Episode 18 | Alex Felice Hijacks the Podcast

00:00 - 05:00

David:

What's up military millionaires! I'm normally your host, David Pere. But today, my friend Alex Felice hijacks the podcast so much that he is even asking himself the questions I normally prompt.

It's an adventure. It's a wild ride. We talk about everything from real estate to personal development, why I need to do a YouTube video about socialism because check it out.

Intro:

You're listening to the military millionaire podcast, a show about real estate investing for the working class. Stay tuned as we explore ways to help you improve your finances, build wealth through real estate, and become a person that is worth knowing.

David:

Hey, guys, it's Dave military to millionaire. I'm here with Alex Felice again.

This time we're gonna, I have no idea. So he's got all kinds of stuff in mind. I don't know what's going on. So we were gonna, like talk about what we're going to talk about, and then do this. And we just decided to hit record and see what happens.

So welcome back, Alex.

Alex:

Thank you very much, I’m excited to be here. I always like I'm thankful for the opportunity to participate. And I'm grateful that you're gonna let me run this show.

David:

I'm excited to see what happens.

Alex:

Alright, so a quick introduction for me, for anybody who didn't watch the first one. I'm a single family, real estate investor, long distance, I do everything long distance acquisition, rehab, rent, refinance. And repeat, I haven't seen most of my houses up to seven rental properties. Now, I think I got a lead on one bucks to buy this house that had an electrical fire. So that'd be eight. And I should hit 9-10 by the first half of the year. But that's what I do. And I run a website called Bokeisachoice.com.

So I had a few things that I wanted to talk to you about that we didn't touch on last time that were military related, that I thought you'd be excited to, to talk about.

David:

Of course, I just wrote down a title.

My title for this is gonna be Alex Felice hijacked my podcast.

Alex:

I love that. I love that.

So, I had some thoughts. One of the biggest things that I learned in the last year was, I started my blog only about a year ago, just just over. And it really had a big, impactful difference, not monetarily, necessarily right in the beginning, because you'll make money in your blog in the beginning, you just, you know, write for yourself, essentially. But it's a valuable exercise to both write and think out loud and try to, you're essentially trying to sell your ideas to the world. And so these are all valuable trades, and they compound, they scale infinitely meaning you're always going to get better. And the upside is unlimited. But the downside is nothing. Writing is essentially free.

David:

Yep.

Alex:

And if you have a brain, you have an infinite amount of content. Okay, so my advice for military people is something I didn't do till I was 34. And I wish I had done when I was 19. Every military person should have a blog, every military person, excuse me, every military person who wants to succeed, should have a blog should have some place on the internet that they can write their thoughts and then share their unique experience with the world.

Now when you're on base, it doesn't feel like your experience is that unique. Because your job is just like everybody else, but your 500,000 people out of 350 million people out of 7 billion people, the fraction is really small. And it's a really unique experience. And so what you do, what I didn't do in the military was take a lot of pictures and document my life and what I thought. And so if you could do this, along with investing, even if you didn't invest right away, start that blog, get your stuff on paper. And you'll find that writing is extremely valuable and makes you very competitive, and you want to compete and get promoted in the military? I bet you having a background in writing will let you think your thoughts out clearer and give you a lot more credibility.

David:

And it'll help you with figuring out how to write your own promotion reports and, and a lot of stuff that gets factored in nowadays they want like book reviews and stuff like that.

Alex:

Yeah, yeah, you can do all sorts. I mean, the potential is unlimited. So I just off the top of my head, we just said I do book reviews on my website now. And what if your military guy and you start writing book reviews for military history or military strategy books, and you put them on your website to go along with it. Or, you know, for me what I wish I had done now looking back as I could have done more in the history of the airborne and things like this. And so, hey, it's just a thing. My advice I've been telling everybody lately is everybody needs the blog. Everybody needs to have a place on the internet. That's their own.

Not just a screw around thing like Facebook or God forbid, even LinkedIn, but have your website. And so a blog is an easy way to start that it gets your experience out there and it shares your unique, your unique life view that doesn't seem as common when you're in, because everybody's doing it. But when you get out, you're like, oh, I should, I should have more.

05:00 - 10:00

David:

It's funny you say that. Because I don't know if I've ever liked talking in detail to you about why I started my blog. But one of the things was I was looking at writing a book, and I was like, No, I'm not a great writer. Nobody's gonna read it Anyway, let me just start this thing.

And well, the reason was, I had two different book ideas. One was like a, you know, real estate, whatever. The other one, and this correlates, exactly what you're saying is, when I was in Afghanistan, I was somehow I don't know where this came from. But I was smart enough to keep not one but two journals.

So I no joke, I have a journal that is dated. And like day by day by day, there's an entry. And I have a journal, that's a mission log and hour by hour by hour of every mission. And they tie in like this. And I can literally go in and go, August 1 is mission 13. And this happened on this day, and this is what I was thinking while it happened all the way down. And that's probably one of the coolest things that I've done throughout the military. It's not online, it's not a blog, someday, I might tie it all in together. But I can literally go back there and go on September, whatever is the day I drove over an idea, this is how I was feeling five hours after I drove over an ID or whatever, you know, and it's super cool. And so to say that, like if I put it on the internet or been blogging everything else, I mean, I was like a seven month window that I documented everything else a couple pictures, but you know, a blur.

So that's a super cool idea.

Alex:

Yeah, and so I just want to share with you I thought that was that was some you'd like, what else? I forgot what my mindset was, when I was writing these, I was talking to you. And I was like, I gotta I gotta come up with something to talk about blogging, you know, we had discussed winging it, which is fine, but I figured we can wing it around some, just some thoughts.

I had, um, I had this thing where I was. I was a slacker in the army. I wasn't a bad troop. But I was like, you know, you're surrounded. Well, depends on what unit you're in. And as an army, not the Marines, and so I was around a lot of mediocrity. And mediocrity breeds mediocrity. And so when you're in the military, and somebody oh, that's what it was, somebody said, like, I'm gonna get out, and I'm going to make XYZ amount of money.

And my thought was, don't let being in the military gives you a false sense of your false sense of confidence in your ability to succeed in the civilian sector. It's hard to sit, it's not as easy to get out and be a hot shot, as you would think. And there are idiots bound in the civilian sector. And just like the military, a lot of them are going to be your boss.

And so it kind of comes back to a thing that you had said in your, your show notes to me. If for any 18 to 20 year old, E nothing, what advice would I give you? A fucking try. Try hard now. I'm serious. Try hard. Now. Try hard tomorrow. Try hard. Always try hard.

Like, in the military. Like I said, it's easy to go to work, be a decent troop, run fast, shine your boots, well, you don't do that anymore. Score high in your promotional tests, you know, get your soldier the quarter. Even if you don't do that, you can still go far. And it's like, that is not what's gonna take to succeed, long run, you got to do, you got to try your units or build your civilian life now, for when you want to get out even if you want to retire.

David:

I agree.

And you and I've talked about the fact that I'm still teetering, right? Like, it's basically decided I'm not extending my contract past where it is right now. But I'm going to execute one last transfer duty station. And that'll be the final hinge point as I go full time on this, that'll be my final decision point as far as okay, is this going well enough? Am I having enough fun doing this, that I can toss the career side because I do love the Marine Corps but but as I do that, what I'm doing is intentionally I'm volunteering for all the narrator positions that I can in the unit so that I'm getting in front of the unit as a public speaker. I'm teaching a class at least once a month on finances to all my service members, because I want to teach that and get more practice, you know, repetition, and I'm going out of my way to try to go into like instructor courses and things like that, where I can build and focus on you know, what's going to happen after.

Alex:

That’s a lot of trying.

David:

Yeah, I don't know about hard but trying.

Alex:

Well, but my point, well, you don't. When I say try harder. I mean, it's to consistently try every day, right? And you got to go above and beyond the military.

You know, if you're a top notch troop, and you're the best in your unit, then you come become a civilian. The competition pool just got way bigger because your company or your platoon or your battalion are small, but the capitalist competition for being you know, you want to be Jeff Bezos or anywhere in between you got to the competition is hot. You got to compete against me dog.

Um, I had one for Actually, let me do one of yours first.

10:00 - 15:00

David:

See legitimately hijacking.

He just took my questions and he's asking them to himself, I don't even know what I'm doing here. I'm just gonna, like, do this and just let you know, I'm just getting, oh, the data focused on my hand. That's cool.

Alex:

Um, I was gonna ask this question, but I'm kind of not so sure. It's really not, you're actually not in your wheelhouse here. But I'm gonna ask anyway.

David:

Yeah, try me.

Alex:

For people who are in the military that watch this podcast, they're probably my guess is a lot of them are thinking about what they want to do when they get out. Or they want to get out and they want to secure their future, just as I'm saying. They're like, look, I don't want to get out and then go, I don't know what to do. I want to secure my future, either now, or shortly, as soon as I get out, or I want to get out early, you know, whatever the case may be. And so for anybody who wants to get out of the military, I'm going to ask us in a messed up way, but I was thinking you could ask people, how do you rebel against the military?

Everybody has some form of rebellion.

David:

Oh, yeah.

Alex:

Yes. Okay. There you go. Everybody has some form of rebellion, everybody. Yeah, they're right there. That's what it was. That was the moustache.

Alex:

My second thought might have shaved a little, might have shaved, right.

But, it comes down to the same thing. It's like, what are you? I'm curious. I'd be curious to know if you can get out of people. What is it? You know, It was the best thing I've ever done, it was the best thing that I ever did for me. Um, and you, there are reasons why you should want to rebel against the military.

The military takes away your and I'm not talking bad. I just mean, just speaking, last week, the military by design takes away your individuality. Yes, you can't grow that mustache like you want. You can't grow a beard, it takes away your melt your individuality. And so if you want to be a successful investor, or a successful business person, you're gonna need to have a lot of individuality.

David:

I agree.

Alex:

And so I think that these two things, I took a little while to explain, I haven't really thought of the idea of how to sell well. But you know, you have people in the military that want to be more individualistic. And that's why they come to your podcast, because they want to learn how to do something that the military is not teaching them.

And they want to do it probably outside the military, at least eventually.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

Yes. And so everybody has to have this. I'd be curious if you could get that out of people. If you could ask him regularly, what do you do to rebel against the military? Just to expand on that idea. Or some kind of, um, maybe not say it that way? But.

David:

Stand out against the crowd?

Alex:

Well, yeah, I think that's called that rebellion, though.

David:

Yeah, that's like a polite way of saying the same thing. I don't know.

Alex:

Yeah.

David:

One of the things that, I think as you're saying this, I've suddenly begun to do, which I wouldn't necessarily call rebellion. But as I'm starting to look more future focused, and also because people are seeing what I'm doing, I've realized that the barrier between my rank and higher ranks, you know, has diminished. And I don't mean that in a, like, I don't respect x. But there's a very open level of communication with officers coming to me asking me advice and stuff and things like...

Alex:

Because you know the fuck you talk about, you know it now.

David:

That wasn't there before. And it would have been kind of awkward to just be like, Oh, yeah, well, bla bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, you know, without, like, whatever. And so obviously, in a professional setting, it's still very professional. But that's something that I would say I've, like, kind of get some weird look, sometimes when I'm not bringing it up, but just having a full on normal conversation with people that are, I mean, you know, out of my paygrade as far as life.

Alex:

Yeah, they're out of your paygrade but you know, more than them.

David:

Some aspects. Yeah.

Alex:

Some aspects, yeah, well, let me take some intelligence is the great equalizer. And and this is another one why I tell people to read so much because everyone can read. And once you know what you're talking about, right, like I'm a total maniac in real life. Well, you know, right.

And but people give me more respect than you think and people who are way out of my, like, for the same the, for my for my paygrade it equals the playing field for that exact reason, because I know I know what I'm doing. And once you really know, your personal confidence in the matter goes way up as well. Because if the LT comes up to you, or even higher, Lieutenant like Colonel comes up to you and he's like, hey, I'm broke. I need some help with that.

15:00 - 20:00

David:

And that happens.

Alex:

Of course, it happens. Dude being a high military rank doesn't mean you know how to spend money wisely.

David:

No, which is, which is scary when you think about the amount of income that some of those guys have coming in.

Alex:

I got a guy who works next to make $450,000 a year and he's always just in fact less than that he's drowning because he has so much debt.

David:

Which goes back to what I'm always saying, and people hate this. But the world doesn't have a frickin income problem, we have an expense problem. And it just blows me away when people are so adamant about $15 minimum wage solving all their problems, but they're wearing like a Garmin carrying an iPhone x. They've got yeah, Gucci belt Jays, like three different versions of them. And they've spent all you know, and I'm like, I get it. It's cool. I had cool stuff. I like nice toys, you know, but you can't have nice toys. When you yeah, when you don't. But that's an asset, though. You can make money with that. That's how I justify a lot of my fancy stuff for videos. But like..

Alex:

I get toys on here that nobody needs to know.

David:

Well.

Alex:

I agree with you. I say that a lot of the time. It's not about what you make. It doesn't matter what you make. It matters what you do with what you make.

David:

Exactly. Yeah

And so yeah, I don't make that much money in my day job. Uh, and I've got really far, because I know how to use what I have really efficiently. And so yeah, you can make twice as much as me. And you're gonna waste it on anybody who's watching this in the military, and they have a car payment or truck payment, you're fucking up. Straight up.

You don't make enough to have okay, here's the rule, I go by, if you should never spend more than 5% of your net worth on a vehicle. And so when I say this to people, they usually see the first thing I see in their eyes is they don't know what their net worth is.

David:

Oh, yeah, that's true.

Alex:

Right? Okay, then you spent too goddamn much.

David:

Or you get the people like I saw this on Facebook the other day someone was talking about net worth. And someone they posted about their net worth. And immediately I was like, Huh, that's counting all your assets. Probably not the equity involved just like so like, for realistically right now. Right? I could say I own x millions of dollars worth of real estate. But who cares? That's not my net worth, if you look at the equity sliver and savings in the TSP and whatever, like the money actually knows exactly. And so that's, you know, when we say net worth, we're talking, how much money could you have? If you sold everything? What would be in your account?

Alex:

Net worth is assets minus liabilities.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

And many people don't count your primary residence. Which, if you actually do that the net worth of most Americans is probably negative.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

Um, yeah, intelligence is the great equalizer, for sure. And it comes back to, you know, my advice to 18 to 24 year old, read and write every day, do an hour, 30 minutes of reading 30 minutes of writing every single day, you'd be down and it compounds in five years, you if you did that, in five years, you'd be financially free and 10 you'd be rich.

David:

Yep.

Oh, and on the car payment thing, just so that people, you know, don't lose their mind over the podcast, there are ways to mitigate that. And I'm not saying you should have a car payment, cuz you would still do better if you didn't.

But my wife's car has a car payment. It's not much, but it's a car payment. And I turbo it. Like last week, I borrowed it for like eight days, and I made $100 more than what her car payment is off, just letting someone else drive the thing around. And that doesn't necessarily mitigate. I mean, I would have made 300 bucks cash if I didn't have a car payment on it.

But there's guys like that. There's guys who do like to bite squads. I've got Marines who make like 100 bucks a night driving their car around delivering food. And again, doesn't mitigate the car payment, but at least it's not costing you money. And then of course they blow their money on something else. And I'm like, don't take your bike squad paycheck and put it in a different bank account. Don't touch it, but they don't. So some of them do. And they'll be successful. But..

Alex:

Yeah, well, look, my style is not to, I'm not. I'm not, how do I say it?

David:

You are polarized, you don't care how they feel about you.

Alex:

I tell you the rule and then you know, and then it's your job to go in. Yeah, right. Yeah. And to be fair, right now, I have a car payment, so it's not bad in all situations. My car died. I went off and bought a little 2015 I think I lost your video.

David:

O oh.

Alright, we're back. We're recording again. Apparently my kid was on YouTube. And I had a YouTube video downloading I don't know. But my internet said that I needed a break to run around like a chicken with my head cut off and figure out why my podcast dropped and we're back.

Alex:

Thanks for having me.

I love how you just steamrolled your kid and made it to make him the scapegoat.

20:00 - 25:00

David:

Oh yeah totally It's all his fault It's not..

Alex:

I don't have kids but that that is the one appealing things like ah..

David:

I literally I walk around the corner and he's like still laying in bed but the phones up with YouTube just streaming I'm like, but I need to go I think I accidentally because I have two WiFi channels and I think I put him on this one on accident the other day and I need to have him on his own individual one. So.

Alex:

So I'm, what I've been wanting to do is I'm sick of wearing that tie this Friday I'm sick of I have this nice backdrop with all my stuff, my pictures, my life. Um, some of its just silliness. Some of it is really really particularly special to me, but I'm sick of wearing other people's shirts. This one's particularly awesome but yeah, yes.

David:

I wear my own shirt.

Alex:

Yeah that's a that's right so that's how I did I went on to some website on the internet Zazzle where I ordered my business cards and I customized and I made a bunch of T shirts with my with logos and stuff one of them says suck it up because I want to wear the shirt these things because I'm sick of wearing somebody else's damn content so I was gonna bring up to you but you're already ahead of the game which makes me mad.

David:

So ironically, I'm I don't want to have so far ahead of the game because I would be stuck up but I currently have a contest running on Freelancer for where I said I want a shirt that says something like this design it and I just got like 60 entries this morning I haven't had a chance to go through them so I got a week I'm looking for if you read like Russell Brunson book expert secrets he talks about your community should be he talks about like building a brand if you can build a brand where your brand name can be turned into a title.

So for example for mine From military to millionaire becomes military millionaires as the title of like the group of the population. So I'm trying to get a shirt design that's like a military millionaire or whatever that I don't know. I have no idea what they're gonna come up with. But if something looks really cool, narrowed down to like five or 10 I'll put it out there for people to vote on and then see what happens with it.

Alex:

Who did that was our kind of did that was um, yours is that's a good idea that we have and I and I've had trouble converting mine to anything like that.

How do you convert brokers of choice to a to it to a would that be an adjective? Yeah, it's tough. Um, but Pete McPherson has been trying to do this where he wants he's trying to convert Do you even blog to? He calls his people? Do you even do you even tribe?

David:

I like that.

Alex:

I think he's, he may have read that book, or he's heard that advice. And he's trying to do the same thing. And that's an interesting one yet I've found that that little, I picked my name. I didn't know anything about branding. So I just picked it because it sounds like it just pisses people off, which is partly.

David:

I got lucky.

Alex:

I like your name. Yours is yours It's, it's to the point. And it's, um.

David:

I told you, I chose it right?

Alex:

You did not.

David:

Okay. I didn't choose it. I sent like 10 domain names out to like a bunch of close friends. And they all said these suck. And then like two or three people said, how about you try this. And then it was all similar.

So I put like two or three versions of that together and set it out to a different group of people. And it was unanimous. So I didn't choose it. I wasn't something that even came to mind.

Alex:

So all your success to somebody else?

David:

But everybody loves it. So I'm rolling with it.

Alex:

My name I originally didn't want, I wanted um, I had this little slogan, I say all the time, Want Better Be Better. And the premise is, if you want a better life, you don't go after the better life, you just have to become better. And then the light and then life will follow. But that was all taken up. And that sounds like shit because you know, you want to get the domain but also the Facebook page and Instagram handle and the YouTube channel, you want to get all of them.

And so I remember that was like, I can only get like one or two. And the domain was taken anyway. And so I ended up settling this one weekend because I just really wanted to write and post some stuff. And I was again piping people off, but I can change it later. And then..

David:

And it's a super catchy name.

Alex:

Yeah, super catchy name. It suits me.

So my brother and I just started a new little project. It's on your website and it says it's gonna be us. Skyping basically like this. We uploaded some videos on YouTube yesterday, but it's really casual. It's not it's just us, you know? Well, it says Yammer but it's not really investing so much. He's not a real estate guy. It's more like we just talked about culture and history, politics and books. And um, that's what it's called. Nobetterreturn.com

David:

That’s catchy too.

Alex:

Yeah.

David:

Just take yours and turn it into an acronym so like bi c so yeah, Paul, your group likes to be up chiz?

Alex:

I like that.

David:

It's like bi, Apostrophe S and just pronounce it differently. It'd be like.

25:00 - 30:00

Alex:

French. Yes. I like that.

David:

It is. But with your personality, the people yeah. And you will all appreciate that.

Alex:

Oh, yeah. That’s Perfect. I would love to be one.

David:

I'm gonna go trademark that right now. So you have to pay me. No. That's funny.

All right, um, what other stuff did you have on their list of talking points? Anything?

Alex:

I think that was all of them.

David:

All right, well, then I'm going to throw the VA loan at you and make you talk to me for like, two minutes now not. Because we can go back and forth. I'm actually getting ready to use it here soon. But I probably still put 5% down so that I don't know the funding fee.

Alex:

Are you disabled?

David:

So no, not well, that's the funny thing, right? So I'm absolutely over a 10% disability rating, but you cannot have a disability rating until you exit.

Alex:

Until disability to what?

David:

Until you exit the service.

So because I'm still active duty, I do not rate even though I have a hearing aid, which is guaranteed over the 10% mark.

Alex:

70% disabled dog.

David:

Woof broke it. It is clear.

Clearly when you go to the gym, no. So I mean, I know that I'll be over that mark. But yeah, you're not alone. What's really funny about that, as you look at the VA standards, is a reservist who activates goes to combat and gets hurt comes back into reserve status, rates of disability status for their job, for whatever.

So if they got, you know, a hearing aid, and they're 20%, disabled, they rate that even though they're still in the military. But an active duty guide is not. So if I transfer into the reserves, I will rate all my disability assets and I will be able to make something. Yeah,

Alex:

That makes sense. The reserves, they don't pay. Not good.

David:

Yeah. So I mean, it makes sense. It's just kind of funny because you think like I was talking to someone the other day, and he used this example, which kind of blows it out of the water. But you've got guys who are still active duty that are amputees.

And so you've got like this guy who's missing a hand and they can't get their funding fee. Doesn't rate no funding fee for the VA because he's not disabled. Like Yeah, he's missing a leg. No big deal.

Alex:

You know, the world's imperfect man.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

The world is imperfect. Especially bureaucracy.

David:

Yeah, so I'm looking at San Diego as more affordable than here.

Alex:

Oh, well, that's also, oh God.

David:

The housing allowances are the same. So I'm gonna do some work if I can find something great with this because you can rap. There's supposedly there's ways to wrap a renovation into it. If I can find something that has cash flows, then I'll play the game. It's not all rent.

Alex:

Do they have a 203 aspect to VA? I know that I don't know much about VA loans.

David:

I was just gonna, you know, rant with you, because I know that you love to rant, but..

Alex:

So you had it. You introduced me to a friend of yours.

David:

Yeah. Did you guys get a chance to talk yet?

Alex:

Yeah.

I emailed him once.

I sent him a link to a blog article I wrote that said, a VA loan is a trap. Don't do it. Terrible idea. And they never responded so..

David:

He wanted to, he wanted an antithesis and I was like, I've got just the guy for you.

Alex:

Yeah, well, the problem is, I'm very convincing. So my, well look, if you ask me for an antithesis, my position is okay, fine, I'm going to try to convince you not to write that book.

Which not, not anything personal or not, that I don't want the guy to succeed or write the book is just, I look you, it comes back to we're talking about really, you got to know your stuff. And so you have to go out to the world and sell your ideas. And you have to sell them against people that know their stuff. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, sometimes they have vocal opinions, even if they don't know what they're talking about. And you have to be able to face all these things.

So it's not it wasn't anything personally, I was nice. I wanted to help as much as I could. But my position is always you know, everything's a competition. Everything's a battle. And so you have to um, you know, if you want to write a book about how good the VA loan is, that's perfectly fine. But my job is my personality. My purpose for existing is to throw a wrench in your machine real like a big ugly wrench.

But the VA loan is okay, so my position with my article is the VA loan is perfectly fine for guys who need a primary residence. And especially if you're in a market that appreciates which most military people are not, because they buy them in military towns desolate.

I don't know about the Marines.

David:

Most of us are not too bad. We've got like Awahoo San Diego. Jacksonville is not so great. But Quantico, Virginia is right next to where I want to go.

Yeah, so there's not all of them but a lot of ours are Oceanside. So it's it's more Yeah, Oklahoma for sale.

30:00 - 35:00

Alex:

Right. Yeah, don't Yeah, so Okay, well, that's a good point.

So there are ways to make money using a VA loan as an investor, but there's way more ways to fuck it up. And what I mean by this is, look, you're gonna have no equity. If you buy a VA loan, you have to buy a retail house, pretty much, right? They're not going to sell you a foreclosure with a VA loan, you can't buy anything that needs rehab.

So not to say you can't get a deal it's like, but who's gonna sell you a deal for a perfectly fine house that they can sell retail while they sell to you 30% under so you're gonna have to buy a retail house, you'd probably have to pay retail, and then you're gonna have no equity, and then you're gonna have a funding fee. And it's like, dude, you're underwater from day one? How did you think you're gonna make money on this investment?

What people do is they try to get the VA loan, because they want to buy something, and they don't have any money. And so the solution is, I can use this alone. And it's like, that's a trap. That is a solution. For the wrong, it's the wrong solution for the problem. The problem is you got no money. And the problem is you have no equity, and you're making that problem worse. And so what you need is and you're not going to build a cash flow on a house, that's later when you bought it retail 100,000 my house rents for $1,000 a month, you have $100,000 loan, dude, there's almost no money to be made there.

Unless you wait 1015 years, which that's a long time to wait just again, a little equity.

Um, so the VA loan is a perfectly fine resource. But for an investor, it can be a trap, because people go towards zero percent down. And that is the wrong way. What's the number two rule of real estate? You make money when you buy.

David:

Yep.

Alex:

You can't make money when you buy retail. And so the VA loan is a useful tool in some certain circumstances. But for an investor, it's tough and..

David:

There's better opportunities out there. Yeah.

Alex:

You can do with stuff like a four Plex. If you do that, maybe but even then you're buying that fourPlex retail bro.

David:

Yep, exactly.

So I'm gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna see I've got a lunch on Saturday with a guy who does VA, like the two or three that renovation type loan, I'll pick his brain and see what the real opportunities are. Because if I can find something that's just a cosmetic train wreck, you know, for a decent price. It's a duplex in the San Diego area. Vista, Oceanside, whatever, it's a good market, it's always going up or down, you know, whatever. But it's a market where I know I'll have tenants. And as long as I know that it'll cash flow, then I'm okay pulling the trigger. But that's the thing is, it's got to be old cash flow a significant amount while I'm in it, because like, for example, if I buy a $40,000 house, my BAH will cover the entire mortgage. So anybody that's in there as a tenant is just cash flow. That works for me until I leave. But the problem is, I got to make sure it works full term. So I don't know if we're gonna keep our options open. And I have no idea no opposition to renting, either. So.

Alex:

Yeah, and look, like I said, well, again, back to my style, my style is, I'm going to tell you why it's a terrible idea. And then it's your job to talk your way out of it.

The VA loan, what you're doing is fine, you're going to one buy at a discount. Right, you're gonna do the rehab. So you're gonna have equity in there. Certainly a little. Okay, good.

Second thing is you buy a duplex, you have cash flow, so good. Then it works. My point is, that's not how most people use the VA loan. Most people used to be alone for their personal residence. And if you buy a personal residence retail and you think you're gonna make a rent on it later, you're gonna be a sad boy.

Especially because here's what's gonna happen, you buy a brand new house, right? And you say, Well, here's what most people do, they do rent minus, they do mortgage minus rent, or rent minus mortgage rather. Okay, the messed up. So what does the house mean? Like, oh, this doesn't need anything. It's like you have it, you're gonna own it for 30 years or 10. And in 10 years is gonna start needing stuff and in 15 years is gonna start really needing stuff. Maybe, well, maybe not at Becker roof. But you'd be surprised.

David:

What I'm always telling people is don't buy a home.

Alex:

Don't buy a home, own it with a house.

David:

Yep, buy an investment property. Don't buy unless you plan like if I was, like, 100% dead set. I'm going to live in San Diego when I retire. This will be my forever home. Maybe something a little bit nicer neighbor. Maybe I'd care about the neighborhood but as it stands, neighborhood doesn't matter. Like area doesn't matter.

Alex:

Yeah, you can't get the device to be a leader, especially young people because like okay, but I'm gonna live there forever. You don't know dog, you've only got to change your mind.

And let me tell you, what's something else you know, it's worth more than a nice house. What happens when the earthquake happens and San Diego's not so cool to live in anymore?

David:

Or the volcano in Hawaii

35:00 - 40:00

Alex:

Or the volcano or the fires? Or the place goes wicked super lefty liberal or did you know you don't know what's gonna happen? You don't know what Black Swan event is gonna have? I'm not saying San Diego is not gonna be that, that it's gonna be popular for a long time. But I just mean, what about all the other towns that don't stay as popular or you want to get up and get out, something else happens.

Oh my god, there's an economic boom in Denver I want to go Well, too bad because I bought this monstrosity of a house because I thought I'd lived here when I was I didn't I thought I lived here forever and I said that when I was like 23 or 25 and I didn't even know how much of an idiot I was at the time. And now you've made this lifelong decision that you can't get out of it and that and that beautiful polished propeller has now turned into a dragging rusty anchor.

And you can't get out of it and you're losing money and you're and now your dti is so high. So excuse me so stretched you can't even pick up a second house anyways. And you have no and you have no equity so you can't get out and you oh my god it just is my children the 19th word of the year is barnacles.

And that's what it is.

David:

You'll have to pick that word like before you know the first month is over. I think you got to like seeing it out. We'll see we'll come back in a year and see where see where...

Alex:

I said it then I'm gonna say it now and I'm gonna say in the future.

You're questioning my commitment.

David:

No. You know, just just helping solidify it.

Alex:

No, no, I've been . I've been trying to write an article about it for a while. It's a tough one, it's just like stuff that picks up piles up and starts dragging, you know, overhead, and it just keeps picking up more stuff. And so a house, excuse me, a home is a barnacle.

It's this thing that doesn't propel you any farther ahead in life. It's just overhead. And then it comes with all sorts of barnacles, starts piling up on top of it, and drags it down. More and more.

My house here is a giant barnacle. I bought it. Because we got a bunch of dogs to watch. They're amazing. But also barnacles.

David:

Hinders your living opportunities as a renter.

Alex:

Yeah, I can't go, I can't go get a cheap condo. That's the way to do it. Go get a little cheap condo down, down. And we live on the strip. And if I could, yeah.

Alex:

All right, how long have we got, let's do ready wrap?

David:

Yeah, we got some time. What's up?

Alex:

What's going on?

David:

Got my first coaching call here a little bit exciting.

Alex:

How about that?

David:

Yeah, so I have decided to start a six week coaching program.

So it's going to be the beta test world right now. So it's all free with guys that are hopefully, I hand selected guys who volunteered that are people that I know will not be afraid to tell me. You know, this sucks.

So other military guys, people who've given me feedback on things already, whether I liked it or not, that had volunteered that I'm like, okay, I know this guy will give me what I want. Not what I want to hear, but what I need to hear. And then. So we're going to basically run through, let me just pull up my outline.

Alex:

To interject what you do. That's really good advice. That's advice that my family and friends hate to hear. But I always tell them like you can't get advice from family and friends can't. They're gonna give you the worst advice. You got to give somebody that kind of a good level of contempt for you.

Somebody that really doesn't like you that much. I see advice. You need somebody who has no vested interest in your success, and probably maybe once a bunch of failures a little bit. You need that advice.

Mom is going to tell you you're amazing no matter what. And that is not helpful.

David:

No, absolutely.

Yeah, so we're gonna select the first week. So it's gonna be like a 30 minute call every week and they'll be homework. So like, this first week we're doing, like, I'm having to do a budget, I'm gonna have them do. You know, tell me everything about whatever we'll talk about the books they've read so that I can give them a book to read over the first three weeks. I've been given two books to read throughout the course.

And then you know, if need be, give them audible referrals for those so they can get the first free book or whatever. And then we're talking in the first weeks like budgeting who's on your team, how they found out how they found their team members? How to find team members, if they don't have them, you know, dig into the team a little bit and figure out how we can give you how we can get you a better property manager if need be? How can we do whatever?

Second weeks we'll be talking about, like property analysis, how many are you analyzing how are you analyzing how can we streamline that to make it a faster, more effective process?

Because I mean, realistically, you know, I have a video on it and people laugh but like seven seconds, I can tell you in seven seconds if a property is worth actually analyzing or not. Right, you know, it's like a simple time I have this weird formula that's like x times x Oh, nope, not worth my time. And that's just off the MLS or wherever, but how many offers are you writing multiple, multiple offers different offer writing strategies, LOI’s, you know, realtor or whatever. financing options will be another week actually talking about how to find community banks, how to find private money, hard money seller financing, how to negotiate that stuff.

40:00 - 45:00

David:

The biggest thing for seller financing is just ask the freaking question, but don't tell them a secret. You know, due diligence inspection walks them through the whole inspection period inspection process. What like tricks of the trade like walking your property manager through with your inspector to whatever different things to streamline the process. And then I mean, realistically, like the last, not the last thing, I have two extra weeks on here that I'm going to try to add some stuff to as we go. But the last week, as of right now we'll be focused entirely on, like how to improve cash flow.

So ways to mitigate expenses, ways to improve in income, like nobody really talks about that. I mean, they do. But that seems to be like everyone is focused on how do you buy a deal, but the reality is, once you buy the deal, you know, like, for me, a commercial property, one of the first things I do, like on this big one I bought, the first thing I did was try to find a way to buy washer dryers where I'm not leasing so that the cash flow actually counts towards the value of the building. And I added 30 grand by, you know, a couple emails worth of value to the building and I bring in an extra hundred bucks a month in income. And just little things like that how to..

So anyway, so. So super rough draft I have I have more detail in my like folders for each week, but we're in the beta. So we'll see what happens in the fall. We'll improvise and adapt from there.

Alex:

Well, good. That sounds good. Yeah, um, it's interesting what you said about, you know, the world and how you remember the term called survivorship bias?

David:

Yes.

David:

I just wrote an article for BP about this. Um, and look, everybody's guilty of this. And some people are guilty knowingly, some people are guilty unknowingly. I'm guilty knowingly. I know. It's propaganda and so that you sell highlights, right? And well, the other thing is, look, I'm buying deals is fun to live in with.

And and here's the problem with real estate investing, it's really easy, right? And you're feeling it now where I can go off and I can buy five houses a year. And then that's all easy and finding good for the first two, three years while things run, right. But when things start to collapse, you have no experience of running the business you only have, it's easy to blind yourself to debt. It's much harder to live with the stress of Oh, shit, I got two, three vacancies at one time, I had a house that just got flooded from an upstairs condo neighbor, and she's terrible at dealing with the insurance company. It's all at once.

And so, um, you know, nobody talks about, they talk about how to get deals, because that's the easy part. And in all honesty, it's the living with the responsibility, the stress and the things in the last 30 years. Well, it's gonna last till you sell it, which is probably going to be a long time.

So, um, so yeah, I do like that. You tell people you gotta you got to show people that it's not all you know, they say, Oh, well, it's hard. It's not all fun and games. You know, it's a lot of trials. It's persistence. And people hear it. But I'll tell you, there's some difference you got to go to sleep with it. Yeah, good to sleep with that pain. That stress of worry.

David:

Yeah, I planned on an eviction the first month I took over my 10 unit. And I had three in the first quarter.

Alex:

Oops, funny. That sounds so bad.

David:

Yeah, it wasn't terrible. I survived it, but one of the evictions also took out the roof and caused two grand worth of damage with his u haul. So that was fun. And then tried to say it wasn't him. But it's like, dude, like, you're the only u haul that was there that day. And we have eyewitnesses and police reports.

Yeah, it was it wasn't my u haul someone else must have been no, like you. And the best part is it took six months to get that all figured out. He had paid the insurance damage to the U haul for the damage done to the truck. But we're still denying that he had caused it so he hit something on the top of a U haul but wasn't admitting it was my roof. Like, Dude, come on, man. You know,

Yeah, I got my money, but it was like it was in June. I got it last month. So yeah.

Alex:

That's what people don't um, that's what people don't, that's what they don't expect. They think, Oh, I have an eviction. I'll evict somebody. It's like, yeah, it's going to take three months and you're going to live with the stress.

David:

You have to pay for a carpet or whatever.

Alex:

And then and yeah, then they're gonna take your place because they hate you. Or I didn't pick my very first tenant. So I was terrible. And I have three properties right now that are in, one just got turned over I had three properties at seven that did not pay for December for various reasons. And you know, and sometimes look, you know what, nobody's nobody in the world would describe me as a nice fella. Not that I'm not nice, but that's not the adjective that they would that they were originally additionally, subs first thing that's definitely on the list but further down.

But um, so I had a tenant who had the upstairs condo unit flooded out. And then it flooded my tenant unit. And she had no renter's insurance. And I don't hold insurance on that property because it's a cheap little condo unit.

I have an HO6 master policy, but I don't have walls in policy. And so it flooded. I fixed it and then the other lady upstairs wanted to come in and she the contractor is making a mad grab for her insurance. So she wanted to do mold treatments. So she went back in there and started tearing up my place. I mean, she's gonna pay for it all, but my tenant has to get an extended stay motel, and I volunteered to pay for it.

Well, now it's going along. So I'm not only not making money on this place, I'm paying out
to help somebody else out. Now I don't have to.But it's the right thing to do.

45:00 - 50:00

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

And that's the kind of stuff people don't talk about. And they're like, well, Alex, exciting news. Like, yeah, okay, but fine, but it's, you know, a couple months. A couple getting over, it's me, well, over a grand and no income.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

Um, so that's that kind of stuff that you don't expect. And then oh, at the same time, I had another tech house, renovated and it hasn't rented yet. And then I had another turnover and another property. And it's just like, dude, like, my property managers, fantastic. Everything's gonna work out. But you get one December, you're like, I didn't get any money. Or very, you know, much less.

David:

Yeah, I had one or two months last year, where I definitely did not match the expenses. But overall, I mean, it's still even now. But.

Alex:

For sure. And so people think they're like, Oh, well, it's just one or two months out. Somebody feels like Yeah, but you gotta sleep every night with those two months knowing because you don't I don't know, when it's gonna get fixed. I don't know that it's going to be cool. I don't know that it's going to that house it hasn't rented it's like, when will it? Well it should be another week or so. What if it's three? What if it's six? How long? Can you go?

Here's another thing is I run my properties. I run high. reserves. Right, a lot of people run their ships tight, and all my properties have 30-40% equity. And my cash flow is high.

So for new investors, when they're borrowing their zero percent loan, they have no cash reserves. And then you have a future modulus month, you get knocked out, and you're not that hard. And so I like what you're talking about, you know, going there, reduce the expenses, you know, drop all the anchors, get rid of all the barnacles and polish up that propeller. So that thing runs right.

David:

Yeah, it’s a simple things to like, LED lighting, high efficiency sink, high efficiency, toilet high efficiency, or the like the light switches in the toilets, or in the bathrooms that turn off automatically, like that's on my commercial property where I pay utilities, on some of the like, common areas, you know, like the bathroom, people leave the light on.

So it's one of those simple little timers, it goes off. And it only comes on when someone walks in. That saves you a fortune over time, and it costs like 20-30 bucks to put in. And then then then there's other things, obviously for the property itself, that are beneficial. Like.

Alex:

Do you put fans in the bedrooms?

David:

Like ceiling fans? I think it depends. It depends on how my like one bed one bath units in my 10 unit don't have it, but like my duplex has fans, yeah.

Alex:

We take all the fans out, we put one in the master. And that's it. Because especially kids' rooms, they get dumped, they hang on them and rip them down all the time. Like, no more fans. And so that's the little stuff that we just put a little $10 bulb in there.

David:

I like that idea. I'm gonna add that to my coaching course.

Alex:

Yeah.

You can send royalties to broke is a choice.

David:

As of right now the royalties for that will be the royalties that I receive on everything.

Alex:

Zero.

David:

Although I did just click the button today to put a couple to somewhat adsense monetize my blog, I don't know, I'm just testing the waters. It's like one page that I don't really care about. So we'll see what happens.

You know, it's funny, though, you talked about writing. And people talk about things like writing, writing, writing, writing, eventually, something happens. Like it's weird every now and then something happens. And I don't know.

So like, for example, yesterday, I was on Google Analytics. And I'm like, what in the world happened? I mean, it was good. Like, my reading spiked, like, probably 200% on a page. And I'm like, what the world like I couldn't figure it out. It's just a Facebook and I'm like, somebody shared my something somewhere. I could not figure it out anywhere. And the last time that happened was on bigger pockets shared one of my posts, and it went up like 700 readers over normal like that day. And this was not quite so big a jump, but I'm like what the world today was the same thing. I'm like, you know, whatever. Someone shared on my page, a screenshot and I guess there's like this private group for it's called us mentoring us and I can't even find it, because it's like, totally hidden.

But it's like I think it's the Air Force. But it's like a staff NCO. Like just helping each other out. So someone screenshot it and said, Hey, man, you're doing good things and posted it to me. And like the guy had been like, I wish I'd seen this before and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, holy crap. Like, I just got like 5 or 600% more readers overnight, over something that I didn't know, and so it's funny, because that's more than any of the marketing I'm doing. But.

Alex:

Well, though, but they go hand in hand. They go hand in hand. And so that's a great story. And that really is it's like you don't know what you're, well first when I say write what I find a lot of bloggers do which is a mistake is they write for content.

50:00 - 55:00

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

They don't write, look, man, use your brain. I mean, you, I mean, everybody use your brain and write something that you have thought about deeply. And don't write for the sake of it, write your thoughts out. And look, that takes a little bit of courage, especially if you have controversial thoughts. Or if you want to, if you really want to get somebody's attention, you got to write out, you got to write it out thoroughly.

And, and somebody will use your information and they'll enjoy it. And they'll find it useful. And they'll share it. And sure enough, one day, somebody could pop in there and it compounds right because now you have more subscribers because or more people interested because somebody else got a hold of it, and then you don't know who else is going to share it next.

And yeah, you just got to write and so it's a habit like any other at first, I was really afraid to put myself out there. And now it's like I write for BP. Did you see this article I wrote for um, Carl Jensen?

David:

What was the title?

Alex:

Do you know who that is? You know, that is Carl.

David:

Mindy's husband, right?

Alex:

Mindy’s husband.

And then he said, when he writes for he writes a blog called 1500 days.

David:

Yep.

Alex:

And so they they shared with me, Mindy texted me and she says, Hey, we were on the local news, Denver, whatever, local news channel came to their house and did an interview about financial freedom, because he did 1500 days, which is I want to retire in 1500 days with the million dollars. And it ended up being I think, like 1.8 million. They were tightly clipped in, like five years.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

And, um, and so he wrote a successful blog 1500 days, and they came out to do an interview with him. And I'm reading the report in the video, and they're like, look, it's not that hard. There's no secret, spend less than you make safe, be, be diligent. And so I read this, and I, you know, my personality.

David:

I didn't put it together that that was I yeah, I totally didn't see it. I just didn't put it together. That was Carl's blog. Yeah.

Alex:

And so um, yeah. So what I wrote I said, If Carl Jensen, right, because I based on that quote, that was the one they singled out, they said, it's not a secret. There's no secret sauce, you just have to spend less than you earn. You have to be persistent. And that's probably that's part of what my book broke is a choice like people just don't try at all. Yeah, just spend everything.

And so I wrote, If Carl Jensen is a financial role model, then our country is screwed. Right? They were called into the financial model that we're having in this is a national disaster. And so I wrote this article here. And I said, look, don't take it the wrong way. It's just busting chops, but I used them as a kind of a beating pinata. And I was like, there should be no reason why everybody can't do this. Look, even Carl can do it. And so I wrote, but I wrote it in a snarky way. And he posted on his thing. And then next thing, you know, I'm getting a whole bunch of views, because he has a very popular Twitter, and Mindy shared and also the stuff and so but I, if I didn't have the, if I didn't have the experience of writing for a lot, it's only been a year. So it doesn't take long to get a little, you know, to get decent at it.

And so if I didn't have that experience, I wouldn't have written that and wrote it. And I didn't write it as a blog, I kind of wrote it as a hilarious email you made into a blog post and shared it.

David:

But it's true, though, because the reality is, like, being financially free, financially independent, wealthy, whatever way you want to say it, just being able to survive. So we'll use a very current example, a government funding issue where you may or may not get paid as a federal employee, which hasn't affected me and I don't really know anyone personally that has, but that's an issue, right? And that's a thought. And that's a fear. And it's happened before and yet, even though it happened two, three years ago, where the military was worried they weren't gonna get paid. We still have people that are like, Oh, my God, what do I do now? And it's like, it's not hard, just save some money, like, so I talked about what percentage of money that I save, and this, that and the other and, but, but what's funny about it is right now, I'm debating going to this conference. And I was like, Ah, you know, it's this much, and blah, blah, blah. But then I'm like, Oh, I have a fund for flights. And I put like, 500 bucks a month in it that I don't even think about.

So I liked looking at it. And I'm like, Oh, well, that's what it's for. So money to go to this conference. Shouldn't I don't even need to think about it, because I got, you know, three grand in there right now.

Alex:

That's a good investment.

David:

Yeah, so I'll probably have to drop my leave request and see if I tell you what conference, I try to go to the 10 x growth conference.

So I'm iffy I'm still on the fence. I've heard good things about the conference, but it's not really my niche. But the reason I'm going is there's a guy named Kevin, who's a big YouTuber, and he's doing his first ever conference. He's piggybacked on the day prior. And so I'm kind of like a man, he's an up and coming real estate guy and a very up and coming YouTuber.

If I can get into his like, it's like 100 bucks. If I can get in on his very first conference where there's not many seats, there's like 50 people going and I can talk to him and network with him. He lives in the LA area, that in itself will be beneficial. Plus, I got free, not free, but I'm gonna pay like somebody offered me to crash in their Airbnb with 10 other real estate investors for the whole time.

Alex:

Awesome.

David:

So I'm like, oh, boy, it's gonna be insane. So like the conference is gonna be fun, but that's not even the reason I'm really debating going at this point because of everything else. But anyway, the point with that is sorry, I'm gonna keep cutting you off because that's the whole point with that is just it's not hard. Just save money. Just once a month to say I'm not buying that and put it away.

55:00 - 1:00:00

Alex:

Well, the way I do is I say pay yourself first.

David:

Yeah, exactly. I've got all my envelopes over.

Alex:

Yeah. The government shutdown. Yeah, perfect example. It's like, it's your fault. If you can't go for two weeks out of money. Have you heard of the word wage slavery?

That's a real problem. But in America it is voluntary.

David:

I need to do a video on that. I just realized that I just read a book on YouTube. And it talks about piggybacking off trends, so I was thinking about trying to find a way to find bird boxes like a video, because that's a trend right now, to piggyback into real estate, but I couldn't really find a way that worked.

So that's what I need to do. I need to do a video called like, I don't know, something polarizing. Like if the government shutdown, has you worried, you're fucked up.

Alex:

If the government shutdown has you worried you're a socialist.

David:

But realistically, yeah, I mean, you know.

Alex:

That is what it is the government's giant jobs program.

And so if you can't go without your job by the government, that is pure, there is no other term for it. That's socialism. And you are at the, you're at the mercy of the government, you are there.

David:

Write the title down.

Alex:

Yeah, you're a socialist.

And I'm okay with a little bit of socialism. I'm not even like a total. But, but people that, you know, they love to say our government does everything terrible, but man, I really want my Social Security check. Or I hate the government, but I can't go two weeks without them.

So yeah, I got no, I have no, I have very little sympathy for anybody who can't make their nut because the government has shut down for 22 days, you can't go without you can't go 22 days without. And look, I know I've been in finance for a long time. I sold cars, I did finance for car lending full time. And I'm here to tell you, I know very intimately how many people live week to week, and it's almost all of them.

And I still have no sympathy for him because it was this way. 10 years ago, it's this way now to be this way and 10 years from now.

David:

Yep.

Alex:

But yeah, I mean, socialism is government means of production. So, but the government, the government shutdown is starting to affect other people. My brother is a DOD. I don't think DOD but he's a government contractor for one of the government departments and he's out of work, right.

And he's like, dude, do you know what I've gotten done on my personal stuff? This is the best vacation I've ever had. But my brother has no financial, uh, he has no financial worries. Because he's responsible.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

And he doesn't make any more than he makes decent money. But it's, you know, it's not like, it's contract money. It sounds decent. But it's not. He's not killing it. And yet, he has no financial problems. Why? Because he doesn't have any fat car payments. And he doesn't go off and he stills nice toys, but he's just a reason for him. You don't need a new phone every year. You don't need a car within the last five years. And so when the government shuts down, and people and people struggle, it's like, well, like you said, the government shutdown shutdown all the time.

Not all the time, but it shut down fairly regularly that you should know that this is coming.

David:

Yeah.

Alex:

And then you shouldn't be at the...

David:

Our budget is terrible.

The Federal like the way they budget things, like it's not that it's a terrible budget.

Alex:

Yeah, they do it all the time, they're gonna try to change the I don't get to play with the time there. I think they're gonna try to introduce a law that they can introduce a mechanic so the government can't shut down over five funding issues.

Because they both use it as a leverage because nobody wants the government to shut down. So it's like anybody. And so they basically just find out where they can shift the blame and then leave them and nobody wants to take the blame for it. So it's like...

David:

And what's funny is they're shut down right now. And I'm not to get into politics. So I'm going to do this in the least political way I can say this because I don't want to get into that realm. The government is shut down. We'll keep it in the financial realm, the government shutdown over something piddly, like $5.7 billion in the government budget is miniscule.

We spend way more than that. Yeah, so many things that don't matter. And on again, not getting into politics here. We'll keep it negotiating now. Right? So we'll avoid that straight. The Democratic Party, in my opinion, shouldn't have said no, we're putting our foot down because of this $5.7 billion, they should have used it as a negotiation tool to get something they want. But unfortunately, they're dug in the trenches now. And it's going to be this big battle of Oh, who's gonna?

Alex:

Yeah, well, they did that last year. They did that last year, it was 25 million for DACA. And then they got reneged on.

David:

I will go check my resources. Yeah, that definitely. Yeah.

Alex:

But again, again, it's but it's the main point is the one that we should focus on if you are a, if you are reliant on someone else for your financial well being, that's your fault. Certainly, if you're over 30..

I can still rely on it for another year. Oh,

1:00:00 - 1:07:57

Alex:

Well, I just mean, I just mean, there's a point where you have to take absolute responsibility for 30. If you're 20, if you're 15, excuse me, if you're 18, and you don't know any better, I give you a little bit of a, I'll give you a little bit of sympathy. Or if you grew up in a position where it's like you just didn't, nobody taught, you know, you had no way to get financially stable.

When you're 20. You're an idiot. In your 20s, in your 20s 20, to 20 to 30, you're an idiot, you don't even know you're an idiot, you're probably insulted of me calling you an idiot right now, if you're listening this, so but you're an idiot, you'll agree with me when you you'll agree with me later.

And so um, so I give you a give those people a little bit of leeway where you're out spending money by you know, trying to pick up chicks spending on alcohol, buying cars and toys, whatever, fine, but when you're 30 no excuse my friend. And you should not, you don't want to be beholden to somebody else, especially, especially the government.

David:

Yep.

Alex:

So get your shit together.

David:

I'm totally gonna write that video and publish it this week.

Alex:

If you're worried about the government shutdown for your financial independence, then just you're a socialist.

David:

Yeah, except I might have to title it with the socialist part first, like you're a socialist, if the government shutdown has you worried or something? Well, we'll tweak the title a little bit. Maybe I'll bounce it off one of my title gurus that I know and see what we think.

Alex:

But if you're like, uh, what's the deal Jeff Foxworthy bit? You might be a socialist if...

David:

Ohhh, I like that.

Alex:

Might be a socialist, although I'll tell you this. I hate that to get this is political. I hate that the word socialism has become an insult.

David:

I agree.

Alex:

Anyways. But so I hate that I'm participating in it right now.

David:

It's all good. It's all rising. We'll see what happens.

Alex:

Yeah.

David:

I should probably eventually wrap this up.

So I'm going to go back to one question, I'm gonna ask one of my questions so that I'm kind of hijacking this back.

What is one resource that you would recommend anyone get started with real estate?

Alex:

Brokeisachoice.com

David:

I was gonna give you a chance to plug yourself like next but that works.

Alex:

Have bigger pockets. That's the one. That's what I started with.

David:

Yeah, I agree.

Alex:

Military to millionaire first then bigger pockets then my website.

David:

I appreciate it. Hopefully, if they're listening to this, then part of that's because they already...

Alex:

Let me give you let me give it let me give an answer that somebody else may not give you.

How about you should go to meetup.com and find local real estate investors in your area and make some real life friends who do this.

David:

Yes, absolutely.

Alex:

Jim Rohn said, You're the average of your five closest friends. Well, you better make it all. Don't make five friends that like real estate, make five friends that are so successful that they really don't want you around. That's what you need to grow.

David:

Don't make friends by walking up to them and saying, hey, I need you to help me with this. Make friends by going and bringing value to their life. So figure out what they need, figure out what problems they have, figure out what's going on with them and then solve the problem.

Don't ask for anything in return. Don't be like, Hey, I can see that you only write one article a week. And I think you could be a lot better served by writing how about you pay me to write an article notice and write articles, like find a way to bring value to them. And you'll get in their circle.

Alex:

Yeah, also ask, yeah, people offer me stuff all the time that I'm like, dude, I don't want that or need that. And you and I can tell that you didn't go to my website to find out what my approach or my angle is. Because every month I write a newsletter and I say this is the thing that I need help with. I put it right in my blog.

And so when somebody comes to me, like, hey, like you said, Hey, I can help you proofread articles, or I can edit some stuff. I'm like, did I ask for that? No. So I know that you haven't even read my content. Which means I know that you're only really thinking about yourself. You're just trying to get done what you think I need. So you can go then and go get what you want.

So when you give that advice, which a lot of people do, bring value. Yeah, well, if you really want to bring value to somebody find out what they really need, ask them or go look at their content. And don't assume that you have something that they're clamoring for, find out what they think they need. But again, it comes down to start dialogue. You know, make a friend.

David:

And be a good person.

Alex:

I don't, it's hard. And it's not that fun. Well, it's way more fun to be a dick.

David:

That's true. Well, you can be a dick but a good person. You don't have to be nice all the time to be a good person.

Alex:

I don't recommend being nice.

David:

Exactly. Yeah.

In fact, sometimes being a good person means you're being a dick, right? Cuz like telling the fat kid, Hey, man, it's all right. You need to, you need to, you know, if the burger makes you happy, then the burger makes you know, Hey, man, I get it. But guess what? You're fat and the job you're in IE the military requires you to not be fat. So you need to go run and maybe if you run and get down to that weight, then you can enjoy a burger once in a while. But until then, this is what...

Alex:

If you need tough love, though. I'm your guy.

I told the guy that I called a guy three months ago, I was like, I can't. I don't think I can be friends anymore because you're a loser. And I'm sick of watching you be a loser and then take my time with texting, and friendship. I can't do it. I can't be friends with losers. I got places to go. And then he tightened up. So you're welcome.

David:

I feel good because you text me. But you already plugged yourself so I can't even go to the...

Alex:

Brokeischoice.com. I don't make any money off that website. I don't monetize anything at the moment. You can Skype me for free, although I will not do coaching calls if you need a coach called David's the guy. But I will exchange emails with you. I will change Skype with you if you need it and for some tough love. And that's it. You have your tickets to fin con to the 19?

David:

Of course I bought him over there.

Alex:

Good. I will see you there.

I paid for that and the one that piggybacks right before the military influencer conference. I went to that last year too. It's a totally different niche. But I felt like since my blog is military related, it's good to go and build relationships and to piggyback so I'll be at fin con and then through the weekend and then mill influencer and this time I booked a hotel too. So instead of being the lame O who leaves early to go to my Airbnb and sleep, I can stay at the hotel until all hours of the night.

Alex:

That was a mistake that I made. I stayed with my friend Lee. And he lived, he has a points guy. And so he had what was it he had a timeshare points that he could use at a different hotel. So we'd stay there and then be like, well, we got to go back to our hotel. And that was a mistake. So if you need a roommate, which it sounds like, you probably will..

David:

So I was thinking that my whole family was going to go up there and we were going to enjoy the trip. And then I didn't get stationed on the east coast. So I need to have that conversation to figure that out. And if I'm going solo then I'll have an extra bed and we can probably throw two or three other people in there.

Alex:

Dude, we need to get some real estate people, that's how you made bonds. Oh, yeah, we should get Lucas I bet you Lucas would come on crash with us.

David:

Just email bigger pockets like the entire bigger pockets place and be like, hey, all of you should crash in this one room with us.

Alex:

You get mad when you can have me. You know even Pete man first and he crashed into me and left the place last year. And I think one night having me around was enough for him.

David:

Well, I mean, as long as you let me sleep eventually. It doesn't have to be for much. But it's got to be something because I'm old. I can't do it.

Alex:

I'm older than you.

David:

I know. But you know, you're Alex and I'm not. So there's another quote for you.

Alright, I'm gonna stop this recording. Hey, thanks for having me on your podcast.

Alex:

You're very welcome. I look forward to doing this again. I'm very grateful though.

David:

Yeah, I'm always glad to have you on you know that.