Birth To Net Worth with Kent He - Episode 15

Welcome to Birth to Net Worth, where we normalize the conversation and emotions surrounding money and wealth to affect a massive change for future generations in their relationship towards finances, building family wealth as a collaborative legacy. Here is your host, Trystan Trenberth.

Good afternoon and welcome to Birth to Net Worth, episode 15. Today we have a gentleman from San Diego joining us. Um, we met through the real estate community several months ago, got in closer and closer touch talking about different strategies that each of us are working on. Um, and somebody that's just, you know, in the too distant past become a father um, being a husband. And I would love to introduce to you guys a gentleman by the name of Kent Hee. Kent, I'm going to bring you into the studio right now. Kent, welcome.

Thanks for joining. How's it going?

Very well, thanks. Very well. So Kent, tell us a little bit about your background. Where, you know, you're in San Diego. Have you lived there all your life? Tell us a bit about what you do.

Yeah, I'll give a little bit of background. So right now I am a full-time real estate investor. Uh, I did grow up in Boston. I lived there for about 28, 29 years of my life. Uh, I used to work in a lot of corporate environments, meaning doing post-merger integration work for a large consulting company. I left that job and I tried to run a bakery and try to start my own bakery by learning the kind of crafts from the top 3 in Boston because I wanted to specialize in something that a bakery that specialized in croissants and coffee. Uh, long story short, uh, I helped— I know, I, I helped a cousin turn around their failing restaurant that was losing about $20,000 to $30,000 a month. So that was a big, big confidence boost. But I used up all my liquidity supporting the restaurant business, so I had to go back to corporate America. Worked at a Fortune 500 company, a large insurance company, where I worked in a startup arm within that insurance company to basically take and build a technology for their company to scale their business from about $7 million to about $80 million in that business alone. And long story short, I started investing in real estate about a year ago, a little bit over a year ago, and I have found tremendous success, whether it's by luck or just simply by taking action. And here I am today. I joined Sub2U and I met— have met so many great people in Sub2U, including yourself, Trystan Trenberth. Just incredible group of community. And that's where I am today. I live in San Diego now. I have a daughter. She just turned 1 and she's so sweet. She's absolutely a bundle of joy. Uh, so that's where I'm at.

Well, thanks for the— thanks for the background. Um, so let's get back to the genesis. What's your first memory of money? Was it your parents buying you an ice cream or a magazine, or you asking for something? What would you remember first about money? Where did you encounter it?

I think the first time we ever had a conversation about money was when I went to video games when I was young. And back then, Super Nintendo games, they were like $50 a pop. Man, they were expensive and I still can't believe my parents bought them for me because I knew how hard they worked and I just never realized like how much money I was taking up with video games because they would probably earn not even $50 a day and they would basically buy me a video game for $50. And it's crazy when I think back about it now, like how lucky I was and how much my parents sacrificed for me. And it just helped put it into perspective when I first started my minimum wage job, just working at CVS Pharmacy, making like $7 an hour. And that's when I started realizing that, one, I need to start thinking about when I purchase something, how much time am I actually putting into it in order to acquire that? And that was such a big eye-opening moment where I'm so glad I worked in that job because it helped me value money a lot more and value what my parents gave me at that time. But my parents, we definitely came from a poor background. My parents never had a college education. My mom probably only had about up to an 8th grade education in China before she quote unquote, not forced, but like she basically had to go start working at such a young age and she was sent to another house just to be a servant and going to the woods, chopping wood for firewood. It's just like the very grunt labor that they had to go through is just incredible and really makes me feel like the problems that we have nowadays, they're nothing compared to what our parents went through. Um, I know, right? And my, my dad also had a high school education, but when they first came over to America, they didn't know English. Uh, I'm, I'm still incredibly surprised they made the move because that seems so scary, right? You're coming to a new country, you don't know a single ounce of English, and they had to live in a 2-bedroom apartment with 9 people in it, and I didn't even have a crib when I was living in that apartment. I just slept on the stroller that was tilted back. And it's just incredible what grit they had and how they were able to just make things work. And it was just one of those apartments in the heart of Chinatown in Boston at that time where if you flick open the lights in the middle of the night, you can hear the cockroaches and the mice just scurry away. Just like that. So it was a very, very different lifestyle for sure. And I still remember the day we got our first affordable housing admission, and my parents were just in tears, right? Because they were finally able to kind of get their own space with a reasonable rent that allows them to be able to save some money from their jobs and be able to put food on the table with less stress. So that's why you and I have all those conversations about where, you know, I'm, I'm addicted to helping people because I want to give people a very strong foundation as a home for children to kind of grow up in through affordable housing. And, you know, through my whole life, that's how I realized, like, I'm addicted to helping people because I used to be an EMT. I worked as an EMT for 5 years, but I only made like $12 to start, man. Just imagine who's gonna Who's going to answer 911 calls when the next pandemic happens? And no one's going to be answering those calls because they're not being paid enough. And I think the only way to keep these great people in these amazing giving professions is by going affordable housing route. So that's kind of where I am at with my investment journey, where I'm trying to create a diversified portfolio of short-term rentals and affordable housing units.

That's amazing. We covered so much there. So, so with your parents, you know, we're both born in China and moved here, I understand.

Yeah, they were both born in China. They came here in about 1985.

So the immigrant mindset seems to be very different to the, to the, you know, I'll say native in the fact that, you know, people born of many generations of this country, um, are just so different. I've interviewed, you know, many of, of each of the different backgrounds. Uh, each of these cultures is very different, but there is just a very different mindset of the immigrant where they've left behind, you know, things that we couldn't ever imagine in our comfortable lifestyle here. And the, the opportunity to sacrifice something is, you know, you look at inspiration and motivation. Inspiration is something that would be nice to do, you're inspired to do it because there's a passion. But the motivation is generally, you know, from what I read, is more of a need. And it's a motivation to provide an inspiration at the, at the end of the struggle or the, the sacrifice to provide something like for their children, for you, to provide that different future, the, the opportunity that they never had. And it just breeds a different, different reasoning and mindset around money because it's, it's a, it's a tool at that point. It's a, it's an aspiration to be more and do more when there's— when you come from so little or nothing. And I think Being born into a comfortable lifestyle is also almost a disability because you don't respect and understand what the toil and trouble there is to go through to, to manifest these things. And like you said, when you realized a $50 game was X number of hours of your mum and dad working, and it was like, wow, then when you picked that up, that was a very different situation when you then looked into, um, your relationship to money at CVS or wherever it was you were working. So, so did your parents have a very similar mindset around money, or did they have a little bit of a— uh, no, I'm not looking for conflict here, but was there a conflict in, or a difference in the way they looked at things?

Yeah, for sure. I, I mean, I would say in practical examples, right, my parents were the type to go to a supermarket that was a couple blocks further away so they can save 20 cents per pound on vegetables. Meals, right? That's how much and how scarce the resources were. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense because they didn't have much money in China growing up where, you know, once a year they would have chicken for Chinese New Year. That's absurd. That's crazy. It blows my mind. They're like, yeah, we look forward to Chinese New Year because that's the year we have chicken. Think about how abundant we have in just food and the resources that we have today. It's crazy. It's like nothing compared to what they went through. And just to see the amount of sacrifice that they put in. They no doubt changed the trajectory of my life by coming to the US, and that's literally the same thing what we're trying to do for our family, right? We're trying to continue changing the trajectory of our family and the future generations because of the decisions that we make, and we learn from the role models that our parents have. Now, yeah, uh, my parents, super, super hardworking, and— but you can see like there are a couple of times where You know, I told my dad about the real estate stuff and, you know, how I found a niche in that works because I specialize in bachelorette-themed Airbnbs right now. And he's like, well, make sure you don't share your secret with other people. You know, you want to keep the secret to yourself. And I was like, no, Dad, that's not how it works anymore. You know, how we're going to become wealthy is by helping more people than we take, giving more than we take, and the wealth will inevitably come when you help enough people. It's just inevitable. It's just that's how it works nowadays. And I think it's hard for you to change that mindset. But as soon as I said it, he's like, okay, I agree. It's just they never had anyone or role models that were in a more affluent or wealthy position that was able to educate them like, hey, there's another way to make money instead of just nickeling and diming and saving every penny. Yeah, you could be— instead of taking the extra walk to a further away supermarket, you You could be spending your time reading a book, you can spend your time meeting more people and networking. And that's what I'm trying to make sure I expose my daughter to when she grows up and our kids kind of growing up, right? We have to show them that there's another way and there's so many different ways to make money, but you have to be guided by the right principles and the reason for why you're doing it. And everyone's going to have their own different why. I know you have your own charitable cause, Trystan, and I love it. It's just that we just need to figure out why are we doing this. And for us, right, I told you the story before, I want to do affordable housing for social workers, nonprofits, and EMTs because these are the people that help people every day. And if I get 1,000 of these units and these people work 8 hours a day and they help 1 person an hour, we could be waking up every day helping 8,000 people. And those 8,000 are going to help another 8,000. And in a small world of ours, they're going to help our kids, our grandkids, and the great grandkids when we're not here anymore. And I'm calling that generational help, not generational wealth. Wealth, because generational wealth will probably disappear on average in 3 generations. But how do I make sure that when I'm not here anymore, someone's going to be there to help our kids when we're not there anymore? And that is so much more fulfilling and so much more motivating every day, man. It's, it's, uh, that's why I wake up every day and I'm so driven by it. Because when you see your daughter, like your precious little baby girl growing up, you're just like, God, I just want to make sure she's well taken care of when, when my time is up. And yeah, time— life is short, man. So that's kind of my story. That's my motivation, man. I, I'm so passionate about this stuff, and I think that's why you and I connected so well.

I think you're right. Absolutely. So, so affordable help for affordable housing for, you know, socially contributing people is, is huge. And, you know, your bachelorette-themed Airbnbs as well, short-term rentals Both are, both are quite a niche within a niche. Um, how, how are you looking at investing for the longer term? Obviously that's a cash flow and an equity builder as well as you're owning the property. How are you looking to provide, um, investment strategy for the long term for your daughter? On, on here we talked to a couple of different people recently. We talked to Ira about whole life policies. I'm gonna have somebody come and talk to us about self-directed IRAs in the next few weeks. All things that people don't really think about until their 20s, until they're at work and they get 401. And then that's a 15-year, 20-year delay on when they could actually start that. And I'm listening to The Psychology of Money right now, and it was talking about Warren Buffett. He's— let's just say he's been investing this for 60 years. Yeah, if he had started investing 5 or 10 years later he would have accumulated 40 or 50% less wealth. Not because of that 10 years was particularly lucrative, but just from the compound effect of the amount of time that he's been investing consistently. He's not like a day trader where he's pulling stock out there, buying stock on the moment. He's looking at a 5, 10, 20, 30, 40-year future of very tiny movements, just tweaking little things here and there. Effect of just being very steady rather than being very, um, very micro on everything. You're changing all of these things, and they say all of these funds well underperform the market. If they just left the stock where it was for a 30-year period, they'd have got a better return than trying to buy this, sell this at these different times. On average, they're getting a 2, you know, a lower return in the long run than just leaving stuff where it is. What are you looking at as far as, you know, your— I don't know if you've got whole life, whether you do the infinite banking thing, whether you've got self-directed IRAs where you can, you know, buy property with those entities. How are you looking forward to, you know, your retirement come investment to then, you know, build a legacy for, and probably when she's old enough, with your daughter?

Yeah, so I've heard of this strategy before. Where, and you know, we might be getting into like parenting philosophy, right? But for me, what I recognize in it and anticipating is that my daughter is not going to listen to me when she's a teenager. I don't know if that's going to be true or not, but this is what I'm planning to do. I think I'm going to be buying one or two properties where I put it on like a 15-year mortgage or something like that. Maybe it's a creative finance deal. And I'm just going to let the tenant kind of pay it off so that by the time she's an adult or she wants to go to college, she can actually see and witness that the property has been paid off and magically she has wealth, right? I think the best way is not to tell my daughter what to do, is to simply show her the possibilities. And I'll also put some money in like a stable stock like Apple or something like that, right? I'll put that aside and I'm going to say, hey, this was for you when you were born. And at that day when you're 18, look at what has happened with just patience and just being— having a diversified portfolio of investments so that you can see and feel that your life has changed dramatically at 18 years old compared to some of your other friends who might not have had the same education or just had the luck of running into a great community like we did, right? There's so much education out there, but if you never go looking for it, you're never going to find it. So I think I want to make sure I expose her to the principles of investing, but making sure that she can do whatever she wants. Honestly, I think if she doesn't get into real estate investing, that's perfectly fine because your kids will never be the person that you, you tell them to be, right? But I want her to have the option to. So, uh, like I told you, right, I loved being an EMT, man. Absolutely loved it. But it was not sustainable. I couldn't live in a better neighborhood with good schools. On $12 an hour. But if I am able to give that option to my daughter where she can just be a social worker for the rest of her life, but not having to worry about a, a poor lifestyle, then I think I feel like I've done my job as a dad, that I have given her the choice to do whatever she wants to do in life. And if she wants to travel the world, awesome. Like, that's what I really want to provide for my daughter, is to give her the choice to do what she wants versus telling her what to do and showing her that she has the power to impact so many people and she could create wealth, right? With affordable housing, we can create wealth helping other people. It's a fantastic business model and it's one that I feel like if I become an authority in this space, I will be able to motivate so many more people to kind of come into the space and continue investing. And I'm hoping I, I can inspire others. And I recognize this is like, I, I caught myself talking about affordable housing with you, and I was like, wow, I'm really passionate about this. So now that's how I decided, like, I need to double down on this. Sometimes you just need to be having the self-awareness of like, wow, what am I passionate about? Catch yourself, listen to how you talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's incredible. My friend Brian did the same thing. He bought a house, 15-year mortgage, put whatever it was into it, and by the time his, his child is 18 same thing. She's going to have a thing that she can either sell, she can keep renting it, maybe refi it, pull something out to then go and do college. But you mentioned the T word we were talking about before we started—

travel.

I think it's so important for kids to get out of their own country. I did a talk on this about 4 or 5 years ago. It was a TED-style talk and all about the importance for Americans to leave their own country at a young age because America is a great country, no doubt about it, but how do you measure the best against the rest if you've never left borders? And I think it's important for kids to have the opportunity to see the world in a different way and understand that just going straight to college isn't necessarily the best modus operandi for most kids. They don't have— they haven't figured themselves out yet. They only know what they've been exposed to through childhood, which is mostly directed by their parents, go to Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, South America, Asia, Europe, somewhere else, hopefully multiple places. They can go and find— not to compare, but to contrast the different cultures and societies and see where they can integrate and find new friends with different perspectives, different views, different experiences in the world. And then once they come back, they may stay. Hopefully they might stay. One of their kids went to the Philippines before COVID They got stuck there through COVID and they're pretty happy down there now. They will come back at some point, but it's just the perspective of it doesn't have to persist where it is right now. And coming back, I'd rather my kid went away for a year or two and came back and said, I'm really passionate about this thing. I learned so much about this thing, saw all of these things, I really want to go and study this thing. And you know their heart's going to be in it instead of picking the major their parents are— yeah, it's going to be a doctor or a lawyer and they go and do that and they're miserable for 30 or 40 years working or never really passionate about that. They don't succeed, they don't have the success they could potentially have where their heart isn't necessarily in it. So if we can provide, like you said, the choices that, yeah, your kid can go and travel for 2 months, 2 years, whatever it is, and know that buying an extra house is going to pay for living expenses while they're away. Another house might pay for the flights between the, you know, cities or the countries they want to fly to. So they understand that building out an investment— you can pay money to buy a house instead of spending the same money on a round-the-world trip, 20 grand. You can go buy a house and that's paying for your travel and the cash flow.

Yes, yes, around, you know, that's exactly it, man. She needs to know that, you know, right now we have a home in gated community and I can watch the sunset from my patio every day. She needs to know that's not normal. That's not normal. Like, most people don't have this life that we have. We had to work for every ounce of it, for sure. But she needs to know that there are so many people out there that are grinding and and struggling every day to put food on the table. And she needs to go to these other countries where, you know, poverty is a much, much bigger problem. And she needs to be exposed to the conditions that other people live in and by which they are still able to make it work. And I think you, you caught it out really, really well. It's like she needs to see and have— be able to have the contrasting view on what else is out there. Because I think in the age of social media, this metaverse that they're working on. I don't want my child to be trapped and stay in a virtual world when there's so much beauty in the world. She needs to, one, always seek out the opposite opinion no matter what she does. And what I'm trying to work on right now, and had the conversation with my wife, is like the number one thing we need to work on is like to help our kid build her self-esteem. I think that's the most important thing we need to do. You're not gonna be able to keep her off the phone. You're not gonna be able to keep her off social media. So you got to work on what you can control, and that's helping her become a very confident young woman so that when she faces all this adversity, she can handle it. And I think that's what we owe it to our kids to kind of work on now, um, especially as like young parents.

Yeah, you touched on the mental health right there. It's absolutely right. I mean, you know, being teenagers is rough enough, and having kids that are spending time in their room as a parent, I wasn't aware enough that there were challenges going on and being experienced. And, you know, I want to raise that awareness for parents that look for these signs. If this isn't necessarily normal, then we had COVID, that kind of— oh my God, yeah, it's there. And then they're also the consumers on social media. They're just consuming, consuming, comparing. And like you said, the self-esteem is such a huge, huge part of this.

That's right. And I think, um, we, we owe it to ourselves, right? We have a completely different set of challenges where, you know, our parents before were just trying to put food on the table. Nowadays we have to deal with social media, all these distractions out in the world, making sure our, our mental health is being taken care of, especially for our kids. It's a different set of challenges. And I'm not saying it's more difficult or harder than what my parents went through and our parents went through. It's just, it's just different set of challenges. And we need to figure out how to adapt to it. And surrounding ourselves with the right people is probably the best thing. And I think it has been challenging, right? Where I'm a super hard worker, and in the past it's always been like me getting things done. But as I recognize the impact that I want to have, I have to involve more people. And how do I develop that trust to start meeting other people? And, you know, Pace Morby always says like, hey, we gotta start dating other people. Within the professional community. How do we do that? And I'm so glad I met someone like you that we can share our whys, we can talk about our interests, share our— get some parenting advice from you and just learn from each other and just trying to challenge it to continue that positive mindset and giving mentality.

Yeah, yeah. I think acceptance is one of the biggest things. It doesn't mean you condone or condemn, just accepting what is and not necessarily have an opinion on things. I think if kids could understand that their opinion is the, you know, the, the foundation of all of their suffering as humans— that is the human condition. Us having an opinion on something is, is what causes us to have a problem. The fact that we are in conflict with something, there's something we don't agree with, we, you know, we say that's wrong, it's not right, it's not wrong, it's just weakening to me. So I accept that's going on. It doesn't mean I have to agree with it.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen some great interviews, um, on like Ed Mylett's show, and I, I forgot the doctor's name, but I remember him talking to him and he was talking about like how our thoughts are kind of the programmers of our mindset and our body and everything that we do. And I think it's so important for us to teach our kids how to think. I think that's so much more important than telling them they're wrong. It's guiding them along the thinking process so that they can see alternative perspectives. Or creative solutions, right? It's kind of like throughout our entire life we've been trying to go— we've been taught to go to school, get— read books, get good grades, and that's pretty much it. How much problem solving is there and how much innovation is there, right? It's like there's different ways to do math nowadays compared to when we learn math. It's crazy. But yeah, you know, it's why do I have to do it that way when another way works, right? How do I teach them that? And I think teaching them to think is probably going to be another great and important skill. And I'm, I'm not sure if like I'm going off track here, but you and I just like connect so well and we just start having these natural conversations about this stuff.

It's funny you mentioned the maths because, you know, I think we probably learned a similar way, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago, whenever it was, however many decades that was ago. But yeah, when I was trying to help my kids with multiplication or division, right? 5, 6, 7 years ago. Well, that's not right, Daddy, that doesn't work that way. And I said, well, show me how you're supposed to work it out. And it's all this convoluted, extremely longhand way of doing things. I said, well, if you do this, but that's not, you know, they need just to do it like this. I said, I don't know why it's being so much more complicated than it needs to be, you know. And I talked to the teachers, so I'm not saying it's wrong, it's the wrong answer, but why is there a reason that this has been taught in a more complicated fashion than, you know, and even the teachers agreed. Yeah, we, we know it's not the easiest way, but that's how we have to teach it.

And that's, um, that's really unfortunate, you know. We should be teaching our kids how to think differently and think smarter. It's kind of like, you know, in real estate, before we even found real estate, our path— and that was all that was passed down to us from parents— were go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, you know, live off your 401 when it's time to retire. Right. And if that was the only path that was presented to you, you never knew there was another path. Right. And I think that's why it's so important that we're being leaders. We're paving the way. We're getting the scrapes and bruises, but also that we can show and allow our kids and our friends and family to say, hey, there's another path to this. You don't have to take that path that everyone talks about. There's another path that I already got the scrapes and bruises for. I figured it out. Was really hard, but you now have the choice to take another path. And I think what I've realized, you know, coming from a group of friends that have come from similar backgrounds, right, they don't have the same motivation for real estate as I do. And, and I realized it's very hard to change the perspectives of your friends. And when they're in a very good comfort zone, you know, they have their 9-to-5s and they are not set in their ways, but they're comfortable and they don't see a need to pursue a different path. And sometimes their comebacks would just be like, well, I'm happy. They're like, are you happy? Like, making more money doesn't make me happy. And I was like, you know, it's not about happiness, it's just about, hey, I want you to have a choice. And I think what I realized I needed to do was like peel back on trying to tell them what to do. And to show them like, hey, this is what I'm doing, feel free to come along if you like. And that was a really big mindset shift for me, man, where you have to recognize you can't change people. And I'm carrying that forward in my parenting where now I know I can't change my daughter for how she thinks. I simply have to show her and let her decide whether she wants to take that path or not.

Yeah, it's very true. I mean, like, I think it was, uh, it was maybe Napoleon Hill, maybe misquoting, but you know, man, convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. It has to markedly change them, or they have to note and, you know, see that difference for it to be real for them, because otherwise it's just they're stuck on, you know, I think, you know, not to get into religion or politics, but just the principle of most kids take on their parents' religious and/or political views, and many of them will defend them till the hilt. You know, to the death almost. Because— but they don't understand why the parents have those opinions. They just take them on, whether it's any of these opinions. And the same, you know, America is the best country in the world.

Great.

How many others have you seen? And how many can you compare and contrast to say that, oh, there's not an equal or comparable experience in a different country with different conditions and situations, you know? So I think it's really important to guide, guide people in that way. And travel, you know, I think it was Mark Twain that said something on the lines that travel, travel cures racism, or I can't remember the term he used, but something along those lines. And I think that that's really, really sums up a lot.

Yeah, I mean, you gotta, you gotta experience other perspectives to break down barriers, right? It starts by just being a good listener and instead of telling people what to do or changing them, right? You gotta just listen to hear the perspectives. I think so often we start off by saying, well, this is what I do and this is how it was successful for me. Why don't you ask them like what their goals are and what makes them happy, right? Because, you know, I've been to the Caribbean islands and man, the first time I went to Barbados, it was like the happiest people in the world. I, and I used to live in Boston, right? Super cold, everyone doesn't really want to talk to you. I pulled up this parking lot and people were coming up to my car and I'm thinking like maybe they just want money, but they're telling me where to park my car at a beach. What? This doesn't happen in Boston. No one cares about you. And you just get a different perspective on what makes other people happy. And there are so many good people out there. You just got to go look for them. And it's hard, right? It's hard to break out of your comfort zone, especially when you're around the same group of high school friends or college friends. But it's what you need to do to grow. And sometimes you have to leave some friends behind just to kind of pave the path so that you can come back and help them, right?

They say you always find what you're looking for, whether it's bad people, good people, you know, problems or solutions. You know, I think that that's, that's very well said. You know, what you focus on expands and you'll find, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, so tell me about your wife. Is she, um, is she um, from a different sort of social background from yourself? Does she have a contrasting attitude of money where you've kind of aligned or, you know, changed perspectives together in, in, in the marriage?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, my wife also works a 9-to-5 right now, um, but she has been so supportive of me, man. It's just I asked her like, hey, should I quit my job? I think I really want to do this. And she has always been the number one supporter. Even when I left my job to go work at a restaurant where I made no money, she's like, go for it. Um, when I decided to leave real estate, she's like, well, there's never going to be a good time to leave, so you might as well do it now because you just found some success for it. And I cannot thank her enough by just recognizing how much, how supportive she is. And her parents also came from an immigrant background. They did come from Vietnam a little bit earlier, and they were able to still get educated and learn English. Um, and they also got started investing in real estate, but they've only done affordable housing, uh, in Massachusetts. So we, we kind of never really talked to her parents about real estate because I think we recognize it's good to kind of separate what they're doing versus what we're doing. Whenever I tell them like, this is what I'm doing, they would give me advice about like, you know, all the problems that they face in affordable housing and renting to affordable housing. Tenants, because there are some stereotypes of Section 8 tenants where some people might come in here, they might bring drama with them, they might bring drugs, gangs, etc., uh, into your, into your property and cause you more headaches than, than normal, right? Yeah. And it's— I didn't want to kind of go against their experience because they, their opinions are shaped by their experience. Yeah. What I need to do is recognize and learn from their experience, like, okay, I know that this is very, very possible. How do I protect my investments against those scenarios? Because I'm raising capital from partners, right? And all my friends, I'm so humble that they believe in me, that they're willing to invest with me in our mission. They just ask simply like, hey, can we make it sustainable? Let's make sure that we're not reaching to our pockets every month to do this affordable housing mission. And that's why I really believe in our portfolio strategy of short-term rentals and affordable housing so that it can be a good diversification strategy and continue to build wealth for their families too. Yeah. So my, my in-laws, they are absolutely amazing people. They're so supportive of Tina and mine's wishes. They, they never really kind of question us. And I, I honestly learned from them. Like, they, they are now buying real estate, and they bought a property here in Southern California so that they can retire here, uh, being in closer proximity with us. So it's amazing what real estate has done for them. And I just wish I opened my eyes earlier, but I don't think like that anymore. I live life with no regrets, and I recognize that in my 20s I could have started in real estate earlier, but I never for one second regret the choices that I made and the jobs that I took, because every single thing that I have done has given me the confidence to leave my job and try real estate. If you think about it, right? I had to tell myself every single time I'm about to buy a deal and I'm super scared, right? I have to tell myself, hey, I used to be an EMT. I used to answer 911 calls. People would used to get me, and I was 19 years old when I started, man. Like, I didn't have a beard or mustache. I tried to grow my mustache. I look a little bit older, uh, but that's what I recognize that all your listeners should be doing. It's like, start doing things that are hard because eventually you can look back at it and give yourself the confidence to take the leap. Because you are going to have to take some leaps of faith at some point, and it's going to be really, really scary. And the only thing that's going to help you take that leap is by remembering all the hard things you have done already and recognizing and appreciating how much gains you have made in life already up to that point.

That's a really important thing to say. Um, you know, there's struggles in what we're doing through confidence and some sometimes financial struggles, and that's not, that's not necessarily relating to real estate. As parents, as adults, as human beings, you know, we go through our learning experience of putting money in the wrong place or not getting the return we thought. And I realized about 2 years ago that I might have sheltered my kids from some of the struggle from time to time. And there was some pride involved. Divorced. I may have wanted to sort of hide it from my ex-wife and stuff through embarrassment or whatever, but I'm not helping my kids understand that there is success on the other side of struggle and there's lessons learned through the struggle. And the persistence and the consistency to push through that is the part, that part of the journey, which is the most important part of the journey. Not to set them up to think that everything's always going to be there and it's going to be rosy, and if something goes wrong, then good grief, the world's falling apart. So I think that's another thing that different cultures have different conversations about money. Some cultures have no conversation about money and others really all in your business and there's no barriers and boundaries between families. Those things can be both advantageous and also subtractive to family relationships and stuff. But I think it's so important to get over the taboo of money and say, hey, Ken, I can't come out this week, probably won't be out for a few weeks. I'm just buckling down for a little while. I'm putting some more money in the bank. Dealing with some stuff that I need to deal with in my responsibilities. And if more people would have that conversation with their friends and be transparent, other friends would be thinking, oh shit, I should have done that a few weeks ago. I know I'm going out putting it on the credit card where I'm just trying to keep up with the Joneses or whoever it is because everyone else is going out, I need to go out as well, so I can't be the one that's left out. Or— and FOMO is another thing in this day and age. You know, talk to him about those things, whether it's as an investor, whether it's in business or any level of success. It's like comparison with other people. Yeah, we can contrast businesses in a healthy way, but the only business that we— or person we can compare is us against last week, last year, 10 years ago. Where have we come as a human being? Because if we're comparing against other people, it's like chalk and cheese. It's trying to compare different fruit, different things, you know, metal and wood. They've got different back— you know, they've got different purposes, different functions, and we're not comparing things accurately. And I think that's where social media is such a breakdown for these teenagers and kids that are looking at other people as a comparison rather than a contrast. I think, you know, I know a friend of mine told me a couple of weekends ago, he said, somebody told me the other week, congratulations on your overnight success. And, and he was telling me how, how that shocked him, because knowing how many years he's put into this business, and, you know, in the recent 2 or 3 years, I mean, they'd be— they literally, 2 weeks before, they'd celebrated their 10th anniversary with 182 employees in the office. And to be told, congratulations on your overnight success, was, you know, I felt it was insulting to him. I'm not putting words in his mouth, but yeah, you know, where, where we look at these things and kids are looking at these teenagers, oh, they're on YouTube, they got a million subscribers, they're making this much a month, and I put out 2 podcasts and I've not got— nobody's watched my videos, you know. And Alex Hormozy, I think it was, says you got to put the content out. Oh, Gary Vee, gotta just throwing the content out. And Hormozy said the same thing. It was like 2, 2 and a half years before he blew up. Something else happened and then suddenly everyone was interested in his content, but he had 2 and a half years worth of content consistently out there. And, you know, if he had just stopped, maybe he wouldn't have had the other opportunity because he didn't have the history. Pace talks about his Instagram was the reason that he got picked up for, uh, the big construction contract with with his, you know, contract, you know, the big job that he had many years ago because of putting himself out on social media. It wasn't a brag, it was just Instagram was new and he just got on board with it and started posting some stuff about his family. And those are the things where it's— authenticity is difficult to detect for teenagers because they don't really know other than the, the, the A-roll, the, the highlight reel. Life. That's all they're seeing, and they don't get to see their friends, especially through COVID, that, oh, they just got an Xbox, they just got a skateboard, they've just done this, they've just done that. It's like they don't know the parents just won the lottery, or, you know, they're making up for something that they're missing emotionally or spiritually, you know what I mean? They don't get that full picture. So no wonder it just seems, you know, negative for them that, oh, I'm not good enough, my parents don't do this, or I don't have this. You know what I mean? So I think it's really important to bear this in mind where we are building that legacy with our kids. I see it as a relay race where we're ahead in the track and the kids are catching us up to speed and they're taking the baton at some point. We're building something together and then we can let them run with it because they've learned, they've got up to speed, and then we can slow down and enjoy life with them as they understand everything at a much earlier age. And we can enjoy much more of life together. You know, I think that's going to change, change the way the world works for many people. But many people can't be entrepreneurs or investors.

You can't.

Yeah, you know, it's not going to be for everybody, but it will change a lot of lives if we can help a lot of people avoid the paycheck-to-paycheck mentality and lifestyle.

Absolutely. And I think, I think it's so important for us to teach our kids and not tell them what to do again, right? But make them become or take on the identity of like, I am someone that does hard things. And I think if we ingrain that into them from day one, as soon as they're able to absorb that, that those lessons, then I think we're setting them out for success, right? Because all the kids out there and everybody out there, I mean, they just want, they do want overnight success. They want to invest in Bitcoin and make a million dollars overnight, right? Everyone wants it because you didn't have to do work except click a button.

Get rich quick.

I know everybody wants to get rich quick, and that's unfortunately not, not the reality for most people. Are there people that get rich overnight? Absolutely. But for the most part, 99% of the world, they're not going to be that lucky. And the ones that were lucky probably took an incredible risk in the beginning. Making that investment, right? But that's okay. But if we're able to teach them like, hey, just do hard things, and that becomes a normal part of your everyday routine where you're trying to do hard things and fail at it, you're going to learn something every day, and you're going to be miles and miles and miles ahead of your peers because of how well you've conditioned your mindset to take on challenges and adversity.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, even the cold showers in the morning here in Arizona, it's like, it was, uh, was it 60, high 60s or early 70s this morning. The showers are getting colder again. I remember Christmas last year with the cold showers in the morning, and they say that that in itself helps resiliency against stress when you potentially put your body under stress, even if it's just a cold shower or an ice bath. I haven't done one of those yet, but I'm looking forward to that sort of thing. But again, It's building these things in that build that resiliency and the wish to excel and know that there's no overnight success, there's no get rich quick. And all of those people that do suddenly become— the spotlight's on them. Yeah, it's like the basketball winner, the team, they win the cup. The smart ones, the very next day, we're not winners anymore. Now's the next season, which is 364 days away. Now we've got to train for the next year's season. It's not like riding on their laurels for 6 months or a year saying winners, because otherwise they couldn't be the winners next year because they, they just wouldn't last like that, you know.

That's right, man. I, I think, you know, life is just a series of decisions. You know, when I first got back, like, the silver lining in during COVID— and you and I talked about social media I deleted Instagram, I deleted Facebook during COVID and I never really got back on until this year. But during COVID I actually started reading a lot more, and that's how I found real estate for the first time. And I recognize, like, when I reflect back on the journey, it's like, wow, I made a lot of serious decisions. I made the decision to get a book, I made a decision to read it, I made a decision to get a home equity loan on my property based on what I learned. I used a home equity loan to buy my first Airbnb.. And I learned how I needed to manage the renovations and what I needed to get the ARV up to. And long story short, right, if I didn't make all those series of decisions, I would have never became a millionaire with, with one of my best friends since 8th grade. And we both came from low-income housing, man. Like, if we never made those decisions, those hard decisions and uncomfortable decisions along the way— it's never one decision that makes it, it's series of amazingly and hard and difficult decisions that you have to make, and uncomfortable ones as well. Because I was so scared, man. When I signed up for Squirtcon, I was nauseous. I was getting ready to throw up that day. Like, I gave a lowball offer because I was hoping they wouldn't accept it, and they did, right? And to think back now where I was so scared, where I was ready to walk away because they wouldn't give me like a $3,000 or $5,000 credit for a sewer issue. And if I walked away from that deal, think about how much money I would have given up. Like, I would have never became a millionaire with the properties. Um, but I had to take a leap of faith, and I had to remind myself and my partner, like, hey, we have always done hard things. No matter what, we'll figure it out. And even if the worst case scenario happens, we will still be okay because of everything that we have done to set up our financial foundation up towards this point. Like, I still had a W-2 job at that point in time. So people can take risks, they can take calculated risks as well. So I think for all your listeners out there, you have to figure out what your comfort zone is and your, and your launching point is. You have to decide like what, at what point will you be comfortable with it? And if not, what is your backup plan? So just so that you have a backup plan, because sometimes you need a backup plan to take more aggressive action.

Yep. Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, this has been wonderful, Kent. We've covered so many topics. Um, what would you like to leave us with for, you know, whether it's talking about your, your daughter or, you know, what, what your next, what your next kind of step in your journey is?

Yeah, I mean, our goal is we're gonna continue pursuing, um, buying another short-term rental, buying another affordable housing unit. Uh, if anybody wants to learn more about affordable housing or short-term rentals, I like to think that I'm really good at underwriting short-term rentals. I'm happy to help any of your listeners with that. They can just DM me on Instagram, um, and I'm happy to help out because my secret agenda— and that's not so secret anymore— I eventually want to help people make money so that they would be willing to kind of help us out when we want to invest in more affordable housing units, because I recognize it's not the most profitable area. But I'm hoping I can help make people money so that they can have some to spare and invest in a— in our mission right here. Um, I think the last thing I would leave with your listeners is the model that we always grew up with when we didn't have much money. It's always a model that we say, hey, it's not about where you're at, it's about who you're with. So you got to recognize relationships, pour into your family, your loved ones, your friends, and the people that you care about, and never let that go. Because in life, it's not about how much money you make. It's really about the relationships that you make in life and those memories that you can kind of cherish when it's your time to go. So I had an awesome time with you, Trystan Trenberth, man. This was fun. I loved it. Thank you for having me on, man.

Of course. Thank you so much, Kent. Guys, look out for the next slide after we finish. It'll have Kent's contact information. You can see his Instagram right here. We'll put his website and anything else he wants to share with you shortly. Kent, thank you so much. I appreciate you joining us.

I love it.

Thanks so much, guys.

Bye-bye. Yes.

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