The Art of Virtual Networking: How to Utilize Technology to Scale a Business in 2022 featuring TwnSqr Founder Paul Wakim — Wealth Juice | Real Estate, Personal Finance, Investing

Welcome to the Weekly Juice Podcast, where we discuss all things real estate, personal finance, investing, entrepreneurship, and the many ways to achieve financial independence. We interview accomplished investors and entrepreneurs with the goal that their stories inspire you to take control of your financial future. Here to get your creative juices flowing while also documenting their own personal investing journeys are your hosts, Corey Jacobson and Ryan Bevilacqua.

Welcome back to the Weekly Juice.

As always, it's your boys Ryan and Cory here with another episode for you. Today we interviewed Paul Wakim. He is a real estate investor, entrepreneur, and actually a startup CEO and founder, and has an incredible story of how he started really getting into real estate. Some family members had properties of their own, and he saw that the lifestyle they were able to live, and he was like, wow, this is something I want to do. And I can see in my future and, you know, turns out today he's heavily involved in the space on a day-to-day basis, even more so than a real estate investor.

He's actually like a tech startup entrepreneur too. So he got into real estate investing first by faking it till you make it in his photography business. So he kind of stumbled upon like the biggest agent in his area. He was a real estate photographer, ended up like making drone videos for this person, got in that way, then became an agent and investor and then sold all of his rental properties and investments to start Townsquare, which is like a tech startup essentially that connects buyers and sellers in off-market properties. It's a really, really cool platform. We'll let Paul talk about it a little bit more in the episode. But this episode we talk about so many different things and one of them being like how to really like build your network virtually. So that's something that we've never talked about on any episodes before. But like, what's the best way for you to get in front of people and talk to people virtually from all the way across the United States or the world? This dude bought a property from somebody who lived in Qatar, I believe, for like—

on WhatsApp.

On WhatsApp. Yeah. Like the creativity. You can tell that he's going to be highly successful in being an entrepreneur. He learned, he taught himself how to code. This episode's a little bit longer. You got to hang out because the philosophy that we talk about, the ins and outs of like, again, the networking and like how the how-tos of networking, but also like more specifically the virtual networking, it kind of blew our mind and it gave us so many good ideas on how to grow our professional platform, our podcast and, you know, our social media. But this guy's doing it all and he doesn't even have social media himself. So he's like a very outdoorsy, cool— we've just vibed really well with him.

He told us right now he's, he's— I don't know if it's called geo arbitrage or specifically he is living in Airbnbs all across the country for a week, 2 weeks at a time just because he can't— a digital nomad.

There you go.

I was way off on that. But yeah, right now he's in Colorado, then he's going to Utah, Arizona. Just incredible stuff. But he's running his business and Paul Wakim is living free, man. So that's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great episode with Paul. I think everyone here is really, really going to take to him and like his story. So without further ado, let's bring him in.

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Of course. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I'm pumped to be talking to you.

Absolutely. Well, yeah, we're thrilled. So let's dive in here. If you could kind of give us the inception story of how you got into real estate investing, like why real estate, and then, you know, take us through the beginning of your portfolio up till, you know, the creation of your business.

Yeah, totally. So whenever I was growing up, my grandfather and my grandmother were real estate agents and real estate developers in Palm Beach, Florida, where some giant houses are. And I saw how well they were doing with real estate. So it's always been like in my blood, I guess, that real estate was going to find me eventually. Then in high school, my rich dad, his name was John. John introduced me to the world of rental properties. He had 20 or 30 rental properties at the time and really showed me what was possible. And then as soon as I graduated from college, I started what has become one of the largest real estate photography companies on the East Coast. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my girlfriend at the time, now my wife. And I was the primary photographer in that business for the first 2.5, 3 years before we hired our amazing employees that we have now. And I interacted with the super, super high-end real estate agents and the really, really experienced real estate investors in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania market, which was blowing up like many places 4, 5, 6 years ago. So I interacted with them and I saw, okay, look at how much money the real estate agents are making. Look at how much money the flippers are making. Look at how financially free the landlords are. How do I get into this? Plus my grandparents, plus John, my rich dad, everybody was kind of like pushing me in this direction of real estate. So I got my license, got into the world of wholesaling, wholetailing, creative finance, and then I found myself in the world of new construction, which was the last project I did before I exited. Real estate and started to create this real estate technology company. I've done everything from wholesaling and wholetailing to a couple transactions as an agent to buying a house for a dollar and turning around and selling it for $86,000+ to my landlord who I was renting from at the time. I bought a house via WhatsApp from a guy in Qatar, house hacked and flipped that place. And then I did, like I said, new construction on some high-end townhomes with partners. But Everything has always been with a mentor, a partner, somebody more experienced than me throughout my entire real estate career. So I'm trying to adapt my success in real estate into my technology company in real estate to allow people to connect with people that are either more experienced or people that are less experienced, just allowing real estate investors to connect in a wholesome, authentic way so that everybody can benefit.

Got it.

Cool.

So Paul, what was, what do you think was the biggest attribute to you being able to get started at such a young age? As we were talking on the show prior to, you mentioned you were 29. I know, and I know you said you had some family that were doing it too, so maybe that was a big key factor, but you've, you've just told us a lifetime full of work and you are barely, you know, you haven't even turned 30 yet. So like, what, what do you think was the biggest asset or the biggest reason that you were able to get started and be so successful at such a young age?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is the support system that I had around me. I, I have never really had like a super hard life. Thank God. I'm just super, super fortunate in that way. I've had support around me since day one and my parents have always tried to instill in me that, okay, you have this life where there's not something going wrong. You don't know where your next meal is coming from or you know where your next meal is coming from. College, all of this stuff is taken care of. Like everything was going Okay, so what can you do to maximize that? So I think that the maximize the situation that I have found myself in. So the success that I have had is just due to having a great support structure around me and being able to take advantage of it. Anytime anybody asks me like, you know, how do I get started or what should I do to get started? My answer is always make sure that everything else in your life is as cleaned up and structured as it possibly can be before you start this new venture because You don't want to be distracted by something going on in your personal life if you're trying to start investing in real estate or trying to start a tech startup. So yeah, I have to give a lot of credit to the support structure around me and honestly, the luck that I have had in my life. There's no other way to put it.

Wow. I like that. And it's hard because people always have something going on, right? I just think, you know, you can get as cleaned up as possible, but you think about health, health things, starting families, being in debt, being, you know, being in school. Like there's a lot of different things. Like everybody has something going on. So it's hard to say, right? Hey, like, just have it all cleaned up because no one has it totally cleaned up. But if you could give a recommendation just to like how someone may clean up things going on in their life, like I'm thinking like we talk financial independence all the time and I know you're big.

Yeah.

Advocate on this too. It's like, how do you recommend people kind of get their financial picture in order, or just certain things that they should have their ducks in a row before getting into real estate? Because I think there's a lot of people that want to get in, they're just not sure if they're quite ready yet.

Yeah. Yeah. This is, I hope, not too lame of an answer, but I try to sit down every quarter, and I have been doing it since graduating college, and looking at my credit cards and looking at my loans and looking at my bank account, just diligently every quarter, putting it into Excel. I export everything out into Google Sheets and I just look at everything that I'm spending money on and make sure that I'm actually saving money and make sure that I'm actually, you know, looking at my finances. So I'd say look at your finances as much as you possibly can because starting a business, getting into real estate investing, whatever it might be in this world of business, is all going to be based on the money that you do or don't have to spend on this thing that you're trying to chase. So I'd say get really, really, really knowledgeable on what your finances look like. And then the second thing is I'm a huge proponent of lists. I have a storage unit that is full of boxes of notebooks. I write down exactly what I have to do every single day, and I have an orange highlighter and I have a yellow highlighter. My yellow highlighter things are the things that I have to do every single day before I put my head on my pillow or before I sit down on the couch and spend time with my wife so that I can be a good husband or take my dogs for a walk and be a good dog dad. But I have to get those things done. And the orange tasks are the things that I know I can get done super quick, so there's no need to push them away. So I make lists and I look at my finances as much as I possibly can.

I really like that. Wow. Very actionable. So thank you for that, for the list. And then I also would tell people automate everything, right? If you can just like automate those credit card payments, automate your debt payoff, right? If you have student loans, but then also automate what you're put— whatever you have coming in, put a percentage of that away to investing, put it in a sinking fund, then also put an emergency fund. There's a lot of these things out here, right? It's hard to tell someone in 30 seconds or less how to get your financial house in order. But yeah, those are just a couple of things that we're chatting about. There's two things that jumped out in your initial walkthrough of your story that I want to chat about. One, I think it's super timely. I believe the World Cup or whatever, I'm not sure if it's called the World Cup, but we're in Qatar, right? USA versus— I forget where we're playing.

That's right.

So let's talk about how you bought a property from someone in Qatar. And then also you got to tell us how you bought a property for a dollar.

Sure.

Walk us through those.

Where do we even begin with that one?

Definitely. So they're like the two crown or the two gems in my crown, those two properties, because they're so unique. So I taught myself how to code in 2018, 2019, so that I could build an algorithm to predict who was going to sell their house next in the Allegheny County market around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Um, that was really the impetus for my technology company. But as I built that algorithm and I got better with the world of coding, I identified a couple homes that were around where I was living at the time. One was the house that I bought for a dollar, and the other one was the house that I bought over WhatsApp from the guy in Qatar. So the algorithm that I built, the— it was, you know, it's hard to call it an algorithm. Anybody who's tech savvy is going to be like, this dude with the man bun, he definitely doesn't know how to build an algorithm. And I did it. And it was, it was, it was kind of luck that I was able to build what I built. But I identified these two houses, walked by them with my dogs for a couple of months, and then finally decided that I would really dive deep into finding out who the owners were. The one that I bought for a dollar, I found the owner's like, I forget, cousin's daughter, something. I found this lady. It took me like 4 weeks to find who this person was and contacted her and said, hey, I want to buy this house that's connected to your distant relative. And she said, I have no idea that that house is even owned by our family still. Turns out it had like $186,000 in Medicare debt leaned against it. The water hadn't been turned on for like 15 years. The house was totally destroyed. It had 4 feet sewage in the basement, just like totally messed up. So there in Pennsylvania, you guys might be aware of this process called the conservatorship. Are you familiar with that?

No, I've heard of it, but I don't, I don't know the breakdown.

Cool. So it's my attorneys handled it. I say that I bought the house for a dollar, but I, I bought the house officially for a dollar. I spent like $18,000 on attorney's fees that got me to the ability to buy the house for a dollar. But I went through this process called the conservatorship where it's a piece of the probate laws where as long as you're working with a member of the family who has some right to the property, you can take control of the deed, take control of the title to the house, and have it totally clear of any debts, including that $180-some thousand of Medicare debt. So I went through this 2-year-long process. It culminated through the conservatorship. It culminated in me purchasing that house for a dollar. And then I called my landlord who I was renting from at the time and said, Hey, do you want to buy this house? It's right down the street from where the house is that I'm renting from you. And he said, yeah, sure. And a couple of weeks later it was $86,000 or $87,999 profit, which was awesome. So yes, that's the first one.

So I have a bunch of questions on that. Like, so technically your profit was the $86,000 minus the $18,000 that you spent on the lawyers. So you made $60,000-something. That's just incredible. So my initial reaction goes to, did this house have to get torn down or did he rehab it? Because I don't know, man, 15 years of nothing being turned on, sewage in the basement, or maybe I'm just being dramatic.

And on that same part of his question, part B of his question is like, what value did you see in this? Why the hell did you want to buy this? And then was it just dumb luck that you got it for the $86,000? The profit obviously was $60,000. It— what the heck did you see in it to know that you needed to do all this research to get it?

Yeah, so I'm sure you guys have houses like this in the Philadelphia market. There's houses that are built in the, like, 1900s, like 1910, that are just, like, sandstone foundations with wood walls and no insulation and wood siding that are just ready to be blown over by the wind. And then there's houses that were built in the '50s, '60s, and '70s that are, like, they're bunkers. This was one of those bunker houses. It had a fire, it had all these different things wrong with it, but at the end of the day, it was a super solid foundation, like double thick brick walls, double floor joists. Like, it just was built like a bunker. So even though it had all these issues, the guy that bought it was like, yeah, it's a 1955 3-bed, 2-bath house in this neighborhood called Morningside in Pittsburgh, it's definitely going to be all right. I also paid to have it cleaned out. It was like $650 to have a trash clean-out company clean all this stuff out of it. And as soon as we did that, it was like, all right, it's not that bad. It's now just a really nice shell of a house. So yeah, that's the value I saw. And I, from the photography that I was doing at the time, I had been in a bunch of really bad houses that were ready to just fall over. And then I had been in a bunch of houses like this that, you know, they look really bad in pictures, But at the end of the day, they're not going anywhere unless there's some catastrophe.

Cool. Cool.

Got it. So let's talk about the other story then. What was the—

The guitar over WhatsApp.

Yeah. Yeah. How did this happen? How were you able to make this purchase happen?

Yeah.

So right around the midpoint of buying that house for a dollar, the one that was real destroyed, I was— again, out walking my dogs, looking at the houses that the algorithm I wrote predicted would sell, and came upon this duplex in a slightly different neighborhood, but close enough that I could walk my dogs and said, wow, that's a pretty cool place. It definitely looks a little bit run down. Let's see what happens if I put a sticky note on the front door that says I want to buy this house. And it just so happens that the guy that owned the house who lived in Qatar, He was a professor at the local university, Carnegie Mellon, and he was in town for like 3 days. And the day that I put the sticky note on the door was the last day that he was there. He called me and he said, hey, I had like this like 3-digit phone number before the 10-digit phone number called me. I'm like, this is definitely spam. There's no way. So he left a voicemail for me. And for the next 7 months, I worked with him and the US Embassy in Qatar over WhatsApp and email. And my journeys in the US to buy this house that was another super solid duplex. My wife and I ended up putting probably $115,000 into it to get it ready to be rented, which we then house hacked and then sold to our tenants. But it was again super lucky. I put a sticky note on somebody's door and it worked out.

It's unbelievable.

It's just like creativity, man.

It's what sets— it's funny that you hear stories like this because people like you are out there. It's funny for listeners, they're You know, I feel like a lot of people today have gotten super lazy, right? And they're like, oh, there's no deals out there. And because they don't find something on the MLS or it's not like instant gratification, right? We're used to like, look at the phones. You, if you need something, you Google it and you get the answer in 2 seconds. It doesn't work like that in real estate investing. It— I mean, it can once you spend years building your network, right? And like connecting the dots. And we'll kind of talk about that with Townsquare, connecting the dots a little bit. But it's just super interesting. To hear your story. Now, you know, we know you've sold off your properties to, to launch your business and take it up from the ground. But I want to talk to the importance of you, your photography business too. I think we kind of sped fast forward through that. Can you— yeah, can you talk to us just about that and how that got you really, really into the mix of real estate investing?

Totally.

Who was taking the pictures? Was it like, how did this idea come up? And you're like, wow, like, now I need to go into real estate investing myself.

Yeah, yeah. So real quick on the point of those two properties, I've been a part of probably 35, maybe 40 transactions throughout my entire career. I've definitely touched a bunch more just watching over the shoulder of mentors of mine and talking to John, my rich dad. But, you know, those two properties are super cool to talk about. I've also sent like hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail and hundreds of thousands of text messages and paid cold callers in the Philippines to make phone calls for us and find hot leads, motivated sellers. So yeah, I mean, those, those two are super cool. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, that's one piece of a lot of work. And the other side of it that people are used to is like sending a bunch of text messages, making a bunch of phone calls, sending a bunch of mail, doing digital ads that I also have some exposure to. So I think as long as you're applying yourself somewhere, you're going to find a deal eventually, especially because the paths are so well trodden by other people in the industry. So yeah, I don't mean to take a tangent and ignore your question. We can go to the photography business now.

No, it's great. You're, you're, uh, you're showing your grit there. I love it. There's so many different ways you can find deals, right?

Yeah. I want to add the, the question on the photography business, and because I think this is a key element too. A lot of people reach out to us and they're like, I want to get into real estate investing, but I don't know where to start. I don't know how. And the first thing that I typically tell them, or we do, is like, learn the business, right? So what's a better way to learn the business than being, what, an agent? If you want to get into investing, a lender, work for a property manager, work for a construction team. And then here's another amazing way that probably is like a little unconventional that people don't think about. Like maybe you have a skill. Like, what is your skill? Oh, my skill is photography. I could take photography of real estate. What does that do? Oh, puts me in front of realtors. It puts me in front of lenders. It puts me in front of property managers, people that know the business better than I do. I can learn from them. Maybe they're investors. Maybe they know people who invest. Maybe their father, their aunt, their uncle, the mailman that they talk it just expands and spiderwebs your network. So I'm curious if you saw that you could talk about the inception of the photography business and if that's what got you into the investing side.

Oh yeah, totally. You hit the nail on the head. I'm about to repeat everything you just said in different words. So my girlfriend, whenever I graduated college, now my wife, she bought me a drone. And at the time we were starting a digital marketing company with an older guy who was our business partner. And it just so happened that his wife was one of the largest real estate agents agents in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania market. So I had this drone. He said, hey, can you go take drone photos of this listing for my wife? And I said, yeah, sure, I'll try it out. I'll see what happens. And a couple other people were like whispering in our ears saying, you should do this for real estate. You should do it for real estate. You should take pictures with your drone, take videos. So the inception of the photography business was I went out, I took photos of that house with this drone, and then I guess, being entrepreneurial and wanting to find if there was really a thread to pull on with this photography business. I drove down the street from that listing, found the first for sale sign that I could in somebody's yard, and called the agent on that, on that sign and said, do you want drone photos of this house? I see that you don't have drone photos. And she said, yes, I want drone photos. I also want interior video and I want interior photos of the house. You can do all of that, right? And I said, yes, of course I can do all All in the business plan. That's right. So I called a buddy of mine, a rock climbing friend of mine who I knew had a wide angle lens and a tripod. And I said, Ben, I need this lens and I need this tripod. And then I called all of my friends that I knew had decent houses and said, hey guys, tell your parents I'm coming over tomorrow to take photos of their houses. And they're like, all right, no problem, man. Whatever you say, freak.

I see what you're saying. Building, literally building up your portfolio.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So I showed up with my drone, showed up with my camera, built a portfolio in one day, sent it to this agent, and it just so happens that she was the largest real estate agent in Pennsylvania at the time and sold 480, 430 houses that year. And I was the photographer for all of those houses, the majority of which were for investors.

This is okay. This is incredible. And I have a story to go off of this. This is it's just the— it's faking it till you make it. And it's, it's— yeah, it's like, it's what you need to do. And I'll tell you why. I have a story about my younger brother. I gotta give him credit. He and his one friend want to start an Airbnb short-term rental arbitrage business where they go out and they rent property from, uh, an investor or, you know, a homeowner and gets permission to put on Airbnb.

Yeah.

So they have nothing to show for— they're just getting started. They just got their first property. And how they did it is my brother goes to the owner, He goes, "Hey, we do this for several properties." And he says, "Oh, what are the addresses?" And my brother texts me, he says, "Just so you know, using your address, one of your Airbnbs, dad's address, and then Andrew, his friend, his mom's address." I'm like, "That's a terrible idea. He's going to know." He's like, "Oh no, I don't think he's going to know. It'll be fine." And so long story short, the owner of the property goes to my brother. He's like, "So I looked up all the addresses and they're all your family members. Do you actually run these?" He's like, "Ah." Yeah, he— so he got caught in it, and the, the, the, the investor said to him, you know, I just want to let you know how much guts it takes to put yourself out there. I asked for some— I asked for like what you've done in the past. I can tell you're just getting your start. I would have done the same exact thing that you did. What? Oh, he wrapped it to you. So like he got lucky that that guy like saw a little something in him. My brother just was like, fuck it, like I'm just gonna say this. And I told him not to, but I gotta give him credit. And a similar story to what you're doing is like what you did like, like, okay, I'm in this situation, like, I got to figure this out now. And then you, you ended up being with the agent that had 430, whatever the amount of listings. So yeah, it's— you don't have to lie, right? But you have to believe that you can do it. So that's the whole thing, is belief that you can do it prior to maybe actually executing it. And it's kind of been our story a little bit too in some things. Not to be, um, uh, like, not to be not trustworthy, it's just that you have to to put yourself out there and think that you can do it before maybe it's actually—

I got my first job in what I do now. Like, literally, I, I had no experience in sales, right? I work in sales now, more in retention. But, um, right out of school, I, um, I had no idea what I wanted to do, right? I studied film, I studied business, and I was like, I gotta— I had to move back to Philadelphia for specific reasons at the time, right?

Yeah.

And I was like, damn, I need a job. And so I went to— I had— I ended up getting a few interviews. I went to Barnes and school and picked up Selling for Dummies and read it cover to cover. Just went there day after— I didn't buy the book. It was like, I went there— I mean, I did buy it the last day, but the first day I was like, I'm just gonna come back tomorrow because I had no money. I was right out of school, right? The book was like $15. So it's actually really funny. I went, I ended up getting the job, and they were like, oh, you have experience in sales? And I like just knew how to talk the talk, right? And I was a landscaper back in the day. I did some construction, and I just like kind of, you know, the entrepreneurial stuff. You're like, yeah, I did sales and like B to B, A to C. I was bullshit left and right. And up there like, oh, that seemed like you have a pretty good amount of experience here. They had to see right through it. But today, the other day, the only reason I bring this up is you kind of do have to fake it till you make it and kind of how do you—

as long as you know that you can make it right, that's the thing.

You have to trust yourself, right? And then when you know when the lights come on, you have to be the one to stand up there and be able to like execute and perform. But it's funny because it reminds me of certain people when, when it comes to school, right? Some people are just great at taking tests and they like, they don't study until the last minute. So, or what I'm thinking is when it comes down to crunch time, that's kind of how like I, we, I used to break out my time. It's like, I'm not gonna study. I was a crammer day before the test. Yeah, study it all and just, you get by, you get like an A. Like, you're not getting the A, but if you put a little bit more time into it, you're probably gonna get the A. But it just proves that you can do it. You're Yeah, well, I can do it. It's like, it's so, it's interesting. A lot of people are using this tactic in different ways. So, um, I appreciate you guys bringing it up because it's funny. You just, you have to, you really do have to take a chance, but the chance is on yourself, right? A ton of these entrepreneurial story stories of how people started, you hear them like, oh, I just figured it out. But it's like they just kind of said they could do it. If someone asks you, can you do it, you say yes, and then you figure it out.

If it's something that you really want to do or see yourself doing, I totally That kind of brings me to my next question here. So you became the photographer for a major agent, right? And then at what point did you become an agent yourself and get into the investing game after that kind of sprung you into real estate?

Yeah, definitely. I don't mean to go back a second time to the other question, but I think through hiring employees for various companies that I've started You know, I think that the reason why your brother had success and the reason why we all have these stories is because people that have been through building something, they can recognize the other people that are trying to follow in those same footsteps. You're just looking for somebody that's willing to bust their ass and work really hard. And maybe that agent saw in me, hey, this is somebody that's willing to bust his ass and do 430 listings for me over the next 12 months. So yeah, I think that it's some of it's luck, but a lot of it is belief in yourself. And I think that the people that are successful that you're going to, they can see belief in yourself and the grit that a lot of people just don't have today. Yeah, just my final two cents. Sorry for going back.

No, I love it. I do. I don't even know if I made sense with what I said. Okay. I was like, I need to get to the end piece.

I got it.

I got my Selling for Dummies book the other day and I got all jacked up. I have it and I have my first business card in there as the bookmark.

Oh, that's so—

hell yeah.

Wrap up the story. I'm going to wrap it up. I was like, I do. I don't think I made any sense. But anyway, it's great. We're all having fun here. So take us, take us to the inception of your business now, right? Like, that's something I really want to talk about because it's kind of this kind of new way of linking buyers with wholesalers and lenders. And I like— give us the benefits of the app, what it's called, and kind of how you created it, because it's interesting. You kind of let this or led on before the show that you taught yourself how to code. And that's— you kind of went fast through that too, man. Like, that's very intense to me. I'm like, how the hell? I play video games, right? But like, to learn how to code and all those numbers, is that just how your brain works? Like, why would you even interested in that? And just kind of take us through the entire story here because it's super interesting.

Yeah, thank you. So yeah, I worked with that agent. She introduced me to a bunch of different other agents that wanted high-quality real estate photos. And then, yeah, built a team of professional real estate photographers around that. And as I was stepping away as the primary photographer and my wife was starting to take over the day-to-day scheduling admin stuff, I was, like I said, getting into the world of real estate investing. And it just— I had this dumb lightbulb moment of there's no real estate without a seller, so I have to learn how to find the next seller before somebody else. And I'm a huge podcast consumer, so I had been listening to some computer science podcast where they were talking about algorithms and AI and neural networks. And like, I don't know what any of this stuff means, but they're talking about coding. So I searched for a couple different things on how to crunch big data, and one of the main languages on crunching big data and building rudimentary algorithms was Python. So, uh, I found that Python is super pervasive throughout the world. And it's really not that difficult. It's like once you learn how to read a legal document, like, you know how sometimes you look at a legal document and you're like, how does anybody write this? But then like eventually it clicks and you get into that flow of like, okay, they're talking like this. There's a bunch of commas, but they're really referencing the first bit of the sentence. Coding is very much like that. I've been out of the game for a long time because our CTO does it now. But once you understand the flow of the language, the syntax of the language, as you call it, it's really not too difficult. And I'm sure there's a bunch of computer scientists that are like, hey man, it is really difficult. And it is in certain cases, but Python is a good way to start. So I had that light bulb moment of there's no real estate without a seller. I have to be able to predict who's going to sell their house. And then I honestly, guys, I got lucky again. I mentioned that Carnegie Mellon is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the county around Pittsburgh is Allegheny County. So Carnegie Mellon did project with their undergrad computer scientist majors. And Carnegie Mellon is probably the single greatest computer science school in the entire world. So they did this project with Allegheny County where they structured and labeled all of the data, all the tax assessment data and all of the court record data really, really complete and nicely so that people like me could go in and pull from it and make queries to it and download it as Excel files and then build algorithms on top of of it. That wasn't their intention. They just wanted to clean it up, but it made it perfect for people to write code on top of. So my ambition for wanting to predict who's going to sell their house so that I could buy more properties like those two crazy ones in Qatar and the one that was a piece of crap, you know, I wanted to buy properties like that. Plus I had a team of Carnegie Mellon undergrads behind me structuring the data unbeknownst to them so that I could learn how to code and build something that helped propel my real estate investing career, no doubt about about it.

Wow. So it's so interesting to me, and maybe you can break it down for us too. Thanks for the story on kind of how you learned, um, yeah, code and all that. But the other thing too is like, you're almost talking about predicting the future, right? Like, how do you predict if someone's going to be willing to sell their house? Can you break that down to us? And, and I don't—

yeah, for people that don't know how to code or anything like that.

Yeah, like, are there factors that you're like, okay, they're, uh, a male aged between 50 and 60 of this ethnicity that has the, you makes $75,000. Do you look for demographic information? What are kind of the clues that would kind of pump into your algorithm?

Yeah, totally. So this is why Amazon, this is why Facebook, this is why Google, this is why they're worth so much money is because they know that I'm a 29-year-old white male that shops at Whole Foods and buys bananas twice a week. Right? Like they know all this.

Like the whole 9.

Like, has a nanban, could do Tarzan. Thank you. Definitely pretty ripped. Yeah, fair enough.

Rock climber.

We know the whole thing, dude. Yeah, literally grip strength. Appreciate it, dude.

That's right. That's right. But they know everything. So like they know what to show you on your Amazon homepage and they know, like, I'm sure if you guys use Google Chrome on your phone, you can see all these stories that are recommended to you the next time you open up a new tab. Like they know all of that because they're essentially the way that I describe it. They're building a quote unquote Facebook profile for you. You on the backend. They know, okay, 29-year-old white male shops at Whole Foods, buys bananas twice a week. There are umpteen million other people that do that exact same thing that have clicked on something like this, like this story about Alex Honnold free soloing the next mountain or whatever it is. So we did the same thing. I did the same thing. Mitch, my co-founder, did the same thing with our algorithms. You look at all of the historical quote unquote Facebook profiles of people that sold their house. Usually they're on their second property. Usually there's some kind of financial distress or family distress, like a death in the family or a divorce or a job change or credit card debt or a lien against the house or just flags of distress. And you look at all the different flags of distress. That make up a Facebook profile of a previous seller, somebody else who sold a property in the Allegheny County market. So you look at that person and then you say, where are all the other people that haven't sold their house yet but look very similar in terms of their data profile as these people that have sold? And then you just place weights on do they have credit card debt, did they get a divorce, those kind of things. and then you're able to predict who's going to sell by placing those weights. You know, most people who sell their house for less than market value have some kind of debt. So anything with debt gets a 9 out of 10 weight whenever we look at the next people who might not sell in their profile. And then we say those people are more likely to sell because of the historical factors, which is why it was so important for me to have clean, clean, clean data on the historical sales provided by the Carnegie Mellon undergrads because they were able to say this one row on this spreadsheet has everything you need to know about this guy who sold his house last year for $50,000 under market in 30 days. That makes sense.

Yeah, it's super interesting and I don't know why it keeps popping in my head, but I keep thinking of PropStream. We've taken a little bit of a glance at it, but we've never used it ourselves. You mentioned sending out a bunch of different mailers and things like that, you know, in your time at Real Estate Investing, can you talk to the differences between these two? Like, I might be completely off here. Maybe they're nothing alike at all. But I just— for— I think a lot of people, when they're like, oh, when I pull lists, I think data, I think— I think PropStream. Is yours— are they kind of doing the same thing, but you're pulling a little bit more? I'm giving like a number to each, each person, right? And saying like more likely or less likely to be be someone that would sell their property, whereas PropStream maybe is just the, just the pure data. Is that correct?

That's it. Yep, that's it. So if you think about an Excel table, PropStream is— this is probably insulting and super dumbed down, but Excel or PropStream is just the Excel table. Here's the row for what the mortgage is, here's the row for, or the column for, what the debt against the property is, you know, whatever. And it's just the pure data. It's the interpretation of that data that is what we were doing with our prediction, saying, okay, the is, you know, uh, 18 years into the life of its 30-year mortgage, these people might want to sell because they've paid off and have a bunch of equity in their house. The interpretation of that data and the provision of the weights to those data points, um, really is the thing that drives any kind of machine learning or algorithm. And I gotta be honest, guys, it's so hard that there's only a couple companies that are really doing it right. I don't think PropStream does prediction. Um, I have some friends at Audantic, uh, based Seattle. They're the best. Those guys are doing some crazy machine learning and it's all like providing weights to data points and going deeper than anybody else I know of in the real estate investing industry to truly predict who's going to sell because it's a humongous problem with probably trillions of data points. Wow.

So last one for me on this topic is kind of like, who is Townsquare For? Like, we're talking to, you know, we've mentioned to you pre-show a bunch of investors in our network, right? And some are just starting out. They might have 0 to 5 units, others, you know, hundreds, thousands of units. It's a very wide scale here. There are flippers, there are long-term buy and hold, we have short-term rental, we have midterm rental investors. Like, there's so many. So who is Townsquare for and why do you recommend it?

Yeah, so we, just to be totally clear, In 2020, when the pandemic hit, all of that data, no matter how nice it was from Carnegie Mellon, it all got screwed up. So the algorithm was no more. So Townsquare, as it is today, was an iteration, a 3-year-long iteration that happened because of that, the ability to predict. Today, Townsquare doesn't do any prediction. We're a marketplace for active professional real estate investors to more efficiently sell their properties to buyers in their network. Buyers on our network, and the ability to connect with other investors on the platform and leverage those other investors' networks for more efficient, more cohesive sales.

Got it. So it basically— what you're doing here is you're connecting off-market buyers in the process. Like, you're saving the buyer and seller time and money by eliminating the need for a real estate agent, the listing time, the process, If you want to help build, if people have buyers, people have sellers, you're kind of connecting them in a way through Townsquare. Is that the broke-down version? Yeah.

Yeah. I'll explain how it works. So people on Townsquare do 3 things primarily, arguably 5, but 3 is an easier number to talk about. The first thing that you can do is you can bring your property that you have for sale and you can post it to our marketplace and see if anybody reaches out to you as a buyer or as somebody who wants to partner with you. And I'll explain what the partnership piece means in just a second. The second thing you can do is you can upload your buyers list. And this is why I say it's a marketplace with tools built on top for active real estate investors. You can upload your buyers list and you can say, hey buyers, here's my property on Townsquare. Here's all of this nicely formatted information. Come check it out. And then we built email tools so that you can send your deal on Townsquare software to your buyers via email from our platform. So that's the second thing you can do after posting it to the marketplace. Third thing you can do is you can take your deal, we call it a post, and you can share it with another user on the platform who has also uploaded their buyers. And you can share it with that user and say, hey guys, like if I came to you, hey guys, I have this deal, it's a 3-bed, 2-bath built in 1979 in Allentown, right? You say, okay, I have buyers on my buyers list that are looking for that property. So you then vet me, you vet my deal, you vet my contracts, and then you can send it on my behalf. I get to leverage your relationship with your buyers that are interested in properties like that. You can send it on my behalf to your buyers And then if one of your buyers comes back and says, hey guys, I love this deal, I want it, you can split any profit that I have in the deal with me through a joint venture agreement. So it allows us to connect in a more meaningful way because it's connecting based on the deal. If I have a crappy deal and it's like 3-bed, 2-bath that has a hole in the roof and nobody's lived there for 20 years, you're like, dude, I'm not going to send this to my buyers, then don't send it to your buyers. But it allows us to connect on a deal-by-deal basis.

Awesome.

Very cool.

Good. I was thinking this more on— I'm trying to tie it into the syndication side and a little bit. I'm just thinking about someone, let's say for example, you— I don't know, someone has a property that is worth $3 million, right? And if they're— you want to connect— I want to connect my buyers list with that property, right? And I want to get in touch with that owner and then—

Yep.

It's multiple. It's not, you know, one person's not going to tackle the $3 million. Let's just say we have like 4 or 5 people that want to jump into that.

Yeah.

How does, how does the link work in the middle of like, how do I get put in touch with that? Excuse me, the person that owns that property. So the seller. And then how could— can we get like a split there? Like, can we jump into the property with them? Is it all on your platform or do you kind of take things offline once you guys meet? How does that work?

So ideally everything takes place on the platform. I'm treating Townsquare, my co-founder, my team and I, we're treating it like a pure tech startup. We're raising venture capital for it. And yeah, everybody asks, how many deals have you done on the platform? And it's like we're trying to keep people on the platform even though we're giving them each other's contact information. So ideally that situation you said would happen on the platform. But the way that it would work is you can set up the one of the 5 things you can do after those 3 things is you can set up a buy box. And that buy box, you're able to say, here is the area geographically that my network, my syndicate, my buyers are interested in. Okay, you set that up and then you say, here's the type of properties that my buyers, my syndicate, my network is interested in. And then you can do what we call setting up an auto proposal. So the second that a property is posted on Townsquare that meets that buy box's criteria geographically and property feature-wise, buys, you can reach out automatically to the seller and say, hey, this deal fits my buyers and my purchase criteria. And that's before they've sent it to their buyers and before they've shared it with anybody else. And then you get to connect with them in any way that you'd like. We don't dictate the terms of any agreement that you have with them. So if you guys have a syndication of people that are like, yep, we'll give you $10 million if you find us a couple good deals. You set up a buy box, you go find that seller, you reach out to them with an auto proposal. They say, yeah, man, I'll sell this deal to you. My fee on this is $25,000. You guys can make your money through your syndicate however you'd like, but you can also say, okay, Mr. Seller, I'm bringing the buyers to this deal. I want 10%, I want 20%, I want 50%, 80% of your fee on this for providing the higher. And I mean, if they're making $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 on that, they're probably not going to be upset. So yeah, that's a long way of answering. Yes, you can do exactly that with buy boxes and find the exact properties that you're interested in.

This sounds like the future of real estate connection and investing in a way.

Thank you.

I imagine that is the reason why you're heading up the company, right? You want to be at the forefront of it. That's right. So that's awesome. But like, do you think this is the future of how a lot of JV partnerships are going to be done? I notice— I know that your network is everything, but I think your network is now becoming more of a virtual connection as much as it is a belly-to-belly and handshake connection. Do you see the same thing happening? Is that the whole, like, reason behind the startup?

Yeah, totally. So whenever we pivoted from the retail space that we were in in 2020 and 2021, We, we went into this space where we were just doing like straight up dump all your properties into Townsquare. It's just a marketplace. But then we realized that there has to be, like you said, that connection. The connection has to be there. There has to be a way for people to form a deeper, more personal connection. And we had their deals already on the platform. So yes, I definitely think that forming connections online based on the deal is going to be the future of real estate. So yeah, exactly. That's what we're going for.

Cool. What are your— before we get into the last couple sections of our show, I want to know what your future goals are with the business. I know that we kind of glossed over that you had a real estate portfolio that you sold to put money into this business, which I think is for a lot of people, what Maybe they're going to build up a real estate portfolio and sell it to live off of. Maybe they're going to build up a real estate portfolio and sell it and go into a big syndication. You chose to build up one and sell it and put it into something that is really your baby. So just talk about that, the decision to do that, and then also the future of your business, and then we'll wind down the show.

Yeah, totally. So I and my business partner put a couple thousand dollars into the business in the first place whenever we were back trying to predict who was going to sell, and we were only able to do that. My wife and I were only able to do that because we had sold a bunch of the properties and had done well for ourselves in real estate before that. Um, so yeah, we, we've been all in, in this world of real estate technology since really the beginning of the pandemic. A great time to start a business.

Yeah, well, a lot of people have, so yeah, yeah.

So yeah, we did that so that we could start the business, and it has allowed us to, you know, have a good nest egg for ourselves and not worry if things don't work work out, they're going to work out. But if things were not going to work out, selling our properties gives us a nice cushion to, you know, not worry about where groceries are going to come from for the next 6 months or so if we really, really had to. And I think having that cushion is going back to that support system. I have the support of my previous investments backing me right now. I'm not worried about a humongous credit card bill, or I'm not worried about only having a couple hundred dollars in the bank. I have the support that I had built up for myself through my previous investments to really lean back on and rest my head easy at night on. Yeah, I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, yeah.

And then just the future of like, where do you see your business in 5 years? Like, give me, give me like a big picture there.

Yeah. So big picture is, you know, I want to help real estate investors connect on a deal-by-deal level. I really think that connecting like we're connecting right now is super valuable. But guys, let's be honest, if I brought you a killer deal that was like, let's get some buyers on this. I know you have a network. I have a great deal. That connection between us would be even stronger because now we're in business together. So I think that— I think that connecting on a deal-by-deal basis is going to allow investors to form even stronger connections than just, you know, let's go out and get a beer together kind of connection. So I think the future of the business is forming those super tight connections, but the real value in the let's go back to data for just a second. The real value in the business is the data of all the off-market property data being in one place. My goal for the business is that somebody ideally could have two cell phones, one that has Zillow and all the on-market properties, and then one that has Townsquare and has all the off-market properties. And ideally, that person could capture 100% of the real estate market that way. So that's the big goal. That's the big vision.

That was a perfect analogy there. And, um, we're visual guys, so now I see your vision here. But I wanted to just— just for the naysayers, but I want to ask you this. Every— it's hard to make a meaningful relationship over, uh, virtual— virtual relationship, I'll say. I'm not the one saying that. I'm saying if someone asks you, it says that, like, what, what do you say to them where they're like, nah, I'd rather just meet this person in person or, or talk to them face to face. I don't think I want to invest my money with them over the computer. Like, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make sense for me. How are you going to like kind of attack that rebuttal or give them a rebuttal basically to say like, no, this is why it would work?

Yeah. So the most important thing that I can speak to has been building a totally remote team. I have 5 employees in Pakistan, plus I have 4 employees domestically, and my business partner and I have been totally remote really since the day we started the business because we started it in the middle of COVID even though he was 3 miles away from me in Pittsburgh, we were still totally remote and have been since day one. And what we have found to be successful and what I would really tell anybody that's trying to build any kind of relationship virtually is have a call like this. Talk about, you know, like we talked for 20 minutes before, not about, not real estate stuff. You know, don't hesitate to go beyond the business call that you're about to have. Like, I talk to my sales guys pretty much every single day. And the first 10, 15 minutes of the call is like, did you see the Steelers game last night? Like, are you sick? How are you feeling? Did you buy that bike yet? You know, like those kind of like personal things. I think adding that to every conversation that you have virtually makes a humongous difference because our inclination is like, okay, I'm going to get on a podcast and I'm going to pitch Townsquare and we're going to be all about Townsquare. Meanwhile, we had a great conversation because we're sitting here talking about real estate photography. And you reading, uh, Sales for Dummies at Barnes Noble. So I think having that like unprofessional, uh, or unscripted conversation is super important. And the second thing is write everything down. If you're trying to have a business relationship with somebody virtually, I write everything down in Google Documents and then attach it to the calendar appointments that I have with people so that it's there for everybody. And if you can record the meeting so that that way everybody has this target to go back and point to for the meeting that you just had. My sales guys, they know exactly what we talked about. My meetings, they know exactly what we talked about, and they can reference recordings. So it's a little bit above and beyond, but I think that it's what has worked for us and what has allowed us to raise venture capital money and be successful.

Very cool.

I can appreciate that answer too. And it was more so I'm thinking about the older generation, and I think the new wave of real estate investors, right? So for us, it makes sense. We've met hundreds, literally hundreds of people via Zoom and built relationships. We jump, you know, we're in deals with people that we've met a couple times in person, right? But yeah, it's— you've talked to them hundreds of times on Zoom, and it's funny, the world is virtual, and I think COVID has kind of pushed us all to be able to adapt and build relationships that way. It takes some getting used to, right? For sure. Like, we have a bunch of influencer friends online, but then when you meet them in person, you're like, dude, the same. And it's just, you're not a cartoon in your real life. So it's interesting, but you have normal conversations, you realize people are human. The hard part is, and this is just being candid, I think for everybody, it's like, it's hard to get in bed with someone that you just met, or like go into business. It's the same thing, right? You're like, yep, you're, you're property-wise, like think about a traditional mortgage, 30 years. You're like, wow, like I just met this person a month ago, am I getting into a 30-year deal with this person? It's, it's, it's a hard hurdle to get over. You have to, you have to really, it's almost like researching psychology, right? And like really trusting that you have your shit together, that they're going to have their shit together. And I don't know, it's hard for people who haven't known their business partner for a long period of time. So just something to think about in general. It's like, that's how I think about all my new relationships and it's hard to build, but it is doable, right?

That's the— Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, like you're swimming upstream. Like if you don't think that that's the way that the world's going to go, people are doing it every day. That's how it is. It's like, not that the— I mean, I love the personalized in-person, get to see nuances and tone and facial expressions. Like, I love that because I love people. But I do think that the way that the world is trending is that, you know, it's kind of like shit or get off the pot. Like, it's going that way. So you got to figure out how to build the relationships in a similar way and then connect when you're together. But a lot more business is being done when you're further apart. So it's like kind of just how it is. And that's That's not because we want it to be like that. That's just because that's the plan of whatever. Yeah, I think—

Yeah, totally, totally. And I think that you saying something about psychology really like piqued my interest and made the light bulb go off in my head. You know, if I don't follow up with an email with you guys and say, hey, thanks so much for having a great show and like all the stuff that usually happens after a good meeting, that's like bad virtual social etiquette if I don't do that. And like, if I don't like have a nice smile or, you know, say something polite at the end of this call, it's like weird, bad virtual social etiquette. So I think that if I were to, you know, contrast anything or butt up against anybody who's of the older generation, that's like, how do you form a business online? It's like, you know, it's kind of the same question of how do you form a business in real life? It's like figuring out those weird social cues on how to be a professional online. You can definitely do it. We've been able to do it and so many other businesses have been able to as well by knowing what the other person expects. They expect a professional email. They expect a summary of whatever the call was. They expect a recording if one's available. And really, I think that it's arguable that you can form stronger relationships that way because there's extra effort that goes into it rather than just a handshake at a bar.

I really, I really love this conversation. We actually never talked about on the podcast. It's, it's, it's almost, it's the virtual etiquette, I guess. I don't know how we call it, like the technological etiquette. It's, it's funny. I run a sales team and they're reading some people's emails back and forth. It's brutal. They're like, it's very like to the point, black and white. There's no personality in there. And for me, like, I try to make it sound I mean, this is your 10 years of practice. It's like, how do I sound like me in words and get people excited? Like, you gotta have the exclamations, but you have to have a little lingo and things that you get. So that way when I see you in person, we're dapping up and hugging versus like stiff as a bird. Like, hey, like, I don't know what this guy is.

Salute.

What's the vibe? Like, salute this guy.

Yeah.

And so it's funny that you mentioned this. So we're definitely conscious of this. We told you before the show, we're like, hey, we have to get up. Press a button on the camera. Also, if we're on our phones, that's notes. It's not us texting, talking shit on you as we're going through, like making weird jokes. It's like, no, we like, we want to make sure this thing flows and goes well. And then if you don't say that up front, we— it's actually interesting. We had one guest after one of our shows, we didn't say beforehand, hey, we're going to be on our phones. Like we try not to look at them as much anymore, but you need the notes to ask the right excellent questions. And he was like, He's like, well, I'll look at my phone now, seeing as you guys were. And we're like, oh shit, like he must have been offended that we were doing that and we had no idea. And it's just that virtual etiquette, right? You learn through going through this stuff. Another point, like sending a guest guide before the show shows you're super professional. It has a breakdown. For example, we had a summary of you before you came on the podcast. You were like, topics I'm prepared to talk about, bang, bang, bang. And here's a little summary of me. I'm like, dude, this is going to be excellent because I know a little bit about this this guy. Then it prompted us to do further research, and it shows an excellent show. I guess I'm kind of Podcast 101 right now for you. But then after a show concludes, like, this is something that we're working on now. It's like, after every show on Wednesday, you should have a thank you email for coming on the show, a link to your episode, and then your clips that we cut attached to it so that you're like, dude, these guys put a little box with a bow on it, just gave me my gift, and now I get to go promote it to true, but you feel like they're super buttoned up and professional. And right, those are the guys I'd want to go into business with, right? Because exactly, I know if they're taking care of A through Z, they're going to do that with everything they do. And that's how exactly it's like intentionality everywhere. And it goes so far. I'll tell you, I'm on a tangent right now. I just got to keep it going.

I got to keep it rolling.

Yeah. Yeah.

One last— we went into business with this gentleman and funny enough, he is a— he's an agent and investor. We had him on the show. So his name's JD. I'll say it out loud. Everybody loved his episode. So he's awesome when he does short-term rental. However, he sets us up with our Airbnb and he ends up sending us final pictures after all the renovations were done and everything. And I'm going through and I notice one of the pictures looks different than it did before. I'm like, "Dude, what is that?" And it sounds very Like, wow, that's nothing to write home to mom about. But it was an old-school arcade game, like an old-school Pac-Man. Picture like a Pac-Man or Time Crisis or whatever. It was actually a Universal one that has a bunch of different games on it. I'm like, oh wow, what's this? What's this in the property? He's like, oh yeah, dude, you told me that that was something you guys wanted and that you were looking to put in one of your future properties. And I just wanted to get one for you. And for me, that was like, he had done everything right up until the end anyways. But that was the cherry on top. I'm like, dude, this guy pays attention to finite details and that's exactly what I'm looking for and someone that I want to do business with because I take my money. Yeah. I was like, oh, Andy's my boy now. He knows. He, he was like, stroke my ego a little bit. He's like, dude, I know what Ryan likes. So yeah, yeah, it was just one of those things. And if you could take away from the episode, it's like when you're building relationships, listen to what other people are saying. That is the thing. We all love to talk. Everybody loves to talk about themselves. It's just kind of human nature. But if you listen and you act on that, it's just gonna take you super far, especially with building relationships and, and especially virtually, you know, we'd only met him a couple times before this and I'm like, damn. And it was virtual and then we had met in person, but I was like, man, I can't believe you remembered that. Like it was just, yeah, something very cool. So I just wanna highlight it.

Yeah, it's those little things. It's like the, the email after the show or the Pac-Man game in the Airbnb because you set it for literally a split second on, on a Zoom call. It's like, man, that's the way you build any relationship, but it's especially the way that you build virtual relationships.

Absolutely. And before we wind down the show, I kind of want to mention another way that it's changing. I love that story, right? And he talked, he talks about all the time and how much of an impact it's had on him and us. And it's the same thing for me. It's like, you know, you can really see if people care. One of the other things that I think has changed, and, you know, people that are listening, maybe it's just another, another nuance in, in the never changing virtual world of creating relationships. I actually— I've noticed, and I know certain businesses you have to do it, but like, I've noticed the attire for meetings have changed, right? Like, we're wearing hats. You just mentioned your man bun, which I love, by the way. But it's funny, like, it's like we're wearing t-shirts. Like, I love the personality of who you are showing through here in terms of the meetings. And I think that the older generation more like, no, no, no, you put on a shirt, you put on a tie, you put on a jacket. And for me, I actually get— this is just personal. I don't know if other people feel the same way. I actually feel like you're wearing a layer of something that's not necessarily who you are. You're trying to put on a facade, a show, making me believe that you're maybe potentially somebody that you are not. I would rather show up with a hat on, with a t-shirt on, and being myself. And if you can't— if we can't connect, that's okay.

We don't—

maybe we're not meant to do business together, but if we can, then you're knowing that you're going to get me, the authentic me. And I think that that is what I would recommend that people do. That doesn't mean if you work in finance, banking, that you shouldn't put on a shirt and tie because that's your audience, right? But I think that like, as podcast hosts, as real estate investors, like, I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna be professional, I'm gonna wear nice clothing, but I'm not putting on a suit to try to show you that I'm somebody that I'm not. And I think that's the only thing that has changed a bit, but I actually really like it because it's like, who is this person? And you can tell, by the way, if somebody's buttoned up. It doesn't have to be a certain suit and tie. Like, you can tell if they're like— do they have their shit together based on what they're wearing too? And you don't need to judge, but humans judge, so it's kind of like how it is.

Yeah, I just want to throw that in there. No, totally agree.

That's a— that's an interesting one, dude. I like how you explain that.

So yeah, and then some people might be like, no, like— and I'm okay if you disagree too. It's like, yeah, I, I like that.

Well, that's a good breakdown. It's like, it's going— it's the shirt and ties, like how you're hiding your authenticity and yeah, you're you. That was— yeah, that kind of hit home for me because so for a long— like starting in my, in my job, we, we always used to have to wear a suit and tie, and then it's gotten a little bit more relaxed. It's still a polo and, and, um, you know, slacks, if you will. I got the Lulus, like super cozy, stretchy. That's right. Don't have them? Shout out. Hopefully we get them as a sponsor. They are fire. I had to do a little plug there. However, I will say, we get on the show and we wear the hats and we're relaxed. And it's funny because sometimes I get the feeling, depending who comes on the show, for example, we had David Greene, who's the host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. He was, it's a big dog. And we had him on the show and he made a comment because I was in a hat and a hoodie and he was like, oh, hat and hoodie. He's like, okay, I could see how this thing's going to go. Like, and, or like, I could tell the vibe. Not like how this thing— that's how I interpreted it. Like, he was saying—

he literally just said the vibe though.

Yeah, he said— sorry, he, he said like, oh, that's the vibe for today. And I was like, yeah, yeah, oh shit, does he think I'm not gonna be buttoned up and be a real bro that's wearing his hat and his hoodie? And I'm like, shit, did I not show up today? Yeah, for one of our biggest interviews. And like, it's a reflection of Cory and I. And I thought about that for the longest time, and turns out the show was awesome and it didn't care, but I was second-guessing myself the whole damn time.

Yeah.

So it kind of— you got to play off your audience is kind of my point. It's like, there's— I think there's a time and a place. And, uh, it's— to me, I still think about that, that till today. I'm like, did I wear the right thing? I don't know. But if you're talking about investment banking, if you're going into a lending meeting, it's like, dude, you're gonna dress the part. You're not gonna wear a backwards hat and a hoodie. But if you're— if you're chilling out, it's a podcast, and it's something that people are going to listen to more than they're going to see, even though it's the first time you met someone. I don't know, there's— it's a hard balance there, but I appreciate it.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely appreciate it. I showed up and saw you guys for the first time today, was like, all right, these guys are going to be my boys. Like, it's going to be a good show, right?

No, it breaks the barrier and you're just like, you're not nervous anymore. It's like, then I'm going to get the real you. You're going to talk about your story and you're going to be like, all right, this is easy. Like, whatever, let's just talk.

We want you to feel comfortable. That's the whole point. It's like, I feel like by doing this, we make other people feel like, all right, I can breathe a little bit. Like, I don't have to grit my teeth. I don't have to be nervous about it. And not that we're like the biggest podcast in the world. I don't mean it like that. I just mean that, like, you know, you want to be able to have people like true, like their light shine through. They want— what do they really want? What message do they really want to get out there? And I do that best when I'm just being who I am. And I can totally see that people don't agree with it. I'm cool with it. It's, it's not— if it's not for everyone, but like, that's how I want to be. To be. And if, if I've gotten to a point where I can't wear a t-shirt at a business meeting, then I'm either A, in the wrong room, I don't want to be in that room, or B, I haven't done well enough being authentic and being true to myself where people trust me. So that's like where it comes from for me. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna put on like, you know, a nice shirt.

You dress really well. Yeah, I do. I would say you're not sloppy.

No, no, I'm not sloppy at all. I just, I just like think that the suit game is It's just like, I love putting on a suit for a wedding. That's the only time I wear it.

Like, you know, only time. It's the only time, but it comes back. Like, it means everything virtually because like, you know, if you guys showed up in suits and I showed up in my t-shirt, you'd be like, you'd be like, what? Like, what is happening?

And then there's two, it's two on one and you're like, oh dude, like, all right, I hope I say the right thing. Like, what should I, who should I, who should I address myself to? Am I talking to Corey Ryan?

Who do I write the check to?

Yeah, exactly.

to Corey though.

50/50 split. No worries. I love this, by the way. When we get to the psychology stuff, that's my favorite part of the show. So this is—

hell yeah, this is us just chopping it up.

So, but we have kind of wound down to the end. So we're going to go to the core 4, which is the second to last segment of the show. 4 questions just to get to know you personally a little bit on investor level, personal level. We'll keep it super basic for the first question, make it easy on And you can't use this answer because even though I know you wove it in a couple of times in the show, we're not taking Rich Dad Poor Dad. We need something else from you.

But no problem.

What's your favorite investing or business book? Some book that has impacted your life the most that you think maybe a young and up-and-coming entrepreneur would like to read and that could impact their life.

Yeah. So sorry, but it's not a business book. My favorite book over the last, like, like 10 years is this book called The Nature Fix. Have you guys heard of it?

No.

Wait, no, I haven't.

No, but I've read a book, an, it was like a 40, 50 page book called, or maybe it was an audiobook 'cause I don't actually read, the 3-Day Effect. And it was talking about, just correct me if I'm wrong, if this is anywhere where you're going, that they were saying like 3 days in nature can like reset your mind. Is that a, is it a similar book? Yeah, yeah.

So The Nature Fix. I used to live in Boulder, Colorado, and the lady who wrote The Nature Fix lived in Boulder, Colorado for, I don't know, some extended period of time. It may have been 15 years, it may have been 5 months, but she was there for a long time and she had to move to DC for her husband's job and she got super depressed. Their marriage wasn't working out like a bunch of different things were happening in her life and she And she's like, what the hell is going on? And then realized that, so Boulder is like the most outdoorsy city in the entire world. They literally drew a circle around the city of city parks so that you couldn't build out any taller or any, any wider because there's so many parks. So it's like the most outdoorsy town in the, in the country. She realized that it was the exposure to nature. So she wrote this entire book about the science of being in nature from from what it means for a newborn child all the way to somebody at the end of their life and how nature can impact them. And without rambling too much, because that's something I can definitely talk a lot about, The Nature Fix is by far the biggest impactful book for the last 10 years of my life and spending time in nature as a result.

This is super timely and it's so weird that you're saying this, but the other day I was, I had this exact feeling and it wasn't it, not to what you're saying, like my life's in shambles, but it came to a point It's like I've been in the city for a long time, so I grew up by the beach and I'm used to like just seeing, hearing the water, right? And I never really thought about it. And I've been in the city or I'm outside the city in the suburbs now, but not in nature at all. And I've been crazy. I'm like, dude, I just need to go freaking see something. So I, you know, I caught the travel bug after I graduated from college and we saw a lot of the world or not really a lot, but different places that I never been. So I've been to Iceland, I've been to Italy, Greece. Just like, those are like some of the most amazing trips I've ever had. And it costs a lot to get to these— some of these places. Whereas I think you— I think some of these things exist, or beautiful sights in nature exist in the States, and you don't have to spend a shitload of money. But my point is, I've been having this like internal urge to just go do something and see nature. I'm like, dude, I want to see this. I don't know, I want to go out. I have a buddy that lives out in Washington State. And I'm like, dude, I just want to go do that. I don't need to talk to anyone. I would go with Cory literally and be like, dude, can we just go vibe for a little bit? Or just grab an Airbnb in some random spot, but middle of the woods, but something we can go hike, go do something. I don't know what it is, but I've just been oddly craving it. And I feel like I'm stuck in this weird cycle of driving to work, coming home, doing the podcast. And it's all fun. Cory said nice stuff. That's fun. But the, the nature's lacking.

So yeah, that's important.

I think I need to read the book because, and it might be every time that you mention it, cuz yeah, yeah, it's especially your, your comment about the water.

There's an entire, I think 2 chapters in the book about the impact that literally just being by water. And I always say, you know, now the guy with the man buns telling you to go stare at trees and stare at waves, but like for real guys, I, I, I can't, I cannot recommend The Nature Fix enough because for me be like, if somebody says go spend time in nature, it's like, okay, well, what's the science behind that? Somebody says go buy a rental property. It's like, okay, what are the actual numbers behind the property so that this is actually going to benefit me? This book tells you exactly why you're feeling that way and exactly why you should spend time in nature. And it has honestly had the biggest impact on my business life, my relationships, how good of a husband I am, all that stuff.

Yep.

I credit with a lot.

So the nature fix, I don't, I don't want people to underestimate this recommendation because there's, there's like a meme on social that I've seen. It's like, and this isn't really our lives, but you know, I'm, but it, it does apply to, to some extent. It's like, oh, I can't wait, you know, my week is up. I can't wait to take a break from my medium-sized screen so I can spend time with my small screen and my big big screen, make like the computer. It's like, fuck, it's completely fucked. And we're not meant, we're really not programmed to have that happen as I sit across from a medium-sized screen at 7:00 PM on a Tuesday.

Yeah, but you're good today.

But like, yeah, Monday.

Yeah, it's Monday. I got distracted.

But it's like, it's not, it really is an important thing. So I'm definitely going to read that book. We could talk for hours, but awesome recommendation.

I think it's perfect timing, literally perfect timing. So thank you for that.

Yeah, no problem. Florence Williams, The Nature Fix.

Perfect. Cool. Thank you.

Question 2 is, let's say we gave you $50,000, Ryan. I gave it to you today. I know you're building a business, so your answer might be different than a lot of people, but let's just say tax-free in your hands. What do you do with $50,000 going into 2023 in your life?

Yep. So I'm very, very, very interested right now in the world of creative finance, seller financing, sub-to, all of the stuff that the great Pace Morby preaches. So I would— I'd spend that $50,000 on joining Pace's mastermind or hiring somebody that can teach me everything I need to know and walk me through my first creative finance deal. I've done creative things like we talked about with real estate, but I've never done multifamily seller finance or a multifamily sub-to, which is what I really want to do, or a wrap or any of the really complicated stuff that he does. So I'd spend all $50,000 of that on learning about creative finance because Townsquare, the real estate photography business, all of those things, I think that those are going to be a finite part of my life. But real estate is always going to be a humongous piece as whole. And I think that the creative finance stuff, everything that Pace Morby preaches, is magic. So if I can learn how to do some magic, then I'll be better for it in the long term. That's what I would do.

We, uh, we connected with Pace's— Pace and his, uh, assistant, and we've been trying to get him on the show. I think it's just one of those we have to keep asking, but we're gonna get him on the show. He's awesome. So I love that. Great answer.

Yeah, that's really cool. We could talk at tonight's end about creative finance, right? There's so many ways to get in and out of deals and it's, you know, some you need, some you need the banks, a lot you don't. And so I think it just speaks to, you know, it kind of goes off your platform too. So, but we, I digress, we won't dive into that, but he, Pace is the man. So I agree, that's a great answer. Question 3 is what has been your biggest mistake in your, let's say your business investing or like wealth building journey? Biggest mistake that you've made and how have you learned from it?

Yeah, it's super easy one. It's trying to do too many things at once. Like I said, I make this notebook list every single day of here are the things that I have to get done and here are the things that I can get out of the way quickly so that I can go do those things that I have to get done. I think that if I look at my to-do list every single day in any other way and I try to do 20 different things instead of those 7 7, 2 things that are highlighted with my yellow highlighter and 5 that are highlighted with my orange highlighter, then if I try to do too many things at once, I just end up banging my head against the wall and being a crappy husband to my wife and my family. So definitely trying to do too many things at once. And whenever I was starting Townsquare, you know, and starting this coding journey, I was waking up at 3 AM learning how to code from a coach that I hired in Europe and then going out and taking photos and then trying to buy houses at night and then trying to wake up and do that again. I was able to do it for 6 months and I pulled it off a little bit, but I would have been a lot better if I would have just focused on photography or just focused on coding or just focused on real estate investments. So without a question, doing too many things at once on a day-to-day basis and in my big goals right now, the goal is let's get Town Square to be profitable and nothing else.

Paul, everyone says that to us and we don't listen. And it's, we had a conversation about this before the show. Ry's like, dude, the amount of emails that we're managing right now, it's like not sustainable.

And I'm like, dude, we have 4 different email addresses and those are the ones we're just managing. We actually probably have like 5 or 6. Yeah.

And it's like, it's not sustainable. So anyway, I think we're doing too much. How do we cut back? Like, same thing. How do you cut? How do you focus? How do you narrow your focus? Because every—

have you guys heard of Hey? Sorry to interrupt you. Have you heard of hey.com?

No, tell— this is part B. Help us, please. What do we do?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. Look at hey.com. They have built a bunch of technology into making sure that only the most meaningful emails get in front of you and it works so well. It's amazing. I can't recommend it enough. It's $100 a year for an email service. So you're kind of like, what the hell is this guy recommending? But hey.com, you can get, you know, Cory at hey.com. It's great.

Got it. And it does it take Gmail, Outlook and merge them together? How does that work? I mean, we can look—

you have to forward, you have to forward them all to it, but you can also send it so that if somebody replies to your Gmail, you can say, hey, my email has changed to whatever, whatever@hey.com and then it will switch everything over nicely like that. Can't recommend hey.com enough.

Cool. All right, great. We'll take a look.

Thank you for the recommendation. There you go. Anybody else listening? Hey.com, get your life in order.

So emails, emails, get your emails in order.

Oh, emails. Okay, dang. All right, so question 4, my favorite question that we ask, you know, the life of an entrepreneur is both amazing and insane. Insane. What, but like my question to you is what do you do it all for? What do you want your legacy to be, Paul? Like why do, what gets you up outta bed every morning and why do you do what you do? What is the why behind doing everything that you do every day?

Yeah, I just want to take care of my family, you know, I want to take care of my wife. I want to have kids possibly one day. I want to take care of my parents and take care of my in-laws, take care of my brother. So, you know, I don't want to the uncle that shows up in a Lambo and like, that guy's the coolest. I just want to be the guy in the background that, you know, if my brother's kid needs money for college, no problem, I can take care of it. If somebody needs a new roof on their house, no problem, I can take care of it. So I just want, I want that from my legacy. You know, I'm not, I'm not flashy. I like the outdoors. That's pretty much all that I do. So I want to be the outdoorsy, quiet guy in the corner that you can look to if something goes wrong to take care of you.

I love that answer. It's, it's so funny.

I, I, he's, he's the same way. I, I, we're, we're similar in that. Probably not as outdoorsy as you are.

Well, maybe we're searching for that, dude. We're like, dude, we need to go somewhere. I gotta go on a trip. It's like, no, we need—

there you go. Come visit. Come visit.

Fine, dude.

Deal. So I, I will say this is, I love your answer to this and I, I, I was thinking a lot about this today. So weird that we're having this conversation. Sometimes the universe just connects at the right time, but I was looking at two people in their, they had to be in their 80s, late 80s. And there was a, it was a, you know, they, a husband and a wife and they got into like a very old, like Lexus or something like that. Like beat, like a beat, a beater car kind of, right? Like I'm kind of, I don't wanna say it wasn't like, when I say Lexus, I, that's typically viewed as like a luxurious car. It was really old and they had it for a while, right? So it's called Honda. And I just saw them like getting in and driving away together, and I'm like, at what point do material things not mean shit? Like, I was thinking about like their car, and I'm like, as long as it's— they can— first of all, it took them forever to get into it, and then watching them try to navigate getting out of the parking lot, I'm like, as long as they have something that's not— if they get in an accident, they're going to be safe, something big and like safe, they're probably good. So at what point when does it go away in, in, let's just say, like, a young male's mind that the Lambo is no longer needed? And I'm— and the answer to me is it's starting to become now. It's starting to be like family's coming down the future for me, and like, and, and like Corey as well, we're like getting to the point where like we're getting serious about our relationships and, and things— material things are kind of just not as important anymore. And you start seeing other people. I think it's when you age. I don't know what it is. You realize like the main, the most important thing is taking care of your family, taking care health and your time, right? Because you don't—

you're—

it's fading away, right? We're not getting super old, but when you get to your 30s, just about, you're like, you start thinking about this stuff. Well, you never thought of it before. You were indestructible in your 20s. That's how I felt. Totally. And it's super interesting. I always thought I wanted a Lamborghini, and Cory and I talked about this all the time. He, he might have flipped the switch a little bit earlier than me. I know we're both car guys, but he told me one day, he's like, hey, listen, I just, I just want to retire my family, and like, I want to retire my dad. And I was like, dude, that is So that's like beast. Like, that's unbelievable thing to say. And I, and I thought about it. I saw this. We both saw this thing on, on— there's a post on either Instagram or TikTok, but it's a baseball player and he came home and his two parents are sitting at their kitchen table and he just hands them a piece of paper. And the piece of paper stated essentially from the lender saying like their loan or their mortgages was paid off. Yep. And I think most everybody has seen this, but if not, I'm reminding you to go check it out. But they— the two parents just broke down. And like, this kid signed his first MLB contract, made millions, and first thing he did, paid off their house. Because yeah, that's where they wanted to stay forever. They didn't need the upgrade. They were— this is home to them, right? They aren't going anywhere. And he took care of them. And that's way cooler, exactly to what you said, way cooler than showing up in the Lambo, the hotshot uncle that has it all for himself, but he can't— he's not gonna buy the roof. He's going to help kids get through school. Just little things where you can impact your, your family tree and your generations down the line. So I think it's a super cool topic, and a lot of people— I wish I heard this when I was younger. I don't know if I would have listened because you have to kind of go through it and experience certain things in life, but it really does start to happen at one point in your life where it starts changing. You're like, wow, I'd rather take care of my people and my time, my health, than have the flyest car on the block or the biggest house on the block. Because at the end of the day, you're going to grow old and that thing will still be there, but you're gone and it doesn't matter. Like, it— there's going to be another one. It doesn't matter.

Totally. Yeah, you're, you're 100% right. And I think what it really comes down to is take care of your people, because who are you going to have experiences with? Like, sure, my dad might not climb El Cap in Yosemite with me, but I mean, maybe we can go for a nice drive on Highway 1 down the California coast. And like, if I can provide a nice safe car to do that, that's going to be something I remember a lot more than And if I pull up in whatever ridiculous car, if I have— we're in Lake Tahoe right now and there's $80 million houses on the lake. I'm like, dude, what could you do with $80 million with your people? Maybe they're multi, multi-billionaires and it's a drop in the bucket, but you know what I'm saying? Your story about that baseball player made me think my opinion about what my legacy, what I want my legacy to be is encapsulated in a story that I think is about Mark Cuban. I've heard this story about Mark Cuban. It could be somebody else. Maybe Mark Cuban is just a big enough name to apply to this story. But nonetheless, the story goes that Mark Cuban sold his company. The name, I had it in my mind and it's escaping me right now, but he sold his company. And when he sold his company, he was worth $2.7 billion, I think, and walked into his parents' house, you know, tech startup, really didn't, wasn't making any money, and then handed both of his parents American Express Black cards and said, quit your jobs, go live your life. That's exactly what I want to provide. That's what I want my legacy to be, you know, not quit your job, go buy a Lambo, do that if you want, but quit your job, go live your life and come have experiences with me, ideally outside.

Yeah, it's so cool, man. And I think, and I don't want to take anything away from the Lamborghini in the aspect of like, for me, that was at the top of the mountain, what I thought was the top of that. I was like, hey, once I can afford that, like, and buy that and have that, then I've made it. Like, I— that no one has them. You see how rare they are. You're like, it takes a certain type of individual to be able to build that type of wealth, I thought. But now you're— they're starting to come around. We're starting to see people in our network that, like, have them. You're like, I mean, I'm getting close, but it's like, do I want— when I can get it, do I— am I going to want it? It's so interesting. But for people, that's some— it's something to strive for, right? And I don't want to take that away. It's like, if that's what you want and that's what you help if you change your life in the course of the lives of people in your family, then go get it. Going after that and just wait till you get a little bit older and you'll see your priorities changing. And when you can— it's funny, when you can buy something that you couldn't before, typically you're like, I'm good. Like, I don't need it anymore. You just wanted to be able to get to that peak, if you will.

So that's right. Yeah, couldn't agree more.

And great Mark Cuban story. It's very similar to the baseball story. It's one of Those things, it's funny, it's being able to provide for someone else, right? And you always think you wanted to help yourself out, but it's really giving back to those who gave to you.

So really, definitely, definitely.

We've made it to the last drop. Last drop is, let's say, Paul, you had a chance to go talk to your 18-year-old self or 17-year-old self. What advice would you give your younger self if you had a chance to go back in time?

I think I have to go back to what I said before, and that is focus on one thing at all costs. Whenever I started the real estate photography company, I was also running a digital marketing agency. Like I mentioned, the guy that was our business partner, his wife, you know, it all worked out nicely because his wife was the one that asked me to go take photos of her house, and I drove down the street and that whole story. But it would be focus on one thing and if it keeps getting harder, just keep doing it because if it keeps getting harder, it's probably the right path. Like if I raise a bunch of money for Town Square, like my life isn't going to get any easier, it's just going to get harder. And I know that that's the right path because it's going to get harder. So I'd say focus on one thing and if it keeps getting harder, don't quit and say, well, there's another 5 things that I could go do. I could start a— I just listened to this guy who started a real estate photography company and made some money. Like, don't do that. Focus on the one thing that you want to focus on for at least a couple years and see if it gets harder, see if you can find some success, and don't worry about how green the grass might be on the other side.

Totally.

And it getting harder may be a good thing. That's what I think I want— like, I would want people to take away from this. Getting harder doesn't mean that it's the wrong thing. You're saying get— getting harder, meaning you might be just achieving more and getting to new heights, which takes you to harder challenges, which you need to pursue and, and move through in order to get to an ultimate destination. So I love that answer, Paul. It's been an absolute pleasure. The, um, this show— this is why I love doing the podcast. It took a turn for something like for the better. Like, I didn't know that we were going to have such philosophical Talks. I love it. It's one of my favorite episodes that we've done because we've really talked about a lot, and the virtual aspect of building relationships I think is so important. I already felt like— feel like you're a friend, and I've known you for about an hour and a half. So thank you so much for coming on. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more about you, your story, connect, network, what's the best way for people to do that?

Yep, so you can find Townsquare, my tech startup, all across social media at T-W-N-S-Q-U-A-R. As tech companies do. We took all the vowels out. The domain was a lot cheaper also. So TWNSQR across all social media, you can connect with my team and I there. If you want to connect with me personally, you can send me an email at paul@twnsqr.com. I, I, I know I don't really have social media.

I was trying to look you up. I was like, this guy doesn't even have social. It's kind of, I'm Kind of a more power to you type thing. So great, great for that.

Yeah. I hired a social media manager for Townsquare, like to manage all of our social media because guys, like my head is in the sand of Townsquare and like my wife will show me stuff on Instagram and I'm like, how do I even work the app? I haven't had Instagram for so long. So maybe it's a bad thing in today's day and age. But yeah, send me an email. You can find me on LinkedIn, like, like your grandfather.

Dude, I love it. I love it.

Hey dude, we need more of that.

Place your story in a way of like it's authentic. Stick and it's just you, man. So don't, don't change it. Just keep, like you said, focus on the one thing and the social will come, man. You'll hire someone to run it for you down the line. Once you, once you get this, this thing off the, off the ground, billion dollars, you'll be all set.

Yep. Let's hope so.

Absolutely. Well, thank you again. It was an absolute pleasure and we look forward to staying in touch.

Yeah, same here, guys. Thanks so much for having me. It's definitely one of the best shows, if not the best show I've ever been on. And yeah, keep wearing the hats, keep wearing the hoodies. It's all going to be perfect no matter who comes on the show.

My man, thank you.

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