285. Market Value vs Investment Value with Ryan Cadwell

Welcome to the Real Estate Investing School Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Jensen. Our guest today is Ryan Cadwell. Ryan is a seasoned real estate professional and managing partner at Resolute RDM, an Indianapolis-based real estate firm, um, with over 17 years in the industry as a real estate broker since 2008. Ryan's been instrumental in over $100 million in real estate transactions. Development, asset management, property management deals, flipping, etc. What sets Ryan apart is his refreshingly honest, no Kool-Aid drinking approach to real estate investing and his philosophy of creating a life you don't want to retire from. He also sits on the board of 91 Place, helping youth who age out of foster care find stable housing. Ryan's been married to his business partner for 17 years. Went from being a minister to embracing agnosticism. And despite living in Indianapolis, he's somehow a diehard Red Sox fan with season tickets. His approach to both business and life is refreshingly honest in an industry that loves to oversell dreams. Welcome to the show, Ryan.

Oh, good to be here, Joe.

Yeah, man, I'm excited to dive in. First, I want to pick apart a few of the things from your bio there. I like it. I love the idea. And I think this would kind of obviously be an overarching theme of today is just designing a life you don't need, you don't want to retire from. It's like that's really what people are looking for. People talk about retiring early or building a life where they can do whatever they want, but it's really just designing a life you don't need to get away from. You don't want to change. It's like you're living it the way you want to live it. And a lot of times that's not the case. People get dive into real estate, they start flipping businesses or wholesaling businesses. Or just managing properties that are just draining their time and energy, and they're like, crap, this isn't what I wanted out of this. Um, and anyway, I like that idea. I think that definitely hits very close to home for me and how I view why I got into real estate. But anyway, welcome to the show, man. Tell us a little bit about, you know, your story and how, how you got into real estate in general.

Thanks, Joe. Yeah, I mean, the philosophy's been born out of, you know, 17 years of making mistakes, and, and I got into it for a lot of the same reasons that we're going to talk about why you probably shouldn't get into it. Um, you know, it bought into a lot of the stuff early on. I mean, I did grow up in it. My dad had apartments since I— since the time I was 4. Um, he, he had a business and he ran some, some lower income apartments, so I was around all of it, um, for a lot of my life and But when I got into it, you know, I hadn't fully figured out what, what it is I really wanted. I thought I wanted, you know, the investment, real estate investment side. I thought we were just going to be investors. I didn't really plan on running and operating, becoming a certified property manager and then actually running an operation side of it. The whole intention was really to just be an investor, but Through the, you know, the 17-year process interviewing some people, we figured out we had a lot more experience than some of our, some of the counterparts. And so that's what, I mean, that's what drew us into that. And then the philosophy over time, I mean, that just pulls from making the mistakes and figuring out how to be happy at the same time that you're going through market cycles like we're in the middle of right now.

So, would you say that you are there, that you've done it, that you've designed and built a life you don't want to retire from?

I don't know that I'd ever say— I don't know that it's wise to ever say that I've arrived. I think the process is really— that's the part that you really want to be pursuing is the process because it's always going to be changing. I would say I enjoy my life. I would say that, you know, a lot of that has just been accepting things in life, enjoying what you do have, knowing that there are good things coming in the future as long as you just continue to work at it. So, in that regard, yes. Have I achieved all of my financial goals? No. I don't know that I ever will. I'm kind of that 1% guy where I always want to be 1% better today than I was yesterday. Mm-hmm. Um, so it, yes and no. I mean, kind of the point, um, I mean, I had a grandfather that retired at like 45 and I thought that was my goal. I'm 45 now and the idea of not having something to contribute to just doesn't really excite me all that much. So yeah, I mean, I would say I enjoy my life. I enjoy what I get to do, the people I get to do it with, all of those things. And I mean, mostly because, you know, we, our philosophy really is diving into it with our clients and saying, why, why do you really want to do that? And usually, usually you get to a freedom conversation. It's usually always about freedom. It's always about some— they want free from something. You know, some people it's, I hate my job, I hate my boss, I, you know, and 10, you know, 10 properties will allow me to pay all my bills. And usually, you know, that's where the conversation starts until we dive into the financials and we figure out how much their monthly, you know, at-home costs are, and then what, you know, what 10 rentals actually look like. But yeah, um, that's usually what it runs into. And then it just allows us to kind of come along alongside our clients and, uh, and to just kind of explore that side of it. Because most the time everybody's selling a, you know, most the time everybody's selling a just the dream. They're selling the, you know, the $5 brown bag special version of things instead of, instead of the full deeper, you know, the deeper reasoning and having the, having the why figured out.

So what is the deeper then? So if the dream is like, hey, you know, you can make money and you don't have to work anymore, passive income, cash flow, yay, real estate's cool. You know, I assume like that's the dream. What's the reality?

Well, the first question is, is what are you going to— okay, you, you get to that point in your life, whatever this vision is, you, you arrive in that moment. What is— you wake up the very next day having won that championship. Now what does your— now what does your day look like? Start describing that. And can you have that now before you even get there? So sometimes it's not, sometimes you're substituting, and it kind of dives into just basic psychology. Sometimes you're substituting this idea that real estate's going to somehow answer a deeper problem or a deeper need you have, as opposed to saying, which, I mean, that's a bad reason to make a real estate decision. So, um, what is, and Um, trying to answer some other psychological reason that, you know, I, you know, I really don't want to keep doing this job.

I, you know, everybody on TikTok looks— that does real estate looks like they drive, you know, amazing cars and are with beautiful people. And, you know, they get that idea in their head that happiness is on the other side. Yeah.

Instead of, instead of realizing happiness is really in the journey of of pursuing that. There's nothing wrong with pursuing it. It's the pursuit though that's going to make you become the person to, to be deserving of that goal.

So it's not just about, you know, the numbers and the math. I mean, the numbers and the math matter, but why you're doing it, why you're doing it dictates even, even on your ROI. Like, how are you going to adjust your ROI on a deal If I mean, for instance, I had, I had a client that told me they were buying a rental property because their kid, they wanted to, they wanted to use that money for their kid's education. I said, okay, how old's your kid? 7. Okay, you got 11 years then. That's kind of a long time. That's a, that you're probably going to go through a peak and valley of the market cycle. Don't know if you want to completely plan that the market cycle is going to hit peak in 11 years when you need the money, right?

Because, but that's essentially what they had said was, I'm going to hold this for 11 years. I'm going to sell it to pay when he graduates from high school. Okay, well, that makes a lot of assumptions. Not a total bad motivation. Let's just make sure we, let's just make sure that maybe we need to get out in year 9. You need to do something else with those funds because the market's peaking in that moment.

Yeah. So just those kinds of things with, and there's nothing wrong with being young and excited in real estate. There's nothing wrong with it. I, you know, I've been there. I know a lot of people that are there.

Yeah.

It's just understanding that there are people, a lot. Well, the seasoned investors, we like, we like to take our product to market when everybody's optimistic, when money's really cheap, like we want to be early and then we want to be there when, when that part of the cycle hits because that's when we're going to realize a bunch of our money. On the flip side, being a broker, being an operator, working with customers, We're trying to help our people avoid those, those things. Because if you buy at the wrong time, if you buy at the wrong time, you're in basically a cash pinch the entire time. You're going to think we're, we as managers, for instance, you're going to think that we're not doing our job because you're not cashflow. Well, that's, that's not really our job is to keep it full, to operate it. And to be as cost efficient as possible. It doesn't mean we're not going to spend money.

So, I mean, there's—

essentially when you're playing so many roles, right? Like, because I feel the same way sometimes. Like, like I have my agent license and, and sometimes I remind myself not every client is an investor and they're just trying to buy a house. And I'm looking at like, I'm also an investor coach. I'm like, oh, you want to do XYZ?

Did it?

And it's like, wait, wait, wait. It's not my pro forma. They can do their own pro forma. I'm their agent. Other people I'm their coach, other people I'm selling to. Anyway, like, say, it's essentially wearing so many hats and seeing different sides of it. But I like what you said, Ryan, about knowing what your goal is, because people always ask, what's a good deal? You know, is this a good deal? Can you take a look at this? And it's like, for the person with your scenario, you know, hey, we want to have something to pay for our kids' college, you know, they're not going to need max cash flow day one. You're going to buy something that's going to appreciate and be a good, strong asset over time. When somebody's like, hey, I need to retire and sit 6 months because I can't stand my boss, they're going to maximize cash flow. You know what I mean? Like that, they can't wait 8 years for appreciation. So there's not one's right or wrong, but knowing your goal and knowing your time frame makes a big deal. And like you said, I, I, some people are like, oh, I want cash flow. I'm like, oh cool, if you had it today, like you said, are you going to retire? And they're like, oh no, I love my job, I'm going to be at it the next 15 years. I'm like, then the cash flow is not really going to make a difference if you make enough money and you're going to stay either way. What, like you were saying, what does it look like if you tomorrow, would anything even change? Like, no, it's like, well, then maybe we would need to reevaluate what we're trying to accomplish, you know? So I love that approach to it.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, it, and it really is just about what, because real estate, the coolest part about real estate is that it impacts everybody's life. Yeah. I mean, no matter where you live, real estate always has an impact, how it's being used, what the highest and best use is. What different developments are coming in, what different grocery stores and, and, you know, experiences, all that stuff, you know, impacts our daily life. And that side of it's fun. It's just a matter, it, it, it really comes back to like why and what, I mean, a lot of the basic questions, why, what, how, like, why do you want to do it? And then what is your required return? If you can make 8 or 9% with your investment guy and you're willing to pull your cash out of that, out of that, but this deal over here is only going to make 6.5 or 7%. There's another reason why you're doing it. And usually, I mean, there's a point to which I'll even ask people, is it ego? Do you want to be standing in a party and say, I own 10 properties because you like the way that feels? And you need to be, you need to be honest about that.

I've been that guy before, and I made some bad deals during that time because I was doing it for the wrong reason.

Um, but that's, uh, that's what I try to have that direct conversation with our clients, because if it is ego, that's fine. I mean, there are, there are completely ego-driven projects I know going on in Indianapolis right now where the investor or developer's making pennies, like 4 or 5%. And the only reason he wants to do it is because it's going to make front page news. So there are ego projects in real estate. Yeah. But you got to have the money and the capital to not care too.

Yeah.

When you can leave, you know, is this ego or is it branding? Is it a long-term play or short-term play? There's different ways to look at it, you know. I love it, man. I want to dive a little bit into 91 Place. That's a— that's an interesting niche, interesting service. I assume that ties into real estate since you're providing housing. Is that a sustainable, profitable thing you're part of? But it's also giving back. Like, you want to kind of dive into some of the details on that project?

Sure. 91 Place. I'm actually just on the board. It's a nonprofit that— okay. That I support from a board position. The nonprofit was originated or started 5 years ago. The goal was to youths that were transitioning out of the foster system, the state system that, and/or, I mean, you even find people that are couch surfers in college. And that's where a lot of, a lot of our support comes in is offering a place for them. They come in, they go through a process to be onboarded. And overall the program is, right now we have 3 houses. I believe after next month, they're all going to be completely occupied. But we also, it's a full wraparound system. So when they come in, they don't just get, it's not just like, here's your house and here's your food. It also dives into, you know, there's therapy available, there's community available, there's programming, there's workforce options like they have a coffee shop as well that where they, where they're able to help employ and then train. So it's a full wraparound type of type model. And that was really important for us. We've, you know, we've been a part of a few other organizations in the past that, that were more of just the front end. They're just the emergency piece.

Yeah.

As opposed to getting them in, getting them on the trajectory and then, and then giving them a way to walk with them. Um, and I serve, uh, both in the treasurer's role and then as well as on the, on the facility side of things. Um, trying to, you know, trying to just focus on locating new housing opportunities, um, to potentially be able to buy and then, and then turn into, uh, resources for, for the clients that we serve.

Yeah, I think it's cool when you can find a way to combine, you know, real estate investing and your knowledge with that in a way to serve and give back. But it can be a big win-win, you know what I mean? It doesn't— and it's not sustainable if it's not a win-win, right? Like, you know, if it's something people like, oh, you know, a charity shouldn't make a penny and, you know, they should be all donation money, and then it's bleeding money every year, it's like, it won't be sustainable. It needs to be able to self-sustain at minimum, but enough profit to also motivate people to continue with it. So I— do you guys have a model like that? Are you owning the real estate? Is there an upside on this too where you can make it a sustainable, profitable thing so that you can expand and keep doing it? Or, or you're not owning the real estate, you just find housing?

I don't personally— none of, uh, None of the property we own do I have any ownership in. I don't know that I would, I don't know that I would as in order to avoid conflict of interest. I think what, where I see myself working with them is in locating, analyzing, and then potentially even building. Because I mean, we have ground-up experience just being able to come in, work with different grant funding and be able to create create some solutions with them alongside what we do on our day job.

So, does the company own, does 91 Place, the organization own the real estate or do they just lease it?

Right now it's leased. We do have some generous donors that where we're talking about potential down the road, down the road, some potential that where we might be able to own it. I do know when, right when I was getting to know them, I had, we had a property that we had just built ground up. And we were talking to them actually about purchasing it at that time. The funding, the funding for that particular thing did not qualify with one of the local, the local resources they had. So, and then we ended up finding another buyer. So we weren't able to come together on that one. But We do have the capability of like building something that would be, uh, that would be based around that. I think the, the trick in that is the profit for profit side of things. Um, there are ways for there to be private and public type of, of monies available. Usually the public money is some sort of grant, could be federal or state funding. Um, that kind of stuff. And you, and for the, I mean, the biggest thing that in my experience has been, if you're going to do that, it just all has to be above board. I mean, you just have to be honest about it. Yeah. I mean, um, it, it doesn't have to not make money. I mean, it, it could be a positive play. Um, I do know that we partner with a few people to where like one of the things they get is, is the tax benefit. Of it, um, along with just the, you know, just for them to do the right thing according to, according to their world.

Yeah, no, I just, I just love the idea of like finding a way to combine those worlds, you know what I mean? Because even as a donor, like, oh man, I'd rather donate to a place that's buying the assets on 20 years from now. They've got, you know, 10 paid-off assets that they can really expand and use to give back to these kids, keep it all in-house and charitable. It doesn't need to be a big moneymaker, but make it take advantage of the benefits of real estate. Why? I'd rather, I'd rather donate to them buying than donate to them leasing and the money's gone to some landlord instead, you know. That, yeah, and like I said, it's tricky. It's not like that's an easy answer, but, you know, I'm just thinking out loud for listeners that are— a lot of the listeners are trying to come up with strategies. How can I get into real estate? What's going to be niche. And, and I'm like, oh, wouldn't that be a cool niche if someone found a way to, to own the real estate and provide a service like this that could expand and grow and, and, and make it even maybe more, more in control? And, you know, and it doesn't have to be, you know, post-foster homes. It could be a lot of different avenues. But I just like thinking about that because I know a lot of our listeners are like, what should— what niche should I get into? And I think that's one thing with real estate is there's so many options. You know, over 17 years you've dabbled in most of them, if not all of them, it sounds like. What advice would you give to a newer person? Maybe they've done like a house hack or, you know, a rental accidentally when they moved and couldn't sell their house or something. But what advice would you give to them if they're like, hey, I want to get into real estate? Like, where should they start? Wholesale, flipping, long-term, multifamily, syndications? Like, Where's a good place to start for the, the newbie? You know, cause there's too many strategies, you can't do 'em all.

Yeah, I think the best place to start is, uh, remember to be patient and then also remember to look around at what's, look around at what is around you right now. There's usually a stepping stone that's in front of you somewhere, like there's going to be an opportunity that comes up. You know, talk to people about— talk to people, go to networking events, um, talk to, you know, talk to brokers. And, and you're going to have to talk to a— to probably a lot. Like, it's, it's not going to be like the first person you come across. Typically, you're going to need to have a bunch of conversations. Um, but don't don't just assume that, don't just assume that you need to go find it really, really far outside yourself. Like I've never done a syndication, but that's where I'm going to start. Uh, it could be as simple as one of your neighbors down the street lost their job and they need to get out of this mortgage and are willing to sell it to you. I mean, you might be able to get in and help them at the same time. And one of the other investment things I learned when I was younger was, and this pertained to stocks, I figured out it actually pertains to everything investing. What are you interested in? What do you like? What are you naturally paying attention to? Like, yeah, look at your news cycle. What are the things that draw you in? And then, and focus there because you're naturally going to have like you're actually going to have interest in, in a bunch of those things and it's going to make more sense to you. So you're going to be able to make better decisions because you're going to be better informed. Just simply being— just off of simply being interested. For me, it was Apple. I loved Apple products. I paid attention to their market cycle and their earnings calls. So why wouldn't it make sense for me to invest there? Made some money there. And, and, and for us, it's, you know, it's been, it's been sometimes it's just the low hanging fruit. Like don't overcomplicate it. Don't push. Don't force. Like, um, there are some times you need to grind. I'm not saying you're not going to have to grind. You're going to put, you're going to have to grind, but sure. Just don't, don't, you shouldn't have to kick open every door.

No, I like that advice. Like you said, like, look at what's around. And like I say, different markets have different benefits. Like some markets are vacation hotspots, some aren't, you know what I mean? Some markets, they need horses to plant. People need places to put their horses. It's like, oh, maybe do a horse farm, you know what I mean? Other places, that's not the case. You know, you could just go tap into ADUs, go find all your neighbors that have spaces for ADUs, like, hey, If I pay for the ADU to be put back there, can we use your land? You know, that's what the hot new thing in California right now. They just changed the laws and you can put ADUs and you can even sell the ADU separate. You can de-parcel in there. So, you know, find out what's good in your area. And then I love what you added on top of that, Ryan, is and what out of the options in your area, you know, what do you actually care about? If you love golf, maybe Focus on, you know, golf retreat, you know, vacation rentals or something, you know, it's like if you hate golf, no, maybe like camping, go focus on doing, you know, RV camps or sites. So, you know what I mean? Like if you love it, you're going to probably have more intimate knowledge of it because you've been participating in that world for years and, and you'll just be more interested in staying in it. So I love that advice, Ryan, because there's, there's so many ways to do it. That it can be disabling. You know, people get paralyzed because there's too many options and they've listened to too many podcasts and read too many books and they're like, well, Ryan's done everything. What are you focused on now? You know, because, you know, 17 years in, you've bought, you've sold, you've brokered, you've flipped, you've wholesaled, you've long-termed, you've multifamily, you've single-family, you've done it all. What, what do you like if you had to like pick one and what do you guys focus on now?

Well, we've got, we've got a residential development where we're working with the city on right now, a couple hundred units. And that, you know, that, that was one of those low-hanging fruit things that came out of relationships that we had. What are we focusing on right now? Into 2026. A lot of it is us just being open to what, to even my own advice in that, in that we are going to look more into the commercial side of things. Some retail, some neighborhood retail. We've done some good things for some clients in that, you know, in that arena. Really just trying to figure out when some of the debt that they've been talking about for, 18 to 24 months is actually going to be pushed into some deals, whether it's recapitalization or they just flat out push it onto the market. We've looked at some auctions. I mean, everything's always about buy right, don't overpay. So, I mean, one of the biggest things is being patient and being patient and making sure that what is being presented fits. Don't just, you know, don't just put it on just because it shows up. That's the other balancing factor to what I said is just because it shows up, sometimes it's noise. Sometimes it's not the signal either.

So what are we into?

Looking at a lot of, you know, local retail deals. And within markets that we know and/or have partners that know the market, because no matter how much we read New York Times or any of those other, you know, Washington Post, those are big, big news outlets. And whether they affect us is, it really doesn't make that much of an overall impact. It's usually just emotional stuff. And plugging into your local markets. I mean, your local markets have way more to do with, with what's going on than, um, for us. I mean, I, one of the things that I watch that I got advice from one of my, one of my teachers in one of my classes that, that I'm taking is, uh, just always be paying attention to, to your job, to, to what's going on with jobs. So jobs are gonna have a direct relationship to rents. They're gonna have a direct relationship to how much they spend. That's gonna directly impact commercial. So no matter what you're doing, jobs matter. And, you know, maybe set, you know, one of my tips would be set a Google alert that's on for jobs in a specific market. If you're gonna invest there, you need to be getting daily updates on what's going on. In that particular market. So I like that. One of the things our team's focusing on—

I like that. I want to ask you one more question before we dive into our final 4. We always ask the same final 4 questions, everybody on the show. But I want to ask you, can you talk a little bit about the difference between investment value over market value? You talk about when you buy, you focus on investment value. How is that different than market value? Because everyone wants to know they're getting a deal, you know, they're not overpaying. Is it, you know, is now a good time to buy? All that kind of plays into market value. But what— how do you contrast that with investment value?

So investment value versus market value. Investment value is 100% a personal thing because it's based on what your required return on investment is, which is going to be based on what your cost of capital is or what, how much, you know, how much you have to pay for your loans. So you got to make more than what you're paying on your capital. So investment value and market value are usually not the same thing. And they're very rarely intersect. They're usually in contrast somehow on the graph there, you know, Every now and then investment value is going to be higher than market value. Uh, think of like the '08 crash through 2012. There was a ton of stuff that could be bought on sale and what it was really worth, you know, and even would appraise for could be higher than. Market value is what everybody's going to tell you it's worth from the brokerage side. If you're the seller, it's what you want. You want market value to be high and you want people to pay market value. If you're the buyer, you want to pay investment value.

So the, what the market's doing is that constant tug and pull, uh, between those two, those two definitions.

Um, and there's a lot of things, you know, if you're early and you're trying to figure out, okay, what does this really mean? There's a lot of things you can dive into if you just if you look at, learn what cost of capital is, learn what your cost of capital is. I can't tell you how many years that I was buying stuff and, you know, doing my spreadsheets and all that stuff, but I was never really, I never really took into effect, into account how much, how much did this money actually cost me? And then, and then my projected return, was it high enough to even pay for it? In some cases, when I looked at my numbers, my, my cash on cash return might be 5, and my debt was 6.5%. Is that really— was that really what I wanted?

Yeah.

So the tug and pull of those things is always what sets the market. And whether or not it's a seller's and buyer's market really probably has more to do with if we're heading towards investment value versus, versus market value. In addition to that, one of the other things that I've learned lately, I've I've— and if you're not doing this, I suggest it. Meet some— and meet some finance people that work at local banks, regional banks, that kind of thing. Take them to lunch. A, take them to lunch. Normally they're paying for people's lunch. And when you take them to lunch, ask them, what are you seeing in the market?

What are you—

which way is the market going? I, I mean, I spent like a year trying to figure out some of the deals that I thought were terrible in like '22 to '23, I was like, why are—

why is any debt person doing this? This looks like it's going to fall apart. Like, I don't— and some of them filled me in. Like, if the bank is a publicly traded bank, they only have a few ways to make sure that their stock price doesn't go down. So originating loans is one of those. So you got to be sure you understand, like, that other side, because I used to treat lenders like, like they were one of my ways to defend myself from making a bad decision. You got to understand lender motivation. If that lender is trying to hit a stock price by having so many originations, they might take a bad deal like, yeah, that, that has a higher risk profile. And, and at the end of the day, the person that loses is the investor that put in the equity because they're still going to get their 70 to 75% LTV, usually even if the investor loses all the equity.

So yeah, no, I think it's a really— I like— I love your balanced approach to everything, Ryan, because you're like, hey, there's this, but here's the other side, you know what I mean? Which is really like the only responsible way to do any of this is you always got to look at the flip side because The advice of going to lenders to pick their brain on market cycles and what's going on and what they're looking for, I think there's a lot of value to that. You know, they have a lot of these have big, big, big money behind what they're doing and the reasons they're doing and why the rates are the way they are and what they won't do and what they will do and what they're seeing changing. Like we're seeing a lot of lending thing get like a lot of the DSCR loans are getting a lot less strict than they used to be. And it's like, what's that going to do to the market? If these get even more lenient, you know. And so having that insider info from an experienced, you know, uh, educated lender can be really, really cool. And then, like I said, balance that with what's their motivation. And that's true of everybody. Your agent, you know, what's his motivation? If he's just trying to make a commission, you know. Your, your property management company, like, you always got to understand their motivation, or else you're going to have a Pollyanna view of things and miss out on stuff and potentially get blindsided. But, but I do love the idea of investment value over market value because it can go either way. You know, it depends on what kind of debt are you getting at what price. Like, I just opened a HELOC. I've now got a couple hundred grand at 4% for the next 6 months because I have an introductory rate.

Whoa.

That's a bit— that's different than me going and borrowing money from a hard money lender at 12%. Now it's this moment in time, but my investment value, I could go pull off some deal and maybe pay over the market value if I can because of my access to cheaper debt. Or if you've got cash, that changes it. You know, it's like you could pay more than what it's worth. You could pay less than what it's worth. And the market value I'm saying is what it's worth, you know, air quotes. But what's cool about it is, like you said, it depends on what your goals are and your situation. And none of it matters. You don't care what the market says it's worth if the deal is no good for you, even if it's, oh, this is such a good deal. You're like, doesn't work for my numbers. Or somebody's like, why are you buying that? That's a trash deal. You're just like, hey, works for my numbers, you know? So as long as your investment numbers are solid, then it kind of helps quiet some of the noise because it's like, it doesn't matter what else is going on if it works for your investment value. Depending on all of those personal criteria of timeframe and access to capital and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I love that point. I think it's something people need to think of more often.

And I think what you, what you actually just showed there is that's also like that specific example where your, where your debt is, is that low. Sometimes you, sometimes we're going to lose out on deals who, to people who have situations like that.

Where, where their numbers are better because they've got different capital requirements for a minute.

Yeah, right. And, and so sometimes you're not going to get the deal because they need the deal to work that capital for a specific amount of time. That, that's going on with private equity. When private equity gets into buying stuff, they've got to put that money to work. They're gonna sometimes outbid you because for them, it costs them more to not have the deal and have to pay their people that they owe, you know, certain interest payments to. So you got to also understand that from the, from your competition too. Just because you lost out on the deal doesn't mean your numbers were bad. It just meant that they had to have it. You didn't. Sometimes that's a blessing too.

Yeah, because if you had bought it at 12%,, you know, on a hard money loan, it would have been a horrible flip. But me buying it 4% on a HELOC introductory rate, it's profitable, you know, but you're glad you didn't get it because it would have been a trash deal for you, you know what I mean? Depending on your situation. So yeah, it's cool to think of. I want to dive into our final 4 questions here before we let you go. But what's a way for people to reach out to you if they want to invest with you, learn from you, mentee? What, what, what's a good way for them to connect?

LinkedIn. LinkedIn's an easy way. And then ResoluteRDM.com. That's an, that's an even easier way. My email's right on there or fill out the contact us. We're not, we're not a deep company. So, you know, if you reach out, you specifically ask for me, it'll land in my inbox and I'll, I'll reach out to you.

Love it. All right. First question. If you could send a text bomb to the world, boom, everybody's phone's going to go off. They have a message from Ryan. What's it going to say?

Oh, enjoy life, find balance. It's always a journey. And then listen, listen to the advice that I'm— I would tell— I'd even text myself to listen to your own advice because sometimes you don't.

I like it. All right. What is a book or podcast recommendation you would have for our listeners?

Oh, I mean, my favorite, my favorite one is the Daily Stoic. I listen to that every day.

I read that every day, mostly just to keep everything in balance and to always be, always remember that today could be my last day. So, remain present. Yeah. You said Memento Mori? Absolutely.

I've got that tattooed on my left calf, so I feel you.

Okay.

Yeah, that's cool. I love that. That's a good— that's a great recommendation, The Daily Stoic. All right, next question here. What is one of the most expensive or interesting mistakes that you've made in real estate investing?

Hiring the wrong people. Yeah, hiring the wrong people and trusting, learning that whole trust battle, learning how to vet And, and I think if I, if I really distilled that down, it really came to when somebody shows you who they are, believe them and then act accordingly. So if, if they're willing to cut corners on things, this especially small stuff, they'll cut corners on big stuff.

Yeah.

Um, when the pressure's on. So Like, just when somebody shows you who they are, it's not your job to change them. That was one of my biggest flaws is, oh, you know, they'll figure it out. It's not your job to change them and believe them when they tell you who they are.

That is good advice. All right, last question, then we'll let you go. What is a one word or short phrase to encapsulate why you love real estate investing?

Journey.

There you go.

The whole thing is never— it's never really a destination. And no matter how good you have it or how bad it turned into, the next day could be the complete opposite. So, um, it, you know, it will distill you down. And sometimes trial by fire will, you know, it'll harden you into a diamond if you allow it to.

I love it, man. Well, appreciate your time. Thanks so much for being on the show and sharing your wealth of knowledge from your years of experience, Ryan.

Thanks, Joe. It's been an actual, uh, an absolute pleasure. Appreciate it.

This is Joe Jensen signing off for the Real Estate Investing School podcast, reminding you to find your niche.