in, um, in private equity, in hedge funds, in finance, um, if you let it work on you, if you let the positive parts work on you, it'll improve your life. And if you let the greed and the negative part and the taking and the trying to get as much as you can out of the deal, if you let that work on you, it'll do the same thing. You can, you can either get the positive effect or the negative effect. You just have to make a choice of what you're going to let work on you.

Yeah, no, that's great. Um, yeah, I mean, you're, you're the summation of the 5 people you spend the most time with, right? And what I love about this program and ecosystem is like, you know, you just are spending time with such high-caliber individuals that have a desire to be better, to, to grow, that, you know, starting a fund is in my opinion, arguably one of the most entrepreneurial endeavors out there. I mean, sure, starting a business is tough, but starting a business that is in the business of raising money and investing that money and generating a return is, I mean, it's a pretty hefty entrepreneurial endeavor. And I think a lot of people underestimate that. And I think it's so much fun to have a great community of people around. But as we wrap up today and close this conversation, how can people get in touch with you if they wanna connect with you about your business or your firm, and, uh, you know, what's, what's the best place to do that?

All right, we got, uh, pparkventures.com— or I'm sorry, pparkv.com. That's the website. Hawaii Landman is a way to reach out to me. That's a real easy one. Like a lot of people, I still have that website, so that's a way to reach out and find me, hawaiilandman.com. But, um, it's Paradise Park Ventures is actually our firm. And anybody who's in Black Card and wants to get together, I've got my calendar link right there in Slack on my— so you can go straight to the Slack, look at my profile, Alex Alexander, and click on it and book time with me. And I'll share with you what I know, and I'll try to help you as much as I can. And, you know, we'll see if we can find some way to work together.

Love it. Hey, well, thanks so much. Thanks for hopping on today and sharing some of your experiences with the community. I really appreciate it. Great connecting, Alex.

Thank you, Lincoln. Take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.