How To Jump Back From A Lot Of Bad Deals With Gavin Gallagher

Foreign this is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of.

Dollars worth of property for panties on the dollar.

Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host, CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson. Hey folks, this is Gavin Jay Gallagher and I've just finished out an episode on the no Closers show with Scott and we talk all about my roller coaster ride of a career where I've gone from making millions in a couple of months to losing millions in a couple of months and the mindset and all of the behaviors and habits that you need to try to figure out in order to support your career and make sure you stay winning rather than losing.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Nook Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson, excited to have you here with us today. Even more excited and jacked up for our special guest today, this guy. You guys are in for a treat, I'll tell you that right now. This guy, he's been a real estate investor and developer for over 25 years. He's based out of Dublin where he runs East Point Business Park. It's a successful office park that he and his family have been developing since the late 90s. Now he's also a wealth of international experience, having spent six years living and working in London, the south of Spain, Dubai, Qatar, Ghana and West Africa. He's all over the place, which is great because I wanted this episode to talk a little about investing internationally and also talking about, hey, what happens here affects a lot of the world here in the United States market. He's the host of the popular real estate investing podcast behind the Facade. So we honored to have Gavin Gallagher join us this morning. Good morning, Gavin. How you doing today, Scott?

I'm doing great. And that was the best intro I've had all day. I hope I can live up to such an intro.

I'm available for birthdays and bar miffas and all that stuff if you never need to walk and introduce you beforehand. But no, honored to have you here on the no Closer show. Yeah, let's talk a little bit. You've been investing for just a few years. You've seen some ups and downs investing there in Ireland. And you and I were talking before the podcast last week as we were figuring everything out there. You've had good ups and some downs like everybody else. You want to talk a little bit.

About that oh yeah, we went through a. I went through. And the nation went through a bit of a roller coaster and it wasn't that different to what the US went through in the lead up to the 2008 crash. But our economy was coming from a much, much lower place and we had a very stagnated economy back in the 1990s and stuff. And so all of a sudden, around about, I was in college at the time, around about 95 or so, the economy just started to fire on all cylinders and it just became this runaway freight train. And as soon as I qualified, I was like, I want in on this freight train. And I bought a property. I bought this tiny little property. It was my first deal and I, I bought it for, I paid 25,000 for it. And within a couple of weeks after getting planning permission, I sold it onto a builder for 125,000. So 5x return, like straight away. And I was like, whoa, I'm addicted. I love this. And I went on to do deal after deal after deal, just like that, kind of really huge returns. One deal in particular just was off the charts. I don't think the calculator can calculate the IRR because, because I borrowed 100% of the money that I put in and I put down a million euro, which is, which at the, at today's rates is about a million dollars. Okay. And I put a million down. Every penny of it was, was borrowed. And six weeks later I sold that property for 3.5 million. So a two and a half times profit in six weeks. And I can just remember thinking, wow, like this is the ultimate to be a part of now. That was 2006, so we didn't quite see what was coming down the train. But it was then 2008 hit and because of all the success that I had enjoyed in those years, your, your due diligence process becomes very sketchy and you just kind of say, this has worked for me before, I'm going to go and do it again. And that kind of led to a lot of poorly decision, poor decisions and a couple of deals that really were. If I had sat back, if somebody had been sitting on my shoulder and saying, Gavin, this is not a good deal. Why are you doing. A lot of it was to do with ego. And of course, sudden success really can impact the ego in a big way and it can start making you think that you're smarter than everyone else and all this. And so I suffered from that quite badly. And I went into a deal that I had a couple of people Tell me they're not so sure. It's a great deal. And, and I was like, trust me, this is a great deal. And five, six years later, I was like, my God, how did I get into this deal? And so it's. Yeah, so the property industry, the real estate industry is one that can be both highly rewarding and extraordinarily humbling. And I had a really humbling experience where the banks came after me in a big way. I spent six years, I won't say on the run, but it felt like I was on the run. And in that time they took my family home. I ended up getting a divorce. I ended up with having to ask my brother for assistance because I couldn't afford rent. And I was like on my knees having just two or three years before that, flying first class, all this kind of stuff, having the fancy car, big house and all that. And so it's incredible how without a really solid mindset and some good philosophy behind you, you can make such terrible mistakes. And unfortunately we've seen that played out with the crypto market and all this kind of stuff. I'm reading about guys that lost, they had 5 or 6 million in crypto and suddenly they have like less than 5,000 or something. Like it's literally fallen that much. Unfortunately, history tends to repeat itself. So I try to focus on that with my own podcast now, that kind of story.

No, I appreciate you sharing all that. That's definitely when you do have success and you're off rocking and rolling, as they say. A lot of times everybody can make money in an increasing market. It's when things change that you've got to have those good habits or that you have a good foundational. Now let me ask you a question. Did you have a mentor? Did you have somebody that was. That taught you the ropes, that you went to for counsel or that you followed or helped you out with things when you first got started?

If only I did. I was pretty much self taught and my. So my father died when I was 21 and, and he had been involved in, in, in real estate and he, when he died, he was in the middle of a couple of projects and they were holes in the ground with a lot of debt and stuff. And so there was a baptism of fire there for my family. My mother was involved and we were basically, it was like a fire sale trying to sort out everything with him gone. Because I was only a young architecture student, I had no idea how the business worked. She was a happy housewife that had never had any involvement in business, my younger brother was only was still in school and my younger sister was like a. Not even a teenager yet. And so it was real baptism of fire. So I figured that I learned a lot and I knew what I was doing now. But the problem is when, like you say, when it's a rising market, everything seems great and when you've made a couple of great decisions, you can start to believe your own kind of fantasy and stuff. And I realize now, had my dad been alive and giving me advice, he would have probably slapped me over the back of the head and said, cop on. What's all this, like first class flight travel and stuff? And the reality is that a lot of the time it's impossible for somebody to true to you when you're having that kind of level of success because like they're not enjoying unless you, unless this advice is coming from somebody at a higher level, it's often easy to reject the advice and think, you know what, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He hasn't had this level of success. He's just jealous. And I did have a couple of guys saying, gavin, are you sure? Like, this is really looks a little bit dodgy to me. And for me it was kind of like, listen, I know what I'm doing. Whereas somebody who had lots and lots of experience might have said, you don't know what you're doing because you've made all of the golden mistakes that I made way back in my day and stuff. And I would have probably listened to that. It's very hard when you're not getting it from somebody who's been there.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. So you started off in the residential, the flipping side of the business, and then did you get in the commercial side as an evolution?

Yeah, commercial. Commercial was. It's funny because residential is very accessible. So it's. A lot of people like to get into residential because you can buy small lots and things like that. But what's interesting about the difference between residential and commercial is based on the income yield. And so you can actually buy a property for half a million and you can sell it for 2 million because you've doubled or quadrupled the income. Whereas when you buy a residential property, it doesn't matter if you're getting all this extra kind of income from it, people will still value it as a home. Do you know what I mean? And so it can be difficult to extract that extra value from residential. Whereas with commercial, I found it to be really, I found this little formula that was. And I just, at the time I believed I had figured out the secret formula to becoming like a multimillionaire. It was working, and I was working for four or five years, and I was just. Every time it worked, of course, it takes a bit of a lag because you don't realize when you buy something, you don't realize it's worked until maybe two years later when you sell it or whatever. And so there was this lag, but I was doing deals, and then when they were successful, I was going into bigger deals and leveraging up more and greater amounts and stuff. So it ended up this big pyramid where I was now the final deal that kind of like really sank me was I went abroad to the south of Spain, and I got involved and I put a deposit down on a 42 million euro shopping center. And it was a major deal and there was a lot of risk involved, but I figured I could handle it. And it was going to. I was going to turn it into this luxury boutique with a waterfront frontage with boats mooring up against shops and all that. And it would have been absolutely stunning had it worked. But I closed the deal and the same week Lehman Brothers announced the collapse. And so I just knew, game over. And I tried to keep. Make it work, but it was just, it was like trying to catch a falling knife. And it was just a death by a thousand cuts. I had a conversation with the head of real estate for Ralph Lauren, and he was very interested until the collapse. And then I had the same conversations, like, everything, all projects are on hold. And then I was like, okay, what about Mr. Gucci that I spoke to? And same conversation. And then I spoke to another person and they said, look, we'll go in if you write the check for the fit out. And I was like, what's that? We normally spend about two and a half million on our fit out. And I was just like, what? That's like the rent for the next 10 years. So it was kind of like, nah, I can't do that. And so I just watched this, like dominoes. Every time one fell, it would. There's these things called adjacencies where if somebody, somebody falls. Oh, they're out, then I can't really go in either. And so it was this knock on impact and was it just. It was devastating.

It's like using an anchor tenant. If you've got an anchor tenant there and then they pull out. We don't want to be a part of it if it's not going to have a Sears or JCPenney or something like that.

Exactly. In this case, the scheme was a luxury boutique. So there wasn't an anchor, so to speak. There was just. There was the collective interest from all the parties. Made it a really interesting one. But when one fell, they all started to drop away.

I'm seeing in my head like the south of France and Cannes with all the nice high end boutiques on the water there.

You know, that's exactly what I was trying to recreate. Yeah, yeah.

Beautiful area out there. Went through that collapsing and so what happens, you just, you end up having just to dump that property. The bank ended up taking it back and it was with a Spanish bank. So how's it, how's lending in Spain or how is it, is it easy to work with?

It was actually far more complicated than that. And I don't want to bore you, but given that this is what you, the business that you're in. I guess what I had done was I had bought this property when it was in planning stage. Okay. So it was, there was some amazing plans showing this marina frontage and where the shops were going to be and everything like that. And so I wanted in, like what they were trying to do at the time, and this was a Spanish kind of mindset, was just sell each individual retail unit or the boutique, sell it individually to whoever wanted. I got to see the plans really early, before, before they had sold off a load of them. And I was like, that's going to be really. That's going to suck. You're going to have some guy in here, is going to do one thing and it's going to be completely uncomplimentary to the guy next door and everyone will be doing their own thing and nobody has the shared vision. And I said, you should be doing this as a controlled kind of experiment. And they went, gavin, it's a great idea. Why don't you do it? And so they gave me basically an option to go and pull together that concept. And so I went and I spent a couple of weeks researching it. And then I came back and said, I really like the idea, let's go for it. So I put down this binding deposit, but I had a whole year to put the deal together. And so I went off and I spoke to a bank. It was actually, even though it was a Spanish bank, it was actually the Royal bank of Scotland. Based in Madrid. Yeah, and they were based in Madrid. And so they provided me with a funding commitment, but it wasn't actually. They didn't give Me, the commitment initially, because all I had done was pay the deposit and they were going to come in with the money when the deal, when the property was finished. Then what happened was I had to raise a load of equity. So I went off and I raised 12 million of equity from investors. 3 million of that came from me personally, because I wanted to have a sizable chunk of the equity. But then there was all these rewards that I would get when it delivered, certain hurdles and whatever. But so it was my equity went in and their equity went in. And that was like to start funding the deal before we had the big money coming in from the bank, and the equity was going to be used to go and market the thing, get all of the tenants secured, everything like that. And then the bank were going to come in with the big loan and that was going to basically close out the deal. But that loan was contingent on certain number of certain income level and a certain number of minimum threshold, basically, in terms of the number of signups. And so everything looked all great when we signed the agreement. And then suddenly Lehman Brothers collapsed and everyone starts dropping off. And it gets to the point where we're now below the critical threshold that these guys will let. How are we going to go and get somebody else to come in and stuff? So I actually started a retail, boutique retail shop to try to kind of create some momentum. I said, look how well we're doing here. And it was literally trying everything to make this work. And. And then it just kept dropping. And in the end, the property was being handed over. And I had a choice. I had a choice of we just walk away from the entire deal and lose all of the deposit and lose all of the, like, equity we put in, or we restructure the deal with the, with the selling party. And so they were. I was in a kind of an unusual situation where they were a. Because they were a, a public limited company, they had all these results that they had to deliver on, okay? And they said, if we can just get a commitment for 51% of the deal, we can sell that in the market as having completed that deal. And so they were prepared for all this kind of financial kind of arrangements where the equity I put in to date was locked in, and then I was going to have five years to close out the deal with the rest. And I said, this sounds better than losing everything right now. It's kind of like I've got five years to pull this thing together. So it meant five years of trying, like, desperately to get this thing working. And at the end of the five years, Spain was still in a slump. And so it was like, I've just spent five years of my life trying to make this work, and it was a disaster. So in the end, we lost 100% of our equity, and I lost five years of my professional career trying to make that work. So it was like, in retrospect, looking back, sometimes pulling the Band Aid off quick is what you need to do. And just what we've lost, we made a really bad mistake. It's time to just call it a loss and pull off the Band Aid. And if I had done that, I probably would have done, moved on and done a lot of deals in the depressed market that was there, instead of spending all my time trying to rectify a sinking ship, you know.

Well, that was what I was going to ask there, if you were able to do anything on the sides of this. But when you've got a huge anchor like that, it really can drag you down. I can imagine. I can only imagine the sleepless nights and the stress that affected other things besides just the real estate boots, huh?

Oh, yeah, it was. I was juggling so many negative issues at the time. Like, the Spanish deal was a massive deal, and it was like a lot of my net worth was tied up in that deal. And then in addition to that, I had a lot of investments back home in Ireland that were now facing the music because of the market had changed. The Irish market fell in some of. In some segments of the market fell 60 to 70% in value. And so I was looking at assets that had been very nicely valued, but loads of equity suddenly, like, crashing down below the level of equity that they needed to be at. And so they were technically in default. Even though we were able to make interest payments and all that, they were technically in default. So I had the liquidator. What would you guys would call maybe like a chapter 11 type thing? They appointed somebody to go in and basically take the asset off my hands and sell it. And what was really frustrating is some of these assets were sold so far below market value, if I had not had the anchor of the big project, I probably could have lined up buyers to buy it at the cheaper price and still be in for the win. And so it was really painful. And. But looking back, these are lessons, life lessons that you. You look back and you're going to go, okay, next time. That won't happen.

Yeah, we. I think we learn more from our failures than we ever do from our victories. They sting more. It's almost like they branded Your mind, okay, don't do that again.

It's so true. But the thing is, like, you, you almost get no, like a big win. There's almost no lessons in that, but there's plenty of ego stroking going on. And, oh, I made two and a half million in six weeks. Let's try and do that again. That looking back now, I realized that was a fluke, that was a Hail Mary that just happened to pay off. And the reality is just you would not be able to achieve that again. But to kind of get it inside your head that this is the kind of deal that I'm able to do. It was complete fantasy. It was like you needed somebody to say, that's never going to be repeated again. That was like a one off. Don't think that you're some genius who, you know, managed to kind of get that and you'll do it multiple times again.

Now five years goes by, you get rid of this, you've lost the other stuff back home in iron. It's gone below very similar. What kind of happened here in the States? Values drop in a lot of areas. Florida was like worth 30 cents of the dollar that, you know, compared to what it used to be. But what's, how did you start building back? What was. Did you. How much of a mind shift did you have to say, okay, I can do this again in a different fashion, but a much more educated and smarter approach. Can you kind of share a little bit about that?

I think the mindset is probably the most powerful aspect of any investor's arsenal in terms of what you've got. And if you're not strong, if you don't have knowledge, sort of understanding of where you are and the situation that you're in, you can be in this kind of complete fantasy land where, you know, oh, I'll make it all back, I'll do all of this. The reality is I spent probably three or four years blaming the world for my situation. I was, this is the bank's fault, it's Lehman Brothers fault. It's the greedy, all of this kind of stuff going on in your head and that I'm really rich. Like, I, you know, this shouldn't be happening to me. And this kind of like false. And then what you really need is a wake up call. And the wake up call was when the bank came along and they did what's known as a full rental sweep. And so I had lots of different real estate assets producing income, and the interest payments were substantially lower than the income. And so I was surviving on the excess. And it was going very well. I was able. I had a such low. Rates were so low that there was actually quite a substantial surplus. And so I was able to maintain a certain lifestyle that I wanted. And I was like, okay, I got to make this money back. I'm going to do this and everything's going to bounce back. It's all going to be great. And it was only when I had this wake up call when the bank told me that was like two weeks before Christmas or something like that. And they sent me this email that we are triggering the clause in your borrowing that says full rental sweep every single penny of income that you get from all these properties that you own, that will now be directed directly to us and we'll decide what to do with it. And so in an instant, I went from having a couple of hundred thousand a year in income suddenly to zero. And it was like, holy crap, what am I going to do? And it was suddenly everything is stripped out, away from you. And I had to go to my brother and say, bro, how am I going to. I can't even afford rent. Help me out here. So he had a property that was vacant and he said, move in, take as long as you need to get yourself back on your feet. He said, but don't go and do that stupid stuff again. And it was like a real humbling moment, but also a wake call where I went, do you know what? Nobody is here to rescue me. My brother has stood in, which is great, but there's no kind of, oh, here's a rope back to wealth gap. You're going to have to wake up and do this yourself. So it's only when you take full ownership of the situation you're in, stop blaming other people, stop saying, it's not your fault, it is your fault. Even if you don't feel like it's your fault, accept that it is your fault. The fact is, where you are is the result of a decision that you made at some point in the last few years. Therefore, whether you like it or not, you're to blame. And once you accept that, and there's a great old guy that I like to listen to, an American, Jocko Willink. Yeah. And Jocko podcast, he has some great stuff on extreme ownership. And just like it is, it is what it is. Just accept it and move forward. So once I did that, it was kind of like, okay, leave aside all the blame, leave aside all these things. How am I going to get myself out of this hole? So I said, okay, what Have I got and what do I not have? And I had lost a huge amount of my wealth. So that was gone off the table for now. I said, what I do have though, is I have the lessons and I have my mind, my mindset, my network of connections, and I have an understanding of resourcefulness now, like how you have to act to make things happen, how you have to do, pull deals together and stuff. So I started looking at the market and assessing, like, what is the market doing badly and what is it doing right? And at the time, student accommodation was actually a really interesting area because the student accommodation, back in 2008, when everything else was tenants were going bust and all this stuff, student accommodation had a 99%, it didn't suffer any fall in income. And so people were like, oh, this is a great asset class. So I started putting together deals that involved student accommodation and stuff like that. And there was a couple of. So that kind of kept me going, that basically righted the ship a bit. And once then that was involved, there was an opportunity for me to get involved with some of my, my, my father's family. There was. There's a business, the business park here that I'm involved in running now. That was something that the family were involved in and they had a team of people that were involved in running it. And one of them basically left the business and they were like, what are we going to do? And I heard about this and I said, hey guys, if you want now, I'd be more than happy to step in because the years that I spent in Dubai and Doha and Qatar and stuff like, this is the kind of stuff I was doing, commercial stuff. And so they were like, oh, okay, come on in. So now I'm involved. I've managed to get involved in this business and it's a substantial business. Like we have Oracle and we have Google as tenants and stuff like that. And it's putting deals together and it's basically creating an environment where you can win when the market is going up, when the market is going down, you can actually buy the properties at below market prices and stuff. So it's just, it's positioning yourself, understanding that you have to hedge your position. You can't be all in, because if you're all in, then you're at the whim of the market and people that are. You have to leave something back. If you go all in on something, then there's. And if it goes wrong, that's it, you've lost everything. Whereas if you've held something back, okay, you're not going to double your wealth as quickly, but you are going to have something for the hedge, the hedging position.

Yeah, you don't want to go. It's kind of like playing poker. You don't want to put all your chips to the middle unless you guaranteed. It's hard to guarantee if you're at the whim of the market. We're seeing that right now, definitely in the market.

I think. I think the market, you're going to find a lot of people have been, as the old Warren Buffett saying, a lot of people. It's only when the tide goes out, you realize he's been swimming naked. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that suddenly are really badly exposed by these interest rate hikes. You know.

Yeah, I totally agree to that. Is that not every investor is created equal. In a lot of cases. We've had a lot of people that have been buying real estate and just letting the appreciation kind of carry them up and selling just kind of your story and stuff like that. And then the market shift. And we're seeing something I've been saying for the last two years, we have to have a correction here in the United States in a lot of cases. And then what happens here often affects a lot of the other markets out there, too, in a variety of ways.

There's no doubt what's happened is, and it's a credit to the American financial system and the investors in America is that you guys react quickly. People could argue that the Fed didn't react quickly enough, but the reality is now making the decisions. You're increasing the rates, all that. You're going to watch the rest of the world. You're going to watch the European Central Bank. They'll take forever to decide to increase rates. And then the bank of England, we had this ridiculous thing yesterday. The government of England went out and they just decided to become Father Christmas and start giving everybody interest. So their economy now is in real trouble. The currency is collapsing against the dollar. And so I think what's going to happen, you need to be able to pull off that band aid. And it's going to hurt people. Yes, but it'll allow you to bounce back quicker. And I think I understand from the various things I've been studying that the Turkish economy is on the verge of collapse. The Chinese economy is on the verge of collapse because of real estate. Obviously, the Russian economy is in free fall. We won't even go where Ukraine is at the moment. But then you've Got Spain and Italy, they're in desperate situation because of their borrowing and their lack of ability to pull that band aid off. They don't want to take. And so I think we're in for a global financial meltdown over the next couple of months. And it's not going to be quite the same as 2008 because there was an awful lot of credit there that was causing the problem. But I do think inflation is now going to be the catalyst and the fact that rates are going to have to try to catch the interest. And so I'm a little bit, I'm actually. One side of me is nervous, the other side of me is actually thinking it's a great opportunity because there's going to be that if you've hedged your position and you're in cash to be able to take advantage of some of this, you should be in a good position.

Yeah, there's opportunities in every market, especially more money's made in a down economy than an up economy in a lot of ways because there's so much different opportunities. Having to catch people to gobble up assets, stuff like that. That's kind of what we like. We love to do that. It doesn't mean we want to see a bad thing.

Yeah, of course. The only thing is, and I remembered in 2012, so Ireland had been in this terrible economy for a couple of years and I can remember seeing assets so cheap and trying to get investors fear grabs the investors so badly. And I can remember I was in the Middle east at the time and I was working with these wealthy Arab investors. And I can remember saying to them, guys, Ireland at the moment, you can buy it for 15 cents in the dollar. It is incredibly cheap. And I can remember I saw a German fund went in and bought an office building at a 26% yield and like in less than four years, full recovery of all of their income, of all of their expenditure. And I remember seeing this and saying, guys, we have to be taking advantage. And they're all, it's very bad timing. They just, I was just like, guys like you cannot find cheaper. It's. This is the time to invest. So it's the brave people that move in those markets that are the ones that clean up, but it's also the.

Ones that have forward thinking. When you see assets that you pick up cheaper than you can ever build them, you know what I mean? And then you know that you're going to be around for a long time if you're buying them at the bottom and get them to Cash flow at the bottom, there's no place to go but up and ride that wave up you're smart enough to force. You know, Detroit is one of those markets that just absolutely bottomed out. And we worked with a couple investors that came in and bought hundreds and hundreds of low value properties. And their number one thing is if we can put a renter in them at $800 a month based on the financials and stuff like that, will do it all day long. Don't care where they're at. And of course they've. Obviously Detroit has not rebounded. It has rebounded completely where it completely was, but not where it was at the peak because the city's been stressed. But still amazing cash flow, amazing opportunities if you know where to look and how to evaluate those assets long term versus just what the news is telling you.

Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest mistake is listening to the news sometimes. Or it's one thing listening to the news, it's another thing letting it get inside your head. And I mean it's good to be educated, but there's just so much noise out there and you have to get, you have to step back from it and you have to go, hold on a second, what is the market doing? Okay, I'm going to do the opposite.

I'll give you a great example. I was over in London in 2008 on a trip and the BBC news comes up and talks about what's going on in the United States and the crash. And they had the news reporter standing in front of a tent city. All over the United States, it's tent cities. People are losing their homes. Okay, that's not actually accurate, but we have this. It's the same thing. You can't trust. Yeah. When you're looking at different markets or different. What are you doing to research these things or what are you doing to find opportunities outside of your backyard?

You know what, one of the things that I've learned is you got to be very careful about looking outside of your backyard. Because a huge amount of people, the reason they look outside of their backyard is because their backyard has gotten too expensive. And so they think, you know what, it looks very pricey at home. Why don't I have a look across another market and they go to another market and maybe the per square foot rental is lower or maybe the per square value is much lower. And you look at that and you go, oh, that's a great price. Wow, I should go and buy that. The reality is the dynamics could be completely different and there's all of this stuff. So I would not invest in another market until I either know it inside out or I have a very, very capable partner who has been through a couple of ups and downs and knows what they're doing. Because if you go and there's all these young guys that are out there at the moment and they're like looking for investors and stuff they have not seen. Like, they haven't been through a downturn. Like, they've come straight from college and straight into making huge amounts of money from crypto or whatever. And it's, oh, yeah, this is just. This market will run away forever. And I think we could be in for some really difficult times. And I don't think these guys accept that as possible because they've never seen it. Back in the 19. I can remember the 1980s, it was dismal. Interest rates were like 16%, 18% on a mortgage. Can you imagine trying to fund that? Why is it impossible that we could go back to something like that? It's 40 years now since we had inflation at that level. Therefore, potentially you could be in a situation now. It would be an economic collapse would be created by it. But an economic collapse is also created by runaway inflation. And so the guys are going to have to get very serious about this very quickly in order to get it under control.

We also see is when we look at what happened in 2008, 9 and 10, and we've seen, especially here in the United States, you saw those individuals that were running those organizations, those institutions retire and leave, and you have new people come and take their place, and they're looking for opportunities and looking for returns and wasted. So what do they do? They redo the same thing, but call it something different when it's the exact same packaged in just a different bag?

Yeah, yeah, that is the, that's the old trick. And it's don't look at what I'm saying, look at what I'm doing. It's the opposite to that. Like, just, I don't know, it's. You can get cynical about this kind of stuff, but the reality is, again, working on your mindset. You just, you know that this is the way the market behaves and you just try to be above that. And you. I read a lot of books on just getting your mindset where it needs to be. And it's just to accept this is human nature, this is what's going to happen. And what will happen is the market will go through a really staggering downturn. A lot of people will lose their Jobs. The politicians will come out and say this can never happen again. And then a new boom will start and everyone will make exactly the same mistakes. And in 10 years we'll be back here again.

Exactly. Exactly. What's your favorite mindset book or two that you enjoy, that you've really enjoyed reading or it's been valuable for that stick out.

I've got a whole library here.

I can see it behind you. Yeah, exactly. I got the same set up here to the right.

I would say some of the better ones. I like the Jocko Willink stuff. Extreme ownership. There's a great one by a guy called James Clear called Atomic Habits. And that's a really good one about establishing good habits because habits are a huge. Like your behavior and your habits and your mindset. Those are all critical. What else? I don't know. There's so many books I know, it's.

Hard to pick sometimes.

One of the. One of the great books that I've read recently actually was Never Split the Difference. And that is, it's by Chris Voss and it's all. He's a hostage negotiator that used to work for the FBI and he's talking now about how to negotiate. That was really eye opening. And there's a really. If you want to go old school, there's a book that goes way back. I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to see if I have it here. But it was by a guy called Richard Gambini or something like that. I can't remember exactly. But it was called Persuasion and it was all about the mindset tricks that people can play and the fact that people give you something for free. That is the kind of. There's now an obligation on your head to give something back and stuff. So it's understanding these tricks that people can play with you and how marketers do use them to influence you and stuff. But I think the best stuff, leaving aside modern books is actually if you go back in time, back to the Stoics. If you go back to 2000 years ago, stoic philosophy. And anytime anyone mentioned Stoic philosophy to me, I was kind of like, yeah, this sounds straight out of some sort of university professor, like kind of what Abdico. And I was. I don't. I'm not interested. This is all. But actually I've been reading it and it really is interesting. Marcus Aurelius, who was the leader of Rome during the Roman Empire, like he used to rewrite in his diary every day. You can actually read those entries translated now. And the wisdom in it is just insane. Like when you saw somebody so powerful and yet he was trying to get his mindset in check. So very interesting stuff. The Stoics.

Yeah, he had some great one that sticks out. Marcus really Meditations comes to my mind in a lot of things or what is it? There's the. Another one was the Emperor's Handbook I think is another one that is just a phenomenal read as well to think about it.

Ryan Holiday is a. He's a good author actually for that kind of stuff. He writes a lot about stoic philosophy and he actually he's come out with a book that I've really been enjoying and it's actually. It's a one page a day book. It's 366 pages and it's. Each one is dated so you know what day you should open up and you just go through it every day you read a passage and it's a piece of stoic philosophy and it's just a nice reminder. Takes no more than 3,4 minutes to read it. But every morning I go ah, yeah, that's. I like that.

That's a great.

And it's just a little mindset like pump and you go okay, yeah, I got to apply that today. And. And just it's about grounding yourself when you're enjoying success. It's so easy to think that you're now more important than this other person or these other people because you make money and you're doing well. And the reality is you have to stay grounded and you have to try to just say, you know what, I could lose all of this again. There could be a massive collapse in the economy. And then don't get so cocky first of all. But don't get so dependent on all of this sort of wealth and stuff as if it becomes your identity. Several people during after 2008, I have I think probably more people than I could my hand commit suicide that I knew from losing their wealth and having no identity beyond being wealthy. And it was a tragic thing to see because they had a lot going for them but they couldn't see beyond the fact that they were going to be poor for a while. And so that was tragic.

Yeah, same thing. I've experienced that with friends. People are being very stressed out right now too with the way things are going in the market that they've had to change their whole business model or buying stuff previously and now they just can't seem to get it. My phone and email gets full stuff as I'm sure Yours does, too, Gavin. People looking for resources. Let's talk a little about. Go ahead, sir. Go ahead. What were you gonna say?

No, I was just gonna say the one thing that helped me sort out when I was really at my lowest peak, I found that focus on what you can control and stop worrying about what you can't control. And I. I started saying, okay, what can I control? I can control my mindset and my fitness. And so I started becoming very focused on my fitness. I used to work out seven days a week and every morning, start with a kind of a ritual where I work on my mindset and stuff like that. And once you've got that, it's like a little win. The rest of the day might be a disaster, but at least you've started with a win.

Amen to that. Got to get up in the morning and get. Start your day off with success. And a little bit goes a long way. Starting off the right track. Let's talk about your podcast. Let's talk about why'd you get into doing your podcast, and how's that been beneficial for you?

I'll tell you why. It's. First of all, the timing of the podcast, it was locked down. It was the first week of lockdown in March 2020, and we had started the year off thinking, this is going to be a great year. We were going to make all this money, and it was going to be a runaway success. And suddenly we were told that we couldn't go outside the door of the house within 2 km of a circle. And I can. That's like just over a mile and a bit. And I can remember thinking, whoa. Like, the world became very small very quickly. And I started running in the mornings just to try to get some exercise. And I remember thinking, you know what? Now is the perfect time to start a podcast, because I got all this spare time and. And I've got lessons to. To tell. Like, I've been through this before. And it was. I was. At the time, I was thinking about COVID 19 and what had happened. Just the big shutdown, and everyone was panicking about how's the economy going to work and stuff. And I remember saying, this is very like 2008. At the time, at the. Within the first few weeks, felt like it was just around about the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Yeah.

And everyone was panicking. I said, now's the time to bring out the podcast and start talking about what I experienced in 2008 and just prepare people mentally for it. And so that's how it began. And I Put out, I think five or six episodes. And then I started getting the feedback and that was mind blowing. I just, somebody wrote to me, found me on LinkedIn and said, hey Gavin, just want to let you know, started listening to your podcast two weeks ago. It has really helped. I said, I've actually canceled a deal that I was going to go and do and all this kind of stuff. And I got more and more of that kind of feedback and I remember thinking, wow, this, it really gave me a lift. And I suddenly thought, okay, I'm doubling down. I'm going to make sure that this is really consistent. So I've done 126 weeks consecutively, not missed one. And it's been really, it's been really rewarding, I have to say. And, and so as a result of doing that, I've created a little bit of a Mastermind coaching group and things like that. And so people who like the kind of lessons that I've been teaching and stuff, they want to join in and pick up some of that stuff.

That's awesome. What is the, the best way for our folks listening, our audience out there, to connect with you, keep up with what you're doing, joining in the Mastermind. Besides this listen to podcasts, what's the best way for people to connect?

I have a couple of things what I'm actually, I've turned my attention to YouTube. So if anyone wants to start to connect with me on a more consistent basis, I think Gavin J. Gallaher on Real Estate is my channel. That's my main channel. And then the podcast goes out on a, on the behind The Facade podcast YouTube channel as well. So those two are kind of regular. Then of course there's the Apple podcast and stuff. But I have a website, my own personal website, Gavin J. Gallagher.com and I always go, the J is important because if you look up LinkedIn and you leave out the J, there'll be like 200 Gavin Gallagher's. So Gavin J. Gallagher is important.

We'll have those links in the comment section below and everybody in the description there. This has been such a great conversation, Gavin. If you weren't in real estate, what would you be doing? If you weren't, if you find yourself that real estate went away, where would you be? Do you have any idea?

It's funny, I think in the media in some way I've really gotten a taste for speaking and making videos and stuff. And so I feel like that's where I can impact people. So I do think it's somewhere in that kind of space.

Awesome, awesome. Great stuff. Thank you so much for coming on the no Closure show. Sharing your history, sharing your lessons learned. And then the mindship shift. It's just such an important thing in the world in an up and a down economy. And I think we need to see a little bit more of that from more folks going as we go forward here and start getting on that treachery waters that we're seeing in the economy. Thanks so much for coming on, Gavin.

It's been a pleasure, Scott. Thank you.

All right, guys and gals, check out his channels. Listen to his podcast. Such great lessons learned from experience, from decades of experience of ups and downs. And that's what, like we said, beginning learn more from your mistakes than you learn from your victory. So go out, take some action, buddy, and we'll see you all stop. Sam.