Podcast Episode 107 Transcript

Episode 107: You're Never Too Young To Get Started In RE Investing with Jeffrey Donis

Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of Prereal, and over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate. Each week I'm meeting with outstanding and investors, highperforming individuals and visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now getting it done. This podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the prereal podcast. Welcome to the prereal podcast. We're joined today, folks, by Jeffrey Donis. He's a managing partner at Donis Investment Group. We're just chatting offline about the market and what we're seeing out there and some of the opportunities and challenges. Jeffrey, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today. Of course. I appreciate you having me, James. It's a pleasure. I think we connected on Instagram, is that right? Yes, sir. Yes. I appreciate you reaching out, and it's a pleasure to be here. I'm really excited to see how I can add value to your audience. Well, for me, it's always great. We were chatting about perspectives and how we could be talking about the exact same thing in the exact same moment, and people have different perspectives on it. I have to comment, though, I'm a little distracted by the books you have behind you. We have a book club here and I'm going, yeah. Is that optics or do you really subscribe to the rest of the stuff that you really dove in on it? Yeah. I love Robert Kiyosaki. I had the pleasure of meeting him in person. I've met Ken McElroy a few times as well. I hang out with the real estate guy a lot, so Ken McElroy will come out to their events pretty often and we get to hang out. And Hunter Thompson. I'm in his mastermind group. I love Napoleon Hill, all these books, mentors, and people I look up to in the space and love to learn from. It's an amazing and beautiful time to be in anything really any business. There are so many tools that are available to us and so many opportunities. I'm in a group called the Land Geeks'and. We do some passive investing with land. And they were talking last night. One of the coaches and mentors there, Scott Todd, about 20 years ago, when they would go to the first kind of convention that they had, it was like an unwritten rule. Nobody talked about what counties they were working in. Nobody talked about strategies that worked. Nobody talked about price points that they were at and how dynamically that has changed. And I'm wondering what your journey has been like. Have you found the community to be ingratiating? No. I've been a part of, thankfully, and I've been fortunate to have been a part of multiple different mastermind groups at various different niches and kind of parts of my journey. It's been amazing every step of the way and I continue to look for more groups to join, but everyone's been accepting us with open arms by us. I work with my two brothers, so I have a twin brother and an older brother, and we're young, we're obviously hungry, but in regards to our background, we don't necessarily come from money and things like that. So when we go into these groups, a lot of people might be intimidated if they come from a similar background or have similar limiting beliefs that they've had to overcome. It can be kind of difficult to jump into this space knowing where you come from, but for us, it's really been a lot easier to do that when there's so many people looking to help. And as a young person, it seems like all the other people are looking to pour into us. So it's been nothing but blessings. That's great and it's wonderful to hear. I love that expression that having others pour into you. The community has been just amazing to me. On the podcast side, this was a really big personal challenge. I'm not a public speaker. I wanted to find a way to take these 30 years of experience and impart it to people and to hopefully inspire folks to take next steps in their career and maybe learn from some of the lessons of mistakes and successes that I've had. And I found the same thing, man. Like, the community was over the top wonderful. People are so eager to help and it's great to see that in what historically real estate has been historically a very closed good old boys network and it was really hard to crack into those groups. Yeah, and like I said before we got on the call, or I might have said it now, but I've been in it for three years now, which is obviously a lot more recent than you and it's awesome they had a lot of experience. But since I've been able to join, it seems like depending on what issue going into right. It seems like the wholesaling it's attracting a lot more younger entrepreneurs and people that are just starting. Perhaps that's for obvious reasons, like the lower barrier of entrance. But in regards to the multifamily space, I can definitely see a lot of similarities. In regards to what you just said, it seems like that is a lot more close knit, but even that kind of environment is changing as people like me kind of jump into the space. And we're slowly starting to show other people that it's possible regardless of where you come from and regardless what your background is, even your education, really. I think a lot of people might think they need to know everything before they get into it, which is obviously impossible. So really, my brothers and I, our goal is to inspire people to jump in and regardless of what you're interested in. The only thing holding you back, really is yourself. No doubt about it. You hear this in many different contexts, but the most important eight or ten inches are right between the ears. Mindset is so critical. I'm curious, you had mentioned earlier, clearly you're young, you're energetic. I love it. Was it family or was it the older brother that led you down the path of real estate? Where did the passion come from initially? Yeah, so I love that question. The passion itself, for me, that's different. I can give you a different answer for that than how we got into it. So if you don't mind, I'll give you the first part in regards to how we got into it. My older brother was the first one to come across Whole Ceiling, and he found it on YouTube. He was just watching The Breakfast Club one day while he was in his college dorm room. Have you heard of the show? Sure, yeah. And a guy named Mark Whitton was on talking about Wholesaling. And Mark. He's an African American guy. He comes from a low income background, and that attracted and kind of was it something that my brother can relate to. We're Hispanic. We come from a low income background, single mother. So we were like, okay, well, this individual on this TV is making a lot of money. And he was pointing at the screen saying, if you're out there and you come from nothing and you want to make a lot of money or be successful and build a life by design, this is a business that you can do because I can do it. So my brother started looking into it. He told us about it. And the first book my brother read was Rich at poor dad. He kept telling us, you have to read this book. I didn't read it until I went to walk in my life for the first time with my whole family. That's where my mom is from, as I mentioned. And when I got there, I realized the humble beginnings that my mom comes from. And I used to think she was exaggerating because she always gave us these crazy stories about her having to walk for water and her having to take care of all her siblings and having to heat up water if she wanted to take a shower because there's no hot water. And then I went there, and I had to do all those things, and I was like, wow, okay. She wasn't lying, and this is actually legit. And I was taking everything I had here for granted, even though she was telling me that it's hard to actually understand what she's saying until you're in her shoes. Right? So came back, and after that point, we were like, no more paralysis analysis. We're going to take action. So we all got into it at the same time, but my brother learned about it first. Now in regards to the passion, I grew up playing soccer. I've always been competitive, and I used to play at a pretty high level. So I'm the kind of person that, like you said, I'm assuming you have the same exact trait, where you just have a lot of energy. I love to win. I like to see progress every single day. That's why I'm an entrepreneur. I love the idea of winning and then just trying to go towards my absolute best potential every single day. That's really what drives me. I don't know what it is, and it's hard to put, like, a word on it, but I have wise. Like, my goal is to retire my mother. That's the first thing. So that really does drive me. But if I were to say, like, truly where my passion comes from, there's just something inside that like a burning desire to be great in all aspects of life. A factor and an external reflection of that is through my business. Yeah. So thank you for sharing. There's a common thread or a common theme that I find the more and more people I have on the show, us serial entrepreneurs have that burning passion, that fierce, and it is a fierce competitive streak. Right. You said a few things that really landed for me. You love to win. Those are things that I believe there are certain components and certain elements of what we do that can be taught, but then I believe that there are others that cannot. I believe that there are certain traits that you have it or you don't have it. I think that you can improve upon them. I think that you can absolutely put the time and work in and see results. But there is that fifth or 6th gear that we seem to have. And to build something special, it requires that folks don't often see the other side of the coin and the immense sacrifice that it takes to build a winning portfolio, winning business, whatever it may be. We're at a point in the world where success is almost becoming frowned upon in certain contexts, and it's tough to explain. I couldn't begin to revisit the missed dinners, the missed holidays, the missed events with my kids, the disappointment with my wife. That is a part of, or at least I had thought at the time, was a critical part of winning and succeeding. It was. You give it all you have and there's collateral damage sometimes. And that happens for sure. There are better ways, I've learned as I've gotten older. And you still have to be fierce and you still have to compete, but there are smarter ways to go through it. But anyway, there's a lot of sacrifice on the other side of this, folks. It's not you wake up and have a real estate portfolio one day. And I love seeing the fire and the passion, Jeff, because you can't teach that piece of it. So let's talk about the portfolio. The goal, I believe, is 1000 units by 21. Is that correct? Well, that's interesting that you bring that up because I don't know exactly when did you hear about my goal? Because it kind of reminded me we had 1000 last month.

It's pretty funny that you say that because I must have put that somewhere. You see, I write things down all the time. We do our homework before we get here, so yeah, I'm glad that that happened, man. Awesome. Thank you. I turned 21 in September, so I definitely appreciate that. In regards to the portfolio, we're co sponsors on those deals. So it's been four deals in the Southeast that we closed on alongside our partners, and a little over a thousand. And we're under contract on our fifth deal that we sourced ourselves. These are all multi family deals, 100 plus units. We target BC class properties personally. We'll source deals out of Atlanta in North Carolina, and on the co sponsorship side, we've co sponsored deals in Atlanta, jacksonville, Florida and Waco, Texas. So it's been awesome. I credit it to first and foremost, God, but also we have some awesome team members that leverage their experience and they've given us the opportunity to partner with them. So definitely a lot of mentors that have helped us get to this point. Could you explain to the audience what co sponsor means? For sure. So, co sponsorship in regards to it, I'll kind of just explain what it looked like for us on the first deal we did. We had one individual in our Mastermind group who found a deal in Jacksonville, Florida. He found the deal, he sourced it, and he really was the one running point on the deal, but he obviously needed help doing certain aspects of the deal. So our skill set we have a very vast network of individuals who are a lot more experienced than we are. And what we focused on was actually networking so we could raise a little bit of money as well. And we kind of brought in our investor relationships as well as some equity partner relationships. And we also are pretty good at marketing when it comes to it. So we have some email things. And then he gave us the opportunity to partner on the deal for bringing all that value. And now we're participating in the asset management calls. We're going and visiting the property multiple times a year and it's awesome. And that's what a co sponsorship kind of looks like. You're not necessarily the lead sponsor. We didn't sign on the loan on that first deal. That takes a certain net worth of liquidity when you're playing with these big deals that have multimillion dollar loan evaluations. So we didn't meet those requirements. And that typically is what a lead sponsor will do. They'll either sign on the loan or find the deal and then kind of leave the deal, whether they're doing asset management or just making those decisions. We were just playing a key role on the team, but not necessarily playing point. So is it the goal for your group, your brothers, to become the lead sponsor on deals? Is that where you're headed or are you very comfortable in the more passive side of it? Good question. So on this deal we have under contract, which I'm not going to say any other information on it, but we do. You're learning quick, baby. Yeah, no, just to kind of get like to be transparent, but transparent where it's not closing any lines. Right. We definitely are running lead on this one. We found it ourselves. We're obviously bringing on partners to help us with key roles like asset management. And we're going to partner on the asset management. We're going to do the asset management ourselves, but we understand that it's awesome. And the amazing thing about this space is you can leverage other people for everything. So we're having a partner that has more experience than us, that's going to help us with the asset management. And we also have a partner that's going to be a KP. So certain rules like that that maybe we couldn't do by ourselves, we're leveraging other people to do that in exchange for equity in the deal and all that. So they're definitely getting value out of it and so are we. One of the things I absolutely love about this space is you can stay in your lane. You can do what you love. And if you're confident first and if you trust and have confidence in your co sponsors. Partners. Whatever the structure is. There's a beautiful world out there where if marketing is your bag or the finance side or capital raise or whatever it may be. There's a whole mess of deals out there. Folks. That you could bring your specific discipline to and at least the groups that I've had the pleasure of working with have been really good about not crossing the lines. Like they do their part and you do your part and as long as everybody hits their marks, the deals run beautifully. Has that been your experience also? 100%. And I think that's where playing with a strong team, like it's the same exact thing, but to go off of it, if you can find a solid team and solid partners that have an amazing track record and experience, if you're new, then you don't necessarily even have to understand all the roles, right. You can just be really good at your role in the beginning and eventually when you want to build your own team and you can maybe lead the team, at that point you would understand what all the roles will look like and what comes with playing all the roles. So 100% agree. So are you guys growing the company all from within? Is it the three brothers that are handling networking, marketing, capital raise? Yeah. That's awesome. Man. So I do the capital raising on the front end and investor relations and creating the team. So that's my job. I'm like the communications guy and networking guy. My older brother does acquisition so he's going out meeting brokers, underwriting deals and we'll do asset management as well. That's his role. My twin brother does all the marketing, which kind of goes hand in hand with what I do. That's our twins. They kind of work together. He does like the things that I just don't enjoy doing, but he's really good at it, which are podcasts. We have our own. He's in charge of the website Lead Magnets, email automations, all the things like that. And he's a very good writer. He wants to be an author and he is an author. So he is the one that kind of writes anything we need to write. He'll write it. What a blessing. That's amazing. It is really a blessing. Yeah. So you mentioned a couple of markets, atlanta, North Carolina and then a few other markets where your co sponsors are. A couple of part question here. The markets that you're in now, was that more of a byproduct of there were deals, you fit a niche in the deal, so you jumped on board and you're kind of in there, passively sort of, but you're not lead and you jumped into the deal because you were aligned in what they needed and what you were able to provide. Or was it you said, hey, I want to be in these markets and then you reverse engineered it. How did you land where you landed? Essentially, yeah. So we live in North Carolina, so I would first and foremost say it's geography. Geographically it makes the most sense to go to the market that we're in. So I live here in the Raleigh Durham area, which is why we look here, we look in Greensboro, North Carolina, in Charlotte, and then also Atlanta is a market that we're in and it's only 6 hours from my house. It's an amazing market and we were already co sponsors on the deal there. So that's why we chose those markets. Also at the end of the day, it's where you're getting deal flow, right? So my brother was just getting deal flow out of Atlanta and North Carolina is where we want to be because we love North Carolina. One, it's an amazing market too. We live here, we grew up here too. My brother went to school at UNCG, which is like 45 minutes from where we live. My twin brother went to Chapel Hill. So we grew up all around this area. We know the market very well since we grew up here. I grew up playing soccer in North Carolina. So I travel all these places growing up and now I get to look for apartments there, which is pretty cool. That's why I love the market of exactly where we are. But that's how we landed on those and was your question how we ended on the markets or how we decided to be lead sponsors just to verify. So what I'm trying to determine is did you end up in those markets because it was a byproduct of that's where the deal was and you fit the group. So you did the deals there or was it no, we love these markets because of specific metrics. Is that just when you're the primary investor, the lead or how did you land where you landed? Was it purposeful in that way or is that being saved for when you're lead? No, we are leads now and we're always looking in these markets for the same reason. In any deal we did, it fits these all these categories. There's a job population growth, there's job growth in regards to jobs of moving into the area. I mean, here where I live, Raleigh is obviously one of the most biggest markets in the country for a good reason. Apple, Microsoft, all these big tech companies are moving here. Tags for Atlanta, all these tech companies are moving. A lot of people are moving there, which means that there will be continued rental demand and I'm obviously more inclined to invest where I've already invested and I already have done deals. So Atlanta was a market that we've already done a deal. I've been there before. I have a lot of connections and relationships in regards to property management companies there and goes for North Carolina, it's more so that we had a deal here at NC, but we live here and we first started looking for deals here at NC. So we already built relationships with people that in regards to property management companies and different third party companies like that that we are going to need. And we've already built relationships here in NC domestically. So that's another reason why we chose this market. But if I had to step away all the other variables and different factors that you determine and use to determine what markets you're going to invest in, all the rest of those markets and all the markets were looking in, they check all those boxes. So much of the growth over the last several years down in the Southeast corridor and even in the Midwest now has been relocations from the bigger cities. Right there is a clear, decentralization we've been screaming about this since what I call the retail apocalypse in 2008, that there were certain factors on the horizon that to us it was crystal clear this was going to happen. Primary markets, we're going to take a hit. Secondary markets, we're going to become primaries and tertiaries, we're going to become secondaries. But this is a cycle. Jeff right, this is now my third full and technically, geographically it was limited with Superstorm Sandy, but it was a half of a cycle there. I've seen the up and the down, I've seen the up and the flow. Historically when the music stops and rates start to increase and inventory levels become more of a challenge for the opposite reason, because inventory is rising. We have found the secondary and tertiary markets are the first ones to soften. Now because of this very real shift in demography and shift in people's mindsets and patterns, do you believe that that will continue even through the slower markets? Do you believe that people are still going to be trading in the big city life for some of these secondary markets? So in regards to make sure I understand your question, do I think people in secondary markets are people from primary markets are going to move into secondary markets? Are they going to continue? Right. They've been moving into the secondary and tertiary markets over this last boom of seven to ten years as the cycle changes, do you think that those secondary markets are going to continue to see growth? I think it depends on where you're asking. So I can only speak on the market that I am involved in. So Atlanta and then North Carolina. We honestly look in mainly primary markets like Charlotte, Raleigh Durham and then Atlanta. I guess it's all subjective in regards to primary, but in my opinion those are primary and those are we're still continuing to see increase in population. I don't see why people would stop. Look at the population growth in regards to Atlanta specifically, that's continuing to go up. There was an article that came out last week that it was ridiculous numbers in regards to the amount that it was increasing. I don't remember the exact number. I want to say around 18%, but those are numbers that I still expect to continue seeing. I do think Atlanta is not in New York in regards to where those markets are at. Right. It's very far from that. So I do think people will still continue to move there. And also people follow the jobs, right. So as jobs continue to move into these certain markets, I do expect to see the same population of people that are looking. It may slow down a little bit as these things start to fizzle out and the dust starts to settle, but I do think things like Covet happened and that's why we saw that increase. When people come in from New York down to the Southeast, as clearly goes away, maybe people start to move back, but at the end of the day, these are amazing places to live in comparison to New York. It's a lot more affordable and at the end of day, the that's where jobs are going. A lot of these big companies like Tesla, for example, they're moving to Texas away from California. So these are things that I do expect to continue happening. Yeah, the thing we've come back to a number of times and we've talked about it on the show when we were looking at our SWOT analysis every year, kind of determining where we think things were headed. Legislative risks was one that was at the top of the list year after year. And I think it's just the tipping point. We blew past it and the big companies started to say, hey, the risk is no longer worth the reward to hang in there in some of these big cities. So for a long time, Jeff, it was frowned upon to not be at your desk every day in some of these big competitive companies. It was seven day a week grind you were in or you didn't have a chance to move up the ranks. And it was a hell of a shift to these big companies start to go, you know what, I can pay this employee 70% of their salary. I don't have to have the overhead of the fancy office. I have to deal with the politics in the office. I don't have to deal with the paid sick leave and all of the different things that are layered upon the companies. Not saying that they're bad, I'm just saying as they stack up, there is a tipping point. And I think we blew past that. And now you've seen so many anchors relocate that companies are embracing it and they're fostering for people to work remotely, which is such a paradigm shift from everything I can for sure. And to be honest, I never got a corporate America, I never went into corporate America or anything like that. But obviously growing up in all the movies and all that, you see how it was a common thing that people are working in offices and now it's pretty standard to see people working from home. And I think that's obviously a big shift. I guess, like for your business, I assume that's obviously had its implications in regards to people might be looking for certain types of amenities right at their properties and things like that because they're spending more time at home. So these are things that we are obviously taking into account as well. Yeah, that's a great observation. The amenities and the things that are offered perhaps outside of the four walls is an interesting thing to look at. We're headed into what I believe is going to be a significant amount of time of continued raising interest rates. So I'm curious, how does that impact the investment strategy for your team, both in the short and long term? Yeah, so short term, in regards to how we approach deals, we're obviously a little bit more picky, so we've honed in on the criteria in regards to what deals we're looking for. So vintage wise, in the past we were open to doing 60 deals properties built in the 1960s. Now we're really keen on newer for various reasons which we can get into. In regards to the class, we're looking for C plus, closer to B minus properties in great locations, either A markets or B plus areas. And also in regards. To markets. We've honed in, as I already spoke about, just on Atlanta and just on North Carolina, because we're very confident in those areas, especially during certain times when it comes down to the financing aspect of it. I do leverage and kind of love having this awesome sponsorship team around me because they have a lot more experience than I do. My partner has over 25 years worth of experience and over a billion assets under management. So although I haven't personally been through that many cycles, I know he has. Obviously he's been alive a lot longer than I have, so fortunately he's been able to survive these cycles and learn a lot of lessons and valuable lessons from them. So we do leverage that. In regards to the types of debt we're looking at, the deal is obviously going to depend on the deal. So a lot of people in the space I looked up to are pushing for anyone in their audience to get fixed rate debt over the long term. So that way we don't know what's going to happen with interest rates. No one does. But in regards to the Fed and the predictions of them continuing to rise rate or increase interest rates, if you have fixed rate debt, obviously that will protect you from that. Now, my only concern with that is if you fix it, if you're locked into a high interest rate today, and let's say you're planning on being into that debt for ten years, or let's say six years, whatever your business plan is now, you have no chance of it coming back down. Let's say it's 6% right now, and let's say you're two in two years, that fed the drop straights back down to 3% or 4%. You're kind of out of luck, right? You can't go back down if you're fixed. So that's the only thing. And prepayment penalties are obviously very expensive to sell any earlier. So for us, we're not necessarily opposed to doing bridge debt or fixed rate in long term debt. It just depends on the deal. Certain deals, like value add plays, it has to meet a certain DC that service coverage ratio for that to even be considered for long term permanent agency debt. So if the deal just doesn't make sense in regards to going with the fixed rate debt, we're not necessarily opposed to doing bridge debt as long as we're confident in the market and we are buying the property at a low enough price where we can calculate rate caps and all that. And obviously we do want three year bridge loan with a plus one plus one option to extend in the case that we're not able to get that refinance year three, let's say that's your business plan for that, then we have the option to extend if need be. Obviously the property has to be performing to be able to qualify for that extension. But that's the goal, right, for the property to perform. So in a fiercely competitive market, how are you sourcing deals? What is it that you're doing that's keeping the flow and the pipeline healthy? Yeah. So always stay busy. Right. One thing that I can answer that question in two ways for finding deals. My brother, what he's been doing since he focuses on acquisitions, is always talking to brokers. We're always walking properties, we're always having lunch with brokers, getting on calls. At this point, we do have a track record and a good reputation with a lot of brokers in our markets. So they're reaching out to us. And we're always responsive. Even when we're working on other deals and trying to get some across the finish line, we're still always looking. Now our criteria may have honed in and is a little bit more strict than it was back then, but we're letting them know that with us, you know, we can close because we have a great track record. But in regards to price, that's where they're going to have to be lenient. Now, a lot of sellers are still not shaking on price. They're still not meeting where our expectations are, which is understandable, although we're just not going to pay the price. Right. We don't necessarily have to act on anything right now. We just are giving the brokers, letting them know that we have confidence that if you do choose us at our price, we'll close. So the one thing I can say is just always be underwriting and always be consistent with these brokers and nurturing those relationships. Because I do think that it's these times that the real buyers come out to play and the ones that aren't necessarily the real ones are going to kind of go away or just not be available for these brokers. And that's when you really build strong relationships. So that one times are good and they have plenty of buyers, they're going to still go with the ones that were there for them when there weren't many. Yeah. So without a doubt, as markets turn over, I've always performed. We've been so blessed through the good Lord's will. We've performed really well in down markets because the order takers go away. The folks that really don't. And look, there's a place for everyone, for sure. Yeah. But the people who have not honed their craft, who have not taken the courses, joined the masterminds, hosted talks, done the research, read the books, listen to the podcast, they're not able to execute as fluidly anymore. And for us, that kind of turning over and cleaning out of the market has always been productive for us. As you just discussed. Are you contemplating perhaps diversifying beyond multifamily at this point? Not at this point. To be honest, as I am still growing my portfolio, I think multifamily is an amazing asset class to be in right now. It's obviously recession proof and it's something that's proven itself over time and over different recessions and downturns. So right now we are focused on it. But I'm a lifelong learner, right? I'm a student of the game. So in regards to what I'd like my portfolio to look like in the future, if you don't mind, I'd love to just share one of the I guess he's a guy named George Gammon who I'm not sure if you've heard of him, but he has awesome breakdown of his portfolio, and I think that's what mine might look like in the future. So he has 80% of his portfolio and cash flow producing assets that pay you to own it. That's real estate for me and then 10% of it. He likes to have something he calls insurance, and for him, that's gold. And I think that's a great place, something that if the US dollar does get the base by another foreign currency or something like that and it loses value, then gold is the insurance to that. In regards to the other 10%, he likes to put that into something that's speculative. For me, that would be bitcoin. I think a lot of people can have different opinions on it, but as I'm sure you all saw, bitcoin went down with the last few months. I haven't looked at it in a few weeks since I'm not invested in it. But I did see how much it went down in a matter of only a few weeks. So that's how volatile things like that are. And for me, that's why the 10% would be towards a speculative investment like bitcoin. Well, I love it. It sounds like you've got a hell of a vision and a hell of a goal here. And I have no doubt that you're going to hit your marks. Man. I love the energy. You have an interesting book. It's a free ebook on the site, how to Not Go bankrupt. Five mistakes that new investors make. Could you spend a couple of minutes on that for the audience and tell them where they can find it? Yeah, for sure. So my brother was the one that made it, so credit his hard work putting that together for you all. But it's pretty much just a list of mistakes that a lot of past investors make. Now, when you're looking at an investment opportunity, a lot of times some of these sponsors may not be doing a great job of just educating you on all the risks, and maybe you're new to it, right? So you don't understand all the questions you should ask. Are there certain things that pitfalls you'd like to avoid? Then this would be a great resource for you. You can go to www.donisinvestmentgroup.com playbook and you spell my last name, D-O-N-I-S. So it's Donisplaybook.

There's a lot of interesting factors out there right now that are far outside of our control. The goal for you overall as we move through the ebb and flow and look, the market is going to go up. It's going to go down. This is going to continue to turn over. Jeff, what does success look like for you? Is there an ultimate finish line? What does that look like? Yeah. So I think success is something that Matthew McConaughey, who was someone that is like in the Hollywood scene, he once said at a Grammy, he was giving his Grammy speech, acceptance speech, he said, the dream person and the person I look up to is the person I'll become in ten years. So every time I win an award or every year, that changes and that person is still ten years away all the time. And for me, that's really the way I look at it. So I honestly don't think I'll ever meet all of my goals. And as we spoke before, my initial goal before 21 was 1000 units. And I knew this was going to happen. Like I had manifested this just in regards to me writing it down every single day. I was like, I have a feeling that this is going to happen a lot sooner. I had no idea how that was going to happen. By the way, when you write these goals down, it's just you write it down because you think it's crazy. That's what people like. Direct card don't tell you to do it. Write it down as crazy as it is, and it happens so much faster. I'm like, okay, what's the next crazy thing that I can like that, because it seems to work for me. It's always going to be further and further. But right now, the first step is to retire my mom. You want to do that the right way with passive income, not active income. Active income is money that you make for putting your time in. But we want to take that money that you make for putting the time in and then invest that into our own investments and other investments that will produce passive income. So that way it's something that's, I guess scalable, and we do it correctly, where we're not necessarily just burning the money, and it's something that can only roll and roll and can last forever. So we want to do that first. The next step would be for me and all my investors. My goal is to help everyone that is investing with us and anyone else that I can just help through my content live a life by design. For me, that looks like having freedom in three things. It's location freedom, which is when you can spend your time wherever you want. Time freedom, which is when you can spend your time doing whatever you want and with whoever you want. And then financial freedom, which allows you to do all three of those things. So this is the next goal that I would have. And then lastly, one of my life long goals. I read a book in that I told you about when I was there for the first time. I didn't bring up the book, but when I was there, that's when I really started my entrepreneurial journey. I just had three books that I took with me, and I was like, I'm going to finish these books while I'm here. The first one was leaving Microsoft to change the world. And it was about an executive that used to work at Microsoft. He was a highly paid executive. His name was John Wood. And he went to Nepal one day because he wasn't getting any fulfillment. He wasn't happy at his job. He went to Nepal and he brought a stack of books for him to read. And then he eventually met all of these kids who were interested in the books. So he gave them all to their kids and saw how happy it made them. If I can do this on a larger scale, why not? Why shouldn't I, right? So he came back home, sent an email out to everyone in his network, and asked them to donate books. And he got thousands of responses and thousands of books. Eventually he sent all those to Nepal. And slow and steadily, that became an organization called room to read. And it's a nonprofit now that builds libraries and schools in Easterwell countries. And one of the lines in the book that I'll forever remember, which is really what sparked my interest, because I was sitting in the third world country, I'm looking around me, and I was like, what can I do to make this a better place? He said, if you are able to teach and educate a female in third world country who comes from poverty and you're able to educate her, teach her to read, she's more likely to teach her offspring to read. As the mother of her kids, she was more likely to do that, which will make and make it more likely that that family will be pulled out of poverty. So I thought, if he can do this, it might not be my dharma to go and start a nonprofit, which I know that might be the thing I'd like to do, but I can just generate a lot of income and donate that to organizations like that. So that's something that I would love to definitely help out with and maybe play a more hands on role when it comes to helping families in Guatemala and other countries like that in central America. That's beautiful. It sounds like your goals and your vision and your values are aligned. I think it was a John Maxwell book, change your world. We had attended a speaking session, and they had talked about how third grade reading level is the single most important and impactful metric in taking kids out of poverty was focusing on their third grade reading level. And I thought to myself, why the hell isn't this promoted everywhere? Why isn't every politician, every community leader? Why isn't this like a focal point where, good Lord, we should be donating and driving to it. Right? And unfortunately, I think the system is set up as such where that's intentional. But it's young men like you that are out there, not just grinding and earning a living, but you're being mindful of how to impact your community. There is no greater reward than lifting up your brothers and sisters around you. We've been blessed and we've done a lot of deals in our day and we've had a lot of successes, and none of them come anywhere close to the impact when you're able to lift somebody else around you up and help them out. So I applaud you for that. I bless you for that, Jeff. I wish you all the best in the world. Where is the best place for people to learn more about you and to contact you? Yeah. So feel free to visit our website at www.donisinvestmentgroup.com. Check out our podcast, the real estate monopoly on all podcast aggregators. You can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram @jeffreydonis. And then on our brothers account, it's Donisbrothers on LinkedIn, I'm sorry, TikTok. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and then Instagram as well. Again, nothing but the best. Congratulations on the success. Congratulations on hitting your goal. Jeffrey, Donis, everybody. Check them out. Out the Donis Investment Group. As always, all the links are below. And everybody, please stay safe.