How Alex Made Money On Amazon And Creates Wealth As An Investor

So I started writing checks with different operators around the country and multifamily, this is 2016. And realized this is a way better process and strategy around getting exposure to real estate. I could write a check, I get distributions quarterly, I get a K1 at the end of the year and I don't do anything. To me, that was truly. I truly had found the passive income source I was looking for.

And you know, I could invest less than what it would take me to go buy a single family house.

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A few years ago I held a workshop which at the time was called the Next Level Workshop. Now the workshops that I have are called the Eight Figure Exit event. And one of the attendees was the man that you're about to hear on the podcast. And at the time, Alex had a business that was doing right around $100,000 a month, all on Amazon. He ended up making some pivots after the workshop, scaling to $3 million a month, having an eight figure exit, and now is a full time real estate investor. And I wanted to ask him about the full journey, but specifically about that transition from one career to the next because Alex has been wildly successful in both professions. So I wanted to know what did he do differently in order to dominate on Amazon and win the e commerce game? What was the exit like and how did he then take what he learned to dominate a completely different industry in which he is now putting deals together. He's more operating like a capitalist and an owner rather than a founder. And if you are in the mode of scrappy entrepreneur who is scaling up, I think you're going to learn a lot from hearing how Alex shifted into that owner mindset. Specifically when you hear us talking about how he brings together resources from capital to the deal to and then he's out and he just gets to enjoy the wealth that's created from that process. I make a specific point of taking a few nuggets from that and implementing it into your business. This is going to be really helpful for you. Also, if you are just starting out, you're going to learn a lot about when Alex and I talk about how the market has changed and how we would approach things differently if we were starting today. So in either case, you're going to get a tremendous amount out of this. Alex is one of our backroom graduates, so if you want to be a part of that, you can go over to capitalism.combackroom to work with us a little bit more intimately or closer. And the event, the workshop that Alex talks about, you can find out more over@capitalism.com eight. That's the number eight. Now, just a quick note. Alex's audio wasn't the best on this, but if you stick with us, the stuff that he shares is just absolute gold. So whether you are an FBA seller just starting your journey or you're looking to invest, you're gonna get a ton out of this interview with Alex Upperman.

Hey, capitalists. Before we jump into today's episode, if you've crossed seven figures and now you're stuck and you're frustrated and you're overworked and you're not seeing the same growth and excitement that you had when you started this thing, but you know that you're sitting on something special and it's driving you crazy that you can't get what is in your head out into the world. I know why you're stuck and I can help. Go over to capitalism.com 7. I've put together a write up about why you're stuck, how to get unstuck, and how I can help you in 2020 and beyond. Looking for exciting businesses with fun entrepreneurs who are frustrated because they know that they're capable of more. So go to capitalism.com7 and we'll get you growing again.

Well, hello, boys and girls. Hey. We are joined by a friend of mine who has just an amazing story in terms of taking his profits in business and leveraging it to do something that is really going to build wealth for the rest of his life and his family's life. He's inspired me and we actually met at a workshop and he's just taken off into the stratosphere, we might call it the Upperman sphere at this point. He's done so well. So, Alex, I know you keep a low profile. I really appreciate you making an exception and hanging out with us.

Yeah, I appreciate the invite, Ryan, and appreciate all that you've done in our lives and for other people in this space. So I'm glad to be here and hopefully give some value back.

Thanks. Alex, would you give the background story on how you and I met first, your perspective?

Yeah. So, you know, I am, you know, back in 2010 and just reselling different products and, you know, doing the garage sale and thrift store and retail arbitrage and all that fun stuff. And in 2014, my wife and I started our first private label brand and it was a supplement Company. And, you know, up to that point, we had never invested in any courses, never went to any conferences, you know, really just tried to figure everything out, you know, on our own. And probably a year into that business, I stumbled across your content. And I don't remember how or where, but started following you. And, you know, shortly thereafter, you were pitching the Next Level workshop. And, you know, when I was, you know, reading through that or listening to that, that the sales pitch on it, I was like, we have to do this. I think it was. I don't remember the cost. Maybe it was $5,000 or something. We'd never spend anything like that, you know, on. In terms of education and so forth. But we did. It came down to your workshop. You know, we were, like I said, we were only a year into our business. I don't even know if we were doing 100 grand a month yet. And just blew our mind, right? Like learning from you and learning, like, how we could apply traditional digital marketing tactics to Amazon. Because I think at the time, everybody was doing the same stuff, right? And we just learned a lot of things from that event.

That we were able to implement. And really, our business just accelerated from there. So joined your backroom from there and developed a relationship further and, you know, stayed in touch through the years.

And I know you built that company to where it was doing. I actually remember you were right at $100,000 a month. And I remember that because I remember the place I was when we had our call about the Next level and you telling me a little about the business and where it was at. I don't know why I remember that, but I remember exactly where I was.

And then you guys really started to grow by just kind of tweaking your processes and starting to own the space.

Was there anything that you did differently from the way that you put your time and attention into Amazon that helped you win in the marketplace? I mean, now your company is in, like, every retail store I go into. It's everywhere.

You guys, since you exited, I'm jealous of the fact that the company that took over your brand did a good job of building the company as opposed to what happened with my exits. But in your case, was there anything that helped you stand out or that you felt allowed you to win on the Amazon Marketplace?

Yeah, I mean, I think first thing, our first good move in the space was probably our first dozen products. We went after really niche products that were not super competitive. Right. Because at the time, a lot of people were still teaching, look at the top 100 or the top 500 on Amazon. And that's where you should find your product opportunities. And for us, with our retail arbitrage background, we sold products that were ranked 20,000, 30,000, and knew that there was still volume in those types of products. And so my mindset was, if we can launch a product and sell 30 units today or 20 units a day, I'm thrilled with that. And I'll do that a hundred times. Right. Whereas other people were going after, you know, in supplements, for example, they were going after the fish oils and the probiotics and the weight loss supplements. And it was, you know, even in 2013, 14, that was super competitive in those categories. But we were finding these niche products that you could sell 30, 40, 50 units a day that might only have one private label person competing with you. So it was a lot easier to break in. You know, we didn't have an audience, we didn't have, we didn't have experience in that space. But by finding the products where there was less competition, that allowed us to build our brand, build our audience. And then, you know, 12, 15 products in, we started going after the more competitive type products. So it sounds like you were able to do that.

Sorry, it sounds like you were able to kind of go after those mid tier markets and capture enough of the market share to where you had a nice profitable engine without having to go deep into the red. Because I think you started this business with like five grand and end up not even.

I mean, our first order was $750. You know, we ordered 250 units, $3. And that product was profitable. And we used the cash flow from that to launch the next product. And fortunately in that category, the margins are high. And so we were able to just roll from there.

Absolutely. That was.

Our angle that allowed us to get that initial momentum.

You got cash flow coming in and you were able to carve out your own area of the marketplace. And then you used a lot of those profits after some more competitive things to take some more strategic risks. But it also seemed from the outside that you didn't like, it didn't seem like you had any duds. It just seemed like you were able to win at whatever you went into. Was there a turning point in which you felt that you had the capacity to be able to win at whatever you put your attention to?

I don't know. You know, I look back at that and you're right. We were really fortunate that the first, you know, I felt like the first 12 products, I think we had one product that didn't really meet expectations, but still was, you know, doing decent volume. But, you know, we really took the approach of when we launched a product, it took all of our attention and we were just doing one product launch at a time. You know, as we grew the business and the infrastructure, over time we were able to accelerate that and launch multiple products at once. But I was a big believer in just giving like 100% focus to the product launch. And then at the time, I saw people that were trying to launch 10 products at a time, and when I saw that they usually weren't successful, right. It was like I would rather take all my focus and apply it to one product launch and try to hit a home run with that, then have my focus spread across five or 10 products and have a bunch of duds or maybe singles. That was the approach we took.

A big part of the success there.

And after a few years, it was, I think, just you and your wife that were running this. I think maybe you had one full time person and you're doing eight figures, doing over 10 million. Over a million dollars a month. Was it just you and Shauna or did you have other people on the team as well?

Yeah, I mean, it was probably. I think your event actually inspired us to make our first hire. You know, we were. It was just my wife and I and we went home and hired like a VA from the Philippines. Right. And that was like a big step for us, which is so funny looking back. Right. Um, but it really greased the wheels to like letting go of aspects of the business and building processes and handing responsibilities over. It wasn't a great hire. She didn't work out very long, but, you know, we ultimately ended up hiring. We had a full time customer service person and really the rest of the team was subcontractors. So we had a, you know, a graphic designer that we might get 15, 20 hours a week from. Somebody who could help set up Facebook ads and things like that. Might be doing 10, 20 hours a week with him. But it was a very lean team, you know, and by the time we sold in spring of 17, we were doing 3 million a month. And really the team was prime customer service person, a part time graphic designer and maybe a few. A few other contractors that are doing a little bit. But that's what's amazing about these businesses, right, Is how scalable they are, you know, and with very little overhead.

Yeah, that's amazing. Great work. Do you still have brands? Do you still have E commerce brands or have you pivoted completely over into an investor.

So I had made some investments in some other E Commerce businesses back when I was still running dao. We exited one of those about a year and a half ago. I was in a completely different category and we were able to move on right after that exit. And I was really just a passive. Had a passive role in that business in terms of capital. Helped with some with the strategy, but not really involved the day to day. I've done that a few other times over the years.

And still have some investments in some small brands but nothing doing anything major. So really my focus over the last couple years has been real estate full time.

Yeah. And that's where I want to go next because I remember having a glass of wine with Shauna when we were in, I think San Francisco for one of the backroom events. And you were thinking about exiting the business at that point. And the plan was always to take the profits and invest it into real estate at that point. And man, first of all, I should put a big asterisk on everything. Full disclosure, I'm an investor in Alex's real. Some of Alex's real estate ventures. I'm an idiot on the Internet who has no idea what he's doing. Don't listen to anything that I do or say. But Alex, all of your investments have actually been my best performing passive investments. Which is something to say for a new real estate investor who's an E Commerce Amazon success story. So to go from success on the Internet to success in real estate is like a big jump. But it seems like that was always the plan. So explain to me what your methodology or your plan was when you were making that pivot.

Yeah. So I had started investing in Real Estate 2015 and took the approach of buying single family homes. I had a partner who was doing a lot of the legwork and fixing them up and refinancing our cash out and doing that. And we quickly realized this is not that scalable. How do we scale this? So we started buying smaller multifamily properties around Kansas city. We're talking 20 unit, 30 unit type properties.

And realized that one, it's not passive. Right. Even if you have a third party management company and they're managing it, you really need to spend a lot of time overseeing them and holding them accountable to the budget and to the pro forma. And you really don't have a lot of economies of scale in a 20 to 30 unit property because you can't afford to have somebody on site. You really need about 100 units before you can Afford to have somebody on site. So quickly realized that this was not scalable either. You know, buying 20, 30, 40 units, which you would think it would be. And that's when I discovered real estate syndication. I was fortunate to have a connection here in Kansas City. They have a family office, they invest, you know, a good portion of their balance sheet and multifamily syndication. So I was able to start getting deal flow from them, from investments that they, that they do. So I started writing checks, you know, with different operators around the country and multifamily, this is 2016, and realized this is a way better process and strategy around getting exposure to real estate. You know, I could write a check, I get distributions quarterly, I get a K1 at the end of the year and I don't do anything, right. Like to me, that was truly, I truly had found the passive income source I was looking for, right. And you know, I could invest less than what it would take me to go buy a single family house right now. I could put 75,000 or as little as some of these deals, as well as $50,000 into a deal and just started making a lot of investments and getting a feel for syndication and really just betting on operators who had track records, right. And letting them do the work. So whenever I sold out and transitioned away from that, I knew I wanted to jump headfirst into that world and really just dive in and immerse myself.

So just to add some context to this, I've said this on probably a dozen podcasts at this point, but when I was just starting to see some success right after college, I was buying up single family homes in Cleveland, Ohio. This is like 2008, 2009. So real estate prices were at the bottom. And no, that's wrong. I graduated in 2009, so this must have been like 2011, 2012. But anyway, I was buying up single family homes and I realized after a few years it doesn't really make much sense for me to take focus away from my business and try to become a full time real estate investor or to try and go find deals. There are already people out there whose full time business is finding those deals. And the thought that I could be able to compete with those individuals who are looking at it full time was not really realistic. And I made the decision to sell my real estate holdings and, and instead to invest in syndications, which is what Alex is talking about, where you have an operator whose full time job is to go find great deals and then partner with investors who put up at least part of the capital to fund the transaction and you get a piece of all the action. And so that's what I decided to do simply because my thought process was I'll keep my attention in my business, which is my most valuable asset, and I'll partner with the people who have a unique eye who for finding those deals and opportunities in the marketplace. And it sounds like you came to the same conclusion, except for the fact that you decided that you wanted to be the person who was the full time investor and be able to offer those opportunities to other partners like myself.

100%. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. You know, I'm a big believer in focusing on really one thing and having laser focus in one area of your life. And so trying to run an Amazon business and be a.

Real estate investor or an active real estate investor, you're not going to do either of those as good as you can if you just focus on one.

So, Alex, tell me about the first couple big deals that you did. How did you find them.

After coming off a big success? Did you have fears of failure? How did you raise the money? What were the first couple deals? What did they feel like?

Yeah, so I mean, I had been investing in several syndications before I was actually on what they call the general partner side of the deal. I'd probably invested in 20 deals and my first deal as a general partner was in 2017 in Oklahoma. And it was really me partnering with an operator who already had a track record.

For that deal. I'd already gained a lot of familiarity and comfort in multifamily. And I went and visited the deal and liked it. He had already gotten it under contract. So for me.

Now I had the opportunity to take that deal to my network because that's what I really found in this space is a lot of people want to invest in real estate, but they don't want to take the active approach. They don't want to go buy a single family home or a duplex or whatever it may be. They want exposure to the real estate. And so here was an opportunity for me to partner with an operator who's got the experience, the track record. And I can take that to my network of entrepreneurs who can give them access to institutional quality real estate.

How did you find the first deal and what was the process like? I know what it's like as an investor and I bought single family homes, but I've never bought 100 unit apartment. So how did you find it and then find like fumble your way through the process to where from the outside, it looked like everything was kind of seamless and effortless.

Yeah. So the first deal was with an operator who had actually already had been actively looking for deals and got.

And so I don't spend my day to day like pounding the payment for deals. I know what that process looks like. I've gone through that process before. But my approach now is to have three or four different operators out there that I partner with, but they're out there really beating the pavement for deals. And it's a very unfair business. If you want to buy a 200 unit complex and you've never bought a large commercial deal before, no broker is going to take you seriously. Even if you have a lot of capital. You really have to be somebody who has bought deals before to be taken seriously. Especially in the environment we're in right now where it's extremely competitive. Right.

Yeah.

Most of these deals will have 30, 40, 50 offers that are, they're competing for the deal. So for you to be taken seriously, for the broker to vouch for you, you have to have a track record. So I partner with the groups who have those relationships, with the brokers who have the track record who can be taken seriously to take these deals down and get them under contract.

Could you explain what that partnership looked like? Because if somebody's already an operator on real estate, why are they bringing you into the deal and allowing you to bring money? Was it just that the partner wanted to focus on acquisition and you had the capital to bring to the table? How did that partnership come to be?

Yeah, I mean, it's really a symbiotic relationship.

Right.

Whereas these deals have gotten more and more expensive. You might have to grow your team to be able to bring in the right amount of capital. So if you're buying a $25 million deal, you're probably going to need to bring 8 to $10 million of equity to the table. And so really my role is to come on and if it's a deal that I like, I'll underwrite the deal, I'll put it through my process and I don't take a deal in my network unless it's a deal that I'm personally investing in. But if it is, I'll get involved on the investor relations side, on the marketing side and on the fundraising side. And then I let the operator really focus on the day to day operations and the asset management of the asset.

Yeah. After you close on a deal, which I imagine is a much more laborious process than any of us know, what do you Do. What is your involvement after you close?

Yeah, so my involvement after we close is generally on the investor relations side, on the. Really, that's, that's kind of where I focus and in communicating with the operator, staying in touch with them, looking at how we're performing compared to the pro forma. You know, here's the projections we made on how we perform. How are we lining up? But I really let the operator, you know, do what they're good at. And I'm betting on the jockey. Right. And letting them do what they're good at and then just staying on top of how the deal is performing, communicating with investors. We're big on education.

And being very transparent about the process. I'm constantly on the phone with investors, your past investors or potential investors, just educating about how these deals work, how we mitigate risk, and all of these different things.

Well, if I can toot my own horn, I have never made you hop on the phone with me. I think I might Ideal investor category. You don't need to educate me. Call me, sell me, send me an email. Hey, another deal and I go, okay, I'm in for 250.

It's across the spectrum, right? You have people who just, they know it's what they want to do. That's the type of investor I was. Right. I did my first deals without.

Doing a ton of due diligence or work on the sponsor. It's just, to me, their track record spoke for themselves. And I knew what they. I knew that they knew what they were doing. They had a, you know, almost a billion under. So I just trusted in that. And I knew I wanted exposure to real estate and I wasn't risking, you know, the farm. Right. I was making a small bet. And so, you know, there's investors like that. And then you've got investors who really want to get, you know, they don't really know much at all about real estate, and they want to get a certain level of comfort before they jump in, which I completely understand.

Would you tell me a little bit about how you're meeting investors and how you're funding those deals? Is it just working your network and pounding phones, or do you have a different process for it?

Yeah, so for me, I've let it just happen organically. I don't really try to go out there and self promote and do all these things to attract investors. Honestly, most of the investors in my deals are just people that I built relationships with over the years. Most of them are my friends and family that, you know, who invest in My deals and, you know, they might refer somebody who then I get to know and educate and, you know, so I just let it happen organically. I don't really try to, you know, you know, it's not something that I'm trying to scale to the moon. Just letting it organically happen over time and let people who want to be involved with real estate come to me and.

Taking that approach.

What does a deal structure usually look like? You have your relationship with the operator and then do you have class A, class B shares? One of them being for the syndication, one of them being for the operator. How does that usually work?

Yeah, so a typical deal, the operator, you also hear it referred to as the gp, the general partner. They're the ones putting the deal together, doing all of the work. And then you have the investors, sometimes referred to as LP limited partners. So the investors coming into the deal are completely passive and they are going to receive a return for that investment. The general partners are usually making their money in what's called carried interest. Right. They're making their money.

There's different ways to structure it. Sometimes there'll be a preferred return and the general partners don't get paid anything until a certain percentage has been returned to investors. Sometimes the general partners get paid out of a straight split, meaning the cash flow is split up between the passive investors, LPs and the GPs. So the GP is getting a small percentage of the cash flow. And so there's a lot of different structures that you'll see in these deals. But ultimately the general partner almost always investing their own dollars in the deal. And I only will do deals with sponsors who are putting their own money in the deals. And I put my own money into every deal that I do. But they're also earning an extra return for doing all the work and running the business.

Got it. I have two questions for you about your approach to it right now, which coming from an entrepreneurial background, somebody who started a business with $750 and now you're buying 750 unit apartments. That's a big jump. There's always some risk aversion when you come from that type of background. Most of us got into entrepreneurship because we wanted a better life, because we wanted financial freedom. And now a few years later, you're buying really big deals. So I'm curious if what you see going on in the overall economy and if that weighs on your mind at all. Actually, I'll let you answer that one first.

Yeah, so the way I look at it, I'm big on Mitigating risk. Right. And protection of principle. And I think there's a big difference between investing and speculating. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs who think speculation is investing. You know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have got really caught up in the crypto craze, you know, because I think we by nature want like, you know, we're used to these big returns in our business and we want our investing to produce similar results, but you have to look at them completely separately. Right. And so in a business, that's where you're going to see your huge ROIs. Right. And for investing, the way you should look at it is invest for cash flow, invest for. You want good returns, but you also want safety and protection of capital. And so for me, I'm really big on workforce housing, multifamily, which is affordable housing that's going to be affordable to your person making 40, 50 grand a year. And to me, that type of real estate is going to be incredibly recession resilient. I'm also big on being hyper selective about the markets that we go into. You know, we want to be in markets that are growing where there's, there's a lot of jobs going there, a lot of people going there. For example, Dallas, you know, you're in some of our Dallas deals. If you just look at the data around Dallas, it's adding over 100,000 people a year. It has for the last 10, 15 years. And it's projected to do that the next 10, 15 years. Well, all those people need a place to live. Right? You as a developer cannot, it's affordable to somebody at 40, 50, who's making 40 or $50,000 a year. It just doesn't pencil because of construction costs, land costs. You know, any new, you know, multifamily property that you see goes up, you know, is going to be renting at, you know, over $2 a square foot and sometimes over $3 a square foot. And so where are the people going to live that are making 3, $4,000 a month? And the question is they're going to live in these older garden style apartments that were built in 1970s and 1980s that they can rent for 1000 bucks a month or 1100 dollars a month. So there's a huge demand because the middle class is, you know, wage growth really hasn't been there. So there's a huge middle class that's growing. But there's, you know, there's not an additional, there's not supply coming on the market, new supply coming on the market. For that segment of the market. So, you know, I believe that multifamily and it's shown itself through past cycles, in the last recession, multifamily performed extremely well. And so instead of putting my money in the stock market, it might take a 30% hit in a downturn, put it into something that maybe we won't be able to sell the asset because we're going through a recession, but we still have cash flow coming in because there's still plenty of demand for the housing.

Yeah.

My follow up question is there's a strategy that I know you follow or at least have in mind that involves value add to the apartment and then paying investors out from the value add. And it's, it takes a little bit of meant like of chewing on it to get it. But once you get. Absolutely blew my mind when I saw the kind of opportunity and it's what really sold me on this type of a structure and excited me about you going in this direction. So would you walk us through your overall three to five year strategy for when you take over one of these deals?

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, the way to look at multifamily is the value is really based on the income that the property is producing, whereas a single family home, it's based on what are the houses around it selling for a comparative market analysis. And that's how the appraisals derive. But with multifamily, anything you can do to increase the income going to increase the value. And so when you're buying these properties, you're buying a business, you're buying a P and L, an income statement and you're looking for ways how can we decrease expenses and how can we increase income? And so you build a strategy around how are we going to do that? And usually that involves going and for us it's usually doing five to six thousand dollars a unit renovation. And so if you've got 200 units, 5,000 unit, a million bucks of renovation and you're going in and you're taking out the carpet and you're putting in, you know, luxury vinyl flooring, you know, LVT and complete makes the unit look completely different. Right. You're doing new paint, you're doing new fixtures, you know, maybe new countertop, it's resurfacing the cabinets and you do these things. And now instead of being able to charge $1,000 a unit, you're able to charge $1,200 a unit. And you know that $200 a unit doesn't sound like a lot on the surface. But if you've got 200 units and you're being your property being valued on a cap rate, which think of it with like a multiple of earnings, you know, these small increases make huge differences. You know, example would be putting in carports, right? A carport you can put in for $1500 a spot and you can rent for 30, 40, $50 a month. You know, you do that, 20 spots, you know, $50 a month, that's a thousand a month. That's 12,000 a year in new income. And if your property's valued On a, on a 5 cap, now you're talking, you know, what is that?

240,000 in value, the property for adding.

What's interesting about this is you're looking for like, you're not looking at it as spending $1,200 to make 50. You're looking at it as, how does this increase the overall valuation of the property? And so there's a multiplier effect which most small entrepreneurs don't think about. They just think about cash flow.

Yeah, right. And when you go in and you, and you increase the value, you have a lot of flexibility. You can sell the property, return capital to investors. That way you can refinance the property. And refinances are amazing because you're receiving proceeds back to you. I just had a deal. One of my first deals, I invested in a syndication refinance and I got 50% of my original capital returned to me. It's tax free. It's tax free distribution. And I can take those proceeds and go roll it into another deal. And I still have my ownership in the deal, so I still have the same equity percentage that I had before, but I've had just had a big chunk of capital returned to me. So you're looking for ways to pop that value so that you can refinance or you can sell and return significant returns back to investors.

So in other words, you're taking over a property, you're finding ways to add value to it. You're letting that cash flow start to accumulate, and then you get it refinanced at the higher valuation, which allows you to pay off a lot of the investor's original principle. And you have the cash flows to still service the debt. And so you've basically de risked the investment while still having the cash flows and the growth of the value of the asset. Is that a fair summary?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I always look for in these deals is what's the cash flow profile, how quickly Am I getting my cash back? I have invested in a few startups and it's very much like, give me the money and maybe I'll give you something back in 10 years. And it's like, no, thanks. Thanks, but no thanks. And I'd rather invest in something that's already producing cash flow. And then there's a path to return significant.

Percentage of my capital back in the next two, three, four years. And we haven't even gotten into the tax benefit. That's another way that these investments are significantly de risked on day one.

These properties are showing off huge losses in the first year and those losses can go towards offsetting other sources of income. So, you know, I didn't pay taxes in 2019 for the first time. That was huge. You know, not paying taxes at 44% tax rate that I'm at. You know, that was a huge optimization that I was able to make by how I structured things.

Yeah, beautiful. Hey, if you are watching live right now, please say hello in the comments. Hey, Herb. Hey Greg. Hey sweet Lana.

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Hey Kay. Hey Susan Anderson. Hey, Sean McCool. Hey, Travis Zigler. Travis Zigler says I love the Shell X duo.

Very few people.

So, Alex, I want to ask you about the overall mindset that you take into any type of business that you go into. Because you've been really successful in two very different businesses that I don't think you could get any different than Amazon private label and buying multifamily real estate. And you've been really successful in both. And I'm curious if there is a mindset that you attribute that to. You know, I think some people just have winner's DNA, but that usually comes down to the way that that winner's DNA affects their mindset and their approach. Are you able to identify what that is for you?

I think for me, I'm passionate about learning and I'm passionate about just immersing myself in something. And so anything that I do, I fully focus on. I give it all my attention and focus and I just dive in. And so with E Commerce and Amazon, that's all I focused on. And I went to the conferences and I joined the masterminds and I invested in myself and in my education and that made all the difference. And so I've taken that same approach to real estate. You know, whenever I'd made the decision that this is what I'm going to focus on, I cleared the plate. I didn't focus on anything else. And I joined the mastermind and I went to the Conferences and I got the mentorship and I just did the full immersion. And when you immerse yourself in something, you know, you can accelerate the time it takes to become an expert in that versus just dabbling. Right. You know, when you dabble in something.

You'Re just, you're not going to get to where you want to go in any reasonable amount of time.

So you basically cut out all noise and go dive deep into whatever it is that you're focusing on and.

And, and just not falling into any distractions and taking advantage of every opportunity that is given to you, including the networks and the meetups and everything that is available. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And when it came to real estate, how did that play out? I mean, being an entrepreneur, I know, hell, I host the conferences and the masterminds, but in real estate, it's a completely different set of people. So how are you diving in and going all in in that sector?

Yeah. So for me, you know, initially it was podcasts and finding podcasts that were specific to multifamily, which is kind of where I've focused within the real estate world and just absorbing content there. And then that introduced me to, you know, you hear about different conferences and then you start going to those conferences. And I joined a mastermind and I joined a network of syndicators, you know, so I go to events where it's all syndicators, you know, and that's all the people you're talking to do this as full time as they're living. And, you know, I did different trainings and went to different workshops on underwriting multifamily and how to, you know, learn the underwriting side of the business, how to evaluate these deals, and got mentorship from people who were experienced and been doing these deals for a long time. So it's a combination of all those things. But honestly, it's the exact same thing I was doing in the E commerce space. You know, there's really nothing different. It's just, you know, the subject matter is different.

Yeah, that makes sense. Would you explain a little bit about the difference in the people that hang out at these events and these masterminds in the real estate world versus the E commerce world? I can imagine that they're at least a little bit different.

For sure. It's something, honestly I miss about the E commerce space.

Oh, really?

E commerce space? Oh, absolutely. You know, you get a lot of younger people, you know, that are, you know, when I was going to events in the E commerce space, it was a lot of People that were my age, you know, young and hungry and you know, in the real estate space tends to be few more gray hairs at the events. You know, I tend to youngest one there or one of the youngest ones.

And so yeah, I mean it's, it's, I would say it's more of a fun, fun crowd at the commercial events. So a little more buttoned up at the real estate events. But it's been, I wouldn't trade it, it's been very valuable experience getting to network with those types of people.

So I'm just going to use this opportunity as a chance to ask you for some free consulting here, Alex. I'm starting to bridge the two worlds a little bit in the sense that I'm about to launch the capitalism.com fund where we're investing in businesses that are at or near a million dollars in revenue, have audiences, have rapid growth rates and amazing entrepreneurs. And I'm going out and raising a fund to be able to accelerate those entrepreneurs growth. So I kind of bridge the two worlds where there's an investment side and I'm hoping there's some old rich real estate investors that don't want to have too much involvement in the business and then there's also some investors that are e commerce experts that we're bringing in who are going to add value as well. So as I'm starting to build up my network of investors of people who are going to be funding these exciting entrepreneurs that I get to hang out with all day, how would you suggest that I filter out investors or where would you suggest that I plug into groups or masterminds in order to get some of that investor deal flow?

So are you looking for investors to invest in the fund or are you looking for something else?

I have all the deal flow I need in terms of entrepreneurs that I want to fund. It's finding investors who want a little bit of a riskier investment that is a little bit that they don't want too much involvement in, but as a certain part of their portfolio where they're investing in exciting businesses.

Right. I mean, I think for you it's starting with what you already have, which is your audience and your platform and starting to tell people about the fund. Right. I think for you that's where you're going to.

Already have that relationship capital built up. And I think those people are where you should start. Right. With your current audience, current platform.

And when it comes to meeting some of the older, more boring investors, where would you suggest that I hang out?

I don't Know, that's a good question. You know, for me, these events I go to, it's mostly syndicators and not so much investors.

You know, my investors tend to be people in my network from my E commerce days. So I haven't really.

I can't tell you the best way to grow your investor network outside of your current audience because for me, my investor network is my network that I've been building for the last five, ten years.

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. When you said that the real estate crowd is a little bit older and less exciting, I just assumed that that was the kind of personnel that was hanging out at some of these conferences. But it makes sense that your network is still your core group of investors. I've always had the thought that my ideal investor in anything capitalism.com related would be.

The retired oil person who made their money in oil that was.

A.

Deep red Republican who wanted to see capitalism win and didn't want to be too involved in the businesses themselves. So it makes sense that most of your network is just from the E commerce days that you've built up.

Right. I think for you going on podcasts.

Go ahead.

Podcasts in the investing space that doesn't have an overlap with your current audience. And talking about the capitalism fund, I think that would be a great way to go to the people that you think are your target demographic.

Yeah, I appreciate that. How did you manage the transition out of running a eight figure company into the, you know, the. I know you were already pursuing real estate, but I know for me it was a really hard transition out of being so involved in a business. Did you have the same type of bumpy ride as you were transitioning out?

So, I mean, really, when we sold, nothing changed for a while. You know, the day we sold, we, you know, I remember signing the papers in the morning and then we worked like 14 hours in the conference room with the buyers. And so it wasn't, you know, your typical celebration. And you know, and it stayed that way for the next. We stayed on for about a year and a half and just hit the ground running. I felt a huge amount of responsibility to make this a good acquisition for them. You know, these people had become my friends. I didn't want to let them down. And so we really just continued running the business like we still owned it. But now we had all these resources at our disposal and, you know, we were able to move people to our team from their organization who already had experience in the industry. So over time I was able to take more and more off of our plate. And really I think the tough transition was when I actually left, you know, because, you know, you kind of dream about that day when you're like, you know, you're not going to be this business anymore. But I quickly found out that, you know, I just felt, you know, almost bored, directionless, you know, what am I going to work on and struggling with that. So that was, that was the difficult part. But quickly threw myself, you know, full time into real estate and had something that I was excited about again and something that I was anxious to get up in the morning for.

So, real question, which one is more energy intensive? Buying multi hundred unit apartments or selling on Amazon?

That's a tough question.

I think from the moment. So getting a deal, like the process of getting a deal under contract until you get to the closing table is very chaotic. And most people, even if you've done the Amazon game and you've gone through like the chaos of that, it's on another level.

In commercial real estate, I would say just between the lender and the legal side and just getting, it's just a lot of moving parts, a lot of chaos.

So I almost have to give real estate, but really things calm down once you get to the closing table and post transaction.

So entrepreneurs listen and I want you to take a lesson from how Alex does real estate into how you operate your business. This is actually a high part of what we teach in our eight figure exits workshop when we're bringing people into the back room. If you notice, Alex has this list of investors that he goes to because he has a track record of success. He has someone that he partners with. That is the main point of contact for operating the business. And then he has the asset that he is acquiring. And so his real job is to be the owner. And that's capitalism. Like that is when you've graduated, as my buddy Alex Meyer would say, when you've graduated from being an entrepreneur to being a capitalist, you're sitting in the owner's seat overseeing, bringing the different pieces together. In a business that looks like going and getting the investor dollars going, finding the CEO to run it, and then going and either buying or setting the vision for the assets that you're going to bring together. That is how you sit in the owner's chair to bring a company together. Most of us think about entrepreneurship as being a founder because it's who we follow on social media. But people who are really, really wealthy are owners. They own things and they gather the pieces and they multiply those resources by bringing them Together. Alex, after selling a company and now selling, sitting in the owner's seat in acquiring multifamily real estate. If you were to go back to being a scrappy entrepreneur, how would you approach it differently?

I would definitely hired sooner and hired talent, you know, instead of just hiring, you know, the lowest common denominator. Right. VAs and subcontractors, because we got to experience after we sold the business, building a real team of high level people who can think for themselves, who were talented in their own, in their own areas and really be able to trust them to do, you know, as good of a job as we would. And that was a really, that was, it was awesome.

You know, the business survive apart from, you know, us keeping it together, holding it together. Right. And so I think just doing that sooner than what we did and I think we could have grown and accelerated the business even more.

Yeah. And that's possible when you've got investor dollars or you've got people who are bringing skin to the game. I think most of us who started with $600 or $750 and are bootstrapping this whole thing get caught in that cash flow trap of just taking what we earned and buying the next round and maybe using debt. But when you've got partners who are funding the business and your job is to basically be the general partner of the business, you have that flexibility, you have the ability to do that, you give up some of the upside. In return, you get to grow it a lot faster. And I think what you're saying is that you would either fund the business more heavily or you would bring on, just like you do in real estate, other partners to keep the business at the level where you can go out and get that talent. Is that basically it?

Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean it frees you up to work on the business.

Right.

Working in the business. We spent so much of our time just in the weeds. And so yes, we had this tremendous growth, but honestly it should have been faster than what it was if we would have removed ourselves from the weeds in the day to day and freed ourselves up to think more strategically.

Yeah. So let's go there for a second. I don't want to spend too much time going back into Amazon fba, but you bring up an interesting point. And I want to know now that it's not the.

It wasn't a wide open west when you started, but now that there's not as many low hanging fruit niches as there were when you and I both started knowing what you know now if you were to start or advise a company that was starting now, that was starting in E commerce, what would you advise them to do that might be different than what you did in 2014 and 15?

Yeah, I think what's most important right now is you have to have an edge. You know, so what is your edge, right? Is it, is it a patent? Is it, you know, your launch strategy? Is it your review strategy? Is it your audience? Your audience, exactly. I think that that's the key thing now is what makes you, what makes you different, what gives you an edge over the other, you know, hundred thousand private label sellers and brands out there and growing, you know, daily. Right.

Well, I think in, like in 2013, when I started, 2014, when I think you started, we had an edge too. But that edge was just time. You know, it was, it was the timing in which we entered the market and at the beginning of certain opportunities, that's the edge. I mean, in crypto, Bitcoin's edge was when it started, it was the first to market. There's a first to market advantage. And that's like the first, lowest level edge you can have. And I think a lot of people will complain that they lose that opportunity as things mature. Just like in the Google SEO days, it was easy. You didn't even have to be good, you just had to be early. And now you don't have to be early, but you need to be good. And it just requires a different edge, a different sword that you're bringing to the table. I mean, in real estate, it's like you're entering real estate at the most competitive time in history, Alex. So, I mean, you had an edge in FBA and timing, but you don't have an edge in terms of the early mover advantage. You're young, you are young in the industry. You are entering the most competitive time in history and you're still winning. What's the edge that you're bringing in real estate?

For me, I think one, it's a couple things. One edge is my balance sheet from selling a business. Whenever you buy these large properties, you know, the g. The general partners need to have enough net worth and liquidity to be able to get a loan on the property. You know, we're the ones signing on the loan. The passive investors aren't. And so the bank wants to see a net worth equal to the purchase price and they want to see liquidity generally in 10 to 20% of the purchase price and liquidity. And so my balance sheet, bringing that to the table with Some of these operators who might have great track records, but might not have the balance sheet to take down a 34. So that's one thing. And the other piece is my network. Right. They might be able to raise 6 or 7 million dollars of the 10 million dollars needed, but where's the other 3 million going to come from? You know, they can only. Their network only has a finite amount of, you know, liquidity at that time to fund their deals. And so I can come in with my network and if it's a deal that I like and I'm willing to take to my network, you know, that gives them, you know, closes the gap on that, the additional equity needed.

Yeah. And I'm guessing that gives you an advantage of speed as well. If you have the balance sheet to be able to close on something quickly in the event of a pinch, that can sometimes give you a leg over other investors as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now it's so competitive that how you structure your offer can make or break whether you get the deal or not. You know, you might have 10 people with the same offer price, but are you willing to do hard money on day one? How quickly can you close the deal? These other different factors and nuances that are going to give you a leg up potentially over the other parties that are bidding.

Well, this is what I observe, Alex. It also seems like the secret weapon that you bring to the table is who you know and who you've networked with. You've networked with other E Commerce sellers who now have cash to invest, which gives you speed at which you can raise money. You have a leg up in the fact of you've partnered with general partners who are finding deals for you. So you've done a great job at partnering with the right people and positioning in your place, positioning yourself in a place where those assets are easy to bring together. I think it's really easy to sit on the sidelines and to look at someone and say, well, he's had a unique advantage or he's had this brought to him. But the truth is you've positioned yourself well in a network of people who can support the goals that you have. And sometimes that's all it takes. I know I give this example all the time, but somebody who has really inspired me is Brian Lee. Brian Lee is a good entrepreneur, but what his real superpower is is he's networked his way into a pool of investors, a pool of CEOs, and a pool of influencers. And he has the track record, over time, it did not start that way, but he proved a track record to be able to bring those resources together and make them worth more than they were on their own. And I think a lot of people, instead of looking at that network as their asset, look at the people in that network and just say that they had some sort of special advantage. And I wanted to bring that up because I think it's easy for anybody to sit on the sidelines and say, yeah, well, Alex started in 2014. Or, yeah, well, Alex has this. Well, Alex knows people that does this, and I want that person to know that that network gets built over time, just like a skill set gets built over time. I mean, Alex, when you started in 2014, I'm guessing you didn't know all of the investors and the people that you know now, but you built those relationships over a long period of time. So besides going to conferences and going, you know, participating in the meetups, is there anything else that you did in order to build up that network?

Yeah, I mean, I think it was.

Just, you know, when we were in the E Commerce space, we. We try to be contributors, right. And give value and just, you know, build good relationships.

Right.

Like our. We priority was to just build friendships with people. And over the years, we've made a lot of great friends in the E commerce community, you know, and that was probably the most fulfilling aspect of the whole experience of building that business was the relationships that we built. And, you know, fortunately, you know, we're out now able to. To take that relationship capital that we have with these people and say, hey, do you want to invest in real estate? If so, here you go. Here's access to the same deal that I'm invested in. If you don't, great. You know, it's no skin off my back, but it's fun and it's rewarding to be able to help people, you know, achieve their investing goals and giving them access to real estate deals that they otherwise would not have access to. Because we've done all that work to build those relationships and that deal flow from our real estate network.

Yeah. Hey, if you are watching live, please say hello in the comments. I want to say hi to Frankie Torres, to Ben Christopher, to Beatrice. Dragoi. Is your last name Dragoi? That is a badass name. Check out this D R A G like dragon, but then oi like Dragoi, like a Japanese dragon. It's a badass name. Hey, Tom Sullivan. Hey, Neisha. Hey, Kristalyn. Hey, Chad. What's up? Chad just had an exit of his own. Congratulations. My friend. Hey, Aaliyah Cupps. Hey, Daniel Estejoy.

Well, Inez Manziano. Who's that? Hey, Leah Cupps again, if you've got. This is the part of the show where I'd like to turn it over to members of the 1% who are watching live. If you've got questions about Alex's approach to either business, this would be your time to ask that. You're sitting with somebody who scaled a business to $3 million a month on almost Amazon exclusively and had a wide portfolio of products and seemed to win at every single one. And so I would encourage you to take advantage of that. And you're also sitting with the same person who has now leverage that success to become a respected investor in his space. Somebody that from the get go. And again, disclosure. I know nothing. I don't listen to anything I say. I don't know what I'm doing. Don't invest in something just because I do. Do all your own due diligence. But somebody who has provided the best return on investment that I have had in any of my investments over the last two years in his first couple deals. I think I was on your first two deals, Alex. So those two early deals have been two of my best investments that I've made since my exit in 2017. So you're sitting with somebody who has a track record of success in multiple different businesses. And so I would encourage you to take advantage of that. All right, I want to run a couple questions for you that came in, submitted by 1% members Anisha wants to know about. She has a small portfolio, real estate. She owns a few townhomes. She's curious if you've ever run the numbers on the rate of return on single family houses that you own versus the multifamily big deals that you own. From a percentage standpoint, how do you see the two compare?

Yeah, so I don't own any single families anymore, but I will say single family returns tend to be very volatile, Right. Because you either are 100% occupied or you're 0% occupied. And, you know, it also depends are you going in and renovating the single family home or not? You know, so there's a lot of variables there, but the returns tend to be all over the place in single family. If you're going to be very active and you're going to do big renovations in single family, I would say the returns, your potential for returns can be very high. In multifamily deals, the types of deals that we do, we're usually shooting for 15 to 20% annual return. And that's about where the returns are shaking out right now, you know, and that's with using conservative assumptions. Right. So there's, hopefully we're able to exceed that. But you know, again, there's, there's macro factors at play that we don't control. But you know, for me it's about, you know, what's your goal, how active do you want to be? You know, if you're going to be in the single family world, then even if you've got a property manager, you still have to find the deal, you still have to oversee the property management. That's fine if that's what you want to take some of your time to do that. But if you've also got a business, it's going to be taking time away from your business. Right. And so that's the question you have to ask yourself. You know, are you wanting to be active, semi active in real estate, or do you want to be completely passive and just write a check and watch the distributions come in?

Yeah. Amen.

Question from Kay Cornelius. In your previous Amazon business, did you start off with the mindset of building a brand or were you just trying to sell products and make some money?

Great question.

The first product was very much opportunistic, not looking to build a brand, it was looking to test the waters and try this private label thing with the mindset of if this product doesn't work, it's going to be trying the next product and trying the next one. So when the first product worked, it was quickly pivoting to, okay, let's build a brand around this, let's legitimize this. Let's, you know, you know, let's, let's run with this. But going into it, it was, let's test, let's just get something out the door as quickly as possible and roll from there.

And you built the brand and the processes later as you were figuring it out along the way.

Absolutely.

Leah Cupps would like to know if you've proven that you can build a business and sell it within three years. So you're over that startup failure. Why would you not put your attention into another startup instead of going the investor route?

Yeah, I was burnt out. Yeah, I was burnt out on Amazon. I mean, you know, towards the, towards the end there, you know, we had 40 products and at the time we were having safety complaints every day and Amazon was changing their rules around reviews constantly and we were constantly having to reinvent our strategies and I was just over, you know, I was just over Amazon and burnt out on Amazon and I was ready to just throw myself into something else. And I think at the time I was like, am I really just going to be an Amazon brand builder the rest of my life? It didn't excite me. It excited me to pursue something else, throw myself into something else. But now that I'm a couple years away from Amazon, I do miss it. I miss having a business I can get up and work on every day. And I think I'd like to go back for seconds.

Do you have any idea what that might look like or how you might approach it differently when you do it again?

I think it's definitely not trying to do the really scrappy. Let's.

Say we don't want to be scrappy, we won't be scrappy. But.

Putting more thought, being more thoughtful out of the gate, knowing what we know now, knowing the things that we had to fix. A year or two into that previous business, branding was one example. Our branding kept evolving because we just did it as cheaply as possible out of the gate the last time around. So actually getting branding done the right way out of the gate and just having a plan and a vision for the brand, whereas the first time around, like I said, it was just opportunistic. If I were to go back in the space, it would be really formulating that vision of what the brand is, who does it serve, who's the audience, who's the demographic, so forth. And having a plan for pivoting off of Amazon, using Amazon as a launch pad, but then using the success on Amazon to be able to take it off of Amazon, whether that's your own e commerce site or retail, so forth.

Yeah, Alex, I never did ask you what you did before you were an entrepreneur who is guessing on Amazon because I believe you're doing this on the side for a while. Am I remembering that correctly?

I was, I was full time, but I was. We had built up a large reselling business. So in college I started selling, you know, textbooks and books and then after college graduated and just was full time reseller, you know, go literally waking up at six in the morning to go to garage sales and scouring Craigslist and, you know, just, you know, some crazy stories from those, from that world and from that time in our lives. But we were able to build that business up. But just to give you an idea of that type of business versus a private label business, at our height of the reselling business, we were doing a couple million dollars a year in Revenue, but we had 20,000 SKUs.

And.

With Dow and we sold, we were doing. At the time we sold, we were doing 3 million a month in revenue with 26 views and so completely different business. And we built an asset that was sellable. Right. There was brand equity there, whereas with the reselling business, just. It's just a cash flow business, which is. It was a great intro to entrepreneurship, but it wasn't.

Something that I would want to do the rest of my life.

Yeah, of course. I wanted to ask you about the company that took over and grew the business. Because Zao is in pretty much every retail store I go into. I mean, is at Whole Foods. It's at H E B here in Texas. Like you're freaking everywhere now. And I know that wasn't a process that you went into. It was the parent company that came in and did that. So I'm curious what you saw the parent company come in and do and how that inspired or changed. How did that open your mind or teach you about operating businesses? Because it looks like they've done a really good job with the business since they took over.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was their track record. When they bought us, they owned about 60 other brands. They had no e commerce skills or experience. It was all brick and mortar. They'd been in that world for several decades. So we knew that was going to be an opportunity for them. And they really just gave us the freedom to continue doing what we were doing online on the online channel. And we got to watch from the sidelines what they were able to do in the retail space. And they've done an incredible job to see the brand, you know, in all these stores. But it's been interesting to see that really their strategy around it has been going to these retailers who, you know, disclaimer. They already had relationship with these retailers, but they were able to get the retailers excited about the brand because of the success on Amazon. I mean, that really was the pitch. Like, here's the brand. Look at how this brand is doing on Amazon. Do you want it? And almost always the answer was yes. So that was. I think that's really interesting to see how you can parlay Amazon success into retail.

Yeah, that's great. Well, Alex, you have pushed me and inspired me. So thank you for your impact on my life. Thank you for the returns that you are sending me. As a result of the deals we've been a part of, it's kind of inevitable that I think people are going to want to reach out and ask about your Deals. Do you want to give out that information? Is there an application process people should go through? If somebody wants to learn more about the raises that you do and the deals that you do, what would be a good way for them to do that?

Yeah, so they can go to my website, 12oakcapital.com that's 1, 2 Oak Capital.

Oak like the tree, right?

Yep. Oak like the tree. They can sign up for our email list. They're always happy to hop on a call. You know, we can go into more detail about, you know, types of deals we do and how that all works. And so you can also email me@alexelvecapital.com or on Facebook on Alex Supperman. So great. Some good ways to reach out.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. So that's 12oakcapital.com Again, please do your own due diligence. Don't just do it because you heard about them on the Internet. Do your research. When you're making any investment or even considering an investment, don't take what I do is any reason to invest in something. But the only reason for these is to show you what is out there so that you can do your own research and decide what is best for you and your family. So, Alex, how many deals are you sourcing at a given time? And kind of what are you looking at right now? We're at the top of the market, it seems, anyway, although I've been saying it for, like two years, the market just keeps going up. So what are you looking at any given time? Do you have deals at your desk right now? What's the scope of your involvement at this moment?

You know, 19 is a good example. I invested in 10 deals total. Two of those I was a general partner on in give access to people in my network, too. And so I'm still, you know, actively investing in a lot of, or I should say passively investing in a lot of deals. And then, you know, two or three deals a year I'll be a general partner on. You know, I see a ton of deals and a ton of opportunities to be a general partner, but I pass on most. You know, it's really got to be a deal. It's got to be in a market that I really want to be in. It's got to be the right operator, and I got to agree with the underwriting. So when it checks all those boxes and I feel really comfortable with it, then I'll send it out to my network. We've got a deal under contract right now in Dallas, 275 units that will close here in middle to end of February. We've got all the money raised and so everything's tracking on that one and really don't know when the next one will be but always keeping an eye out and looking at constantly.

So yeah, that's great. Well, congratulations on all your success, Alex. It's been just an absolute joy to be a small part of your journey. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and your experience with the other 1 percenters.

Thanks Ryan. Thanks for having me.

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