1287: Fox v Hedgehog Investing & the Abundance Mindset with Rabbi Evan Moffic

Thought the event was amazing. I thought that I knew a lot about real estate, but coming to your seminar, I realized there's a lot of things that I don't know. And one thing that you did, besides teach me a lot about real estate, is you inspired me to look beyond where I live and to, you know, kind of shrink down the world and make it smaller so that I can invest in places that are further away and get better returns. So I really appreciate that and I'm excited to be here this weekend. And again for me and from all the people I heard there, thanks for doing these events. Cause they're great.

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's, he's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 1287, 1287, and happy Monday. You know, I hope you like Mondays. I absolutely love Mondays. It's really, I think maybe my favorite day of the week because I just want to get up and tackle the world and get stuff done. I kind of wish people worked on weekends because then they'd be available for me to bug them. One day. One day a rest. Yes. Well, hey, we'll talk about that in a moment. So I am in the car. As you might have detected, this is an on the road podcast episode with my guest today. Who you've heard on the show before, our client and man of the cloth, Rabbi Evan Moffek. We are in Chicago and he has graciously offered to give me a ride to the airport and he's also driving Coco to the airport. For those three of you listeners who don't know, Coco is my dog. We're on our way to catch a flight back to Florida. Been here for a couple of days and yesterday Evan attended this little meeting, conference, kind of mini conference I was part of. We got to talking about some things and today we want to talk to you about his presentation. So I guess this will serve as Another speaker announcement for our upcoming Prophets in Paradise event. We're going to talk about that, and we're going to talk about the wealth and happiness connection, but we're also going to talk about his animal, one of his animals in his home. His kids absolutely dig this animal. It is a hedgehog. So last night, after he sent me a video of his daughter with a hedgehog, I started thinking about that old parable. Or that. I guess it's a poem, right? I think it's a Greek poem, if I'm not mistaken, about the fox and the hedgehog. And then it reminded me of Jim Collins book, Good to Great, a very renowned business book that talked about the fox versus the hedgehog strategy. And I thought, you know, this really applies to real estate investors. Tell us about the hedgehog. By the way, here's Rabbi Evan Moffek. Hello.

So great to be with you and great to be with Jason. Any chance to get to learn and talk and be together is a gift. And so, I don't know, maybe some of you know, but there's this real popularity now about hedgehogs. So my kids, who learn most of what they learn on YouTube, unfortunately, no.

Maybe that's better than TV. I mean, I think it's better than TV.

That's what my wife and I say. Yeah, they never watch TV anymore. I mean, maybe a little bit of Disney Channel.

It's better than video games, too.

Yes, yes. And they do some good stuff, you know, Khan Academy and so forth.

Khan Academy's awesome.

Yeah. So hedgehogs have become popular, and they really, really asked for it. So for Hanukkah, I think it was Hanukkah, we got them a hedgehog, and they love him and play with him and take care of him, and he does require a lot of care. But as Jason pointed out, one of the things about the hedgehog is a hedgehog is consistent. It's not distracted. And you can tell they don't move around a lot. They sit, they play, they're focused. And I think that's part of why that fable was written about the hed versus the fox. That's always moving.

Okay, so the strategy we want to talk about today which applies to real estate investors is the fox strategy versus the hedgehog strategy. So the fox is into a lot of things. The fox is all over the place. The fox would be like an opportunistic investor that is just, you know, the flavor of the month, whatever is hot. They go to those real estate investor clubs, and those things are, in many ways Terrible. I think they go on these real estate websites where they've got all these people talking about all these things. Look it. What we've got to realize as real estate investors is it is a giant industry, really an industry. And I'm not talking about people who make their sort of career or job income from real estate, like real estate salespeople or lenders or title insurance people or anything like that. I'm talking about just the real estate investment industry is a giant industry. There are so many things people can do. And look it. I'm quite a fox in. And I don't mean that by looking at the mirror.

That's.

Well, you know, that used to be the expression. You know, when I was a kid, we'd see a cute girl and we'd go, what a fox. And then there was that song, Fox on the Run.

Yes, yes, sweet. And then Jimi Hendrix, Foxy Lady.

Oh, that was. You're right. Yeah, I forgot about that one. That was a long time. That was before my time. But anyway, I'm kind of a fox when it comes to business because I get easily distracted by things. And I think that's a flaw. I think that hurts me in some ways. It helps me because the fox, because they check out all these things, they do learn a lot. The problem is that lack of focus will get you into trouble. Right. You know, foxes survive and hedgehogs survive, right? So if you go to these real estate investor club meetings every month, they've got this different speaker who's coming in peddling his info, product or, you know, whatever they've got to offer that month. And it's the bright shiny object syndrome. And that can really, really hurt you because more so in investing than if you have a business and you fall for the bright shiny object of, oh, here's the marketing deal this month, or the technology thing this month. We' to implement with investing, it really takes more time to pay off, and you must complete the strategy to win with those other things. In, say, a business, you can win a little bit on the margins being a fox. You know, you might try the marketing program du jour and make some money with it, but with the investing, it really requires more of that hedgehog focus. So again, the fox is into a lot of things, the hedgehog is into one big thing. And that's really the difference.

Well, you know, Jason, as you were saying that, I was thinking there's a paradox here, because one of the things that we all have to do if we're going to be successful income Property investors is take action. We all know the analysis of paralysis, people who sit and sit and sit and in some ways, paralysis of analysis, paralysis of analysis. One of the things that, you know, people who are foxes, they take action. They may take rash action, but there is a part of, I think me, anyone who takes action, there's a part of us that is a little bit fox like. So it takes a certain discipline to be able to take action, but also to not be distracted by all the possible actions we can take. And I think just part of that is experience. I think probably all of us at some point got involved in things that we probably later regret that we hadn't done. I mean, I think that's part of the process. One of the things that I try to teach myself is always have good options. That's why you never recommend buying really class D property, because there's not many exit strategies that if we're going to take action, we should have options. And once we figure something out, we have to choose. In some sense, that's all of life. Once you commit to something, you are foregoing other options.

The Hedgehog has to forego certain options in order to stay focused. And the key is, in some ways that's one of the reasons I think a lot of people listen to this podcast, is you're giving us the constant inspiration to stay the hedgehog, to continue to not be tempted by everything, to know that income property is the best. So we need the inspiration and teachers to keep us on that path of the Hedgehog.

Well said. And here's the thing, let's go back to that example of going on to like a real estate forum website where everybody's doing all kinds of things, going to the investment club meeting where every month it's a different thing. I mean, as a real estate investor, if you call yourself that, you can do fix and flips, you can do wholesaling, you can do commercial property. Of that subgroup, you've got retail, industrial apartments, special use properties, vacant land. You can just do so many things. There's you can do lease options, you can do self management or have a property manager, or you can do speculation, you can do house hacking. There's like an endless number of things that the fox can be distracted with. And by and large, you will not make money with that strategy. It will be a failing strategy.

You can't be a perfectionist because if you have to make all these decisions, sometimes you're going to make a decision that may not have been the right one, but it's A decision and you move on and you did it. And you can always rethink. You can hire a property manager at first, see that the property manager may not be performing well, and then do it your own. Or, or you can start as empowered, do self management and then switch. But you've got to be making decisions and you've got to be making decisions with incomplete data. Life is all about probabilities, right? Nothing's 100%, so you can't expect that.

But the thing is, with what you just said about either being an empowered investor, self managing or using a property manager, that's still the same strategy. That's the buy and hold strategy that we recommend. And of course I don't want to say that you can't make money with other strategies. Of course that would not be true. You can make money with other strategies. You absolutely can. I'm just saying that over so many years of doing this and approaching 10,000 real estate transactions, I mean folks, you'll be hard pressed to find anybody with a bigger resume than yours truly. Okay? And now listen, I haven't been doing this 10 years. I've been doing it a lot longer than 10 years, okay? I've been doing it a long time, since I was 19 years old, starting part time while going to college. And so I've seen a lot of stuff, I've tried a lot of things and I still try some other things once in a while. You know, I've got, between all my different entities, I've got enough money to speculate and take some risk and to be a laboratory really for myself to learn some things, but also for you so I can share those experiences. Usually they're not positive, by the way, with you on the show and tell you what I've learned and that's what I've been doing, trying to do the last 15 years. And so you can make money with any of them. But for my money, I tell you, the strategy that works and works for the most people and is the most reliable is the simple buy and hold, long term thinking, conservative strategy.

Well, yeah, and I mean that's actually when I'm still in the process because it's a new construction but purchasing a short term rental. I was a little nervous.

So that would be an offshoot of the buy and hold strategy, not the traditional rental strategy of long term leases, but short term.

But I made sure that it could function as a long term rental.

Good, good idea.

Right. But here's another somewhat of a paradox because I'm just reflecting on My own response to kind of what you're saying, in a way, we talked about this yesterday. You're competing with Wall Street. Wall street has in some sense has a way of, you know, trapping investors money. And this is a much as we know income, property is a much better way to build wealth and to use wealth that we accommodate for retirement and so forth. So the person who's going to be attracted already thinks differently. And if you think differently and you're open to different options, you may be tempted by some of the Fox strategies because you're already someone who's open to new ideas.

And no one wants to be accused of being closed minded.

Right, right.

But sometimes being the closed minded hedgehog is the best strategy.

It is. And I think you kind of have to make a decision at some point. You have to decide this is going to be my strategy and just continue to learn about it.

That Russian figure skater, I've shared her quote, I can't remember who said it, but it was a Russian figure skater. And she said, to follow without halt one aim. Therein lies the key to success.

Oh, yeah, I mean, I think that's true. And the other thing is, I've gone through the journey myself. I mean, one of Jason's commandments is pools are for fools. Don't invest in something where you don't have control.

And that doesn't mean a swimming pool. Although, you know, you can do okay with a swimming pool and a rental property. It's not ideal. I wouldn't recommend having one, but there are some times where it does pencil out. But he's talking about pooled money, assets investing in funds.

Right. And that can work out. I know several people who have gotten very rich investing.

Yeah, but you told me yesterday those were the people running the fund.

Yeah, the insiders. That's who gets it. That's who gets it. But there are some people that maybe they don't. They're very busy professionals. Maybe they just want to put their money and make 10% or 12%, you.

Know, or 7% or no percent or negative 7%.

Right. Well, as you say, as you say, there's nothing truly passive.

Passive investments do not exist. Passive income does not exist. It is a myth being sold to us by Wall street, by banks that have CDs, and by hokey, cheesy real estate promoters that lie. Passive income does not exist.

And you know, one thing I actually don't like, and there are some people who, they start off encouraging people to buy their own real estate and then they realize that they can make a lot of money getting people into syndications and into pools, and then they encourage people to do that. And that's wrong. And I think we know that. Truthfully. The key that one of the reasons you listen to this podcast is to get education and to learn that being a direct investor is by far, far the best way to build wealth and where you get the most leverage.

No question about it. If you've already achieved some degree of wealth and you want to diversify it, or if you want to consider it risk capital or whatever, you can do those things. But the core hedgehog strategy should be following the Ten Commandments, especially number three, thou shalt maintain control, which Evan is talking about now. Very important there. And by the way, you can see properties, of course, at jasonhartman.com go and take a look. But really, nowadays, because inventory is so tight, inventory of properties, you need to be working with one of our investment counselors and also subscribing to the PropertyCast, which will deliver properties like a podcast, but it'll deliver the printed property performance. So whatever platform you're listening to this on, type in Jason Hartman's propertycast, one word. You can get those properties delivered to you automatically, but be working with one of our investment counselors because the inventory is moving too fast. Okay, so we have an upcoming event, of course, Profits in Paradise. This is an annual event. This one coming up is late October in Orlando, Florida. And for the first time ever, we're combining a property tour and maybe even two property tours with this event. The first one will be on Friday. That one is confirmed Friday at 11am before the weekend starts. Saturday and Sunday is the event. So that'll be Friday the 25th of October will be the property tour. And we might actually do a second property tour potentially on Sunday evening after the event concludes. Look for more on that on future episodes. But we've got James Malinchak speaking and of course he is a very well known speaker, very inspirational, has a bunch of books, was on the Secret Millionaire show, donating money to homeless people and people that have those needs. And also Evan Moffick, who I'm here with, of course, Rabbi Evan Moffik has been doing such a great job guest hosting on my Solomon Success podcast that I invited him to speak at Prophets in Paradise. And he's just got such great messages. Of course, you're a rabbi, so you're speaking all the time. Today you did a wedding, Yesterday you did a funeral. You know, four weddings.

Four weddings and a funeral.

Four weddings at a Funeral, Right.

I have had one day. It wasn't four. It was Three Weddings and a Funeral. This happened about three years ago.

That'll be the sequel.

Yeah, it was exhausting, but, you know, overall, it was joyful.

Okay, so at Profits in Paradise, tell us about your talk and what you're going to speak about.

I'm going to speak about happiness and wealth because one of the reasons we invest is, of course, to build wealth. You want to gain wealth. But ultimately the purpose of life is, and the purpose of money is not to get more money. It's to build a life of joy and meaning and happiness. And there are specific ways we can do that. One of the reasons we say Profits in Paradise is we want to be able to enjoy life. We want to be able to travel to conferences. We want to be able to learn with great people. We want to be with our friends and have meaning in life. And so I'm going to be talking about what are specific things we can do. I wrote a book about this called the Happiness Prayer. And there are certain actions, relationships, finding the right profession, finding work that we love doing, even religious things. I mean, it doesn't even have to be religion. It's about community. And so I'm going to be talking about specific actions we can take to live a happier life and also talking about how income, property, can help us get there. I mean, it's already helped me get there. And talking a little bit too, about a question I get all the time is what's the relationship between money and happiness? Is it more money? Is it happier? I can tell you the answer to that is absolutely not. But, you know, there was a famous. I think it was Joan Rivers who said, I've been rich, I've been poor, rich is better. Right?

I agreed. So that's a good point. Before you go on, let's discuss that a little bit because so many people have such misconceptions about money. You know, you hear the thing, well, money won't buy happiness. You're right, it won't, but neither will poverty. Okay? So you have a better chance at it if you have some money. I've cited many times this study that was done in the 90s about, is there sort of an optimum amount of money in terms of net worth and annual income that really does make one happy versus too much or too little? It's like the Goldilocks thing. It's got to be just right. Okay. And back then, and I haven't adjusted this for inflation, but back then I believe that Study said something like a million six in net worth. And I can't remember the annual income. Now, of course, you know, that's 25 years ago. So adjust for inflation, and that's going to be a higher number today. And also, you've got to adjust for where you live. If you live in Omaha, Nebraska, where Warren Buffett is, right, you don't need as much money, right? But if you live in New York City or LA or Honolulu or Dubai or London, you know, or Hong Kong, you need a lot more money. So you have to adjust for inflation and you have to adjust for where you live and maybe the size of your family because you have more mouths to feed, more people to support, more dependents and whatever, Right? But the idea is there is sort of an optimum amount. One of my guests, and that interview will be coming up soon, I recorded it, but it's not been published yet, said something really good the other day, you know, someone said to him, something to the effect of, well, like, isn't it hard to be rich? And he says, yeah, it's hard, but being poor is hard, too. Okay? Even being in the struggling middle class, that is being attacked by every direction is also hard, okay? So, you know, you might as well bet on the. The idea of having more rather than less. But don't make it your God. Like, for me, it's really. And this might startle some of you, it's not that big a deal. I mean, my standard of living is so low compared to my net worth. Right. I mean, I could lose a bunch of my money and still be okay. Like, it wouldn't really affect my lifestyle. But some people choose to live a more ridiculous lifestyle. You know, mine is pretty modest. Really. Talk to us about that optimum amount, Evan.

Well, just before I get to that, I also want to say that actually that's partly why, as a rabbi, I think I can talk about this in a certain way.

You have some very wealthy people in your country.

Well, that's true. Well, they're all religions. But even so, Christianity did have a certain glorification of poverty. There are texts in the Gospels. There are people, you know, priests take a vow of poverty or certain priests. And so Judaism never had that. Judaism always said that wealth can be a sign of success. But here's the other thing. You also have a responsibility to give. And so there was never, within Judaism, there was never a glorification of poverty. And I have seen very wealthy people who are miserable. I've also seen very wealthy people who are extremely happy and one of the things that I see, and you see.

Poor people that are miserable and happy, and you see middle class people who are miserable and happy, you know, that should not necessarily be connected to the money because you can, can be miserable or happy no matter what.

I'm going to talk about that. And part of it is giving. There's an interesting Jewish law that even somebody who is extremely poor who relies on charity has to give charity. Even though that's not economically efficient. You would think, well, why should someone who needs charity also give charity? Because there's a dignity in giving and happiness. But the optimum amount, I would say, is enough. I'm just thinking of people in my congregation. I have some people who essentially live on Social Security and maybe a little bit more, and they're extremely happy. They have a lifestyle that they enjoy and they're able to meet their needs. And then I have some people who are extremely wealthy who are unhappy. But I do think that basically having enough to have a decent, you know, roof over your head in a safe neighborhood, when your parents have enough to send your kids to a decent school. So I've heard the figure of $70,000 a year, that seems low in a.

Place like that's bright.

New York or San Francisco, especially even in Chicago. That's low even, although there are parts. If you live in Indiana, you know, the taxes are much lower. So I think it really depends on the area. But maybe $100,000. You know, I'm going to do some more research and find out what the different amounts are in different places because I do think it's relevant to us.

And that other study that I cited was net worth, not income. So really you have to look at both categories, net worth versus income. Right. Those are two different things. And you know, can you get your net worth to generate the income that will satisfy you and be ready for emergencies? For example, just a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine who's 10 years younger than me was diagnosed with leukemia, a really severe leukemia. And he's still in the hospital. He'll be there for a month at least and had to go through this intense sudden chemotherapy. Now, you know, that person has a pretty good business that he can leave and his girlfriend probably doesn't have to do too much to manage it while he's stuck in the hospital. Right. You know, it looks like he's going to recover and he's going to be okay, but it's still early. These emergencies can happen. It's not just the emergency of having medical Expenses, it's the inability to be able to work and produce income. So if your income went away tomorrow, how prepared are you for that? Right. You know, you need to be your own insurance. Yes. You can have disability insurance where there'll be all sorts of exclusions. They'll try not to pay. And, you know, you don't want to rely on that. You want to rely on yourself.

And one of the other things is to bring this back to income property. You know, one of the other good things is it's probably less money per year that you have to make if you're an income property investor because you don't have to pay many taxes on it. Right. If you're someone who makes $100,000 a year, you, you're going to pay 30, 25. I don't exactly remember what the tax rates are to taxes, whereas if you're bringing that in through income property, you're going to be paying much less.

Especially if you follow my refi till you die plan.

Yes, yes. The other thing is you probably, everyone probably know has heard about the fire movement, financial independence, retire early now. There's a lot of great tips, but one thing I don't like about the movement is it does focus on penny pinching. And one of the things that we need to know is as income property investors, I think that you teach is that abundance mindset that we would rather try to find ways to make more money than skimp on things. You know, there's so many more ways to bring in, to attract, to bring more money into our life rather than just not live a meaningful life. So I'm going to talk about that as well.

Good point. That's a good topic. Back to what you said a few minutes ago about giving. You know, I think one of the things that is really, really tough about being poor is that that level of poverty, and it doesn't have to be total poverty, it could be just being middle class. Right. It deprives the person of the ability to give. And that giving is very, very satisfying now ever since especially 2005 when I set up my private foundation. And by the way, you know, I'll be happy to talk about that someday on the show if anybody's interested. I don't take any donations. That's simply my own money that I just give away. And by having the foundation so structure, I've made it more an actual part of my life. Some of the stuff I do is my own mission to teach financial literacy to young adults. We have our own podcast. You can go to youngwealth.com check that out, or check it out on any podcast platform. And that's part of it. But a lot of it is just giving to other charities as well. So it's a combination of the foundation doing its own work and just making external grants or donations, which we've done quite a bit of over the years. So it's a great thing to have the ability to give. That's a part of the abundance mindset, and it's very satisfying to see that make an impact on other lives.

Yeah, there are schools of thought that say even when you could use the money, you should still give because it trains you in a way to attract wealth. Like, giving is so fulfilling that you will work harder in order to have the money to give so that you'll ultimately attract more money. There's a Jewish saying that, you know, someone who studies Torah when they're poor will also study when they're rich. So if you give when you're poor, you'll also give when you're rich. And it's just a habit that can actually help you gain wealth.

Well, that's the concept of tithing. Right. And that is very true. That's a very good habit. It sets up your subconscious mind to believe that there's more, to believe that the world is an abundant place, which it is. You know, Zig Ziglar, really, this quote is not about abundance, but I think it is. It's one of my favorites that he said. The late Zig Ziglar, who I had the absolute honor of being on a speaking tour with years ago where we shared the stage together. He was one of my first early mentors, and just really, his work meant so much to me. And he says you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. That's all you've got to do. So provide more people rental housing, and you will get what you want. It's a great thing. Anyway, Evan, we gotta wrap it up, but give us a closing thought.

Come to profits in paradise. You'll get a taste of real community, you know, financial friends, people you can connect and talk with. You'll also learn about how to live a happier life and live happier and hopefully wealthier.

All right, thanks so much for listening. May you all live long and prosper. As Mr. Spock would say, Happy investing. We will talk to you tomorrow.

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