Episode 1 | Christian Montalvo | Military Millionaire Podcast

00:00 - 05:00

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, good morning guys. It's David here with From military to millionaire. And I'm here with Christian Montalvo. And she and I got connected via a buddy of mine, Jacob Ayers, who runs a podcast called the real estate way. And I was a guest on that. And she was recently a guest on it as well. And so I had posted asking people for recommendations for like video podcasts, my YouTube interviews, and I want to say you were the first, maybe second but you were one of the first or second names that somebody tagged me and with the exception of somebody told me, they said me and I said you have to tag something else I might talk to you. And then somebody else said Donald Trump. And I said, that's great, but please tag him. You know, because I don't think it works if he doesn't see it, not that I'm ever going to get to interview that guy anyway. But I digress.

Christian, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what got you started, I guess a little bit about your story in real estate investing?

Christian:

Sure. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

So yeah, just a little bit about my pre real estate background. I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. My dad is an Air Force vet, turn mail carrier and my mom is an administrative assistant for the school district I grew up with.

So my point is, I grew up in a very working class family and nothing special and I just kind of went through that standard blueprint of graduate high school, go to college, get out of college, get a job, maybe get married. Buy a house.

I went to Oklahoma State and studied food science. I got a master's in food science specialized in food microbiology, nothing related to real estate at all. And for the past five years, I've worked in a really weird area, which is contract cleaning for food production facilities.

Basically, I work third shift in places where they make your food and I make sure everybody's being compliant as far as food safety and safety regulations go.

David:

That sounds like a job I would never want to do.

Christian:

Yeah it takes a special person for sure.

David:

That means, there's a lot to be said for having a job that not everybody would want to do. It's job security and usually implies a little bit better paycheck than say working at the job everybody wants.

Christian:

Yeah, so I with that being said, You know, I made decent money as a recent college, college grad. I worked very hard working nights traveling most of the time and in 2016 I traveled 43 out of 52 weeks and we're not saying really cool places we're saying like middle of nowhere chicken plants, you know, things like that. But I was spending my money at an alarming rate. And one night I'm just driving down to Houston for work at 10 o'clock at night, and it hit me that this lifestyle is not sustainable.

I was 25 years old at the time and engaged. I was thinking about you know, one day I want to be a good wife. I want to have kids and I became scared of the instability I was creating for myself and my future by how I was just spending money and you know, just being silly with it. Luckily, I know, some people don't get that realization till much later in life. I got it pretty quickly. And I basically was praying about it and still wasn't really taking action. And a few days later when my friends turned me onto Keith Weinhold's rich education podcast.

First podcasts on theirs is really, really good. It talks about house hacking and all the things that you He did and getting started in a friend of his did. And then I was just hooked. I fell down the investment real estate rabbit hole, found bigger pockets, bigger pockets forums, just you know Rich Dad advisors everything just went crazy.

Basically wiper. Yeah, the purple library, yes, all of that. And I got home from that trip and went up to my fiance and said, Hey, we're changing everything. When we get married, we're going to live off of one income, and we're going to save all our money and we're not gonna do anything fun until we buy duplex, and then we're going to live in one side and rent out the other and we're just gonna keep doing it over and over and over again. And he just looked at me like, what? I don't I don't know about this, but that's how we did. I got him on board. And that was in 2016 April 2016, we bought our first house hack. And it took us about a year to save up. We're getting married at the time and had some other things going on. But yeah, it took us about a year from my realization pretty much we had close on our first house hack.

05:00 - 10:00

David:

That's awesome. So you said April 2016?

Christian:

April 2016 was when we closed on our first deal.

David:

That's super cool. So you now have eight doors in a matter of two years, and a little bit of change.

Christian:

Yep. Just now we closed on our eighth door in June of 2018. So just over two years, we got eight doors.

David:

That's super cool. And I know I think mentioning, you know, when we were talking earlier, you mentioned that you've done two house hacks.

So how did you transition, you know, from the first duplex and the husband who was like, as thanks to, you know, another multifamily living in the house and he's still on board. And some people are if you're living in a house next, how'd you manage to make that transition?

Christian:

Yeah, it was definitely a big change. So just to give some background, we went from living in a one bedroom apartment that we're paying $900 a month for, which was the cheapest whooping a little bit more because we're living month to month. And that was the cheapest issue we could find for the area where we were living.

My husband was 25 minutes away from his job. And we found this duplex in North Dallas. It turned his commute into almost a 90 minute commute one way. So he was commuting three hours a day back and forth. And it was tough with our first day having that house hack. I was in California, and I got a call at 10 o'clock at night California time that the AC isn't working and the tenant has her grandbabies in the house and it's 100 degrees Texas weather. I just thought oh my gosh, this is how it begins.

But being those the only nighttime calls I've ever had in the past two and a half years knock on wood. And we ended up I think she was testing us seeing you know how fast what we were going to do. And we just jumped on top of it. And we lived there. We had our tenants next door and we got used to helping them fix things. We fixed stuff in our own place.

Again, the hardest part of that was my husband's commute, and I just kept telling him, let's just make it one year. Let's just make it one year. At that time, I ended up getting pregnant. And we did not plan. But one of the best things was being able to pause and say, you know what, at least our living expenses have been cut down. We went from paying $900 a month for a one bedroom house to a three bed, two bath half duplex that we started paying $500 a month for because the tenants were paying the rest of the mortgage.

David:

Awesome.

Christian:

So that was awesome. That really helped when we were thinking about daycare expenses and things like that. But then a year later, in April of 2017, my baby was one week old and I had a timer on my phone that was going to tell me when it was our one year mark. It went off. I think I was sitting on the couch with him. It went off and I said okay, it's time to call the bank. I had a C section so I wasn't cleared to drive or do hardly anything.

So I actually took a walk with my baby in the stroller to the Wells Fargo that was down the street from us, and was like, hey, I'm here to refinance my property. And they just looked at me like, what? Where's your husband? Like, let's go. They actually asked me if I wanted to wait for my husband to go for it. I was like, no, no, this is fine. Let's go. He knows he trusts me, he's ready to get out of this.

So we did a refinance and we found out our property appraised for $40,000 more than what we bought it for, which was awesome. I know that's not always the case. But that ended up being a really nice little deal for us. It made the refinance very easy. And then we refinanced out of that we used an FHA to buy that first property. So we got out of that. So we could have another FHA available to us to do our next house hack.

And in October of 2017, we closed on our second house hack, which was a fourPlex.

David:

Super cool. Yeah, there were a lot of awesome things in there. Try to unpack so I guess. First, first, let me make the statement I meant to make it earlier. For those of you who notice she's not military although there is some in her family history but just some people obviously the title From military to millionaire is like my journey and we we definitely do help like to help military personnel and public service and everything but but realistically it's the working class so if somebody can invest on a military W2 salary, they can invest in any W2 salary. It's not about your career currently, it's about how you take that money that is not very much and turn it into wealth.

So that is why we are interviewing in case somebody you know, naysaying You don't have to be in the military to talk real estate you just have to be motivated.

So yeah, and then the house hacks I love the fact that you mentioned the bank that brought you the asked you about your husband, I think that kind of stuff is funny because it seems like that's still sometimes one of those stipulations.

Christian:

Yeah, it is. It's really weird.

10:00 - 15:00

David:

Yeah, totally not the same as there's the jokes about like the O'Reilly and AutoZone and you know, like, oh man, sure girl they're gonna try to take you know, mess mess with you like the reality is finances is not a that should have no play whatsoever.

So I think it is hilarious to me the idea of you being postsurgery carrying a baby in a stroller down to the bank, and being like, my phone says it's time to refinance today. That's awesome. And I can just imagine how he must have felt because I would be like, no, no, no, no, go go back to bed. We can do this next week. Like go rest.

Christian:

Yeah.

David:

That's super funny. Um, okay, so and I really liked the idea of the house hack and I like that you guys do it together. So I did my first house hack single and we haven't done one together yet. We want to so I guess any advice that you would give cuz I know your four Plex is not a three bed, two bath like you're looking a little bit closer any advice for the not necessarily the property headaches but the you and family living? You know, with the tenants side of things that people worry about?

Christian:

Absolutely. I, you know, I think living with tenants isn't really an issue at all. If you're used to living in any kind of apartment or you know, military housing, something like that, it's very similar. It's just though we create professional relationships with our tenants where we say good morning, we say, hey, how are you? How's it going? You know, we have some little kids that live down below us at different holidays and stuff. I bring them like little treats and things like that. But it's that isn't really the issue, It's just more about it's sometimes harder. You can't find this ideal house hack that's right by where somebody works, and that's more of the struggle. So it's a lot of sacrifice. It takes a lot of sacrifice, and both people have to be on board not to not make it work but just to make it somewhat enjoyable.

The trade off was to my husband I said, hey, we're going to move closer to I found a fourplex. I went and saw again taking my little at this point he was a three four month old baby. And he wasn't in daycare yet I was still on maternity leave. And I said, Hey, I found this a fourplex, we're going to move into it, we're going to house hack it, and it's gonna put you 30 minutes away from your job. And he's like, sign me up. I'm done. I'm done. I was like, great.

And then has like, I'll give you the fine details later. And as we're walking around our spacious three bed, two bath, like we have a room that we use for the cats, like we do nothing with them like so our new place is about 600 square feet. It's a one bed, one bath and the baby's gonna have the master bedroom and we're going to sleep in the living room.

He just said, oh, okay. And at the time he you know, nothing could be worse than driving three hours a day. So, he was definitely on board and it works. And now my baby is 18 months old and he's like a calm baby bull in a tryna cabinet. So he just topples everything over and it's a crazy mess. But we figured it out. Again, it is a sacrifice. I go over to some of my friends houses where they have just space and everything's nice and comfortable. And we're in our four Plex. I'm like, okay, it's just it's not forever. We're gonna do this again. We're hitting our one year mark soon. And you know, we're already looking actively for the next one.

David:

Yeah, so we have a nine year old and uh, I guess he's 21 months now. So totally understand the, I mean, we currently have we're getting spoiled. It's like a three, two and a half. It's the base housing so it's nicer than anything I could ever afford out here in Hawaii because the prices are like, you know, a three bed or two bed one and a half bath 1000 square feet on like an eighth of an acre is like 800 grand and the walls are like this. I forget what it's like, I call it single ply. I forget what they call it. But it's like, yeah, it's terrible. Like you can shake the wall and like you and I could be having a conversation standing up against the walls. And it would sound like we were just talking to each other, you wouldn't know that there was a wall in between you, which is, yeah, so for, you know, almost a million dollars, it doesn't really make sense as an investment strategy, so we lived on base and this is a great house in a great neighborhood. And I'm like, we're gonna go house hack, and I just totally ruined my selling point on that because there's no benefit other than the money.

Which is great. Don't get me wrong.

Christian:

But there are lots of other benefits. It just depends what you're looking for. And it depends on what you signed. So far, house hacks have been interesting. Yeah, we traded closer to jobs for less space. And that's not always the case. There's definitely a couple of areas and to say this way, when we bought our fourPlex, there, it's three one bedrooms and one bedroom, one bath and then the bottom floor, a three bed, one bath.

15:00 - 20:00

Christian:

So automatically said, okay, all these people when we bought the property, all the tenants were on month to month leases. I said, okay, we'll give someone a 60 day notice and we're going to move into that three bed, one bath.

Then when I took a closer look at the units, I noticed that the three bed one bath was a family. The kids went to school across the street, they had the place decorated, you know, they're taking pride in where they're living, and I just didn't have the heart to kick them out of it.

We found one of the units was a young guy who had lived here for six years. I don't think he had cleaned the place in six years. He had a cat that was going to the restroom on the floor, it was awful.

So I said, hey, we're going to just go ahead and move into the dirties unit and in between our work schedules, we're going to spend a week it only took a week to clear it all out and get it repainted and flooring put down. But so there was an option for us to live in something bigger, but we chose to live in a smaller unit. Just to keep the tenants and I'm glad we did. And they're great tenants and the kids are happy. And I am their long term tenant definitely.

David:

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's super cool. And I actually won't name names, but I know a couple guys who are, you know, fairly well known in the investor house hack realm, who kind of the same mentality and they will buy a house, you know, much much like that. And they could buy, even if it was a million dollar home out here in Hawaii, or whatever, and they'll buy these places, and they will find themselves living in the shed outside to rent all the nice units. And it's like, I own a million dollar house, but I live in the shack outside.

And, um, you know, and that's, you know, not the American dream or whatever. But that's brilliant. I mean, because you're doing that you basically, yeah, you're living in a smaller space, but your mortgage is just much more effective than if you've kicked the biggest tenant out. And I mean, you'd still be doing well, but I think that's a power play for sure with the refinances to live in the cheaper unit.

Christian:

Yeah. When we moved into this 2nd property we went from so we went from our $900 a month for a one bedroom apartment. And then we went to our three by three by two duplex house hacking, paying $500 a month, when we made the switch to this fourPlex, we started cash flowing off of our first duplex. And then we started living for free in the fourPlex with no money out of pocket plus money on top of that a month we were making.

So it was a big change. So that in itself also was such a big benefit, you know, living for free, finally making some really quick decent cash flow. And it was just okay, we can do this. We can do this for a year.

David:

Yeah, that's just super cool. So if you haven't read the book, Chad Carson his new book that came out bigger pockets, I would recommend it because it sounds like you're pretty far along on some of those steps that as he lays out like his idea for retirement with real estate, which is the title of the book, retire early with real estate.

And, and you guys are listening like you're doing awesome, and there's some pretty sweet strategies in there as far as down the road with how to you know, I mean, you already have probably read a ton of books on 10-31’s and all that other good stuff so we won't get into that, but the point here is that you're setting yourself up for success and that's super exciting to be I mean, I'm, I'm jealous. I have been looking to do the house hack. I want to do the whole thing that I want to do is the VA loans zero down move in a fourPlex make it cash flow so that I'm not paying for it and be able to say like, I bought this house with no money, I never put $1 in it. That's like my, my goal that my next..

Christian:

That VA loan is so amazing. Like, it's so I definitely if there's one thing I wish I could go back in time, join the military, and you know, get all the benefits from the military and, you know, obviously serve my country and do something amazing and respectful and thank you everyone listening for your service.

But yeah, I mean, I mean, that'd be a loan is amazing, and you'd be crazy, not to Just take advantage of it and you know do something like that with it.

David:

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong there are some downsides to it like everything else but the idea being that you could, you know, buy for nothing and live for free is pretty, pretty cool. Unfortunately I got stationed in Paradise and it cost a fortune to live in paradise

Christian:

That's an amazing 40 unit deal..

David:

That's a damn mind monster if you see my newest YouTube video, my monster deal, which is because it's big, but also because it's a total beast, which anyway.

Alright, so to transition out of kind of your story. What would be if you were to talk to, I guess anyone in the working class who is asking you about, you know, hey, I don't have a whole lot of money or I don't make a whole lot of money. How do I get started in this? What would be like what's the one thing you wish somebody had told you when you started learning all this on your own?

20:00 - 25:00

Christian:

You know, I wish you know, my dad when I was younger. And he always kind of tried to teach us to live below our means. And he was reading books like the Millionaire Next Door and Dave Ramsey and things and I was, of course, a teenager and was like, whatever, I don't care.

I wish I could have grabbed hold on those quicker and definitely the biggest thing was, I wish my husband and I even as just single income earners would have lived below our means a little bit better when we first started before we got married that my first year out of college working I basically squandered away all of my money, just by oh yeah, I'm making money. This is so much fun. I have all this money. Let's go. Let's let's do all this crazy stuff.

So I wish I had been more responsible with that. But if anybody can I really think anybody can do this. There's so many options. Whether you're using the VA loan, you can qualify for the FHA three and a half percent loan. I have a girlfriend who's a single mom, who is working towards that right now. And it's just about how dedicated you are. How much are you willing to buckled down, save live below your means, you know, if you're married, learn to live off of one income, figure it out, it's just about how much of a priority it is, I promise you can, you can figure it out, you can figure out a way to save money or an extra income and get creative. And once you get into this first deal, and especially the second deal for us, it just kind of picks up, we closed, it took us a little over a year and a half to close on that second deal from our first with the refinance and things.

But once we closed in October of 2017, on our fourPlex, and by February of 2018, we were in the process of buying another duplex. And it was just from the cash flow and the again just living continuing to get better and better at living off one income living below our means saving more money because once we got that first one we're like, instead of It's okay, we're good, we finally got this we can spend a little bit more money it was, hey, how fast can we get the next one? Let's keep going and it's just very motivating. And I just think it's about dedication. How bad do you want it and just buckling down and doing it.

David:

I like the fact that you pointed out after you got the first one, the mindset shift of how to get the next one. So I tell people all the time like, and BiggerPockets says it and a lot of people pointed out but your first deal may not necessarily be your best deal, but it will probably be your most important because so many people get stuck at the ideas and the learning and the analysis paralysis and who cares? Buy the house, go for it. Like if the numbers look like they make sense kind of then if nothing else, you're buying a great education so.

Christian:

Yeah, definitely am I or my husband still not being completely sold after the first one just because of his commute and you know, a few things we're learning we're doing maintenance ourselves or when we do have to call contractors we're learning to figure out contractors not be robbed, blind, you know, by that kind of stuff.

But when we got into this second one, and it totally changed, where there was no money out of pocket, and we were starting to make an income. I mean, his mindset completely shifted. He's like, you're right. This is what we need to be doing. Let's keep going. Let's keep at it.

David:

Yeah, that's super cool. So a little trick that I heard, I don't. I mean, you're up early enough like me that this might work for you. I haven't personally done a x to the contractor out here in Hawaii that I haven't already known. But if you end up looking for contractors, someone told me once that the best way to do it is to drive to Home Depot or Lowe's before they open and see who's already in the parking lot because they'll be the guys who are up early to work on your place. They already know what they need without going by the jobsite, and other guys you want to hire, so.

Christian:

Yeah 4:45 in the morning, be at the Home Depot parking lot and see who's walking in. You need a plumber to go down the plumbing section, see he's buying plumbing stuff..

David:

That sounds to me like the greatest strategy. So in that regard, actually, I guess this is not in that regard.

So transition. I saw a post on your Instagram with books in a bag and it was talking about your daily carry bag and it had one or two books that you read in a journal and I think it was where you write your goals. So tell us I guess just a little bit about any good books that you've read that you would recommend and then what it is that you do with this daily kariba.

Christian:

Sure, I am obsessed with goal setting . Early on when I started falling down the real estate rabbit hole I listened to Grant Cardone's first podcast with bigger pockets. And it just blew my mind. I bought his book and fell in love.

Then quickly after that I read the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and those two books the combination of the two just really changed helps with my mindset. It already changed, but it helped with the continuation of that mindset.

I set my 10x goals and then based on that my husband and I actually together, we sit down and we create annual goals that we review every quarter.

25:00 - 30:00

Christian:

I take those annual goals and turn them into monthly. And then I break them down into weekly. And then the weekly is turned into daily tasks.

So I carry with me a large planner and nobody has to carry a large planner, you can do apps and things like that. It just works for me to physically write it and keep up with it and be marking those things off every single day.

I have a journal that I continue to either rewrite these goals to remind myself I follow that one of the things is scribing in the Miracle Morning journaling, and I'm not like a dear diary person I'm a I have this crazy idea, I need to write it out right now and make a note and highlight it, you know, I, I rewrite my goals in it. And then yeah, I'm always reading two to three books at a time. Just usually if I read just one book at a time, especially when it comes to physically reading it sometimes my eyes will start to glaze over and if I can switch over into another book, it kind of keeps me intrigued on both back to back. It's just a strategy for me to keep myself reading.

And yeah, and then I have yeah, those are just my big things and then I'm a Bible reader so I keep carrying my Bible with me. But yeah that's my everywhere I go I have this bag full books make it makes people crazy. My mom's like, what the heck are you doing with this? You know, this bag is so heavy, but it keeps me in check and all my price all day long. And again, there we go. Yeah, and it's a workout. I get some cardio and weightlifting going, that my baby. But you know, you don't have to do that. But it's just it's what works for me on keeping on that Miracle Morning Routine. I again, I work nights, so my schedule gets kind of crazy. I'm not always perfect at waking up and doing my savers right away.

But I have this as a checklist throughout the door day making sure that at one point during the day, at least I do my affirmations and look at my goals. I visualize my goals. And that helps me keep on track all day long, no matter what time I'm awake.

David:

Yeah, so I'm the Savers, which is for those who don't know, that's the portions of the Miracle Morning, which I'm going to try to say now and I'm going to botch it but it's silence like meditation, affirmations, visualization like looking at a board or whatever if your goals and then exercise which I usually throw in at the end reading and scribing or journaling, writing.

I'm really good at getting up in the morning at, like 3:55. In fact, six out of seven days of the week, I would say I'm up and already in my office by 4:15. And then I do this thing where I picked this up, and I kicked myself for it, but you know, my timezone, it's, by the time I'm up at 4:15, everybody's going to work in the rest of the world for four or five hours.

So my property manager might have texted me or emails or I will get wrapped up in that thing, and it'll be six and I'm like, well shoot I was supposed to read this morning. So I'm getting very good about putting it on silent face down and leaving it alone. Just so that I can actually get some work done with it.

So the Miracle Morning for me is awesome. And I find that between 04 and 06-6:30 is like my most productive time because everyone's asleep. Some waking them up right now because it's you know, is what it is.

Alright so how can if somebody wanted to get in touch with you or just follow your journey where would you send where can people find you?

Christian:

Well I'm so, I love Instagram. I'm a typical millennial. I like to post what's going on you'll see us change wax rings on toilets, patch up holes in walls, everything I'm always posting on there I have an email I people can email me anytime at [email protected] but I'm also on bigger pockets, I'm a bigger pockets pro member, I love to connect with people on there. I'm working on trying to be more active there. One of my goals for upcoming in November is to try and spend 30 minutes twice a week there just responding, reading, responding to forum posts, things like that. Usually that's not hard for me to do once I get on. I'm in there, but sometimes I just get so wrapped up in daily life but it takes a bit for me to just log on.

But yeah, it's a great resource and people can definitely connect with me there.

David:

Yeah, I like that you recommend that I find that a lot of times I point people towards my blog and realistically, bigger pockets. Bigger pockets is a great place to point people to. So I've made it a point to annotate that in my blog and tell people in fact, I'll send you a call agreeing Westmont, we're done with this. But this is a shameless plug but bigger pockets and especially their pro membership. I mean, that stuff helped change my life, right? So I attribute a lot of my success to them. Because every time I was googling stuff as a young investor, I'd be like, what do I do about this? BiggerPockets what do I do about this? bigger pockets, bigger pockets, bigger pockets, I'm like, oh, my goodness, who is this guy? And so eventually got to a point where I would be searching through the bigger pockets rather than Google for answers. And, and that's awesome.

30:00 - 33:37

David:

So yeah, bigger pockets that pro memberships are awesome. I'll put a link in the description if you're interested in checking it out. But I yeah, that's honestly I think that's probably one of the best places to connect. Because it's all real estate related people so I mean Instagrams great and your Instagram has some good pictures. And I like you know, I liked your two by four idea for a handrail that I saw on there. So there's some pretty cool stuff on there. But you know, that's also kind of marketing, not marketing, but talking to you know, your family and your home life, which is great, but if you want specific real estate knowledge, I think that's a great place to go find and connect about, like, seriously asking questions and learning.

So I digress. Christian, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and talking. I need to go talk to Jacob and tell him thanks for the referral. Number four, I really look forward to seeing what the future holds. And I'm probably going to be picking your brain at some point and be like hey, call my wife or me and like walk us through how the hell we live in this fourPlex cuz how happy you are right now.

Christian:

My child keeps knocking me most of all.

David:

By the time I get to do a four Plex and they say that those are the best years of everybody's small quarters. He's just, He's nuts. He's such a happy kid, but oh my goodness, like it's bedtime go to sleep. About to start putting Jamison in the milk like that on public debt. I'm going to not edit that out, but I'm going to tell myself to edit that out so that I am going to edit it out and then anyway, awesome. So yeah, I think that's I mean, unless you have any questions or parting words for the masses?

Christian:

Um, no, I will say this is something I did say when I was on Jacobs podcast and it just really rings true. You know, you are the five people of the five You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

So this will change you this will change your goals and this includes everything even family you know, if you have some naysayers in your family that are saying, you don't need to save up live in a duplex, you should just buy a single family home or buy that new truck you really want.

You know, be careful who you're spending your time with to find people. And if you have a hard time finding people trying to convert people, we have been able to convert some of our friends to think like us, not all of them are wanting to be real estate investor investors, but a lot of them have converted to the living below your means making good choices with money. And it's you know, it's been a game changer for our journey as well.

David:

Yeah, definitely agree. Every time I get around people who've been more successful than me, I seem to do something good. And when I hang out with people that are everything is someone else's fault, the victim thing you can tell and you know, and I know in my head and I'll even tell them like that. That's the wrong mentality. Here's why. You know, here's how you should look at it. I still find myself at the end of the day going like wow, I really don't like not only did I not get anything out of that, but I don't know that like I don't, it's just not worth hanging out around that. it rubs off on you.

Christian:

It really does. It really does.

David:

Great piece of advice. I definitely, I mean, you can see basically everywhere how much of a fan I am of networking. It is definitely the 10x my, my life. Yeah, networking and getting to know quality people is a huge point. So I'm glad you brought that up.

So awesome. Well, Christian, thank you very much. I'm gonna go ahead and I guess get ready for work now.

Christian:

All right

David:

Have a great day. And thank you guys