#25: Dr. Hoa Nguyen, CEO Of Blacksteel Investment Group - Living With Gratitude, Investing Abroad, And Overcoming Obstacles

You know, our first deal that we actually did win, we wound up walking away from it. And so we were going to a mastermind and sharing wins. My win became a challenge. So there was a guest speaker who's also considered our mentor, but it was Charlie Young. And he said, what are you working on, Hua? I was like, I just won my first deal. I'm so excited. And he's like, what you got? And he's, like, looking at it. He's looking at the property. And he was like, no, you need to run. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Talk about deflating.

What are you talking about? He was like, I'm gonna call this broker today. If you don't call him to say you're gonna walk away, I'm gonna talk to him, and he's gonna be in hot water if he tries to sell you this deal. Okay? I've already put hard money. It's hard money. Like, if I walk away, I'm losing my money. I had no other product. I didn't have anybody else put money in with me. This was solely my money in this year. And he says, I don't care what you put in there. Walk away. Take the loss. It's not worth your time.

On today's episode, we have CEO of Black Steel Investment Group, Dr. Wan Boy. There was just. There's so much in that interview to pull out and extract. So much wisdom, so many nuggets of gold. But, Steve, the thing that has lingered the longest since we've chatted with WA has been to keep the proper perspective at all times. And I think once. Once listeners hear her story, that that'll make sense. But perspective is a game changer in your life.

I loved listening to WA of what she does on her daily rituals, how she views life, where her family has come from, and from that journey. You can see what WA's doing now and where she is going. It's just a great inspirational story.

Yeah. And for listeners, as you tune in, you'll quickly pick up that WA has overcome a lot in her life. And whether it's moving a lot, whether it's fleeing a country, her family fleeing a country early on, going through college to become a doctor. The thing, the trend you start to see early on is she overcame a lot, but her mental health makeup was what kept her going. It seems like they have that proper perspective that she's living a blessed life every day, and she's trying to be present and she's trying to build upon the dream that she's had from day one. So I'm excited for people to listen to this one. It's so inspirational. It brings back a lot of thoughts and feelings I had from our our conversation with with Brad Kelly overcoming so much and doing his ultramarathons. But let's head west. Stay tuned as we discuss living with gratitude, investing abroad, and overcoming obstacles with our guest, Dr. Hwa Nguyen. This episode is brought to you by Skyline Point Capital. If you're anything like me, you're always considering where to invest your money. Stocks, bonds, crypto, a rental home. The list is literally endless. As we've all seen over the past year, the stock market is unstable, the housing market is just weird, and inflation is on the rise. In times like these, the clear place to invest my money is in multifamily real estate, AKA apartment complexes. Here's why. Returns on real estate investments have little to no correlation with the stock market. There's lower volatility, stable income streams, and the tax benefits are insane. And let's not forget that the apartments will typically appreciate in value over time, which means you can walk away with a pretty nice return when the complex is sold in three to five years. Best of all, multifamily investing is passive, so you get all the benefits without the hassle and headache of your typical rental home investment. Getting started has never been easier. Head to skylinepointcapital.com to learn how you can start investing today. Okay, so you just got back from Belize. You look tan. You look great. Please, please make Steve and I jealous. Why were you in Belize? What was a vacation? Were you investing there? What's going on there?

So Belize is both. I started a girls trip back in 2015 and absolutely fell in love with the island there. Called Jaime up and said, we're buying something here. And he was like, whoa. Mind you, we had not invested in real estate yet. And so we started the hard way learning how to invest in real estate and all of our assets beginning was all in Belize.

Oh my gosh.

So crash course. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about like just going full in.

Yeah.

We bought land, hired an architect, designed it, custom built a home, and then decided to Airbnb it and hire a management company. And so we go there every few months to vacation. But then also that's our rental property. And then we decided to pick up more land and have a hotel, so syndication over there as well. And so that's how we got our foot in the door. And so it's a beautiful place to vacation, but then it's like, you know, it's a legacy asset and it's a great way to cash flow while we're not there.

Yeah. And let me guess, you probably get to write it off as a work trip as well, right?

Absolutely right.

Steve. I think we opened a real problem of a can of worms here because all of our investors are going to listen to this and then email us saying, why have we bought a vacation place in Argentina or Belize or St. John's island where I can go visit my investment and then write it off as a tax write off. I think we opened up a problem for us.

I think Belize would be a great place to have that type of property. And we'd move right next to Wa and Jaime and we're in.

Yeah, I like that even we're considered locals there. We go there so often that all the restaurant people, that restaurant and hotels, they know us.

Oh, my gosh.

Local rate.

I love that. So, okay. But I want to eventually get in. I want to go back eventually to your story, how you got started in your journey through real estate. But let me ask you this. Since we're talking about Belize, what's the benefit and advantage of investing abroad? But what are the unknown downsides and pitfalls that most people don't think about? And you wouldn't know unless you just start investing like you and Jaime did.

Absolutely. We learned a lot of things the hard way. Obviously, you know, the benefit is, you know, it is easy to do business in Belize. As far as you can own, your name is on the actual title. Everyone speaks English and there's a lot of people from America. So the brokers and things are from America that are based and living out there. And the architect is, again, it's based from the US but they live over there now. So actually doing the business side is, is pretty, pretty easy. The, the challenge of doing, like investing in Belize was the financing. Right. So financing over there was ridiculous as far as they wanted 13% financing. And so we wound up paying cash for everything. And so we didn't finance anything. And so they. That was big part of it. It was just using up a lot of our cash. And it's island time. And so when they tell you it takes six to eight months of construction, dou.

That sounds about right.

Yeah. So everything is slower. And the process and we've, we've seen that both in all the developmental projects there, everything's much slower over there because there's a lack of, you know, there's so much new development going on there that having construction workers coming from the mainland over to the island because the island is a higher cost of living. So they have to go back and forth every day from the, with a ferry or water taxi to get there. So the labor, you know, is a challenge, getting people to come in and do things. Capital gain. There's no capital gains tax in Belize. Property taxes are extremely low. We pay about a few hundred dollars a year on all of our properties. So it's super cheap on that aspect. Management companies do charge a little higher to manage your properties overseas. There's. But you know, other than that, I think it has its pros and cons. I obviously didn't know about multifamily syndications at that time and Jaime and I didn't have partners or investors in our land and building. And so we put everything up front and we kind of, we didn't have the experience but fortunately we, we dealt with good people. Unfortunately, we had a lot of friends who invested in Belize who did not know and didn't trust the right people who've lost money or are in development projects that have just been there for years and they haven't completed them. And it doesn't look like it's going to be completed. So you do have to do your due diligence. You do have to go back and forth. And we did a lot of trips back and forth to learn the market, talk to different broker groups, talk to locals on the locals who are expats, who've done business. And Belize are well versed. And so we did a good amount of homework before we decided, decided to truly invest in Belize.

Yeah, I know you travel a lot and so this is not news to you, but one of the things that you find out quickly when you travel is culturally, obviously things are just different no matter which country you're going into. Sometimes they value one thing over the other. And I made a trip to Central America a couple years back. I've been there a couple times. But we were in Guatemala and we were helping with some building, you know, construction things. And we had, I remember talking to the project manager, he was the owner as well. But we had said, okay, let's be here at 10am, let's start construction. It's very clear, like face to face conversation. The next day it came and he showed up at like 1:30. And I asked my local friend, I'm like, is this normal? Like in the US when we say be here at this time, do this thing at this time, people are usually very punctual. It's a cultural thing. And he's like, this is very normal. You just have to, you just have to accept that there is a three hour margin on either side of whatever time you set. And so I. So when you say Belize construction times are extended, doubled, that's not surprising to me. But now that you know that, would you, looking back, would you have just bought an existing rental or apartment, or do. Do you think building is the way to go going forward?

You know, in hindsight, being that it was our first property, I probably would have just bought an existing property in a resort that is already doing a model where you can live in it when you visit and then they rent it out. And so I know a lot of people who are doing that model with a lot of success and without the headache of having to front as much money and without having to go back and forth in managing the construction process. So in hindsight, I probably would have bought an existing and then done that. But, you know, it's kind of double. Like, I love the asset, obviously, we love that it's our own custom taste of everything that we put into it. So we, we feel really happy that it's got the personal touch of how we wanted it and everything in there. But then when you start renting out a property and you have people like your wood is starting to get messed up or little things that they don't take care of the property like you would of your own. So it's kind of, it's, it's like, oh, no, do I really want to rent it out?

Yeah, right. Just keep as your vacation home. Yeah.

How do you.

Wow.

How do you mentally go through that? You built this property, it's your own, it has your own taste there, your artwork or amenities and et cetera. And then you rent it out to somebody.

Yeah, it's a hard decision. You know, mentally it is hard, but I realized that, look, you know, we knew that we wanted to have it as a vacation home, but you know, at the time that it's just sitting there, it just didn't make sense for us to not rent it out. And it was a hard decision because we put so much love into that. We knew renting it out, it's going to have wear and tear. And so we have to consistently, you know, repaint, retouch redo this and that. And that was something that Jaime and I talked and brainstormed for a long time where we decided, like, we just have to shift our mindset that this is one of the assets. We have more land that we purchased. So our end to end goal we plan to retire there. Our true end goal retirement home where we're not going to rent out out is going to be on the beachfront on the West Coast. And so that's how we set it mentally. It's like, okay, now, this home, it's okay. It's going to have wear and tear. We will have to accept that. But our retirement lot in the future on the west coast, that we're not.

Going to rent out, I have some good friends that they have property in Florida that they're in the 60s and they bought it and they went through the exact same thing. Do we keep it for ourselves? Do we rent it out and et cetera. They decided to rent it out and then they, their mindset was we need to outfit it, like for a renter. The, the furniture in there, everything for a renter. And the, it took them a while to feel, to feel that way because when you buy something, you want to put your own nice things in there. And, and they go, no, we're going to rent it out and Airbnb it. And so they finally got to a good point and they're happy they did that. But when they go down, they feel like they're in a renter property, not their own properties.

Oh, yeah. And yeah, we put it into our taste. You know, money financially wise, we probably could have done it smarter where we put less high quality things in it if we're truly just renting it. But we wanted it to feel like it was our own. And so we put all the high quality and personal and artwork and touches and you can tell it's high quality custom made wood things. And you know, and so we wanted that feel, even if it was just a few times out of the year. We wanted to truly have that feel and we wanted our renters to know that, hey, if you're coming into our home, it's a high quality home.

Awesome.

Let's, we jumped ahead to Belize. I am now, I am now sufficiently jealous. But so let's, let's move on from this topic. Um, let's go back to how you got started in real estate. And I know that that starts even before you got into real estate. So let's start from the very beginning of your background. How. And let's build up to investing in real estate. So where were you born? What was your situation growing up? And then how did it lead to real estate? Can you kind of walk us through that?

Sure. You know, my parents actually fled Vietnam after the war. And, and so my mom was pregnant with Me at the time, my dad was actually the one who had a boat, a wooden boat, and he had about 75 people who fled the country.

Wow.

In the middle of the night. And so this was seven days at sea, really. Everyone thought we were going to die in the waters, right. So they were leaving with bare nothing, Right. Because if you get caught, we probably get get killed or imprisoned, right. And so it was a hard journey. And we went to Manila in the Philippines and. And there was a refugee camp there. And that's actually where I was born. And so my parents, I have two older brothers and myself, I'm the baby and I was born there. We stayed in the Philippines for about eight or nine months and then we winded up going to Germany. And then from Germany, I lived there for close to eight years. And then so I came to the US after that. And then we moved around so much. I mean, I was in Pennsylvania, I was in Virginia, Mississippi, Mississippi, Louisiana, you know. So when people are like, well, where are you from? I'm like, well, that's a hard question everywhere. And it was just trying to find like, you know, my parents came to the US and they're just trying to find, to make a living. And so when they came to the U.S. they were janitors, right? And so we lived. When we first came to Pennsylvania, we had a three bedroom home and there were five families living in that three bedroom home. So my family of five lived in a one bedroom of house. And then once we moved to New Orleans, my dad's a fisherman by trade and so that's what brought us down to the South. And we lived in a little trailer, $3,000 trailer, in the projects of New Orleans. And so I remember growing up and how rough it was in New Orleans and the cultural changes of going from all these different places. Germany was very different than coming to America. And English was my third language. And and so learning that process of just like, man, I was in 13 schools before I wound up being in the fifth grade in New Orleans. Right. So learning how to adapt and learning new languages was a big thing that I had to adjust to early on. And my parents were always working. We started having a little convenience store in New Orleans and my mom didn't speak English and so I started working by age 10 and it was like a convenience store slash Chinese food. And so I learned to work the kitchen with my mom and I was prepping and everything like that. And my dad passed when I was 13. And so at this point it's just my mom and the three of us, single mom, and she doesn't drive, she doesn't speak English, she's never been to school, but she's very savvy. Like, she's really growing up in Vietnam. She wasn't allowed to go to school, but she was a good businesswoman in the sense that, like, she knew how to just go to the market to sell, right? And she knew how to cook really well. And so I learned. I pretty much was a young entrepreneur helping her in the business aspect. So I learned about money and the work, you know, how to be in the workforce. So it was school and work. And so I knew that I didn't want to, like, seeing my mom's hardship and everything. I was like, I was really motivated to do well in school. And fortunately, I, you know, became the first doctor in my family. To go to college was a big milestone, much less become the first doctor in the family. But that was something that I wanted to have financial, you know, I wanted to have because we didn't have much growing up. That was really. I stayed really motivated to do well so I can take care of my mom. Really. My goal was to retire my mom at the time, you know, because she had worked 80, 100 hours every week just trying to put a roof over our head. And. And then I went to optometry school. I met Jaime, and, you know, that was. We started dating 2005. So it's been 18 years we've been together. He was my lab partner, you know, and smooth.

That's how you do it. You become the lab partner.

Right. We were injecting each other's eyes, you know.

You just like my nightmare, you.

Know, so we always joke that we, you know, love it. First injection, you know, it's just. But he was my last. I don't know why, you know, we've had just so much alike. He's just very humble. He was very hard working. And, you know, again, it was just we were very driven at a very young age, very motivated, and I wanted to always own my own practice. You know, I was entrepreneurial. I want. After becoming a doctor, I wanted to own my own practice. But the reality of when you go to school, you work hard, you get good grades and all that, and I was valedictorian and all that good stuff. And you come out of school and you're like, $350,000 in student loan debt.

Yeah, yay.

You know, yay now. And so, you know, we. I mean, we hustled. Like, my nickname is Hustler because I Mean, we really grind. Like, even after we graduated, and that was 2007, 6, we. I moved to Dallas and because Jaime's from here. And so I decided to move to Dallas and we. We both had a private office job for someone else. And we worked five days a week. And then I started doing a bunch of relief work. Jaime and I worked every Saturday and Sunday to pick up extra work to get extra money. We lived in a one bedroom C class apartment. We didn't have lifestyle inflation. And so we lived like students. I mean, we were used to living like students because the goal was truly to have our own practices and to start investing. And so we had those goals early on, and we really lived like students. And we were able to buy our practice four and a half years in and then buy our second practice two and a half years after that. And, you know, real estate came about only because my daughter was born in 2014. Athena was born. And it took us so long to finally get pregnant and have Athena. And the priority shift of having more time, freedom was the whole reason we pivoted into real estate.

Man. Okay. There's so much to unpack there. Wow. I know. I want to. Let me ask you. Let me go to the very beginning of what you had said. So you walked us through this upbringing that's difficult. And there's a number of people who hear that and they've gone through that and life maybe hasn't turned out the same way. How were you able to overcome that sort of start to life? You know, that could, that could. That sort of. That sort of upbringing can weigh someone down and keep them from kind of breaking through. But what was it about you or your situation or maybe what your parents instilled in you that. That led you to. To say this is, I'm gonna change. I'm gonna change the course of our family's life and. And become a doctor and become an entrepreneur and eventually real estate. Like, what was it about your situation that allowed you to overcome that?

You know, early on, I think it's all about perspective. And I think for us, even though we didn't have much in America, we didn't have the fear of being killed. Right. And so hearing the stories of my mom and my dad during war and the hardships that they gone through coming to America and their sacrifice of leaving everything behind for me was really embedded early on. And so I valued the opportunity to be able to go to school, especially because my mom, family of seven didn't have that opportunity. And my mom and dad, they're very happy people. Even though we never had much, what I did have was I had a lot of love, right? And I knew that they, whatever it was, it was for us. And so for their sacrifice to come here, I felt that that was something that I, I just, I cherished so much. So regardless of whether we lived in a bad neighborhood or it was a small home, even though it was a trailer, it was a home, right? And so for me, I read probably in the fifth grade and that was in New Orleans. I read a book called A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And it really put a lot of perspectives through even the harshest times that you can still create change and create impact. My parents, I remember when we lived in the trailer, my dad used to always bring homeless people home and take care of them and feed them. And so it didn't take much for us to help somebody else. And I saw my parents, they're great role models. It's not like they just teach by telling you, they teach by doing. And so I learned at a very young age that they, they were just so kind and always helping other people that they would take their own things off their own back. And for me, that was really an eye opener. And I just wanted to do like they. My parents never said you need to become a doctor. You know, my mom actually had me, she put me in different environments. She actually had me learn how to do nails. You know, a lot of Vietnamese own nail salons. And so in high school, I actually got licensed to be a manicurist and learn the nail business. And she says, you know, I just want you to have different skill sets so that if anything should happen to us, that you can still make it, that you can have work skills, whether you're in the kitchen working, whether you're doing nails, that you have a skill set that you could make money and support yourself. And she did that very early on and she goes in case school doesn't work out, you know, and so she, she didn't have a dream for me to become a doctor or to do, you know, she just wanted me to become an entrepreneur, do what I wanted to do, to make myself happy and help other people. That was kind of the high level teaching that they embedded in US law.

When I hear your story, I always use the phrase glass. Half full, half empty. I see a half full glass with you, with the world in front of you. As a child looking at. When I hear the story that in America you don't feel like you're Going to be killed. I can't imagine what that would be like. I don't have that feeling, and I've never been that way. But your family structure, your mom and your dad and siblings, you're in this country. You can do whatever you want, and your parents supported you to doing that. Was there any pressure from your parents to go a certain direction, or did you just look out and look out and see the sky's the limit. I'm in America.

Yeah, I really believe that. The glass, you know, there was no glass ceiling at a young age. I just felt like, you know, we're here in the land, you know, we. Anybody who's not from America, it's like, you want to come to America for the land of opportunity. And I felt like that we were blessed to have that opportunity, and I wanted to go as far as I could. And even now, like, I'm always constantly learning. I'm constantly growing and surround myself. So it's never. It's a lifelong journey for me. And I don't know how I got that at a young age, but I think the hardships helped me kind of help mold my mindset to have resiliency and grit and just keep on moving forward. And so, you know, we all have weak moments. I have my weak moments, but I know that, hey, we got to get back up, get going. And it is definitely a glass half full. You know, I. I just see there's so much opportunity, and I want to live it full out. And I think we've been so blessed. And the hardship, though, is I. I always say success is a lousy teacher because it is so true. It's true because the failures. And I failed a lot in my. In my journey and in my career, or I felt maybe a little disappointed, and I put a lot of heart and effort, but every time I hit a blockage, a hardship or a challenge, that becomes the biggest turning point, a pivotal moment of big.

When you're talking about these hardships, I think even when I go back and look at my life, what were the turning. The pivotal turning moments in my life? Were they a success or were they a failure? And 99% of them was a failure. And I learned from that, and it moved me to a better place. And when I see today where failure can't be an option for kids, where everything has to be, everybody has to have no failures, I think they're missing the great opportunity to be better and to grow as a person in this country. And I hold all my failures as a reason where I got to today and the people around me that supported me pick me back up and dusted me off and said, get back in there.

Absolutely, I agree. Pivotal moments, I look back to too, and the big pivotal moments are moments of failure and hardship.

It's such a weird, I don't know if paradox is the right word, but paradox that we're so. Maybe it's an American thing or maybe it's just a human thing, but we're so averse to pain and to problems and to discomfort that although we know that failures are the greatest teachers, we do not want to, like, we don't want to go through that. We'd rather if we have like, I'm a win or I'm gonna win and lose or learn a little bit or lose and learn a lot, I'll take the win and learn a little bit usually. And I don't know why that is, but we tend to take the road that's more comfortable rather than, and I'm not saying manufacture losses to learn, but we just, we don't embrace failure very well in today. I, I want to, I want to come back to where we left off on the story of you got into real estate because your daughter was born. And so can you walk us through, like, why that talk about pivotal moments, why that moment led to actually investing in real estate?

Yeah. So when we had our two practices, Jaime and I were the sole Doctors. He managed one practice, I managed one practice. And we were still working about 60 to 70 hours a week between seeing patients, because we were open six days a week. And then also all the admin and all the things after charting and stuff like that. And so we had been accustomed to working 60 to 70 hours a week. But when my daughter was born, I just remember after two weeks of her being born, I went back to work and just coming home, it's like, man, I was just tired after every day and I just didn't. I just, like, man, I, it was so hard. Like, I so wanted to spend quality time to be there with our daughter, that I just didn't want to continue doing that. As much as I love being a doctor and serving my patients and I felt so proud of our practices, I just needed to trade, I needed to buy my time back so I could be with her. But on the same token, I wanted to continue to keep going, growing and scaling. I didn't want to be a stay at home mom and not do anything with my career. And I was like, you know, I love being a mom, but there's got to be a way. And I knew real estate was the vehicle of building wealth, but I didn't know anything about real estate at the time. And so I started attending a lot of local meetups. I started going on different Facebook groups and just learning a bunch of different ways. So I started with single family. I learned wholesale. I learned flipping anything that was real estate related. I would start reading books and then just trying to find the vehicle of what. What asset class. Where do you even start? You know, because none of our friends were in the real estate space. Nobody in our circle was a mentor for us at that time. And then eventually, after our Belize investments, where we kind of did it on our own and figured out the ropes, we had a mentor group that we joined to learn about multifamily syndications. And that was really a big game changer for us because then we could start passively investing and having our money grow for us. And the biggest thing about that asset class was a lot of the tax benefits that, you know, we really weren't utilizing with our police properties. And so when we started getting into the syndication space, then, you know, as we were getting more cash flow and our goal was to then become active general partners. One day, we did eight deals as a passive investor. We then started hiring associate doctors so that we could have more time to transition into the real estate space. And I said, you know, real estate is going to still be a lot of work, but there's flexibility in my schedule. I can stay at home with our daughter. I can schedule investor calls, I can schedule tours, I can do my underwriting and everything from home with our daughter. And that was really a huge learning curve and time commitment because at the beginning, we were still working full time in our practices while we were doing real estate. So it was like 20 or 30 hours in addition to our 60 to 70 hours at the beginning of our journey. But the goal was to transition over. And, you know, after a few years of doing that, I mean, now I see patients once a week because now we have three other associate doctors. Jaime works one day, once to twice a week, and then the rest of the time, we're committed full time into real estate. But it gives us so much more flexibility. And we've gotten to meet so many new people and grow and partner with. And that's the beauty of real estate syndications is the leveraging of partnerships and someone who has more experience for us to really learn the ropes instead of us trying to figure it out all by ourselves. And so that's been A really big shift for us that buy back our time freedom.

Well, when you jumped into the syndications, you did limited partnerships for a while, and he said, okay, I'm going to jump in, be a GP and do syndications. Can you walk us through what you thought syndication was going to be and what you learned? And the reason I asked that, because there are people that think I'm going to jump into real estate and it's going to be easy, and just because I have a W2 job, I'm going to do this real estate. And they come to find out it's a little more. With the right team, the right people and mentors, it accelerates things. But what did you learn in your process when you got in?

Yeah, I learned. I mean, I was a little slower at the end, at the beginning, because I was always very conservative and like, who to trust and who to partner with before I transitioned over to becoming a co gp. But even as a limited partner, I would show up to every meetup, every event, and branch out outside of different groups, too, just to learn the business and see other underwriting models, everyone who has a mentorship program and how they analyzed deals. And I wanted to kind of see who else is and what they're doing out in the market. And so I invested a lot within the group that of our mentorship. But then I also invested outside because I wanted to see what other people were doing and learning. And so I talked a lot to the brokers, I talked a lot to insurance brokers in the mortgage industry. And so I wanted to get a different taste in management companies just so that I didn't. I was a little bit more well versed in really, how this worked. Now, when I transitioned into becoming a co gp, I was underwriting so many deals and submitting when I finally had the courage to submit my first loi. And that was a whole process of fear of like, okay, I'm gonna go.

Actually, oh, my gosh, this might happen.

And if they accept it, then what? Right.

Still going back after that.

Right. And so that was what we did. And it took a long time for us to actually, actually get awarded our first deal. And so people don't realize you filter through so many deals and if you're lucky to make it to best and final, and then there's multiple rounds in best and final. And at the beginning, I mean, Jaime and I would be the, you know, the two last ones.

Yeah, right.

And the broker's like, I think you're going to win this deal. I think you've got a really good chance, and we lose out on the deal. And we did this eight times where we spent so much time. Like, we shopped every comp in person. Jaime's in there, secret shopping, pretending he's renting a place. And, you know, and so we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and people don't realize how much time and dedication and when you put in that much time and money at the beginning and then you. You lose. And it's kind of like, okay, we just got to start all over.

Yeah.

You know, but. But it's harder. It's easier said than done. It's like, don't get emotionally attached. And it's just. It's another project. But when you're in the midst of it and you're dedicating that much time, you get second. You get second. Like, you get thoughts where you're like, man, is this truly what I want to do? Is this really, you know, this was not as easy as people made it out to be.

Yeah, we've. We've had some conversations late recently with some of our. Our investors. And, you know, we've got some people who have cash on the sideline. They're waiting for another opportunity. And most of them don't really know that we're always underwriting, and we're. We're putting in offers, and we only bring you the ones we actually buy. And so they have this impression unless they know that ahead of time, they just think, you know, I don't know what they think, but they probably think we're, you know, we're not underwriting a lot of. Of opportunities. But I was telling an investor recently that if we. If we analyze or underwrite 100 properties, we might offer 10, we might win one. And so, like, we're always doing the work. And when we had a, you know, we've had some deals where, like, you, we were at the last one, or we were in the last best and final. We were up there, we didn't get it. And it's. It's deflating. But at the same time, it's like I'm constantly learning every one of these. These failures. I'm learning how to be better next time and how to underwrite it better and how to be a better steward of our investors money. And so it's frustrating, but, boy, you can continue to learn from those failures every time.

One of the things we learned in the underwriting and if we don't get a deal, what we've done, I think a good Job is we kind of know where the line is, where we can go financially. It makes a deal, a good deal and not a very risky deal. And we just did. We're in best and final for an offer and some properties, and we were sitting really good, but somebody came from the outside and offered crazy money at it. And when we plug it in, it doesn't make any sense. You just have to learn from that and go away. But we're not going to train. We're not going to change our underwriting model because somebody maybe. Maybe they made a mistake, Maybe something happened. But you can't be chasing properties because somebody thinks it's worth 30%, 20% more than it really is. And because there's enough out there.

And we.

And like Jake said, we're learning all the time.

All the time. Absolutely.

What's one thing that you learned? You know, you're talking about you putting your first loi and eventually you got your first apartments. What was something you learned real quickly about your first purchase or maybe like, a mistake you made on that first one that you'd advise others on. Like, if you're jumping on as an lp, a limited partner, keep an eye out for this. I wish I would have known this ahead of time.

As an, you know, our first deal that we actually did win, we wound up walking away from it. And so we were going to a mastermind and sharing wins. My win became a challenge. So there was a guest speaker who's also considered our mentor, but it was Charlie Young. And he's like, what are you working on, Hua? I was like, I just won my first deal. I'm so excited. And he's like, what you got? And he's, like, looking at it. He's looking at the property. And he was like, no, you need to run. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Talk about deflating about.

He was like, I'm going to call this broker today. If you don't call him to say you're going to walk away, I'm going to talk to him, and he's going to be in hot water if he tries to sell you this deal.

Wow.

I kid you not.

Holy moly.

I was like, what? And so I was asking the mastermind group a feedback. I was like, okay, I've already put hard money. It's hard money. Like, if I walk away, I'm losing my money. I had no other. I didn't have anybody else put money in with me. This was solely my money. And he says, I don't care what you put in there, walk away, take the loss, it's not worth your time. What I wish I would have learned, and in hindsight, I mean, I did walk away. And the beauty of it is, you know, I wish, you know, I don't even know. I think I should have gone, I should have stuck to my criteria. I always said I wanted a project that was at least 100 units and larger in a certain type of criteria market. And because I kept going into the 150 to 200 or between 1 to 200 and then I couldn't win a deal after eight best and finals, I changed my criteria, I changed my demographic basis where there's less competition, I went smaller and I went into a pocket where I normally wouldn't even look right. And in hindsight I should have stuck with my criteria of 100. It's just easier. This amount of work that I did for a 56 unit deal is the same amount of work for a 200 unit.

Right.

And it's actually better trying to find management companies and everything else. And so I learned the hard way they were nice enough to return half of the earnest money. And we negotiated that. But it was a blessing in disguise because a month after that we were, we, we got into a 243 unit deal with great partners. And so had that not been the challenge. And I presented that challenge, but an opportunity opened up so that I could partner with a better opportunity. And that property is killing it. And so when I pitched, when I asked Charlie to take a look at that one, he says it's a stone cold deal, man.

Talk about the importance though of having a great group of support and mentors around you like a guy like Charlie for you, you need that. Whether you're, you're buying a property yourself as a general partner or GP, or you're investing in one as a passive investment, an lp. Man, you need to have that group of mentors and support around you to be able to like as Steve says frequently, if my baby's ugly, tell me it's ugly, you know, you can call it out. And I think a lot of people can, can really learn from that and find a group of people that can support you and, and speak truth to you and you know, support you because it saved you probably a lot, a lot of money and your investors.

Yes.

Wa.

Do you remember what Charlie saw in that deal that said run?

You know, he didn't like the demographic. He says, I've owned properties there in Pasadena. And he said at the price point that you're buying for and the unit size that you're, you know, it's only 56 units. He goes, you don't have to go back and forth to Houston with 56 units to get management and the price that they're selling it for you, it's not, it's not a good deal.

Yeah, it's Charlie's. He's got a lot of wisdom. Jake was talking about mentors and, and being around people that support what you're doing. When you started looking for people, mentors and groups, you wanted to partner up. What were you looking for? Because the reason I asked, I see some people, I'm just going to get in and do a deal and get people in and, and sometimes it doesn't work out very well. What do you look for when you team up?

You know, everyone that I have partnered with, I've gotten to know through the years. I, I've never jumped in with anyone without knowing who they are. And so I, I purposely passively invested with people that I liked as a person and had a good reputation in the group already. Then I also wanted to see, like, okay, if there's someone I potentially want to be a co GP with, I would passively and vest with them to see how they, how they do business and how they send out reports, how they communicate. When I have questions, I always go visit the property. I always get to know people outside of our events and groups if I want to do business with them. And so for me, I'm slow in the sense that it takes me time to trust, because if I'm going to bring investors in who trust me, it is a journey of not just how they do business, how do they live life, what are their value systems? And for me, that's super. That's number one. And so everyone I partner with, they're not random people. They're people that I've gotten to know through the years before we've had that opportunity and planting the seed so that when the opportunity is right, that if there is an opportunity for us to do business together. And I learn, I just, you know, reputation precedes people and just talking to people, and that's the beauty of having a ecosystem and other people is because other passive investors, and they're, you know, and they've also been general partners. And so you can kind of ask other people how. What's your experience been like, and, and things like that. And so I've learned, and fortunately, our partnerships and people we've worked with has been good, but it's because we've taken the time to. To get to know people. And I think that's so important than just trying to jump in and, you know, raise capital or bring other people in. Because at the end of the day, it is your job to vet the people you're doing business with. And it's not always perfect. You think you can do business with someone you think is a certain way, and then it doesn't turn out to be that way, or skill sets or personalities clash. But you do the best you can. And that's why I always say I do the best I can, because I. When it's. When it's my money, it's one story. But when other people's money, a whole nother animal, you know, vetting people and vetting the project and vetting the teams and communicating. And so that's a whole big process. And I've learned a lot of things I should have done and, you know, things that are going well and things I wish I would have done better that they don't teach you, you know, but you learn that along the way.

Jake and I talk about this a lot. It's one thing to buy 100 unit multifamily property. It's another thing to run it like a business.

Yeah.

We view investing in real estate as running a business. You are absolutely running a business. You got people, you got vendors, you got customers, you got finance, you got insurance. And we take that mindset. And I think when you go to look at syndicators, GPs and et cetera, one of the things we look at is have they run a business before you've run a business?

What's it look like?

And there are challenges, and we've all learned in our business over the years. We've had our ups and downs and failures to make it better, but there are some battle scars. And running a business that are so applicable to real estate investment and doing syndications. And we think that's a real. A big criteria when we look for partners. Have you run a business? Do you know what it's like, what the mindset, what you're thinking about from that side? Do you see the same thing?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because people who have done business, like you said, have a very systematic way of doing things and they have more culture in how they run teams. And so I think that's also very important with partnerships because if you're having people from who don't have any type of business background, it is hard because they don't have the right mindset of how to have the right systems in place and how to communicate properly and work as a team together. So having a business is definitely very important.

Yeah, I, One of the things that stuck out to me, Steve has said, Steve continuously says is don't fall in love with the property. You see people get themselves in trouble when they fall in love with a property and they'll do, you know, they'll fudge, not fudge the numbers, but they'll make certain changes to the numbers to make it work just because they love the property. And you've got to be asset at agnostic. You've got to say do the numbers make sense? And if it does, great, we'll move forward and if it doesn't, I can move on to the next one. You can't fall in love with the property or else you might find yourself in some hot water.

Absolutely. You got to stick to the numbers.

Yeah.

Although it's hard sometimes to not get emotionally a little.

Yeah. You should see when we, when we make it to best and final and then not win where very, it's yeah, we need to be cheered up by our wives. We're very sad. We don't take losing very well. But we, you know, we're not gonna, we're not gonna mess the numbers to make it work. While before we wrap up, I wanna, I wanna ask you one final question. Then we'll go into a speed round of questions just to get to know you a little bit better. But oftentimes we talk with our investors about the impact that real estate can have on your, on your own personal life, your wealth, your, your tax situation. The passive income creates time freedom and you've talked about it as you always knew. Real estate was the, the, the place where you can create true wealth and eventually time freedom. Spend with your, with your daughter and your family. Can you. Without getting into numbers, obviously. But what's the impact that real estate investing has had on your own personal life? Whether that's wealth creation or it's, you know, the, the tax benefits because you do have a, you know, a business that you know, investment can offset. What's the impact been on your life personally?

It's been a huge game changer for us, obviously. Wealth creation, tax advantages and time freedom, all of that. But more importantly from that, because of now having that flexibility, you know, we've, we've now been able to open a whole nother arena of things that we never even imagined doing. You know, we, we're, we go and speak a lot now and we're able to do charity work and go volunteer in person. When we, you know, traveling is one of the things we love. And if we can incorporate speaking, traveling and give back all in one, that's really the model. And if we didn't have real estate as the vehicle building more financial freedom and time freedom for us to go and do these things. I mean, we're so fulfilled, you know, it's so blessing to be able to go educate others, to be able to be, you know, in person doing volunteer work, because it truly gives you perspective on a whole nother level of gratitude when you are able to help those in person. It's. It's different than just stroking a check. It's really different. You can experience the gratitude of people and in helping them. And that's been something that we've been really been blessed to do. And real estate is something that people could really want to get in and they're just scared. They don't know where to start. And so, you know, that's just been an area that we've been happy to go and talk about. And, you know, our daughter, she gets to travel the world with us and she learns about real estate. She's eight years old. She's been on I love it properties. She understands the value of money and how it grows and to give back. She has brothers and sisters, she calls them. We support a lot of orphanages and so she calls them all her brothers and sisters. And, you know, and for me, one of our things is like, I just don't. Our daughter doesn't have contrast the way Jaime and I had growing up. And so one of the things I want to make sure that she is well versed in, I don't care what she does financially. I just want her to have compassion and have a kind heart and not give up. And so I want to expose her to different things. And I don't have like any expectation. You need to do this, you need to do that. Like, she's very freestyle spirited. Her nickname is Ninja. But, you know, it allows us to just give her exposure. And I think traveling and showing kids, besides the classroom experience, real world life experience is one of the best things we can teach our children in real estate. It's been able to allow us to do that.

That is. I love that. And I want to say one last thing before we. I lied. We're not going right in the speed round. But it's just what you said there and what we've talked about, it's so. It's so evident that, you know, you're a, it seems like you're a firm believer that your past does not define you and that if you've got, if you've got the, if you've got a dream, just chase it and, and to go after it and work hard and make sacrifices. I mean, you talked about you and Jaime living very frugally in a small apartment, one bedroom apartment, just to be able to, to, to realize your dreams, like, get there. And so I love that, that, that's, that's your story, if you will, of, of my past isn't finding me. I have a dream. I'm going to work towards it. We're going to get there and I'm going to share it. I'm grateful for what I have and I'm just going to be present with my family and in, in gratitude in a life that I've been blessed with. So I'm really thankful that you shared that with us because it's, it's, it's inspiring.

Thank you.

All right, speed round of questions. I got five questions.

Here we go. Get ready. Get your seat belt on.

Okay, ready?

Quick questions, quick answers. All right, number one, do you have any daily rituals that you absolutely swear by?

Yes, I, I actually have a daily ritual. I do my deep breathing, I do meditation, and I do some sort of exercise and movement every single day. I listen to 15 to 30 minutes of some sort of inspiration on my growth day app or on YouTube to listen to like Les Brown, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins. I feed my mind before I start my day with at least 15 to 30 minutes every day.

That's so good. What's one piece of real estate advice that you would give to others?

Get educated. Surround yourself with people who are already well versed in doing what you want to do and really build on relationships. Real estate is all about relationships. Get educated. Surround yourself with the right people and nurture that relationship and leverage to grow and scale together.

What's one thing in life, business or real estate, that you're really excited about.

At the moment, continually growing and being able to share that journey along with other people? You know, the other thing that I've kind of, in addition to my financial and time freedom and all that, I've really expanded on my health and spiritual journey. And I'm sharing all of the things as I'm learning and as I'm growing and things on my own journey, I'm happy to share that with other people along the way.

All right, last question. The title of this podcast called Heading west, and it's in Part talks about the journey from in life as you start at one point and you head west to the end of your life. And so with that sort of in mind, as you head west in life, where do you hope it ends up? And I know it's, it's the beach in Belize like locationally, but what does that look like? What is, what do you want to feel? What do you want to be doing? What's, what's life look like at the end of, you know, your destination?

You know, I live every day to the fullest. I want to, I don't want to waste any single day if I wake up and I'm still breathing. I want to know that I am helping and improving other people but also in the same journey being authentic to myself. And so I always say have inner happiness and peace while I'm helping improve other people around me and just making sure that, you know, love is at the core. I don't have a like beach and all the fancy stuff is just added bonus to me. I just want to know like, hey, I don't have this 20 year or 50 year or 80 year vision. I just want to know like, hey, I'm playing full out every single day and so if I go tomorrow, I'm good, you know.

Oh, that's the best mindset I hear.

Was saying game on every day. Game on.

Well, wah. Where can people find you if they want to hear more from you? If they want to. I know you speak where if they could, they could come watch you. Where would they find you if they want to seek you out?

They can go on our website passivewealth number23.com I'm also on Instagram and Facebook. Hoa. Last name Gwen. But yeah, I'm heavily on Facebook. So if you want to follow me there there or you could just go on our website and get updated there.

Wonderful. Well we'll, we'll put all the links in the, the show notes wherever you're listening to this podcast. But if you're interested in passive real estate Investing, go to skylinepointcapital.com We've just finished up a podcast series called real estate investing 101. Great place to cut your teeth on. Here's how I get started in real estate investing. But while we just want to thank you again for an amazing conversation, can't wait to have you back. Can't wait to visit you in Belize at some point in our lives.

Jake, I think the invitation is going to be coming pretty soon.

That's what I would love to have you guys come to Belize?

Oh, that'd be amazing.

Thank you, Jake. Appreciate it.

Thank you. It was a blessing having you on.