Join an active community of RE investors here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersen
0:00 Intro and Meet Samir Patel
1:16 Buying a 72-Room Motel with an SBA Loan
4:31 Lessons from the 2008 Crash and Loan Workouts
8:11 Why Samir Became a Hard Money Lender
11:48 Focus vs. Diversify: Does Your Age Matter?
14:23 Biggest Mistakes Borrowers Make
20:35 Why Smart People Never Start Investing
22:07 Build Your Own Underwriting Checklist
25:09 Book and Education Picks for Investors
28:06 Best Southeast Markets for Real Estate Investing
29:28 Zoning Mistake That Cost 18 Months
31:15 Using AI as Your Worst Critic
🏡 REAL ESTATE INVESTING LESSONS FOR FINANCIAL FREEDOM
Welcome back to The Real Estate Investing Club! I'm Gabe Petersen, and in this episode I sit down with Samir Patel, a hard money lender and veteran real estate investor with experience in hotels, self-storage, multifamily, and single-family properties. If you want practical real estate investing advice on how to build wealth and reach financial freedom without learning every lesson the painful way, this conversation is for you. 💰
🏨 BUYING A MOTEL AT 21 WITH AN SBA LOAN
Samir shares how Rich Dad Poor Dad inspired him to buy a 72-room motel for $1.5 million while he was still a West Point cadet. He explains how an SBA loan, a mentor who co-signed the personal guarantee, and a smart investment thesis near the Great Lakes Naval Training Center made it possible. We break down what he learned from the credit cycle, a bank loan workout, employee issues, and why commercial real estate is ultimately a finance game built on debt service and stress testing. 📉
🤝 HARD MONEY LENDING AND PRIVATE LENDING STRATEGY
Samir explains how buying one deal opens the door to many more, and how his path led from distressed notes and private lending to running a hard money lending firm with 1,500 real estate investor borrowers across 30 states. We talk about why mastering one asset class matters, why a DSCR focus and a bigger down payment can protect your cash flow, and why building an investor base early can save your project when capital calls hit. 🔑
Subscribe for weekly real estate investing interviews, and drop your biggest investing question in the comments below. 👇
#RealEstateInvesting #HardMoneyLending #FinancialFreedom #RealEstateInvestor #PassiveIncome
Want to learn more about our guest? Connect here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-patel-atlanta/
Want to learn more about the REI Club Podcast, how to invest with Gabe at Kaizen, or join our community of active real estate investors on Skool? Visit the podcast website at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com or click here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersen
0:00 Intro and Meet Samir Patel
1:16 Buying a 72-Room Motel with an SBA Loan
4:31 Lessons from the 2008 Crash and Loan Workouts
8:11 Why Samir Became a Hard Money Lender
11:48 Focus vs. Diversify: Does Your Age Matter?
14:23 Biggest Mistakes Borrowers Make
20:35 Why Smart People Never Start Investing
22:07 Build Your Own Underwriting Checklist
25:09 Book and Education Picks for Investors
28:06 Best Southeast Markets for Real Estate Investing
29:28 Zoning Mistake That Cost 18 Months
31:15 Using AI as Your Worst Critic
🏡 REAL ESTATE INVESTING LESSONS FOR FINANCIAL FREEDOM
Welcome back to The Real Estate Investing Club! I'm Gabe Petersen, and in this episode I sit down with Samir Patel, a hard money lender and veteran real estate investor with experience in hotels, self-storage, multifamily, and single-family properties. If you want practical real estate investing advice on how to build wealth and reach financial freedom without learning every lesson the painful way, this conversation is for you. 💰
🏨 BUYING A MOTEL AT 21 WITH AN SBA LOAN
Samir shares how Rich Dad Poor Dad inspired him to buy a 72-room motel for $1.5 million while he was still a West Point cadet. He explains how an SBA loan, a mentor who co-signed the personal guarantee, and a smart investment thesis near the Great Lakes Naval Training Center made it possible. We break down what he learned from the credit cycle, a bank loan workout, employee issues, and why commercial real estate is ultimately a finance game built on debt service and stress testing. 📉
🤝 HARD MONEY LENDING AND PRIVATE LENDING STRATEGY
Samir explains how buying one deal opens the door to many more, and how his path led from distressed notes and private lending to running a hard money lending firm with 1,500 real estate investor borrowers across 30 states. We talk about why mastering one asset class matters, why a DSCR focus and a bigger down payment can protect your cash flow, and why building an investor base early can save your project when capital calls hit. 🔑
Subscribe for weekly real estate investing interviews, and drop your biggest investing question in the comments below. 👇
#RealEstateInvesting #HardMoneyLending #FinancialFreedom #RealEstateInvestor #PassiveIncome
Want to learn more about our guest? Connect here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-patel-atlanta/
Want to learn more about the REI Club Podcast, how to invest with Gabe at Kaizen, or join our community of active real estate investors on Skool? Visit the podcast website at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com or click here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersen
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:05all right welcome back to another episode of the real estate investing club i hope you guys are
00:11having a great week great day wherever you are and whatever day it is for you as always it is
00:18friday on the podcast we're bringing that good friday energy to you guys and i apologize for
00:23anybody watching the video i the battery went out on the the focus thing that's on my camera
00:29and i wasn't able to get a new one so i'm a little bit blurry um i hope you guys
00:33can get over that
00:34most of you guys are just listening anyway so it doesn't really matter but it is a good day for
00:39a
00:39second reason i guess this would be the first reason because we have samir patel with us on the
00:44show samir has a ton of experience primarily they do hard money lending they are also in hotels self
00:51storage multi-family single family so a lot of experience to jump into here um samir thanks for
00:57dropping on the show glad to be here and i also apologize because the water the water broke in
01:03my office and i'm taking this call doing this from my basement so i like the background it's very it's
01:09very real estate related you got unfinished basement a lot of the uh you know the um whatever you call
01:16that the installation there so it's a good backup okay good all right man moving it on um as i
01:22told
01:22you before we got on the show we always like to start with stories we like to hear how people
01:26got to
01:27and take us to the beginning of your story in real estate and just tell us how you got here
01:33so like most people you read a book on the notion you know for many people it's rich dad poor
01:38dad
01:39and i'm no different and i read that book in 2005 or 6 or something like that and you know
01:46the book
01:46talks about building assets right and that craze that notion that idea you know probably launched the
01:52careers of probably thousands of real if not more real estate investors and so i caught that bug of like
01:57i got to build assets and reduce my liabilities at every turn possible so i was a cadet at west
02:03point i got a small loan from usa bank actually i thought i was going to use that as a
02:08down payment
02:08on a townhome um most of my fellow cadets use it for a vacation or a car i use it
02:14to actually buy a
02:1572 room days in motel outside of waukegan illinois 72 rooms with uh wow that's crazy what was the
02:23purchase price 1.5 million and i did it under an sba loan and it's not just me obviously no
02:29one's
02:29going to lend to a 21 year old but i found a mentor um that didn't understand hotels that did
02:34co-sponsor
02:35the personal guarantee of the loan who obviously the bank really cared about i don't think they
02:39cared about me but my deal with the mentor was that i would you know he would give me a
02:43crack at
02:43running operations and stuff like that remotely to the best of our ability um and it's a motel right
02:48so it's not not crazy um in terms of operational impact but what i liked about it what i sold
02:54them
02:54on on it was that even with my limited military experience at the time it was right outside the
02:59great lakes naval training center which is the navy's only boot camp and i was able to sell him
03:03on this idea that the navy is graduating 200 300 sailors every two weeks which means graduations
03:09which means travel which means families which is perfect for a budget motel like a day's in
03:14and uh he bought that investment thesis we bought it no seven didn't make any money for five years
03:20right because 08 hit and i learned the hard way what that's good of a downturn what it means in
03:26terms of the credit cycle and all that stuff and well we got through it and then i started making
03:30you
03:30know 100 of my money 2012 onward after that and i held it for 10 years nice and so you
03:36you you got
03:37started like your first investment was um you know most people start with single family you started
03:43with a true you know true investment a true asset class a motel you said it's operationally simple
03:49but i would i would say a motel would be of the asset classes one of the more operationally um
03:55difficult asset classes at least compared to you know that the number of moving pieces there and so
04:02you really you started it out and uh you learned i mean from you from the firehose as they say
04:08you uh you
04:08learned everything you needed to know from that first one i want to hover on that a little bit
04:12because i know there's a lot of um lessons that you learned through that process one of them
04:17obviously is the cycle that you bought in i guess it wouldn't be a cycle because that was kind of
04:21a
04:21crash um but you did buy when uh when the uh the economy the general economy was having a difficult
04:28time um tell us other lessons that you learned through that first purchase
04:34so many i'm glad i did it i mean in retrospect it sucked during the first five years of ownership
04:39it was really not i mean i thought it would be operationally simple i was absolutely proven wrong
04:44uh to your point uh once you're in it right but sometimes ignorance is the only thing that gets
04:51you to make a move and um i uh i just went with that um but you know the first
04:58dead body i ever saw
04:59was at the hotel before my iraq and afghanistan deployments okay um paying people nobody cares that
05:05you're a west point graduate people just care about getting paid so like dealing with employee issues
05:11um i also learned how to do a workout with a bank so we were upside down in our mortgage
05:17uh three years
05:18in and i learned kind of the hard way of what it's like to negotiate with the bank because you're
05:24underwater you're not making payments you're in default what do you do then and it's an sba loan
05:29right so it carries some additional baggage for you if you screw it up um what do you do in
05:35that
05:35scenario to to right size the ship right and i learned more than anything else actually and some
05:41people would disagree with me that i believe commercial real estate at least is a finance game
05:46it's not about the box it's not about the tenants it's ultimately about finance and some people would
05:52disagree with me and they may be right even but i learned that you got to be on the right
05:56side of a
05:57balance sheet and interest rates and stress testing income against debt service for example
06:03very early on and that's a lesson that's carried me through pretty much every other asset class that
06:08i've uh been involved with been involved with over the last 15 18 years yeah yeah and and that's um
06:16100 right and i i actually learned that the the hard way i used to think that um you know
06:23putting less
06:24down and having more leverage was a good thing because it meant you can you would have more more
06:29money in your bank to to use for other projects to use for things that now might go wrong whatever
06:33it is but i've learned that uh actually having more putting more money down and having a a better
06:39um dscr is better because then you have more cash flow and it is much easier to make sure that
06:46the
06:46the uh the property runs and hits the numbers that you're looking at that you're looking to achieve
06:50um yeah and you know the other lesson along those lines is well to put more money down
06:57if you're just a single real estate operator you how much can you really put down
07:01and that the other lesson i learned was the importance of having investors now some people
07:06say you don't want any investors i get it i i respect that but i learned that it's super important
07:13to build an investor base very early on right because in that hotel motel we still had capital calls we
07:19still had to do stuff for five years while we're underwater and revenue wasn't matching
07:23all the obligations that we have so i also think that there's a lot to be said about building even
07:29if it sucks asking for money to build some skills and having an investor base so that you can bring
07:34more money down so your pop so your projects don't fail yeah um yeah because once you uh once you
07:41run
07:41out of runway in your um your capital reserves it is very difficult to keep that project going um i
07:47mean
07:47doing capital calls raising extra additional funds is not something that anybody wants has to have to
07:52go through um but since that hotel you have you have branched out you've done a lot of different
07:58projects you've done self-storage multi-family right now what you guys primarily focus on is hard
08:03money lending um tell us about how you got there i mean i'm sure there's been uh ups and downs
08:08and
08:08lefts and rights with your career how did you land on hard money lending as your primary business
08:14so you know when you do one deal rent in real estate it's like magic when you do one thing
08:19in
08:19real estate such as buy a motel other things start to materialize you could say the universe is smiling
08:26at you or you could think of it that people know know that you're doing this and so then they
08:30think
08:31of you for other opportunities and so that purchase opened up so many other opportunities over a period
08:37of time so i bought a debt collection company that bought debt that collected debt on behalf of
08:42hoa homeowners or hoa associations against their delinquent homeowners um i started lending
08:48privately as well um around 2010 11 um primarily because once you start borrowing money you realize
08:56that sometimes being a lender may be a better game that may be better suited to your personality than
09:01to be the operator yeah and so i just started dabbling in all sorts of other real estate centric
09:07real estate tangential things like hard money lending like buying notes even in which you could
09:13do even as a mere mortal in 2010 buying distressed notes from banks because a lot of banks were failing
09:19especially here in georgia which had the most number of failed community banks in the country
09:23really um and so you know i i've been lending for a long time in addition to owner owning things
09:32and
09:33i've always believed in being a master of the profession so that means understanding or trying
09:38to understand every facet of what goes into the deal right when you do a deal you've got three or
09:43four inputs it's not just the money you put down it's not just your acquisition right it's it's there's
09:48a regulatory aspect to it you know in the closing of a deal there's the lending aspect to it which
09:53is
09:53somebody else's money and they've got covenants imposed on you there's obviously the tenanting now in a
09:59single family it's not that hard but on a commercial like getting people to come use your property
10:03there's that angle there's a legal angle obviously i've always just believed that i gotta understand or
10:09i want to understand all those sorts of things and so i just am really good at asking questions and
10:14finding people to to mentor me and all those angles that i just talked about and lending emerge is like
10:20one of the best things that i am good at and so fast forward to 2019 2020 i started selling
10:27off a lot
10:27of my assets actually because i wanted to simplify life and i just put a bunch of money like millions
10:33of dollars into my lending firm and passively lend out of that yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense
10:39and
10:40i'm almost pretty much in that same period right now where i bought a bunch of different types of
10:45assets and i'm really wanting to focus in on um on just one thing there's there's i feel like
10:52there's money to be made and uh there's a good reason to focus in on only one thing a lot
10:58of deals
10:59like you said once you get into real estate things will start coming at you you'll get deals left and
11:03right maybe a single family here a short term there a mobile home park a motel whatever it is
11:09and uh it is so tempting to want to chase deals generally um but i have found i mean the
11:17lesson one of my
11:18my own lessons is that is the wrong approach because every business every type of asset that you buy is
11:23a different type of business and every business that you run within real estate is it has its own
11:27rules its own uh um things that you need to master and if you really do want to get good
11:32returns you
11:32have to focus in on just one um trying to do everything and just pursuing deals generally is is the
11:41easiest way in my in uh in my mind to kind of have things go wrong and so like you
11:46said you you focused
11:47in on lending and that is what you guys have mastered um in doing so you guys you know a
11:53caveat
11:53real quick if you don't if you don't mind me saying a caveat i agree with what you said but
11:57i'll add one
11:58thing to it i think your age matters so i so i teach real estate entrepreneurship at georgia state to
12:05undergrad and master students and i have a different message for for for those classes for my undergrad
12:10i actually say you should chase everything that you can get your hands on right whether it's an
12:15ice cream store or a mobile home park or a single family flip when you're 20 to 25 it's more
12:22important
12:22that you get started and you get exposure to everything as you can but when you start hitting
12:27your 30s and if you follow the typical career adult progression you've got a mortgage you got a kid
12:31you got you need cash flow for real things then i do think focus matters yeah uh and i don't
12:38know
12:38like i know i'm gonna agree with you i i just turned 40 and i have two kids now and
12:42that i think
12:43that is the thing that kind of made me want to dial it back on diversity like on on diversifying
12:50my
12:51portfolio i want to streamline at at this point i want things to you know streamline operations
12:57streamline you know what i have to be involved in um and so yeah i i i agree with you
13:02i feel like
13:02that's a good caveat to put there um honestly is to be a versatile type of person right because
13:08one moniker one sort of thing i've always had as i network with folks and i hate blindly networking
13:13because i think it's just annoying but i try to be a one phone call kind of guy like you
13:19give me
13:20any problem whether it's a title issue contractor issue legal issue or you got to remove a dead body
13:25from your property like i can solve all almost any issue now with one phone call and that comes from
13:32having a diverse background to get into some problems to be honest but i recommend you do it
13:38when you're younger not when you're older yeah yeah because then you got the you got the ability
13:43to bounce back pretty quick um so one thing i didn't want to broach on as in the lending business
13:49you get to see both great successes people who do flips and they you know they get great returns but
13:55you also get to see the other side where things don't go as planned um and you get to kind
13:59of coach
14:00them through that to kind of help them get through the problems that they're running into um there's
14:05a lot of wisdom in in just watching people go through that so tell me what are the main issues
14:11that you see investors that you lend to what are the main issues you see them run into um that
14:17could
14:18have been sidestepped um or that you feel are most easily sidestepped that people run into
14:26yeah i love the word coach um sometimes it's more like compel these days as a lender but i love
14:34the
14:34word coach because that's the kind of relationship i want my me and my loan officers to have with our
14:39our our people that borrow from us because it is a partnership whether they know it or not
14:42in many ways the i'll put it in buckets so the first bucket is is um if they take on
14:50partners and
14:50investors they don't do the work up front to be aligned with the other stakeholders on their side
15:00so typically what happens is especially for those starting out you may partner with a buddy
15:05somebody you probably worked with somebody went to school with somebody from church perhaps it's a
15:10common common angle you guys like each other as people and your friends as people great now you're
15:16entering into a business relationship and you think that you have the ability to work out
15:21any differences or you gloss over it well as you and i both know gabe not every project is a
15:28home run
15:29right there will be problems a capital call may need to be made some repair that was not anticipated
15:35for happens the city shuts you down for something you know or you just overlook some something in your
15:42plan well a lot of partners don't talk in my opinion from what i've observed about how to handle
15:49capital calls and how to handle problems and the other problem is they they think they're 50 50
15:58and 50 50 sometimes works but i'm not a believer in it because i think at some at some point
16:03someone's
16:04got to be the person responsible and they've got to be able to move and make decisions and you know
16:10in
16:10any business enterprise you got to make decisions rather quickly sitting around for weeks is a recipe
16:15for disaster in many cases now obviously some there's some nuance there but you generally don't
16:21want to waste time um or lose time um so that alignment is a big problem and so i i
16:28have an exercise
16:28that i put my students through which is take a sheet of paper you put your expectations of yourself on
16:34one side and you put your expectations of your partner on another side right and then you guys come
16:39together and you compare your notes right and one of those questions should be like how do we handle
16:44capital calls is it going to be a loan to the partnership is it going to be a dilution of
16:47equity
16:48to the partnership are you guys aligned on whose effort because there's obviously like hey i'm the one
16:54managing the property and the other guy brought the money but the guy doing the work often thinks
16:58that that they deserve more because they're the ones doing the work and the guy that brought the money
17:03brings the money is like well it's my capital like this project would not have gotten off the ground
17:07if it wasn't for my capital right so getting aligned on those things um and i'm not saying
17:11one is better than the other you got to talk about it with your partner but i've seen a lot
17:15of
17:15partnerships go wrong and the project ultimately suffers because mommy and daddy are fighting yeah
17:20uh so there's that the the second is people trying to hit home runs too early in the game
17:29i teach my students i tell people that come to me for advice that it's better that you do a
17:34move and
17:34hit a single or not lose money on your first deal especially if it's a flip then trying to make
17:40a
17:40fifty thousand dollar profit on it yeah i get it you want to make a profit yeah i get it
17:45you're
17:45trying to underwrite to the 70 rule you know which super hard to do these days it's possible i get
17:50it
17:51like i get these things that people will teach you or talk about but i think generating momentum is
17:56the first thing if you want to make this a profession and so they try to hit home runs
18:02when they haven't earned the right to hit home runs meaning they don't have the experience they
18:06don't know how to solve problems they don't have backup capital in some form on standby and then
18:11they get effed when when the when a wrench is thrown into the plant yeah and then their lender
18:17has to foreclose on them because it got messed up and you know we as trophy point we look for
18:21that we
18:21look for experience as a really big really big thing um for the people we want to lend to and
18:28we dial
18:28back our leverage if we feel like it's someone that doesn't have experience but a lot of people
18:32have just sometimes in my opinion off kilter expectations when it comes to their first or
18:37second deal i would say just break even if you can it's more important that you make a move than
18:43trying to make fifty thousand dollars a profit or hit a home run on your first flip yeah yeah and
18:49especially with flips um that is what i started back in 2014 i was doing flips and uh there are
18:55it is it's hard to communicate how much you don't know when you start in real estate and you you
19:03know
19:03you watch hgtv you read the books you watch the youtube videos you feel like you know you you've lived
19:08in a house all your life you feel like you know how to do flips um or at least i
19:13felt when i started
19:14back in 2014 i knew how to do it generally but it's crazy how much you uh you really do
19:20learn
19:20from just doing you know on the job just small things that you wouldn't expect to have to learn
19:25you definitely do have to learn um and that is i like that you said no home runs my first
19:30deal
19:30not unfortunately but i'm glad it was a home run but i just got lucky the second deal though i
19:36worked
19:36on it was me and a partner and we worked on it for um i think it was eight months
19:41and we physically
19:42worked on it ourselves and we ended up each taking home i think it was about sixteen thousand dollars
19:47which might sound like money to some people but if you're working eight months physical labor on a
19:53deal it is nothing i was it was like it was it was bone crushing but you lose three thousand
19:59to taxes
19:59you know three four thousand taxes on that so we really took home 10 right right uh and so but
20:05the
20:06that specific deal taught me so much um and i'm glad you know the two deals in combination
20:11one of them was a home run and it was way too easy and i got looking back i got
20:16way too lucky
20:16but it did give me the motivation to move forward and then the next one uh kind of crushed me
20:21took
20:21way too long but it taught me this is what real estate is you're gonna run into problems things
20:26are gonna go wrong um so yeah i like uh i like that you said don't look for a home
20:30run look for a
20:31first base get in the game and uh and then you know things will start to snowball as you start
20:37to get
20:37more experience you know it's a paradox too right like i'm around a lot of students that want to
20:42learn real estate and the reason why smart people you know they say c students or a students end up
20:48working for c students is i don't know if i completely believe in that but yeah i don't know
20:53how you did in school um but a lot of a students don't get started in real estate because they're
20:59so
20:59smart that they look at every single variable and they don't even make a move right because they get
21:05they get overwhelmed by all the variables and all the things that go wrong whereas i'm not saying
21:10the dumb people but the people that make moves they actually the win here is making the move to
21:14get started yeah right and then having the faith in yourself that you'll solve whatever problems come
21:20your way if they even come up yeah it's a weird paradox right this is why real estate it doesn't
21:25matter how technically academically smart you are it's it's the guts um to make that move in the first
21:31place yeah and you you'd actually said it earlier i wrote it down you said uh um you got to
21:36start
21:36ignorance is almost a benefit um starting without knowing without knowing everything is a benefit
21:43because uh i mean now i underwrite things insanely like to the to the t like i put so much
21:50effort in
21:50underwriting which means most 90 i'm talking 95 96 97 percent of all deals that i look at i do
21:57not
21:57even move on but if i'd had that same kind of rigor or i started i would never get a
22:02deal done i would
22:03just it would like i would never get into the game and so ignorance is definitely um definitely helps
22:09you at the beginning that's for sure let me let me ask you this your underwriting checklist
22:14is it your checklist or did you borrow somebody else's uh it is a mix of both uh so it
22:20yeah i started
22:21with somebody else's and then as i do more deals i start you know i have gone into so many
22:29issues
22:29i've made so many mistakes over my career and each one of those mistakes adds to my due diligence
22:35checklist um and a lot of it honestly has to do with uh with the location with like the the
22:43metro that
22:44you're investing into um this is just like recent things that i've been adding to the checklist uh you
22:49like like really the the corner the the the specific corner that you're buying onto street
22:55corner that you're buying onto matters more than the metro generally um and but anyways yeah so it's
23:02it's been growing as i've done more deals yeah and i would say that like it's an overlooked thing right
23:08a lot of people think that you can just borrow someone's checklist or you join a guru or you join
23:12a
23:13program and they'll sell you on the fact that they'll sell you their checklist well you as an operator
23:20i feel and i what i've learned maybe even the hard way is that checklist has to be tailored to
23:25me
23:25because i look at the world differently my capital comes from maybe a different source
23:30than the guru's capital you know where his cause coming from so that checklist has to be like a
23:36living and breathing document that is constantly modified it's not a static not a static thing at all
23:42and i think that's another you asked you know where do people go wrong it's borrowing other people's
23:46checklists too much and not realizing why certain some of those items are on that list because the
23:53way you underwrite could be different than mine right because my capital comes from a different
23:55place my worldview comes from a different place my sense of risk comes from a different place and so
24:01just borrowing yours may not be useful to me and mine may not be useful to you yeah yeah it's
24:08highly
24:08it's built on experience um and what what i'm comfortable with is something you might not be
24:13comfortable with and same vice versa um in fact especially like mobile home rv parks most people
24:18they want city water city sewer and they won't even look at anything else but we've i've dealt with so
24:23many septics and so many septic issues and i'm totally fine with with buying them now because i know what
24:28to expect and i know how to underwrite them i know uh how much money we should be setting aside
24:33for
24:33when one fails how to fix a leach field all that stuff and so um yeah you're you're you're underwriting
24:39your due diligence checklist 100 right it should be tailored to you and your experience and what
24:44you expect versus um what somebody else expects themselves um with that said man i have taken a
24:50look at the clock it looks like we have run it down we are past the 20 minute mark so
24:54i do have to
24:54push us on are you ready let's do it all right quick question around it starts with education it could
25:02be any form could be a book you've read movie you've seen mentorship program you've been a part of
25:06anything like that i just need two recommendations one for general life wisdom and then one for real
25:11estate so for general life wisdom i would read a book called influence by robert cialdini um that book
25:21uh has changed my world in terms of how i raise money and how i talk to people and real
25:25estate is a
25:26contact sport in terms of your contacts so influencing your contacts is really important no matter what field
25:32you're in um and then for real estate i did the georgia state um masters of commercial real estate
25:38program it's a one-year program it's designed to teach you to be an owner of real estate assets
25:44uh mondays and wednesday nights it it been it like it was amazing for me it vindicated some of the
25:49things i was doing self-taught and also taught me some things i was doing ass backwards um and so
25:55i it's
25:55one of the best programs out there and i say that because i also teach the real estate entrepreneurship
26:00i loved it so much they invited me to come back and teach so nice shameless plug there no no
26:05that's
26:05good i've actually uh so i i've never had like a formal um education in in real estate when i
26:11went
26:11to uh uw i studied like philosophy and so it has nothing to do with real estate but i have
26:17almost
26:18considered going back and getting something like that a certificate or a master's in commercial real
26:22estate just because i want that i want to see what the framework is that um that they teach
26:26through your education i'm curious uh how it aligns with what i'm actually experiencing in the
26:32field so um a lot of people tend to like denigrate formal education especially entrepreneurs but what
26:38it's done for me is it gives me a formal way to like dust off all the experiences i've had
26:43right you know formal and i'm kind of forced to because i'm in class i'm doing an assignment
26:47and you cannot help but like reflect and reflection is is a fantastic thing especially if you're in it to
26:53win it and you're running your own game um did i get a job out of it no but i
26:59started my fund and
27:00now my fund's 150 million in size as a direct result of the program because it forced me to reflect
27:05on
27:05what i'm good at and what i suck at yeah and i found my fit as a result and like
27:11we were saying
27:11earlier you you don't know what you don't know um you know and if you so going through something
27:16formalized like that uh could open up gaps that i didn't even know i i had so i i like
27:21that idea
27:21uh moving us on though this next question is for your younger self let's go back to the samir who
27:26is just getting started buying that 72 unit uh motel back in i think you said 2007 or something
27:33like that yeah go back to him look him in the eye give him one piece of advice moving forward
27:39i would re re-evaluate my cat my core values and it would be the only core values you need
27:45in this
27:45world are courage and cash flow i like that tattoo that on my forehead it'd probably be that
27:51optimized according to that i like that courage and cash flow that is uh that's a good tattoo to
27:57get um next question is about the u.s it's a big place there is a lot of opportunity out
28:03there
28:04give me the single metro you're most excited about investing in today
28:09i can't say single metro but i i'll just say the southeast united states anytime you have population
28:15growth and job growth which are the two demand drivers of real estate i think you'll be okay
28:20directionally speaking so south carolina north carolina georgia parts of georgia uh even parts
28:26of alabama actually i'm not exuberant about florida um but tennessee fantastic i think
28:32not florida huh that's uh a lot of people come on saying they love florida what why don't you like
28:37florida one the laws two um and i maybe i'm coming at it from a lender's perspective
28:45um there's just something about florida that just is too volatile for me like when it's great it's
28:50great when it's bad it's bad yeah and i've reached the point and i just turned 42 myself
28:55with two young kids actually ironically enough i'm just at the point for me personally where like
29:00i don't want to deal with that type of volatility like phoenix is another market where
29:04when it's great it's great but when it's bad it's it's also bad yeah yeah that makes a lot
29:10of sense you want the predictability not the ups and downs um next question is about lessons learned
29:16not every deal we go into goes the way we expect it in fact pretty much every time something's gonna
29:21go wrong and that's when we get to learn a lesson so what was one deal that went a little
29:25bit
29:26sideways for you and then what was the lesson you pull from it oh man um where do you even
29:34start um
29:36we bought a property so like a very simple lesson that you'll learn a commercial real estate
29:40which we'll never make again but we bought a property not fully respecting zoning and uh entitlement
29:48and the it was like semi-industrial semi-commercial retail and um you know we thought we could do
29:58something and you know it's a very rookie mistake but we did not take a look at zoning um and
30:04you know
30:05the variances and all that stuff so it took like an extra 18 months basically to get through the
30:10variance process and we did not build that into holding costs yeah yeah and i mean like i made money
30:17like it expanded the whole period but it's a shitty thing to do to go to your investors saying hey
30:22i got
30:22this wrong i didn't do my due diligence i didn't realize zoning had a say in this and so it's
30:27going to take
30:2812 to 18 months longer than you thought we thought to get out of this yeah so the lesson learned
30:33there
30:34is uh check zoning laws make sure that what you're trying to build is conforming to what the city wants
30:39to have there and now with ai though like you know ai is a godsend with stuff like this right
30:44like
30:45trying to crack open a city zoning ordinance manual it's like if you're a first-timer it's like like
30:51another language to be honest but now that you've got chat gbt and ai and all this stuff like you
30:57can
30:57ask it layman type questions and get layman type responses that are meaningful yeah that actually
31:03leads to the next question which is about ai ai is new and it is transformative to anybody that uses
31:09it in their business so what is the most effective and uh and impactful way that you've used ai in
31:16your
31:16own business so i have so ai by design is meant to be agreeable right like it's designed by human
31:25humans technically want to be agreeable so the underpinning of ai is that it wants you to like
31:30it it wants you to it wants to agree with you even if i mean that's why some people are
31:35committing
31:35suicide based on ai it's kind of hard to believe but i guess that's what's happening is ai is
31:42ai is leading them down that path so anyway i have turned ai to be like the worst devil's advocate
31:48possible against my own thinking right like literally instruction in the md file um don't
31:55ask me what md stands for memory i think memory something file literally is you are my worst critic
32:00and so i've taught it when it comes to underwriting decisions and underwriting of deals to be the worst
32:07freaking critic now whether i agree with it or not it's a different story but i want it to ask
32:11me the
32:11questions that i have not considered nice i like that that's the first time i've heard um you know
32:17that type of approach with ai and i 100 agree it depends on what system you're using i feel like
32:22claude is a little bit better at being more straightforward but chat gbt chat gbt and gemini
32:28definitely are they're they just they just say exactly what you they think you want to hear and it is
32:34extremely annoying um but if you if you build that into the skill or into the context for the project
32:40that would uh um it would give you a lot more useful information versus ai just telling you you
32:46know trying to be happy and trying to tell you what you want to hear yeah you've it's it's a
32:50friend i
32:51mean it's a friend in the sense that it can ask you to think about things you didn't think about
32:54right which is the very thing you want to do when you're trying to make deals and put your own
32:58capital
32:58at risk yeah absolutely all right that leads us to the very last question this is for the listeners
33:04you've given us a lot to think about i'm sure people want to reach out get in contact with you
33:08is a two-parter where can they find you and then what can they expect when they reach out
33:14so i'm always here for advice i always love helping people i've benefited a lot from helping people
33:18obviously i'm certainly not self-made in that regard um hit me up at samir samir at trophypointcapital.com
33:25um if you need lending like you need capital quickly to take down a deal we're in 30 states um
33:32trophypointcapital.com um we pride ourselves on being flexible we pride ourselves on listening
33:37to your deals um and there's a reason why we have 1500 borrowers 1500 real estate investors
33:44uh do business with us all right i will put samir's links in the show notes so if you guys
33:50want to reach
33:50out all you got to do is click the little more in the description it'll pull down that full description
33:55and in there you can find his links all right man that wraps it up thank you very much for
34:01hopping on
34:02the show yeah great to be here love the love the pace of it absolutely for everybody who's with us
34:08today thank you guys for showing up you are the reason we do this so if you guys have any
34:11questions
34:12reach out to me at gabe at the real estate investing club.com if you guys want to support the
34:16show just
34:16leave us a comment review anything like that other than that i hope you guys have a great week
34:21keep rocking real estate keep rocking real estate and i look forward to seeing you on the next episode
34:25you