EP15: A Real Life Case Study for our Very Successful Deal and Investing Nuggets for Healthcare Professionals with Leslie Awasom

We have experienced a significant amount of growth over the last four years with $168 million of assets under management. But there's absolutely no way we would have been able to do any one of this without members of our community, without our investors that are joining us on this journey.

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, Madhvi 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. Madvi 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, Madhvi Jain.

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to Think Outside the Stocks. Another episode with your host, Madhvi Chen. And I have a very special guest with me today. I have a soft corner for this guest because he is my friend, my colleague, my partner. On our first deal there it was there first deal, it was my first deal going in together. So we learned a lot together. And Leslie, awesome who's here, he has awesome in his name. Can you believe that? He is an awesome personality. So Leslie, welcome to Think Outside the Stocks.

Oh man, thank you so much. Thank you very much for that nice introduction.

Yeah. And Leslie, you know, I think you amaze me on many, many levels. And we will talk about that. But listeners, if you're joining in, you know, I like to introduce my guests. Three fun facts. So I'm going to talk about the three fun facts about Leslie. Leslie actually is a healthcare professional and Leslie would talk, love to hear more about the healthcare side of it. So he's a healthcare professional turned syndicator. First of all passive investors and then syndicator. He lives in Maryland and he actually, like I said, not only just my friend, a colleague, but a partner. On our first deal, that first deal, we actually went in together. We, you know, did the financial analysis together. We went in together. We completed that full cycle too. And we moved from that deal, our investors, to another deal, what's called 1031 exchange, which saves a lot of taxes. And Leslie, one thing about Leslie, you all should, you know, really pay attention to is his mindset, his Mindset is tremendous. He has grown, you know, through his books, through his different coaching that he has done. He has grown tremendously and he kind of practices that and also preaches that with his friend, family, whoever comes in the way. Right. So Leslie is, is, you know, it's, it's all about the growth mentality and helping others mentality. He also, the last fun fact about him, him is he also has a kind of a holistic way of changing people's life with a, with a wellness clinic to optimize people's life. So Leslie, with that introduction, tell us more about what you do in your medical profession. How did you get into real estate? Passively first and then how did you become active? And let's keep in mind that we have our passive investors in mind. They're listening and we want to tell them that what our journey has been so we can encourage them to take that first foot forward.

Absolutely. Madvi, thank you so much. Again, these were really kind words. I hope I can keep up to all those niceness that you said. Well, I'm Leslie Awasome by training. I am a nurse anesthetist or CRNA for short. I've been practicing as a CRNA for over 8 years now. Prior to that I was a nurse, critical care nurse for about four years, working in like the ICUs of some of the Trauma 1 hospitals here in the Baltimore area. My journey to healthcare. Healthcare was not really my first choice of career coming into the US as an immigrant when I migrated here in 2000, like every one of us coming, I was here to chase the American dream. And my initial major was computer science, believe it or not. And I came and started in computers, computer science. Then the dot com crash happened and everybody in computer science was losing their jobs and everything. And I was afraid that I was going to go to school and not have a job without the right education or the right community. I had to go with whatever everybody else in my community was doing.

Wow.

Which was healthcare and which provide a stable job for me and my. And I also saw a lot of opportunities to bring in great value to contribute in people's lives. So I went into nursing. But right off graduation, Madvi, like I don't know if I told you this story but like right on. My orientation was in 2008 when the crash happened. I just got out of nursing school and I was working in the ICU and my preceptor, older nurse that was almost at the retirement age, one day I was working with her and then she got a Call and walked out of the unit, then came back. She was just flustered, like, had this fluster look on her face. I did not understand what was going on. And next thing you know, she had to take some time off. And then she was in the office in tears. And I find out later that my husband had called and they had lost like a significant amount of their nest egg to the market crash.

Oh, my God. Wow.

Yeah, they had a significant amount of money sitting in the market and with the crash, that they lost a significant amount of that money. And she had been planning to go on retirement in a few years, and she was talking about postponing it, and it was just devastating. And that looked stable to me because I didn't quite understand it. I was like, oh, wow. So you could still have a stable job, work all these years, save your money, right? And then something like that, you lose all of it, you know? But I didn't know what to do. When we go to orientation at work, they tell us, let's say for your Retirement, do your 401k plan, join the Retire 2045 plan, or do all these savings, all these different savings plan. I didn't quite understand what that was, but everybody I was speaking to said, okay, go ahead and do that. It's going to help you save on taxes, invest in your 401k and do all this stuff. But I did that. But that whole, that whole portfolio of like 2065, 2045 retirement, that. That left me a little depressed inside, but I cannot really tell. I like thinking that I have to work all this while, then I have to wait till like 2045 or 2065 in order to be able to retire. Just seemed like it didn't make any sense to me. And I was looking around me, there were people living, doing whatever they want to do. And I always ask myself, like, what are these people doing that I don't see, right? But I had no education, no financial education. There was nobody around me that had any. So the next thing I had to do was after working as a nurse for a few years, I was. I said to myself, there got to be more, right? So what's the next logical step? The next logical step is to go back to school and get another job, get another career, which is what I did. I went for, like, the most challenging piece, advanced education in nursing, which is anesthesia, right? And I went and I did my graduate studies in nurse anesthesia and got a job, right? And a great job. The salary, the pay is really good. The schedule is amazing. It's a great career to be. And you get to do a lot of great stuff, take care of people in like critical states and you, you get to do a lot to help people right in that environment. I felt like this was the ceiling and this cannot be it. I kept asking myself, this cannot be it. I cannot. As much as I love doing this, as much as I get paid very well to do this, I cannot miss out on a significant portion of my kids life like this. I cannot. I saw other colleagues that had been working for 24 years and I just didn't see myself having to do that for 24 years. And what if the job, what if the hospital is not there tomorrow or if something happens or if I break my arm, you know, and they tell you your disability insurance is going to pay for that. So that feeling came back, right? That thought process of my original precept or losing that money in the market, all of that came back. And one day, Madvi, as the luck will have it, I was in the operating room during one of my down times, just scrolling on my phone and I saw an article on Yahoo. It said, it's like one of these ads on Yahoo and it says the writer of rich dad, poor dad has written a book for millennials called second chance at your money in your life. And it's for millennials with student loan debt that are trying to figure out the next step. Like, well, this sounds like something that I may need. What do I have to lose? You know?

Right?

So, and back forward a little bit. When I was graduating from anesthesia school, our school brought in financial planners to come talk to us about setting up for our retirement and planning for our financial future. So being a diligent person that was looking for the future, I set up an appointment, one of those financial planners, and he created a financial plan for me. But when I reviewed the plan, that plan involved me spending about 40% of my income on insurance on different kinds of insurance. That didn't make any sense, right? Not the insurance that you and I know about, Manvi, that provides a barrier that you could use for infinite banking. This was more like, like premium kind of insurance where it's more beneficial for the salesperson. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, so I had to pull myself out of that and told myself, I'm going to have to educate myself so that I'm able to take on my family. So when I read second chance at your money in your life, it was like the answers to all the Questions that I've been having from the crash in 2008 to my experience with that financial planner up until that point and the stuff that he talked about on there, he referenced some good mindset authors. That's how I got into personal development. So that book is actually what got me started because I follow every single step that he recommended in the book and then the growth just progressed from there.

Wow. So it's really like a second chance. Right? And you know.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And Robert Kiyosaki, it's interesting what you bring. We bring up that book because we often talk about the rich dad, poor dad book. Right. You know, that's the most famous book. So I think that's very interesting that you bring in this, this book which has really given you second chance. So thank you so much for sharing that journey. And I can imagine, you know, and especially as a healthcare professional is so essential, right. You have fulfill about your job because you're serving others and that's the kind of person you are, Leslie. But also there's so much of stress, there's so much of exertion that's happening and it's a constant exchange of time with money. Right. As long as you are working, you're going to be fine. You're going to create this, you know, and healthcare has a lot of money in this profession. Right. But it's kind of sad to know that you, as you are putting that to in a bucket, that bucket can have a tremendous capacity of losing it 30, 40% if you're putting in the stock market tied to some volatility. Right. So your mindset, you know, that started early from reading the books and all these programs and coaching activities that you did. I think that that is tremendous. The journey that you have put yourself through, that changed not just your family's life, your family's future, but now you're impacting others too. So as a healthcare professional, if you guys are listening, it's important to think about one thing, very small thing. It's not about how much money you make, it's how much money you keep. And Leslie, I think that's what you did really excellently. Right. So let's go ahead and take our listeners ahead. Today, we're gonna have a little fun conversation about that first deal that we did together. Right. So coming from that background, and you started with real estate, let's talk about your syndication journey. And for listeners, first of all, you know, Leslie, me and Tenney, and Leslie has two other partners with Excite Capital. His role in Excite is a director of operations and he's also co founder of Excite Capital. So he actually is focused on like company operations, market data analysis, more of a financial analysis and cash flow analysis, budget analysis, etc. So when I met them, first of all, you guys heard Neel Bhava in last episode. So at Neel Bhava's educational event, that's when I met them first. And we kind of kept on meeting unplanned in the same city. Them coming from, you know, Washington area, me coming from Austin. It kept on happening so frequently. It just felt like destiny that we got to do something together. Leslie. So with that we walked in our first deal and that's what we are going to discuss today as a case study because we have talked a lot about on this episode on this podcast about passively investing in real estate. Let's take actual use case, actual case study that we as a partners walked in together and go through that thought process. Why did we do it? What happened, what did we plan and what did it ended up to be? This is our full cycle. So this is actual a real life, real life example. It's not, you know, imaginary. But also keep it in mind that the numbers discussed here is pertaining to that deals. It's not, it's not something that, you know, gets repeated based on different aspects of it, the economic cycles, market data, etc. So lastly, let's talk about our first deal. You know, let's talk a little bit about the deal itself. And what did you like about the market? The deal when we're going in, which is the Churchill, which we rebranded as to the view. Right. So let's talk about that.

Absolutely. Madvi. So that deal came from a period of consistent, persistent work and effort that we have been putting in since we founded Excite Capital. Right upon founding Excite Capital and doing the data analysis and market analysis to identify areas where wanted to to buy assets. And we identified the southeastern region as one of the areas that is growing significantly and that's going to keep growing for the next years. With that knowledge in mind. Our partner Tenny Tollefari actually sold his house here in Maryland and moved his whole family to Charlotte, North Carolina. So we can have presence in that market and boots on the ground.

That is a solid commitment about excitement.

That's why we call him Tenacious Tenney. You know, and Tenny have been working, building relationships like really working hard to break through building relationship with brokers. We were finally able to build a good relationship with one of the brokers and he brought us this deal which is in Columbia, South Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina is a market that we had analyzed. We love the market because it's one of, is the capital city of one of the fastest growing states in the US A lot of people are moving in that area and the affordability in that market too. It's, it's very good. You know, assets, rents, when at that point in time even now are still very affordable in that market. So, so there were many and it's a great population center. The MSA has over a million people. So, so all of that went into the background of us choosing that market. So we started focusing on looking for assets, assets in that market. So after multiple trips down, after several analysis on different assets that we had looked at, I think we reviewed over 300 properties before this one came.

Wow.

And when this one came, our property manager partner was really excited about the asset because our main property manager knows that market, she lives there. And she was like guys, you guys need to take this one down.

I remember that.

Yeah. So we did our analysis and the numbers made sense. We are very conservative when our numbers going in and Madvi is a good contributor to that with Excel skills. So we make sure that we put in a lot enough cushion into these deals before we go into. So. So once the numbers made sense, we put in the offer and the offer came through and we got, we initially came in second place but the first person backed out and then we were able to get the deal which is kind of be kind of a story because we've been second place a lot of times but ended up winning. So. Yeah, yeah.

So the second chance.

This is a. Exactly. Second chance. That's very right. Man. I said this was a typical value at play at the time. Our plan was to go in and renovate 76 of the units and do like a hundred and fifty dollar renovation premium on the renovations, do some exterior work and initial goal was to hold that for five years, but the asset did so well that we had to exit early.

So yeah, so let's, let's talk about that step by step. First of all, you mentioned about almost 300 properties analysis, right? So let's talk about a little bit about that. So listeners, when you are actually thinking of buying a single family house, if you're looking at a small box of analysis, right. That what is the financial analysis? What is the market that you're going to look into? So if you think about it say like a Amazon box size package, right. If that's your box when it comes to the multifamily analysis, it's like the container, the shipping container size. Right. That's the difference of the analysis that Leslie is talking about, and it's called underwriting. Essentially, it's huge set of the sheets of Excel files and financial calculators that we run by. And. And when Leslie is talking about 300 of the properties, it actually went through that financial analysis, which is intense analysis. So we found that. It's really like a needle in the haystack that we found. Right. Once we found that. And few of the things that was favorite from my side is, first of all, it had tremendous occupancy and sustainability through even the COVID period. This was April 2021. So this was kind of that period where Covid had impacted the occupancy has impacted people were not paying well, but this property was doing really well. It was in great condition. The market that, you know, Leslie is talking about as well, and the debt structure on it, we got a really good fixed rate on it. Right. So that everything just kind of funneled into it. And the third thing I really like, which Leslie, I really admire you for that, is the conservative analysis. I cannot insist enough that how important that conservative analysis is. And this was our first deal, you know, as an active syndicator for me bringing in my friends and family, for Leslie, you bringing your friends and family. So we were really, really. Remember how many times we went back and took those numbers and looked at that numbers and, you know, made sure those numbers were right. So let's talk about once we, you know, acquired that property. You mentioned a little bit about the business plan about renovating the units, kind of. What other business plan, you know, that. That we had in this property? Would you like to mention that? Sure.

But before I do, I just want to go back to that emphasis on conservative underwriting, because I want to connect it to the point that you brought in earlier about medical professionals having to work really hard to earn the income. Because a lot of times society sees medical professionals and say, hey, this person is a physician. They're making this amount of. Is a doctor. But a lot of people don't see the amount of work that goes into becoming who they are. You know, we are uniquely placed because two of our founders are medical professionals. I'm a CRNA doctor, Oni is an orthopedic surgeon.

Yeah.

We know the amount of work that it takes for our colleagues to get to where they are. A lot of us are like first generation professionals. First people in our school to go to school. So we know how much work it took for our investors to get to where they are. So that is the, that is the reasoning that goes behind why we so conservative. Why we have to dig through 300 deals to find the right deal that makes sense. Because for $50,000 for some people might mean nothing. But $50,000 for a lot of our investors is blood, sweat and tears. And we know how much, how hard they work to get there. So. So we'll always continue to have that in the back of our mind as we go into this asset because we know the people we're serving now. Going into the business plan, we had talked about doing the. The. The interior renovations for $150 rent bump. The other thing that we did going. In my view, you remember, we. We projected no rent growth on this property whatsoever because it was in the middle of COVID We had no rent growth on this property. We also had the exterior value at under the debt like you mentioned was really strong. We had a fixed rate debt from Fannie Mae, very good interest rate as well. So our goal was to go in, do the exterior which we completed. We completed the exterior work actually we revamped that property. You know, remember we won the beautification award. We did Columbia, South Carolina. Yes. But the most improved apartment community. And then started working into the interior value add where it's like renovating those interior units and then doing the increase rent with that. But as we kept the assets, the market kept growing. Columbia, which was something that went into our initial analysis. Some things that we learned from the bootcamp we went to with Neil Bauer. How to do market analysis, finding those markets that are growing. So that really helped us a lot as the market grew. And then our business plan was performing way beyond what we are on the road. So the asset turned out to be a really, really good asset.

Absolutely. And one of the important things. Right, but what you are mentioning here that we did these external updates to the. And we completed that. Right? What's important for you and me and we also going through working day in day out on property when we were holding it. What was important really for us is to make the residents lives better. Right. So there were some updates which did not add maybe you know, the. The value like the value in terms of how it looks, the branding, etc. But for example, the lights, right. The lights were so important for us because we wanted the residents to start feeling safe. Right. So that was. That was really a high cost. And we did that. Right. There were small things like putting that bench for the school kids while they're waiting on the bus stop. So what I like about it, and I know you like about that too, that we are making that community's life little better with little bit of rent bump. We are making them, you know, feel safe, feel comfortable, feel at home. Because maybe these people will never go into their own homes. Right. So that's really important. So having said that, you know, we had the business plan, we started implementing. Business plan. But not everything went the business plan, did it?

Absolutely not.

Let's talk about the challenges.

So first off, one thing we didn't have in the business plan is that we're gonna have a fire on the building.

Oh, my God.

Remember immediately as we took over a week after we had a fire.

Yeah. We were so excited celebrating. And then the celebration didn't last longer. It was. We got that call from the property management team. Tell us about that.

Yeah, I remember Sunny and I were actually driving to Columbia from Atlanta that day to meet with the property management team.

Yeah.

And we had called and we were all excited, happy, talking about how we're coming to meet. Then about an hour later, they called us and said there was a fire on the building. I thought it was an April fool joke or something, but, you know, thankfully we got there, nobody was hurt. It was limited to just a single unit. So we're able to get the tenant accommodation and we're able to rebuild the unit. And it all turned out great. Other things that didn't go as planned is the. The expenses. With inflation, the expenses went up. The cost for renovation, we initially on the road $7,000, but it became about $10,000 per unit and renovation, which was higher than what we on the road. And. But like I always say, man, the performer is always 100 wrong. Right. So you just want to be the set yourself up so that it goes wrong in a good way. And I think for this property, a lot of things under performer were wrong in a good way.

Right.

Because like, for example, all the reserves, we had a significant amount of funds in reserves that we brought into the deal, from the lender reserves to our own operating reserves. So some of those increase in expenses, we had enough cushion to cover for that as well. So those are some of the things that did not really go as planned, but we had enough cushion in the deal to be able to handle that. And that's going to keep happening as we go into this asset.

Yeah, absolutely. And a few of the things that you said, Leslie, is really important. Right. Things don't go as per the plan. And this is why this example, it's a real life example. It's important for listeners that we went into the assets by having some assumptions. We were conservative. But still things didn't go as a plan. But as passive investors, all of the investors, all they had to do is listen to us. When we were sending those newsletters and updates that hey, this is what the challenge that we are currently facing and this is how we are handling it. So the communication from our side was a key aspect of putting that first foot, the right foot forward for investors. Passive investors, once they gave their money into the investment, they didn't have to do anything. They started receiving that distribution. They started, you know, even after we closed, we, they received their upside for this particular investment. But when we had this fire, when we had challenge in terms of the financial aspects of it, remember we also had that unexpected pool cost. I mean that, that maintenance cost was really high too. Right. We kind of communicating and we just said that this is what is happening, this is how we are handling it. Handling the fire and aftermath was not easy. Thankfully, like you said, nobody got hurt. That was the most, you know, prime importance for us. And you know, we hired the third party inspector, we adjusted and we had that, you know, the whole insurance claim process and it actually turned out to be, you know, a good payout because you not only they covered for the damages, but also lost rent and as such, so we actually could recoup that cost that we had and also the loss trend. So that's really important for passive investors. If you're listening to, keep in mind that if this was your property, even if a single family and if there was a fire or something, by the way, I have a rental property where lightning hit. It was not a huge fire, but I had to deal all this myself, even as a landlord. So passive investors, for you to keep in mind that once you hand over this money, the syndication team, you're leveraging their experience, their expertise and their effort too. We are there to kind of take care of all these things for you while managing the property. And all you have to do is just look out for your distributions coming in and look out for the communications that we are sending in. So that's really important. So going back to these projections we had, Leslie, we had certain projections that conservatively we had projected. Let's talk a little bit about that and let's talk about when we had that five year hold. Why did we exit this property in 19 months? So let's talk about the projections and why did we exit the property and what was the actual outcome compared to the projections?

Absolutely. For the asset we projected a five year hold like you mentioned, cash and cash projected, I think it was like 7.4, 18.5% average on our returns and I believe about a 16 IRR that we projected for this asset. And this was over five year hold going into the asset. Over the 19 months we distributed, cash flow was average of about 8%. So the asset was producing enough more cash flow than what we projected. And at the end when we exited the asset, investors ended up with a 29 average annual returns and about a 28 IRR. And the reason why we. Why we exit? One of the reasons, multiple reasons, but one of the reasons why we exited the asset is because we had met our exit, our projected exit price in 19 months of managing that asset. We grew the NOI so much that it made sense at that point to exit the asset. Plus with the changes in the interest rates, our prepayment penalty that we had, which was significantly higher on this asset at that point was next to nothing at this point. So this provided us a small window of opportunity for us to exit out of the debt without paying any prepayment penalty as well. Plus we also wanted to give our investors this proof of this, this opportunity, proof of concept for them to see that you're able to, to grow your wealth in this and this period of time in a tax advantage way and you're still able to either take those funds and use it however way you want or roll it over and move over to another equally as nice asset with a higher basis going in. So we felt that asset in particular was at the right spot for us to exit. We have finished all of our exterior capex. We have done about 32 units of the interior and there was still enough meat left on the bone for the next investor as well. So.

Right.

So that asset was at the right time for us to exit.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we pulled that trigger so quickly and it turned out to be really great timing too. Right. Because the market started sliding down after that. And this was, you know, another discussion that we had that the market, market, we started seeing that it's changing. So it felt right that let's take that action really quickly. And I know of some deals, the investments syndicated team who were hesitant to take that decision and they held onto these properties and some of these properties are facing a lot of challenges in this market. Right. Especially. Yeah, go ahead.

Some of them dropped 20, 40% in value.

Exactly. And with the right debt structure in place that we cannot insist enough on having that structure when we had that fixed term for the loan, that was really important too. Right. So few of the things that you mentioned and I really liked about our exit is that, first of all, we could achieve that target exit price. Right. We purchased it for 12.5 million and we sold it for 17.8. This was in merely 19 months. This was tremendous. And not only that we achieved that, but we had had, like you said, proven that concept so the next buyer could see that, okay, they can continue doing this. We initially planned, what, about 80 units or something, but we didn't, you know, upgrade so many units. So even if that. That cost was high per. Per fix and flip, we didn't do that. And we didn't have to do it. We just proved the concept and we handed it over to the next buyer so they could continue doing that. And I think the property is still performing very well with the next buyer, too. Too. So thank you so much for kind of summarizing that. What were your, like, I would say, top three learning lessons or the best things that you saw that happening in this property, that you would like to take this as a blueprint and move it to the next property and kind of rip it in there.

So I'll have to say, number one is probably the power of a team. And this is one of the lessons that I learned early on in my journey is like, always surround yourself with people that are way smarter. Having you mad V&Chris as part of the asset management team, great minds that we could always exchange ideas with and bounce off of each other. That was really powerful. And that same translates from the asset management team all the way down to the property managers. I'll say having Carolina property on site, property manager is amazing. So the power of a team makes a huge, huge, huge difference. Difference. The other piece, the other piece you talked about is communication. We pride ourselves. One of our core values at Excel Capital is transparency. We pride ourselves with being transparent and open and wanting to share every part of even struggles or whatever we're going through with members of our community. So I think communication is key. For example, as a new syndicator, your first asset, as a lead sponsor, you have a fire a week later. All kinds of crazy thoughts can go in your head, you know, but we stuck to our core values, informed our investors, and the feedback was amazing. Investors were so excited that people are telling them what's going on with their investments because some of them had invested in other things before that didn't go really well. So I'll say part of a team, communication and what else? And just the value that you bring to a community with the work that we do do.

Right.

I, I know a lot of us look at motor. The, the sale side of multifamily investing is like you're going to grow your world. Yes, you are going to do that. You're going to earn a lot of passive income. Yes, you are going to do that. But the, the most beautiful part of this is like you create a significant amount of value to people.

Absolutely right.

Going back to that asset. Seeing the new playground that we built, seeing kids playing on this there, seeing all the changes that we made and seeing how people feel very comfortable living in there.

The gym area. The gym area was not exactly, exactly.

Adding a spin studio, adding all these things, updating the pool. You know, I've lived in some crazy apartments in the past and going back and seeing what we're able to do for all the tenants and seeing how they appreciate it, for me that that's probably the biggest piece out of that. This asset and all the other assets that we, that we.

I love that Leslie. And knowing you, it does not surprise me what all the things that you listed right now. And that's, that's the reason. I mean, you know, I think I'm gonna talk about, you know, a little bit from my heart. What I like about Excite, especially you and your team is, you know, first of all, when I'm looking at going into deal, my priority is always the investors come first. Right? The investors first. Not always number one priority. Keeping them in mind first and day to day life. Working with you, I have seen we have taken decisions where we at times take a hit on our, what money we are getting. But we have always put our investors first. So to be the internal part of your workings and seeing that you don't only just think about it like that but you actually implement it. That's what's really, really important for me. The conservative analysis and you know, all these things that you talked about that we have a responsibility of our friends and families and people who have earned this money working really, really hard and how you take, you know, hold this responsibility on your shoulders together. I mean that's, that's really important aspect with think outside the stocks for me too. It's not about, you know, putting millions of dollars in the investment, but it's about what the 50,000 individually creates a single income cash flow for one person that's what motivates me, that's what I'm most passionate about. And the last thing is that I really like about your team is how you just said what you think about the team and the community. For you, it's about growing together, learning together. It's not about that. You are on a growth path. And by the way, you are on a tremendous growth path when it comes to Excite Capital. Remember one of the celebrations we had written down on a piece of napkin what your, you know, the goal is going to be in terms of the assets under management. You are on a tremendous growth path, but it's not about singular growth. It's about growing with the community. And I feel, you know, you had such kind words for me today. I think, you know, what we connected is based on values. And, you know, I really see you grow. And let's talk about that. I am. It was a privilege to be a part of this deal and to provide this kind of returns to our investors, to provide this kind of certainty to our investors together. So thank you so much for all your kind words and thank you so much for this experience going in together. It was a very special deal being the first one which went full cycle for both of us. So thank you so much for that. So let's talk about Excite and it's exciting. Where are you guys going? So let's talk about your team, your growth path, and you have grown tremendously. You have a huge team now supporting you. Where are you guys going?

So our goal is to. To keep growing, keep giving value to people. You know, madv, we have experienced a significant amount of growth over the last four years with $168 million of assets under management.

Wow.

But there's absolutely no way we would have been able to do any one of this without members of our community, without our investors that are joining us on this journey. They are the reason why we started the company in the first place, because we saw a need in our community and went out to fulfill it.

Absolutely.

And they have brought in like, seen the value that we're able to bring and they have been very, very supportive and pushing us and putting us out there to go out there and continue to bring these nice assets to buy together with them, them. So we owe a lot of our growth to us, to our investors and our community. And the community is growing. Our goal is to acquire about 5 billion of assets over the next 10 years.

Love that.

So we are doing everything on our end to build the team and the foundation necessary to be able to Handle that that kind of growth. We started off just three of us. We've brought in more full time team members. Now we have an amazing team team right that we feel really strongly about. Our marketing director Macy Price acquisition associate, this mouse mouse. And amazing personality, right. Administrative assistant Jessica Connor. Investor relations associate Kayla Daughtry. And my two amazing partners Tenny Tollefari and Dr. Julia Zoni. And I also forgot my, my brother and our acquisitions analyst, the genius himself, Manny Awesome. We also work with the skill bridge skills bridge program with the US military bringing a lot of intents to come and work with us. We have Mr. Kevin Brown right now working with us. So, so the team keeps growing and we as long as there's this need to provide an opportunity outside of the stock market for safe, secured long term wealth creation, we are always going to be there to find, to put in the work that is necessary to find these assets and to bring it to investors.

Love it.

So looking forward to the journey.

Love it. Love it. And I have no doubt in my mind that you're going to grow not just as excite capital but all the community that you are planning to grow together with. I have no doubt about it. What is being in healthcare professional. Let's talk a little bit about that for passive investors, right? Healthcare professionals in real estate, there's a, a little fear in mind because it's an unknown territory. It feels that okay, there's just a lot of hassle and lot of money involved in it and lot of risk involved in it. What will be that? You know, one thing that you will advise the healthcare professionals to keep in mind to go to this kind of passive investments and kind of skip that, you know, whole rental real estate, the landlording thing completely. What will be that one thing that you will indicate that will help them to, to take their first step in this, in this journey.

I'll say just do a little bit of. Because a lot of us healthcare professionals, we do a great job at educating ourselves in healthcare and everything we need to perform our career right to earn a significant amount of income. But we do nothing to learn about how to grow that income or to secure that income going forward. So we trust some professional that says that they specialize in this and just give them our funds and we don't even put an eye on it. We don't even know what invested in. So I'll say just, just spend a little bit of time. One of our taglines is grow your mind, grow your wealth. It is very important to spend a little bit of Time, just educating yourself about these asset classes.

Right.

I never knew it existed. For a good period of time in my life six years ago, I never knew you could invest in multifamily and earn passive income. I knew absolutely nothing about it. So when we learned about it, that's why we were like this actually exists and we don't know about it. How many people in our community don't know about it?

I know. Right?

Yeah. So that's what I'll say. Just educate. Colleagues are very intelligent people. They are hard working people. So just, just spend a little bit of time, time. Educate yourself about this asset class. Educate yourself about the fundamentals, Excel capital. We provide a ton of education about this. Mad you provide a ton of education about it. So spend some time listening to this and then, and, and then once you feel comfortable enough that you have a basic understanding, try it out. Find a sponsor that you know, like and trust and invest, you know, and find a sponsor that, that has a, that, that, that you, you know, professionally or you know, personally that has a good track record and that, that has. And then invest in markets, in assets that you know in a stable environment. So, and then find that, that opportunity, invest and then sit back and go back to taking care of your patients and watch your money grow for you. So it, it is truly a great way to grow out and I cannot emphasize that enough. So just spend a little bit of time and educate yourself.

Love that, love that. And I think that's really important that they're finding that right team and educating and changing your mindset. That's so important. You need a team that can handle the challenges. They can make the decisions. Like we had to take that quick decision to sell this property so that you can know and trust this team and put your hard earned money into this property. So thank you so much for sharing that. So with that, I'm having so much fun in having this conversation with you, but we kind of are coming to that end. We have a couple of segments left still. So before we, you know, jump into the next segment, this is my favorite segment where I ask about, you know, your diversification strategy. So at this segment I would love to ask you, Leslie. Leslie Awasam. Awesome. How do you think outside the stocks and how do you invest in other asset classes? What other areas that you invest in that our listeners can learn from from?

Well, we just talked about one of the big areas. Yes, it's multifamily investing for sure. But Madvi, the most important area I invest in is myself.

Yeah.

And you mentioned that about personal growth. I think that's, that's why we talk about investments here. I would, I'll encourage listeners. The most important investment that you can ever invest, the one investment that is guaranteed to return a hundred percent every single time, is an investment in yourself, yourself. And outside of that, then you invest in multifamily. I invest in multifamily. I also invest in the businesses that I'm involved in.

Right.

Because I have a good understanding for that. And, and that. So I have a very small amount of investment still in stocks.

Right.

Long term health stocks. But majority of my investments is in real estate and multifamily to be exact.

Thank you so much for sharing that. And now if our listeners want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch?

Absolutely. You could come to our website which is www.excitecapital.com. that's X S I T E X as in xylophone X, S, S, X S I T E. That's ExciteCapital.com you can reach out to me right there. Touch base with any one of us. I'll be more than happy to, to answer any questions or help you, guide you along your journey.

And Leslie is very, very accessible. So guys take advantage of that. And now this is going last round, which is the fun round, I call it a rapid fire round. So are you ready for some quick fun questions and you know, maybe 60 second answers to that question?

Absolutely.

Great. Awesome. So let's, let's get started. My first question is that, you know, can you elaborate that one moment, kind of an aha moment or a mindset shift or paradigm shift that happened or with a book or an advice that you received that changed your life completely?

Yeah, I think I kind of alluded to that. It was when I started reading Second Chance and he talked about the banking system, how the US Banking system work and how all the concepts about money that just that the, the level of expansion I got from reading that book is like nothing I've ever experienced before.

Right.

So I'll have to say when I picked up that book and actually started reading it.

That's awesome. And if you are to define one word that drives you this entire year, what will that one word be?

Growth.

Love it. And I know that by growth you mean the growth of you, your mindset, your company and the community around you. So I exactly know what that growth means to you.

I have to keep growing. It's what keeps me, I cannot stay stagnant. So I have to keep growing, keep Learning and keep helping others grow as well. That's something that is very important to me. Being able to grow and see the people around me grow as well.

Love that one mindset advice that you will give to the listeners, either it's for part of a book or anything else. What will be that one advice to the listeners?

Take action. That's what I would say. And that's one of the things that. That early on I struggle with. So we could spend a lot of time in analyzing or reading and studying and understanding all these concepts. But the most important thing you can do is take action, right? Because you don't really know until you take action and then see the results and then you can make more analysis.

Love it. Absolutely love it. And the one impact that you would like to leave into the world, and I know you, you know, you think beyond this syndication, real estate, investments, you think beyond for people. So what is that one impact that you would like to leave to the world and what are you doing for that?

I would say I would want to be able to contribute to the growth of at least a thousand people. When I say growth, I want to be able to see a thousand people come up from the journey that I am as a. A W2 employee and grow into entrepreneurship. To be successful into entrepreneurship is something that I'm seeing myself go through, and I like to transfer that same tool to at least a thousand people. That's one thing that I have as one of my goals, and I hope to see it through one day.

Love it. Love it. And Leslie, this kind of brings me back that so many things that we have in common from the values, from the conservative analysis. My goal, I'm on a mission to change the financial trajectory of one family at a time and thousands more to go. And looks like, you know, thousand is your number to change the growth mindset of I. It's just amazing to see that, you know, how we could kind of run the parallel path and we kind of keep on meeting. And I'm. I'm sure that, you know, even as a partnership, we have a lot in future together marked for us. So I love that. And I cannot end this episode without talking about your optimized life, you know, mindset. So tell us a little bit about, you know, that health objective that you have for us.

So optimized Life is the tagline of a wellness clinic that my wife, one other partner, and myself are founding in Baltimore, Maryland, is called Vita Nova Wellness Clinic, and it's focusing on optimizing the life of our lives. Of our clients. We also specialize in ketamine infusions which helps in treating drug resistant depression and anxiety. So this is something that my wife is really passionate about and one of my partner, an anesthesiologist that I work with, a great guy that studies the mind as well. So it's something that, that aligns with a lot of the stuff that I do. So I'm helping out in the back end of the operations. That clinic is probably going to launch next month. So our goal is to meet people where they are and create a plan to move them to where they see as an optimized life for them, you know, so using all kinds of alternative therapies in order to move people along those journeys journey. So we're going to be doing the infusions, we're going to do vitamin infusions as well, do some meditation and some mindset training and coaching along the way for our clients. So I'm excited to see that that project come to life so you know, and contribute as much as I can to it.

So thousand people's, you know, growth, mindset change, the financial change and also the holistic healing kind of a change. Wow. You are on a tremendous path, Leslie. I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for this candid and this honest conversation. I had so much talking to you today and you are very close to my heart. I have that soft spot about you, you know that I wish you all the best for everything and especially for making that impact in, you know, thousands of people life. I wish you success in that journey and you know, what you are, what you have done and where you're going. I have tremendous respect for that. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much. Melvi. Thank you for having me on this platform. You are a significant a person on our journey so I'm grateful to have you as part of the network and I'll definitely look forward to working with you on more opportunities and we gotta hold each other accountable on our journeys of bringing growth to a tremendous amount of people.

So absolutely.

So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for those kind words and thank you so much for again being here.

Thanks for tuning in to the Think Outside the the Stocks podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and subscribe. Maadvi is on a mission to change the financial trajectory of one family at a time. With a thousand 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 on active income with Passive Real Estate Investments. If you if you learn something new, please share it with one person today. And if you have 60 seconds, please leave us an Apple review to help us reach more people like you. Tune in for the next episode.