Building Recession-Proof Wealth Through Mobile Home Parks & Self-Storage with Matt Ricardella

What I would tell you is this: if you're looking to earn the highest return humanly possible, this is probably not the asset class for you, especially if you know how to pick tech stocks. But if you want to sleep at night and you know that you're going to have safe, predictable cash flow regardless of the cycle with tax advantages, and you could grow that cash flow year in and year out where there's really no new supply coming in, then this is the asset class for you.

Are you frustrated watching your hard-earned money ride the knee-jerking Wall Street roller coaster? Are you looking to diversify into alternate investments and set them on autopilot to achieve financial freedom? It's time to learn the ways of the wealthy. It's time to Think Outside the Stocks with your host Madhavi Nade Jain, an immigrant from India and ex-IT professional who will bring you industry experts to illustrate a passive and holistic financial approach to build not just passive income but also your generational wealth. Madhavi is on a mission to change the financial trajectory of one family at a time, and a thousand more to go. Are you going to be part of this vision? And now, without further ado, here is the host of Think Outside the Stocks, Madhavi Nade Jain.

Um, before we go ahead, just a little bit, two cents from my lawyer. That this is information and education purpose only. If you want to engage with any of our guests, including Shauna, please do your own due diligence. And I am not particularly a financial, legal, or tax advisor or investment advisor. And also, we, you know, we'll have some examples for educational information purpose only. So keep that in mind. These are point in time. These are not representative of any real information. Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to Take a Cut at the Stocks. And in our guest list today, we have Matthew Ricardella from Crystal View Capital. And this is going to be a very interesting conversation. So you are tuning in, but just stay tuned till the end because we're gonna have some interesting, interesting conversation here. And I want to say that most investors, most investors focus on chasing the next big opportunity, the next returns, right? But today we're going to talk about how in a recession environment, even in different market cycles, one can focus on boring assets such as mobile home parks and self-storage and can still build sustainable wealth. And that's our conversation is going to be about that— why sophisticated investors are moving towards resilient, overlooked asset class in uncertain markets. So, Matt, welcome to Think Outside the Stocks. I'm so excited to have you here.

Thanks for having me today, Madhavi. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Absolutely. So let's jump into this discussion that we have. But before we even start talking about real estate and Crystalview, I would love to know about your journey. When I introduce you to my, my audience, I actually talk about 3 fun facts. And I'm going to introduce these 3 fun facts about you, Matthew. The number 1, first of all, Matthew has done over $1 billion in transactions his lifetime. Matt, this is incredible amount of experience under your belt. And currently around $650 million assets under management. And not just that, I mean, one could have a big portfolio, but look, let's look at the the results to investors, right? So the second fun fact is that they have actually distributed over $170 million to investors. That's incredible. That's their commitment back to the investors, sticking to what they are saying and what they're performing and that what they're producing. And the third fun fact, which Matt just shared right before this episode, um, that we started recording, that he actually loves cooking. Well, coming from Italian background, I would not expect anything less. And looks like, you know, you had— your father had a pizzeria in New York and just the love of cooking. So I'm going to ask some questions towards the end just to add some fun. But yeah. Say that again.

I'll give you all my recipes.

Oh, secret recipes, grandma's recipes.

I love that.

That's a good deal. That's a really good deal. But with that, With that 3 fun facts, Matt, let's dive into your journey before Crystal View Capital even started. Right. So let's start about, you know, what's your background and what really led you to real estate?

Yeah, well, I appreciate the question. And as mentioned before we got started, I grew up in upstate New York and my family was from the restaurant business and it was a small business. And my dad had 2 restaurants in this town where I grew up called Phenicia. And, uh, I started at a very young age working. So at 9 years old, I was washing dishes in the restaurant. It was a family business. So I learned the value of a dollar and a hard day's work from a very young age. And, um, also at a young age, I learned I didn't want to be in that business for the rest of my life. I saw how hard my dad works and he's still the hardest working guy I know, and he's still doing it. God bless him. But, um, I wanted to get into a business where I could really generate more wealth and, and control my future more and, and have more passive income. Um, I, I was not a good student. Um, I ended up dropping out of college and I got into the real estate business as a realtor, actually, in Southern California back in 2002.

Wow.

And the way I, the way I built my business up was through direct phone sales, prospecting. I used to get on the phone and make hundreds of contacts a day, you know, talking to owners, trying to list their property. Or I'd go out in the field and I'd knock on hundreds of doors every single day and, and build relationships.

Right.

And I started, I started doing this at 20 years old. So I was, I was very young and I built up my business really nicely until one day I called somebody on the phone trying to list their property and they said, well, why don't you just buy it? And it was a duplex. Okay, it was in Long Beach, California, and I had no money, no credit. But this was back in '04. And if for those of you that were around back then, you knew that it was very easy to obtain financing. Yeah, they were giving loans out to anybody— stated loans, ninja loans, no income. And I was the beneficiary of that. So I bought a— I bought this property for $340,000, no money down. Essentially turned it around, rented it up, and I sold it a year later for $700,000. Wow. And from that point forward, I thought, well, why would I do anything else? So I didn't. And all I did was I went out there and I was buying homes, I was flipping homes, and that worked out reasonably well. But I really wanted passive income. I wanted income that came in rain or shine, no matter what I did. And I kind of transitioned over to commercial real estate. So I owned office, retail, multifamily, industrial, and I built that portfolio, my investment portfolio, the same way I did as when I was a realtor. I would get on the phone, make hundreds of contacts, find deals off market, just like we do today. And I'd buy them right. I would manage them effectively, just like we do today, turn them around. And back in 2006, I bought my first mobile home park. And that asset class really delivered a lot of cash flow to me. The ownership profile was mostly mom-and-pop, which worked out well for me because a lot of inefficiencies, I could buy them right. And I started buying them for my, myself, from 2006 back until 2013. And I had a great business. I built up a nice portfolio, but the problem I had was I couldn't go to scale. I didn't have, I didn't have capital. I always had to sell something to buy something new. And that's when I launched Crystal View Capital, taking on other people's money, investor capital. And I did that in 2014 and the rest is history.

Love that. Love that. So, so came from a very different background, the restaurant business and going back to it, back at it. You realize very early on that this is not for you. And not just that, you realize that you created something completely different out of the box for you and quite accidentally landed into this investor journey yourself, right? By the way, that cold calling, I think that a lot of effort there, a lot of like growing thick skin. And I think that is what the hard work and growing that thick skin has helped you just survive this, you know, market cycle after market cycle. And we will talk about that in a minute. But it's incredible that, you know, your journey from, you know, early 2000 to now, you probably have seen a lot happening through the cycles, right? This current environment that we are going in with the interest rate hikes just happened and commercial real estate just started crumbling, right? And why Crystalview is still sustaining in this, that's, that's a testament of, you know, what you have learned into these different cycles, right? So going back to it, right, I think there is— you started mentioning about managing the risk, right? So you know, over two decades in real estate, right, about investing in different asset classes. So what fundamentally changed you in managing the mobile home parks and self-storage? I mean, there are several asset classes in commercial real estate, right? How did you end up with these asset classes?

Well, I own the mall, and these asset classes in particular produced the highest free cash flow of any of the others that I owned or I operated or I managed. So, um, the fundamentals were extremely strong. When you think about supply and demand, specifically on manufactured housing, unlike any other commercial real estate asset class that exists, they're not building any new supply. So when you have supply that's static, where it's even shrinking, in some markets, and you have demand for affordable housing that's off the charts. As a landlord, as an owner-operator, you have tremendous pricing power, you have tremendous ability to grow your occupancy. And that's always intrigued me. That's always screamed at me. The other thing was the ownership profile, you know, within these properties. When you look at industrial or retail, multifamily, a lot of institutional ownership.. And when institutions own an asset, it's typically run very efficiently. They're going to sell it through a traditional marketing process. But when a mom-and-pop owns, which self-storage and manufactured housing is still predominantly mom-and-pop owned and operated, it creates, it creates a real opportunity to build a relationship and with, with the owners and to buy based off that relationship. Versus going out there and buying through brokerage channels, participating in auctions, and paying full price. We pride ourselves on structuring win-win deals. A lot of these owners, these are legacy owners. Their grandparents built the asset from the ground up. They worked in the communities as a child. In a lot of cases, it's not always who could write the largest check. In a lot of cases, it's who's going to be the best steward. Right, for the asset. Who's going to take care of the community? Who's going to take care of the residents? Who's going to invest back into the community? And time and time again, Madhavi Nade Jain, we've positioned ourselves as that ideal steward. And because of that, because of the relationships that we build within our team, it's allowed us to buy these deals where we've, we've actually beat out Blackstone. We've beat out these large institutional operators through the relationship.. So that, that's always inspired me. That's always intrigued me and it's allowed me to be creative, which I love. So that, that is the reason why I've built my career around these asset classes.

Love that. Love that. So it's really, you know, it's their baby that they have probably held it for a really long period of time. And probably the next generation doesn't want to hold it. I mean, there is so much transfer of wealth is happening and the younger generation don't want to be in the same business. Just like probably you didn't want it to be in the same restaurant business, right?

That's right.

Yeah. And but this is about handing over that baby and the residents. And you know, it's when we purchase as investors, as GPs, and we purchase these properties, there's tremendous value add to even residents. It's just not about investments. It's about making that their living a little bit better too. So can we talk about, you know, how it impacts the communities, even if the investment get the returns and all that? It's Glory. How does it impact when Crystal Vee goes in and how does it impact the communities and what living that they have created?

Yeah, so for us, I think it comes back to the vertical integration, Madhavi Nade Jain. In our space, in the manufactured housing space, a lot of our peers and competitors, they don't operate the communities that they own. They outsource that to a third party. A lot of those third parties, they're just there to earn fees. They're not thinking about taking care of the residents. They're not thinking about reinvesting back into the community. They're not thinking about bringing in homes and filling vacant sites. We think about all those things because we manage all of the communities that we own and operate. We think about those things because frankly, we think like an owner because we are an owner. We invest our own money into the fund.

Love that.

So we're thinking about it very differently than like, let's say, a sponsor or a property manager that's just earning fees. We're thinking about it like an actual owner. And because of that, we build the relationship with the residents within the community, not only the owner. But when you build the relationship with the resident, when you go to sell homes, those residents are going to refer their friends, their family, their coworkers, others to come and buy a home within that community, which allows us to grow our rent roll, to grow our occupancy. And As we do that, we increase our net operating income, and that is what allows us to make the outsized risk-adjusted returns to our investors over the 10+ years, is really driving NOI at the properties that we own and operate.

Love that, love that. And you were also kind of mentioning about institutional capital flowing to these assets, right? I mean, even BlackRock, right, capital. But there is a social stigma about these mobile home parks. I mean, people like to invest in this Class A, which is, you know, probably the urban downtown, new, newer buildings with lots of amenities. And they like that pride of owning that as an investor, right? So what would you tell to investors who has that stigma about owning this not too great looking assets?

Well, what I would say to that is, again, I come back to supply and demand. We're not chasing the shiny object. I know the name of your show is To Think Outside the Stocks. And to kind of create a semblance here for a moment, if I will, you know, a lot of stock investors, they're guilty of chasing the shiny object, right? Big high-flying tech companies, everybody's piling in, it becomes very crowded. That to me is not the place to invest. The place to invest is a contrarian point of view, is to buy the things that perhaps are unloved but have great fundamentals and earning power. And I don't know an asset that has great fundamentals or better earning power than manufactured housing communities because there's more and more capital chasing these deals, but I'll let all those investors go after the Class A multifamily, the trophy assets, the shiny object where I'm going to buy what I know works. I'm going to buy what I know is going to withstand market cycles. You talked about the resiliency of these asset classes. I'll tell you, I was involved in both storage and manufactured housing back in '08 and '09, and whoever was invested during those periods knows that there was a tremendous amount of pain. And I will say this, these properties not only held up, they actually outperformed and were some of the only property types where you could grow NOI in a recession like we went through back in '08 and '09. So, what I would tell you is this, if you're looking to earn the highest return humanly possible, this is probably not the asset class for you, especially if you know how to pick tech stocks. You want to sleep at night and you know that you're going to have safe, predictable cash flow regardless of the cycle with tax advantages, and you could grow that cash flow year in and year out where there's really no new supply coming in, then this is the asset class for you. And that's why I choose to personally invest in these property types.

Love that. Love that. Let's talk about what you just mentioned about no new supply coming in. Not many people, not listeners, don't typically understand the difference between the apartment complexes or those other areas building continuously and mobile home parks, why the supply is limited.

Yeah, the reason why is it's called NIMBY, not my backyard, is what it stands for. So a lot of municipalities, not a lot, pretty much all municipalities throughout the United States, they don't allow new communities to be built. That's one thing. Number two, it's very costly to build the infrastructure. So to go out there today to buy the dirt, to start building roads, improvements, uphouses, underground utilities, and then to buy the homes, bring them into the sites, sell them, fill them up. When you buy— when you're talking about a 200-site community, that process is going to take probably 10 years from start to finish, and it's going to be very, very costly. So, you know, that kind of prices out most developers, not to mention they're not going to really get the approvals. On top of it. So that's where that no new supply coming to market is extremely valuable to those that own existing communities, which is us. And then within those existing communities, the vacant sites that we have, we bring in homes, we fill those vacant sites, and everybody who's out there looking for affordable housing— I mean, we all know friends and family, and we hear about it They can't afford to buy a stick-built home. They can't afford to rent because of inflation, because of interest rates. But we have the lowest form of affordable housing. So the demand for our product is off the charts, but the supply is flat or shrinking.

Right, right. And also, let's talk a little bit about, you know, the quality of tenants, right? I mean, in multifamily, the renewals is a big big thing, right? It's a key thing because how can you retain, how can you offer some concessions for them to retain or things like that? What is different in the mobile home parks when it comes to renewals and kind of sustaining the tenant base, the occupancy that you have?

Yeah, well, you need to think about— it's a great question. And what I would say to that is this: think about the nuances between multifamily and manufactured housing. And let me explain. So in multifamily, the landlord owns the building, the tenant is renting the space. So, you know, when the sink backs up, when the toilet overflows, electrical is not working, that's the landlord's responsibility to come in and fix that. So repair and maintenance is higher. When a tenant moves out, let's say the landlord raises the rents, the tenant can simply move down the street and go and rent another apartment. Yeah, the landlord has to step in They have to turn that unit over, put in new carpeting, paint it, make upgrades, then re-rent it. When you look at a manufactured housing community, the tenant owns their home. The landlord owns the infrastructure and the lot. All they're renting is dirt. So when the lease comes due, the tenant who owns that home isn't going to say, oh, you know, let me spend $15,000 or $20,000 move the home down the street to a community that perhaps isn't as nice, perhaps has higher rents. So your tenant base is extremely sticky, so your turnover is almost nonexistent. So that's the other thing that keeps that revenue and that cash flow very consistent despite the market cycles that you go through.

Yeah, I think that's one of the most amazing part of the mobile home parks. And not only that, earlier you answered about how you are caring about the community and creating that environment, and not everybody is contributing to that level of details when it actually coming to thinking about the tenant base, right? So on one hand, you are providing them a really good environment to stay in, and on the other hand, even if they want to, it's just so expensive, probably this is the parking lot that's their home for the rest of their life, right? And I think that's, that's interesting. And while we're talking about the mobile home park, I would love to bring in the self-storage kind of comparison as well, right? That compared to multifamily, what are the different aspects of the self-storage that makes it recession-resistant as well as, you know, for tenant turnover? Because now it feels like, okay, it's so easy to just empty out a storage and move out, right? But it doesn't happen that frequently, right? So can you, even if it seems contrary, compare that recession-resistant nature of the self-storage as well?

Well, it's the nuisance is what I would say. So for you to clear out your storage unit, move down the street, that's a lot of work. And you know, if the prices are on par with both facilities, why would you go through that process? And with storage, it's kind of set it or forget it. You know, when you rent a storage unit, you have the credit card on file, the credit card is charged. A lot of people are saving their family heirlooms. It could be they're leaving records. They don't want to throw this stuff out. You know, the average length of stay is going on a year and a half, 2 years. That's the national average for tenants within storage facilities right now. So you— it's also— you have very low turnover and even lower repair and maintenance. You know, all your— when a tenant moves out of a storage facility, essentially all you're doing is sweeping the floor, rolling up the door, and renting it to the next unit. You could do— next tenant— you could do that in 15 minutes.

Right.

You know, on multifamily, that could take weeks or months.

Yep.

So you have a lot, a lot less repair and maintenance, higher free cash flow. The only thing you have to look out for, one of the main things you have to look out for on storage is oversupply, right? So when you're in these major metros, you have to be very careful when you have new supply come in, even if you underwrote a deal right, all of a sudden you lose your pricing power because there's more competing. So when you think about that supply and demand dynamic, the way it exists in manufactured housing, it's not as strong as storage because somebody could come in there, they could build a facility down the street and basically take away your pricing power. So you've got to be conscious of that. And that's why we own most of our storage in secondary and tertiary markets. Where a lot of the big REITs and developers aren't coming in and building new supply. And in our Fund IV, we're heavily concentrated to manufactured housing. In fact, 80% of our portfolio is manufactured housing, 20% is storage.

Just balancing that risk. Love that. So let's talk about the areas, right? And you mentioned that really the areas where this— or the submarkets this, this investments are is really, really crucial. So when it comes to the mobile home parks or the self-storage, what is your criteria of identifying the markets?

Yeah, you know, for us, it's supply and demand, you know, for looking at storage in particular. But for manufactured housing, I'll tell you, we're quite agnostic. You know, we own in 32 different states right now. So we'll go into almost any market as long as there's decent fundamentals. What drives the investment decision for us is not so much geography. It's more so a special situation around how we could create value. So if you show us a park in a rent control market or in Texas or in the Midwest where most of our portfolio is located, as long as we could come in, we could buy that asset, right? We could execute a business plan to create value as long as it's near a job base, a job center. Where we're going to continue to be able to grow the rent roll, where we're going to be able to grow rents and sell homes. That's, that's all we need. But it's the situation that's more important to us than the geography. And again, that situation is a plan and a path to create value.

Love that. Love that. While we're talking about, you know, the selection criteria, the market and the submarket selection, acquisition is one child, but asset management probably is the most important other aspect of the, the same mirror. So you have built this almost half a billion dollar portfolio, CrystalView, of $650 million at this point. When it comes to the scaling and the operations, right, what is the bottlenecks that you have, you know, faced, and what really makes this asset management successful when it comes to managing this massive portfolio, which is just spread across the country?

Yeah, yeah, great questions. One is what we say, Madhavi, is we, we control our own destiny. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. When you outsource the property management to a third party, again, they're not going to care like the owner. They're going to go in there, they're going to collect the rent, they're going to charge you a fee. And that's about it. You know, the asset could disintegrate and they're really— there's no vested interest for them to ensure that it's going to operate at its highest possible potential. But for us, back to the alignment of interest and thinking like an owner in our vertical integration, we self-manage all of these properties. So we have systems and procedures from 20 years that I've been involved as a, as an owner-operator in this business. And those systems and procedures could be rent collection where they are rent collection. They could be— we have a home sales coordination team where all they do on a daily basis is they find homes, they bring them to vacant sites, they market those homes for sale, and they, they grow our occupancy. We have a utility specialist team. What they do is they look at the water and sewer within the communities that we own, figure out, can we build that back to the residents, ensure that those lines don't have leaks in them. And we're not paying expenses that we shouldn't be paying. Um, we have community relations people on our team that are holding barbecues. They're going out to the community, they're sending newsletters, they're communicating with them. They're— who has the best yard for the month of May? And then we're going to give them a little prize, things like— so that builds that pride of ownership, like I was saying. And it all comes together. So when you sell a home and your residents are engaged, they're going to tell people and you're going to be able to sell that home a lot quicker than if the residents are angry with you.

Right.

There are bad actors and bad operators in our industry. They'll just go in there and they'll raise the rents way above market. They don't pick up the phone. They're not available. They don't communicate. They create a bad name for all of us. But the other thing for them is they're going to lose their tenants and they're not going to be able to sell homes. So we think about it as Let's take care of the residents because, A, it's good for business, and it also gives them that pride of ownership, and it gives us a good name and a good brand and a good reputation. And all of that spreads, and it's a virtuous cycle. And none of that would be possible if we weren't vertically integrated, if we didn't have our own asset management team in-house.

Yeah, that makes totally sense. And what you're talking really about, I mean, listeners, I mean, you might have heard this kind of, you know, involvement in community and vertical integration, but we get to hear a lot into the actual multi-family or the apartment complexes, right? But what you are doing for the community, even as, you know, mobile home park communities are typically get neglected a lot. So even you are trying to do that and give them that apartment quality of feel while staying in a mobile home park. I think that's incredible. With that, I'm going to ask you one question that, you know, there's a lot of institutional money that's coming in, floating, flowing into this, you know, kind of alternate asset class. They're getting more curious about it. Does that create kind of a more pressure in the industry, or that actually creates more opportunity in the industry? How do you see it?

Well, as a seller, it's wonderful. You know, because it opens up the playing field of the buyer base. So you're able to sell assets at a lot more compressed cap rates. As a buyer, it makes it more challenging. And for us, the way we mitigate that challenge is through the relationship. So if we were dependent on, you know, brokers bringing us deals or just going to on-market deals, our ability to create value and generate the returns that we have historically to our investors, it really wouldn't be existent. You know, our, our brand and what our reputation, which is known for great returns, we wouldn't be able to have that reputation if we didn't go directly to the source and build the relationship and spend the time. We have a whole sales kind of acquisitions team that goes out there. They're having dinners with sellers, they're having lunches with sellers, they're on the phone all day. Building new relationships, hearing the story. And from that, from those relationships, we've really been able to grow our acquisitions quite substantially. This year, right now, we have over $100 million of acquisitions in our pipeline that are either under contract or about to close. And all of those deals are off market. They're all built and sourced and originated through relationships that we've had over years in this business.

Incredible, incredible. And you have talked about kind of, you know, several advantages in the way you are approaching from acquisitions, from, you know, vertical integration, from systems and processes, your interest. But to kind of sum it up, you know, when this institutional money is flowing into this market and they're going to look for, you know, this high-quality portfolio buys, and that's going to be a positive opportunity for CrystalView or any other operator, right? What makes Crystalview really stand out? What's the difference, like the differentiator that you bring in when it comes to this particular asset classes?

You mean compared to how we operate or the way that we buy?

Yeah, just, just everything, kind of putting it together. What's Crystalview's distinction when it comes to how you do everything?

Yeah. So let's compare Crystalview for a moment to institutional capital. First off, institutional capital is never going to operate these assets themselves. What they're going to do is they're going to go— they'll go to sponsors that are like us or smaller than us, and they will engage in what's known as a programmatic joint venture. And, and what that is, is the sponsor will go out there, they'll source the opportunities, the institutional capital provider will back them,, and then the sponsor will manage those assets. And then dependent on a certain waterfall, the, the sponsor will get a promote based off of that. That's typically how you see institutional capital coming into the space. But the way, the way we think about it is, is very different because we own and we operate these communities. These institutional capital providers, they're dependent on the sponsor. And these sponsors, they come and go. This is a— this business, the main thing that you have to understand here, this is a lot of hard work. You really have to roll up your sleeves. You have to have the systems, you have to have the infrastructure, you've got to have the team and the culture. And these, these institutional capital providers, they want to go to scale, but they can't because this, this business and this industry is very fragmented. And what that means is there's not a lot of large players. It's mostly disparate in these mom-and-pop owner-operators. And what we do is we roll up these mom-and-pops, right? We go out there and methodically buy them one by one and then kind of bring them into our ecosystem. And that's how we go to scale. And we'll, we'll exit to the institutional capital, which is going to pay a premium. So the big difference between Crystalview and institutional capital is we're opportunistic and we're going to buy very aggressively and buy right. And they are going to buy more stabilized core, core plus products, and they're going to pay a full price because they want to go to scale and they want to do it quickly because they have a lot of capital that they need to deploy. So because of that, we could deliver returns that are far in excess of what I believe they can. Even though their cost of capital is less than ours.

Love that. And you know, what would you say your kind of pillars of the differentiator that you have from other operators that's just, you know, helping this growth, kind of sustaining this growth that you have?

Yeah, great question. Our core differentiating factors, or our secret sauce as we like to call them, I think there's a couple of them. One in-house deal sourcing. So we're buying most of our— 92% of our deals, Madhavi, are sourced off market through the relationships that we discussed. Number 2, vertical integration, you know, where we're self-managing all of these assets, we're executing a business plan, we're controlling our own destiny, as we talked about. Number 3 is the culture here at Crystal Group. Our team all thinks like owners because we are owners. And the reason we are owners is number 4, the key differentiating factor is alignment of interest. And what I mean by that is we're not just here as a GP earning fees. A lot of our peers and competitors are. We're here as an actual owner because we invest our own capital in the funds that we sponsor. I've invested more than $15 million of my own capital across all the different funds that we sponsor. And not only myself, a lot of our team are investing and it's a significant portion of their net worth. And we all do it because, A, we want an alignment of interest with our partners, but B, we don't know where we're going to find a better risk-adjusted return than what we're doing here at Crystalview.

Right, right. What a fantastic strategy and what a fantastic approach, Matt. And, you know, we had such a good conversation today. This portion, this segment of our Think Outside the Stocks is now leading into the next segment, and that's one of my favorite segments as well. So thank you so much for this discussion about, you know, this such strong asset classes that you have been focusing on, enlightening us with your journey and why you're focusing on this particular asset and just bringing in that differentiator, whether it's, you know, deal sourcing, your vertical integration, having that aligned interest and just how you are helping not just the mom-and-pop operators to take off the responsibility off their plate, but very diligently, carefully, you know, for the communities, adding that value to that community as well. So thank you for sharing that. My next segment is going to be Think Outside the Stock. So, you know, one of the biggest things I would like to talk about this segment is that asking our guests that when it comes to investing, that we all are very focused, our listeners are focused on investing. So what's the returns? What's the probably tax, you know, benefits of it? How much passive income am I going to generate? But I always like to kind of think differently. I like to ask them to think differently as well, right? So instead of, you know, thinking like a frog in a pond, just thinking like an eagle, changing that perspective just gives us a completely different visibility of not just focusing on investing, but to focus on how to grow, preserve, protect, and pass your generational wealth, because that is such an important aspect of it, right? So as a, as a guest here, I would love to know from your journey, from your financial, personal financial structure, how do you create these pillars in your personal financial structure to not just, you know, invest and grow your wealth, but how to risk manage, right? How to grow, preserve, protect, and pass. This legacy to the next generation?

Yeah, no, it's a, it's an in-depth question. It's a great question. I think for everybody it's different. We all have, we all have very different goals of what would our— what we want our legacy to be. Some of us want to leave it all to our children. Others have philanthropy goals that we want to give back to. And for me, I think it's both. You know, my wife and I have, have developed certain trusts that, that we own our assets in. A lot of our investing in Crystal View is done through some of our family trusts, which a lot of— we have a lot of philanthropic goals through those trusts. In fact, we're involved in AIM, which is actually Helping Stop Sex Trafficking. Very nice.

Yeah.

And we actually, since you're, you're in India, it's interesting. We're part of— it's called Angel House, God Forgives Foundation. One of our investors actually goes out to India. They build orphanages and help children without families provide a home, education. And they've named a couple of houses after us. It's actually on our website and they've named them the Crystal View House. We've built walls and helped build infrastructure. Within some of these communities. So, for us, it's— we want to leave a legacy to our children. We want to give back to some of the causes that are near and dear to both my wife and I's heart. And I think finally, we want to inspire— for me, I want to inspire people. That's part of our legacy and that's part of what I'm doing at CrystalView. I'm not the young guy anymore. You know, I'm 40. I've always been the younger guy since I started so young, but now I'm 44 and we've got a lot of young people in our organization. And it's really— it goes a long way when you mentor them, when you spend the time and you give back to them and you really help them understand the business process, how you think, you know, what a deal is, what a deal isn't, understanding the pitfalls and building that young generation up. Because I want CrystalView to be an organization that outlasts me, that continues to grow and continues to give people the opportunity to live the American dream. Where others maybe told them they couldn't do it. That was always— I was always told I couldn't do it because I didn't have the right contacts, the right background, the right education. And I wanted to build something through hard work and effort and passion. And I've had a moderate level of success in doing that. I feel like I'm just getting started, but I want to allow others to come in behind me and continue to build the legacy that, that we've started. So That's a long-winded way of saying that that's kind of how we want to pass what we build.

Beautifully said, beautifully said, Matt. I think, you know, I always talk about it's not the wealth, it's not just the dollar amount that you're living, but it's what the footprint, what the impact that you're trying to leave. And, you know, in terms of your philanthropy, in terms of your mentorship, in terms of just this kind of a vision of making others' life better, uh, it's incredible. You know, we wish we have more people like you thinking about that holistically, about what their legacy means, really means to them. And you know, what legacy that they want to leave behind. So thank you so much for sharing that. And with that, we have come to our last round. And this is kind of a fun round. It's called rapid fire. Just quick questions and 30 to 60 seconds answers to this kind of fun questions, right? So whenever you're ready for it, we can get started.

Go ahead.

Absolutely. All right, that's great. You have been phenomenal, by the way. Uh, so the first question, that, um, what is one, uh, market cycle lesson that you will tell to every investor?

That I would tell every investor? Well, I've always been a contrarian. I've always taken the advice— one of my mentors, I don't know him personally, but I've read everything that he's written I've ever read and listened to almost everything he said is Warren Buffett. And he always said, be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

Absolutely.

So I think that's, that's certainly a market lesson. When everybody is scared, that's when you want to be buying, right? And when everybody is euphoric, that's when you probably want to think about selling.

And we see a lot of fear in these days in the market. So, you know, that advice comes very timely, and you have lived through it. It's just not some words and some statements, right? You have kind of lived through it. So thanks for sharing that. Um, what is, you know, one kind of underrated skill as an operator that investors just don't see it, and that's one of the most important aspects of it when they want to— like, and you were mentioning about falling for shiny numbers, right, or shiny object syndrome. The shiny numbers, you know, an investment which is, oh, giving 15% returns or 20% returns, and what's the difference between them, right? But as an operator, to look for what's in the operator, what's that one kind of underrated skill that they should look for in an operator?

Yeah, I think there's a few. One is diligence, just pure hard work. And in today's environment, you know, It's hard to find— as, as a business owner, for those that are business owners, I think we all would, would agree some of the hardest challenges we have is finding and retaining great talent. You know, it's hard to find people that are willing to put in the work in this business. And this is why not everybody does this. This is not that much of a technical business. It's more of a roll up your sleeves and go to work for 8 or 10 hours a day and really grind it out. Um, and, and we built CrystalView around people that do just that. We have a good time together, we're all hard workers, we're all grinders. But the second trait I would say in that question, Madhavi, is be an independent thinker. You talked about shiny object, or you talked about what a broker or somebody else tells you— here's a stock tip, do this, do that. I'm not saying don't do it, but be an independent thinker. Do your own research. What's your thesis behind it? Why do you have conviction? If you can't write it down— and this is what another mentor of mine said, Sam Zell, who is actually the godfather of the manufactured housing business, he really built Equity Lifestyle Properties back in the '80s— he said, if you can't write down your thesis on a piece, one single piece of paper and have conviction, then don't, don't make the investment. But you need to be an independent thinker. You can't just do what somebody else told you to do because you're going to get killed.

Love it.

You got to have conviction in what you're doing.

The contrast of that herd mentality, just being that independent thinker. Love that. Love that. One personal question. What's your favorite travel destination?

Yeah, you know, actually, we every year, my fam, I have two boys. 15 and 12. And my wife, who I've been married to going on 20 years actually.

Oh, congratulations.

Yeah, thank you. We go, we go to Italy every year.

Of course.

That's where my family is from a long time ago. But we, we like this place in Italy. It's called Positano and it's in the Amalfi Coast just south of Rome, right next to Naples. Real beautiful, right on the water. Great food, great beach, great atmosphere. So that, I would say, that's my favorite vacation destination.

I love that. I love Italy too, and I think that's gonna be added into my bucket list. And if I need some tips, I know where to go. But, but one of the, my most favorite destinations in Italy, which was, I was spellbound, absolutely, is Scala dei Turchi. I don't know if you know that place. It's, um, uh, the Steps of the Turks. That's what they, they call it. It's on the other side and just beautiful white. It just feels like heaven. It's like white, long rocks and blue water. It's just amazing. It's just beautiful. I'm going to send some pictures of you. It's really beautiful. But thanks for sharing that and adding to my bucket list. Last question. I cannot leave you without asking that question. If you were to have this— were to throw this massive treat and cook cook for the feast for the people, what is your one go-to dish that is like never ever fails or you just can't go without cooking it?

Yeah, I would say, you know, back to Positano, one of my favorite dishes, and I feel like actually my family restaurant, this is what we were known for and I love to make it. It's called zuppa di pesce. Oh, and then in Italian it means fish soup. So you have, you have lobster, galamad, shrimp, scallops, clams, mussels, and it's all together with like garlic, tomato sauce, saffron, oregano. You kind of let that simmer, a little white wine, all that kind of juice comes together and creates like this soup.

Wow.

And then you could have a little pasta on the side. But yeah, it's really delicious.

Well, we already gave half of the recipe. Maybe I should reach out for the rest of the recipe. So thank you for sharing that. It looks— it sounds very delicious, especially the saffron. We use a lot of saffron in Indian, you know, spices and recipes too. Never thought about that being used in Italian cooking, which is very interesting. So I'm gonna reach out for that recipe. But thank you so much for this incredible, incredible conversation and being here with us today. It has been an incredibly insightful conversation because It's not just about, you know, again, falling for the shiny numbers, but it's about creating that long-term wealth with asset classes which are really sustainable, right? Whether it's market cycles, recession cycles, when others are being fearful in the market, right? Those are the sustained asset classes that you kind of, you know, got anchored with and kind of created this massive portfolio with CrystalView. And provided that investor kind of, you know, returns and investor benefit year after year. So it's incredible to see that, and that just comes from that deep discipline, the systems and processes that you have, the resilience, and also understanding the risk at its deeper level, right? So that's what really kind of shines through this conversation. Uh, so thank you for sharing this perspective of deeper asset classes, the operational excellence, and navigating really that uncertainty, right? And like you said, that, you know, trying to look for right asset class in right market cycle. So thank you so much again for being here and, you know, just in this quick half an hour, 40 minutes, throwing light on so much golden nuggets about this asset class. And listeners, Make sure that you listen to it. And, you know, if you are interested in learning more about CrystalView, we are in, you know, Think of Set the Stocks. We are doing the evaluation, we are doing the due diligence and bringing in this investment as well. So if you want to know more and participate, we are here to help you understand this investment a little bit more better as well. Again, thank you, Matt, for everything.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Madhavi.

Absolutely.

Thanks for tuning in to the Think Outside the Stocks podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and subscribe. Madhavi is on a mission to change the financial trajectory of one family at a time with 1,000 more to go. We hope you'll be a part of this vision. Please join our growing community and to get your journey started, visit thinkoutsidethestocks.com to download your free guide guide on active income with passive real estate investments. If you learn something new, please share it with one person today. And if you have 60 seconds, please leave us an Apple