EP 261: Jeff Ervick's Path Scaling to 2,000 Doors While Working a W-2

[00:00:00] Hello, and thank you for joining us today on The Gentle Art of Crushing It Show, where we focus on learning and sharing with our listeners all there is to know about how to create success in our lives. This show stands on the shoulders of giants. Our mission is to empower and inspire our listeners to create the life of their dreams whilst having a blast in the process. Let's celebrate life together. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:28] All right, welcome back to The Gentle Art of Crushing It podcast. My name is Randy Smith and I'll be your host today and really excited to have Jeff Ervick with us today. Jeff is the co-founder of Velourous Capital Partners. They do value add and ground up development. They've got over 150 million in AUM and development. So Jeff, welcome to the show. Randy, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. This is an excellent opportunity to get to know you better and know me better and talk more about real estate, which we love.

[00:00:57] I love it. I love it. Well, let's jump right in as we always do. Can you give the audience kind of your perspective on the state of the current market and how that might be impacting the passive investment community? Yeah, that's a, I think a loaded question right now, right? With everything going on. We're in the first couple of weeks here in March and we're also looking down a barrel of potential recession coming up. There's a lot of ways that things can swing, right?

[00:01:25] And I think that's the hard part is, is no one has a crystal ball. So being able to best understand what you're looking to do or looking to get out of any investments you're in, whether you're in the stock market, whether you're in the bond market, whether you're in full of cash or you're doing real estate, you know, what is the best way or best method for your portfolio? Right.

[00:01:46] Right. And, you know, to be honest, that that's going to change per person. Right. So, you know, mine is probably different than yours, which is different than, you know, one of our other close buddies and so forth. So just really depends. But state of the market is it's a little chaotic right now. I'll put that right because there's the back and forth of are we tariffs or we're not tariffs? We do have tariffs. OK, we're going to increase tariffs. We're going to decrease tariffs.

[00:02:09] You know, it's everything going on with Doge, right? Like we're cutting a lot of, you know, spending here and there under cover under uncovering a lot of, you know, frivolous spending. Right. Which is really, I think, really good for the American people. Yep. And then also we got the potential end of the Ukraine war on the horizon. Right. I mean, that's that's just just announced. I know, again, I'm not sure when this is going to air, but just announced today that there's a 30 day ceasefire about to happen. Right.

[00:02:35] So there's a lot of economic and political geopolitical things happening right now that are greatly shifting the market. And it could be could be great. It could be bad. It could be inverse. It just I mean, it's kind of like a to be seen. Yeah. Yeah. TBD is is really kind of what's going on. No, I agree. I think you you captured that really well. It's really kind of uncertain times. We're seeing stock market highs and lows and huge drops in single days and then everything that's going on with Doge.

[00:03:05] It's an interesting time to be managing, you know, your own assets and trying to understand where to put those next investments. But I think both you and I agree that real estate is a great place to hold assets. And I think we'll get into that a lot more. Jeff, can we maybe take a step back and can you tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and how you found yourself where you are today? Yeah, for sure. Excellent. So let's see. I've I've had about a been been in technology sales. Right.

[00:03:35] So I'm still a W2 employee. Right. I still have a W2 job. And I've been in technology sales for little just 21 years, basically. Right. Just over 20 years. With that kind of a little known fact is I've only had two jobs my entire life. Hard to say for most people that in 20 years, you've only worked for two different companies. Right. But that's that's you know, I'm a I'm a loyalist. Right. And I'm also a, you know, a hard worker.

[00:03:59] So if you kind of put those two together and, you know, you come to a really good career that has just spanned two years where a lot of people in the in the sales technology sales space will will jump ships for a different opportunity or startup. Or maybe they want to make a little extra money here and there, whatever it is. Right. So for me, I'm I'm kind of the opposite of that. But regarding the real estate aspects. So I've I've been in real estate since 2017. Right.

[00:04:26] But I joke, actually, this is my my first real estate transaction was back in 2009 when I bought our my wife and I bought our first townhouse. And we did a little thing called house hacking before it was actually a house hacking idea. Right. So we bought it. We fixed it up. And I think within I think it was like close to 16 months or something like that. We sold it for a profit and moved into a bigger, bigger house. Right. And then kind of actually did the same thing at that time. Two years later, you know, we actually sold the property, that property and moved up to where I am here now.

[00:04:55] You know, so that's that's we have hacked before it was really a house hacking thing. But for for my actual real estate investment experience. Right. You know, as a W2 earner. Right. I was looking for a way to offset my income. I love real estate. So how can I get into real estate? You know, without knowing what I was really doing is, OK, let me go out and let's let's buy a rental property. Right.

[00:05:18] So I did the you know, when you're standing in front of like 30 people frozen in the middle of the wintertime out in front of the actual property, I was going to buy holding up a paddle and that kind of stuff. No kidding. Yeah. A little little daunting for my first time ever buying a property. Right. Sure. Sure. I won that deal. And that was that was my first ever a Burr property. So I've done the Burr method with all my all my personal rental properties. I flipped a few. I've sold a few, but I still hold on to a small portfolio right now.

[00:05:48] And then I got into private lending. So I also switched over at the previous job I had. I had had an old IRA. So I switched that over to a self-directed IRA and been private lending out of that for the last probably six or seven years. So that is my initial portion of it. But then I kind of got to a point where I'm like, all right, I can only do so much of this when like the actual active like like rental properties. I can only do so much when I'm when I'm working a W2 job. Right.

[00:06:15] So how can I really scale? I really was looking to scale my portfolio. And that's when I got into multifamily. And so we, you know, we got into a multifamily by by looking to grow our portfolio, grow our passive income, but also grow. I wanted to be an owner. I didn't want to be like just just passive income on that, which is not a bad thing. Actually, probably it's actually probably easier to be a passive investor, much easier, actually.

[00:06:40] But but but being the real estate guy I am, I'm like, I want to jump into it, learn, learn, learn every aspect of it and be a part of a deal. Right. So that's how I got my start in multifamily and been doing that for the last two years. Since then, we've grown to 150 million of assets in our management. Just personally, about two over just over 2000 doors and a limited and general partner perspective. I'm GP and all except for one one deal of that that method.

[00:07:08] And that's value add right up development, which is we'll get into that as well, too. And then also light industrial. That's our portfolio. Are you interested in real estate investing, but don't know where to get started or think you don't have the time or money? Are you stuck in your W-2 because the golden handcuffs make it hard to walk away? If this sounds like you, check out impact equity dot net and schedule some time to talk with the founder, Randy Smith.

[00:07:34] Randy went from massive income to leaving his W-2 through passive income, and he can help you do the same. W-W-W dot impact equity dot net. Unbelievable. So that is you and I have a lot of similarities to our past. I was corporate America about 25 years and the very large majority of that was only two companies. So I spent 10 years at two different companies, started investing at first with my old IRA through a self-directed account in the passive space.

[00:08:01] And then I did BRRRR and out-of-state single family investment. So, yeah, a lot of similarities there. Yeah. Well, you mentioned you are the corporate guy and doing real estate investing. I remember back in those times, like I would I would talk with all of my peers and colleagues about all the stuff that I was doing in real estate. And they would they would look at me kind of like a deer in the headlights. And, you know, like, why would you do that? Why would you like we've got such busy lives and families and soccer practice, all this other stuff. Why would you get involved with that?

[00:08:28] I'm curious. Did you have similar or are you having kind of similar interactions with other people you're working with? Yes, I get that all the time. And and yeah, it's it's definitely a reaction people get to is like, how can you do that when you have a full time job? How can you do that when you're married with three kids, you coach travel baseball and I've got two other kids in different travel sports and so forth. And I got to say, you know, it is very difficult. Right. But and I don't say that.

[00:08:54] I don't I don't think that everybody should or or want to jump into something like that. Right. Which is why, you know, I also passive invest. Right. So I passive invest in not just my deals, but other deals. Right. So we're we're investors in a few other private equity deals and also other other operators, multifamily deals. Right. But I say the support system. Right. Is probably the most important part. Right. And that's, you know, my wife and our family. Right. And friends.

[00:09:22] You know, that's that's a massive way to be able to overcome that. But a lot of people also ask me, well, how do you manage your time between your W-2 and your real estate? And, you know, I do have a very unique position that I'm in. Right. I'm very flexible. I kind of run. I run my own business. Right. But but I run my own business under a umbrella business. Yeah. So but but but I have the opportunity to to be flexible in that nature.

[00:09:52] But I'm very diligent on my time blocking. Right. There's majority of my time has to be spent W-2 because I've got to got to do that, that that portion of it. Right. But on the outside of that or if I have something that comes up, I make sure that I'm dedicating a certain amount of time to certain tasks that have to be done within the real estate side. I focus on investor relations. So a lot of mine is building relationships as well anyway. So I don't have to go fly to the property on a weekly basis. We have asset managers that are part of our team.

[00:10:20] One of my one of key partners is operations and acquisitions. Right. So and then we have a few folks that work for us underneath us that are that are asset management, marketing and we outsource proper managements and so forth. Right. So we've got a very unique ability to be able to manage our opportunities correctly and manage my time correctly. So it's kind of a sure. We had a twin disorder sort of thing. No, I think it's great.

[00:10:46] I think somebody says, like, if you want to find if you want to get something done, find somebody who's very busy. And that seems to be the case with a lot of people that I see that are managing kind of W-2 and real estate is they're extremely busy. They're doing a ton of stuff, but they're more effective generally than most of their peers or colleagues that are in the W-2 without the extra work. So I used to share with folks that I felt like I could literally accomplish more in four hours of head down work than a lot of my peers could accomplish in eight or 10 or 12 hours.

[00:11:16] And that wasn't bragging. It just simply was when I work, I work. And when I'm doing another task, I do another task. So I think it's great to see what you've been able to accomplish just in the last couple of years. It's amazing. 2,000 doors. That's absolutely amazing. So congrats. Kudos. It's funny. I talked to one of my partners that got me into... Well, he actually would say he helped me do the initial part of my contract for my rehab for my rental properties. And his company is actually my property manager too for those rental properties. Right?

[00:11:46] And I asked him, I'm like, how do you do? Because he was doing lending. He was doing property management. He was doing construction. He was doing his own flips and so forth. And he's like, I am a horrible multitasker. He's like, I don't multitask. I focus on one thing. Right? And then I get that task done. And then I focus on the next thing. Right? And I focus on the next thing. If I have to do 15 or juggle 15 balls at one time, something's going to drop. All right? So I think that's... I kind of took that to heart. I was like, all right. That makes sense.

[00:12:11] Like if I can utilize that kind of mentality with my businesses and I focus on those specific tasks and get them done and move on to the next one versus like do one task and halfway between it. Got to go another one. And, you know, so... Right. Kind of funny. It's like multitasking really is not a thing. It's like you got a single task. Right? Exactly. Yeah. No, a lot of people think they're great multitasker. They're actually just really good at jumping from item on item. Because you can only really focus on one thing at a time. Like that's the reality of it. So... Well, now you mentioned also that you started in the private lending space.

[00:12:41] And we don't talk a lot about that here. But I do some of that as well. And I think it's a really great way for folks to kind of dip their toe in this space. Very similar to its passive investing. And I think it can make sense if you find some really good operators. But can we talk about your experiences with that? Like how did you find the people to lend your money to? Was this a traditional self-directed account that you were using? What did all that look like? Yeah. It's funny. I think it's kind of going full circle a little bit from when I started to where I am now with it.

[00:13:11] So I like to kind of talk about that story a little bit too. So when I first moved my initial IRA to a self-directed IRA, I had a friend of mine, a friend of a friend who said, Hey, Jeff, look, I'm looking to borrow some money. I'm buying some rental properties. I need to borrow like $80,000 or something like that. Right? Can you help me out? And I said, Okay, well, let me see. I can probably do this. And he kind of... He already has done it himself. Right? So he kind of walked me through how to use a self-directed custodian. I use a company called Equity Trust. But there are plenty out there.

[00:13:41] There's like a dozen that I could recommend that are out there. I just use Equity Trust because it's where all my accounts are. Anyway, so I started lending out of that. Right? And then from his connection, I also met with another operator who was buying rental properties up in the Buffalo area. Right? And so I had a number of deals out with him as well. And so I was doing direct, right? Let's call it direct lending. Right? To the actual operator. You vet the operator. You underwrite the position. You underwrite the opportunity.

[00:14:09] You underwrite the deal. Right? I didn't do anything more than like 65% loan to value, loan to cost. Right? Or loan to value. So I made sure I was protected. And I was always on... I was always in first lien position. Right? You remember dealing with it. Right? So if you were always in first position, what size checks were you writing for those? Yeah. It was anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000. All right? Okay. So these are cheap assets too. Yeah.

[00:14:38] These are not $300,000 or $500,000 houses. These are... Yeah. Exactly. These are your class C-ish, I would say, rental properties. Right? You know? So yeah. It was those kind of assets. But they were either... He bought them as cash flowing or bought them to rehab it and then rent it and then refinance out of it. Right? So I got into doing first lending or first lien position.

[00:15:04] I had a title company do the deed and do the mortgage or promissory note. Right? I had a personal guarantee on all of them. And that was... It was good. Right? But it was also kind of like... That's also kind of active a little bit. Right? So you got to go out, you got to vet the operator, you got to vet this, you got to do that. So I eventually partnered with a friend of mine, right? Who was running a hard money lending business. And I invested into his company. I said, hey, listen, I want to give you a chunk of money. And I want you to use my money as yours, as you're investing. Right? So he does that.

[00:15:34] And he's got... I'm not going to say the amount, but he's got a lot of money in deals all throughout the Baltimore, Maryland area. That's his niche. And that's what he does. He doesn't go outside of his niche. So he knows it very well. He knows the operators. He can get to each property by a drive. He does all the inspections. He meets all the people beforehand. He's got a whole system and a whole process for hard money lending. And it's beautiful. Right? For me, it's amazing because it's a passive income stream. Right?

[00:16:02] For me, now I can give him my information. And I utilize my self-directed still with him. And I also have cash with him. So I've got a mixture of both. Right? And this is a 201 lesson. But I also arbitrage a whole life insurance policy too. So I put money first in a whole life insurance policy. I take a loan up against that. And I lend that to him. And he lends it out. And I make a difference. Right? So I'm making twice on my money versus making once on my money.

[00:16:33] Yeah. So can we dig into that a little bit? Because that's a strategy I've been researching for years. And I just cannot get my head around it. This idea of borrowing money, you end up paying a fee. But then maybe if you can get better of a return than what you're paying on the interest. But you're paying yourself the interest anyways. So, yeah. Give us your kind of high level on that too, if you could. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So it's called Infinite Banking or BYOB, Be Your Own Banker. Nelson R. Nash wrote the initial book of Be Your Own Banker.

[00:17:02] So if you haven't read that, I love that book. It's kind of like the Bible of it. It's a real small read. It's only like, I think it's only like 60 or 70 pages or something like that. Right? But he goes very succinctly through how that process works. And then I also, there's a guy named Chris Noggle, who's all over YouTube as well. I read his book, How to Be a Millionaire or something like that. Right? But its foundation is based on the infinite banking methodology. Right? So you get yourself a whole life insurance policy. Right? And you overfund that policy with a paid up addition.

[00:17:32] That way you kind of jumpstart the policy right away. And also it has to be engineered specifically to be able to make sure you get, you can pull the maximum amount out of that. Right? These whole life insurance policies have a guaranteed return. Let's call it 3%. And they also pay a dividend. And let's say it's another 3%. So you're looking at about a 6% return compounding on your money annually. Right? So every year that money compounds as it grows. Right?

[00:17:57] So if you put that money in first and then you're guaranteed to make that money. Right? And then you pull a, you take a loan off of the actual cash value of the policy. So you're not taking your money out of the policy. You're borrowing money from the, uh, from the insurance company. Right? And, and those insurance rates actually are right about, I think, I think I got my last one at like 5.2%. Right? So, and it's my own money. Right? So I'm borrowing against that.

[00:18:25] Um, and then I lend that out. So I, I, I pass it to my, my hard money lending business and he pays me a 10% return. Right? So I'm making 10% on that money. Right? Even though I'm paying five to the, to the insurance company. But that five I'm paying to the insurance company actually comes back into an interest payment from me back into my cash value policy tax free. Right? Right. And it's, so you, so you're earning your 6% and then you're also, you're paying call

[00:18:53] it 5%, but that 5% is also going back to you as well. Yeah. So that goes back. That's basically that, uh, you're going, you're paying yourself the interest into your environment, into your, into your policy, so to speak. Right? So yeah, that's how you look at it as, as you're paying your own interest. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. So then you're back to your own bank and then you can then, you know, as that compounds annually, you can take that money back out again and relend it and you keep on recycling that money back and forth. It's kind of like called the velocity of money. Right? Yep. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

[00:19:22] No, it's, it's something I've, I've looked at a lot. The biggest challenge that I can't get my head around is if, because I'm a multifamily investor, almost exclusively 80% of my dollars in this space are multifamily standard performance going to provide, call it 20% annualized return per year. A lot of the programs I've seen in the infinite banking, they, they require you to hold the dollars in the account for X amount of months or a year or two years sometimes before you can do a loan.

[00:19:49] So I have a hard time getting my head around leaving those dollars there for two years before I can touch them again, because I feel like I can get better returns. You're probably not talking to the right people who can draft the policy. Then there's another guy named Chris Larson, who, who's really good next level income. And he does that as well too. So I've talked to him multiple times about it also. So, so when you engineer one of these policies or when, when the, when the person who's putting it together, like Chris Larson, when he engineers a policy, you know, for an infinite banking position,

[00:20:18] you put the money into the policy. And within less than 30 days, I can pull 90% of that money back out. Right. So let's say you put a hundred grand into your policy up for the, for that year. And that's, that's your paid up additions. It's your, your upfront. There's different ways to look at how you carve up your, your paid up additions versus your overfunding portion of it versus your actual policy amount of it. Right. Then you can take 90% of that.

[00:20:45] So you can pull 90 grand back out, you know, within less than 30 days. Right. So, but again, the policy has to be specifically designed for infinite banking. Right. And also the, the, the insurance company, you know, there are some that are good with it. Some that aren't good with it. Some that are better terms and that you can pull out faster. It's got to go to an expert who knows, knows, knows how to do that. I'm again, I'm an expert at using them and I love them. Sure. It also protects my family.

[00:21:12] So if something happens to me, you know, I've got a, I've got this, this great insurance policy that's going to cover my family for, for their lifetimes. Right. Now here's another, we're going to keep going down rabbit hole here, Randy, but. No, this is good. Yeah, this is good. I also, I also have trusts, right. And the trust owns the policy. So when I pass it as it says, Hey, trust the money goes back to the trust, which is then my, my kids are going to be when they're older enough. Right. We'll be the not custodians, but yeah, basically the custodians of that money.

[00:21:41] And I tell, and part of my, you know, family plan is to say, okay, now use that money to put a life insurance policy on yourself and then your kids. Right. So everybody kind of comes back. So think of it as a, the Rockefeller method, right. Where it, it, it, it keeps on replenishing their own personal bank. Every time someone passes from, you know, from a hierarchy down to all the way down to, you know, the, the next generation that was just born. Right.

[00:22:08] So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a, it's a, it's a very big strategy, but it's a, it's a, I love it because it helps protection. It protects my family and also my money against anything else. Yeah, no, it's something I need to spend more time with. What I know is the ultra high net worth individuals that I get the opportunity to hang around with from time to time, like 80% of them are using this strategy with their dollars. So if, if it works for them, it likely will work for me. I just still need to get my head around it before I'm willing to jump in and do it.

[00:22:38] So you're, you're, you're, you have to also make sure you're doing, you're using it for the rights arbitrage, right. For the right investment. Right. So if, if I use one, right, for example, let's say I take a hundred thousand out and I put it into a multifamily property that maybe is a, it's a, it's a value-add property. There's no cashflow in the first couple of years, right. Because of the value-add perspective, that might not be the best one. Cause then you're also paying for that, you know, which again, you're still paying yourself back.

[00:23:08] So if you can afford to use maybe cashflow from another investment, pay this back. And then by the time you're, and you have to set the loan parameters yourself, right? So if you say, Hey, I'm going to pay this off in, you know, in five years, right. Then you look at the interest rate and you look at your, your amortization in the schedule, and then you make that payment, right? So that way in five years, you're back down to zero. But the beauty about it is that your loan is a simple interest loan, right?

[00:23:34] So if I pay 50,000 back, I'm only paying interest then on 50,000, not like your car loan, where you still paid on the entire. Sure. Premium or the retire principle. Right. So yeah, you gotta, but that's why I use that system for higher cashflow opportunities like private lending or a private credit, those sorts of things. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, this is, this is great. This is a discussion we haven't got into much on this.

[00:24:02] I actually had Chris Larson on, I think probably a year, year and a half ago. We walked through it at that point. But yes, it's definitely, it's a strategy that needs to be considered and researched and certainly something our listeners should dig into and at least get to know and understand it because I think it's something that likely will be a tool in everybody's investing tool belt at some point. So yeah. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you one more thing before we hop off this and then, and then, you know, cause I know we didn't talk about whole life insurance policies our entire

[00:24:29] time and people might not find it so interesting as, as our real estate portfolio is. But if you use this, right, not again, you don't have to use it for an investment vehicle. What you could do is you could take a loan and let's say you want to go buy a new car. You want to spend 50,000 on a new, a new truck, right? You put your money into your whole life insurance policy first, right? And instead of going to the bank to get a loan, which might be like six or 7%, right? At this point, even if it's 4%, right?

[00:24:57] Then you actually borrow the money from yourself, right? And you put a loan on that vehicle. So you're basically buying that vehicle cash. You then pay yourself back monthly, like you would the bank. So that's what I said earlier, set your terms, your interest rate, your amortization. That way every month, if you get to pay 800 bucks back to that new car payment, pay back to yourself, right? And then at the end of that five years, you own that car outright. Plus you just paid a ton of interest into your own bank. Yeah.

[00:25:27] To yourself. So that's the, that's kind of the easiest way to, easiest way to understand the concept. All right. And, and I do that. I mean, I bought my wife's car with my insurance policy, right? So now I have zero debt when it comes down to a car payments. Yeah. That's amazing. So, well, yeah, thank you for digging into that. I think it's a strategy we all need to look at and investigate further. It can just be, like I said, another, another great tool to pull from the tool belt. Well, let's spend our final minutes if we can talking about this multifamily portfolio that you've built and, and Velour's Capital.

[00:25:56] You've only been doing this for a couple of years and you're already at 2000 doors as an LP and GP. So how did, how did you grow that so quickly? Yeah. So, so again, like I mentioned earlier in the conversation, I, I was looking for a way to scale my portfolio as a, as an investor, right? Cause I personally want to be into alternative investments. I still have a very good stock portfolio, right? Which is managed stock portfolio, but I wanted to diversify my own portfolio into that. So that's why I said, you know what? I need to, I need to find a way to grow and scale. So I got into multifamily.

[00:26:26] I took a couple of mastermind courses, joined a couple of programs, right? Just kind of just understanding environments and understanding what, what it is and how you, how you go through the process. Now I wasn't the person, I'm not really the person that's going to sit there and watch a hundred videos, right? And learn how to underwrite a property. That's just not who I am. So I, but I network, right? I networked and I found some, some people that were in need of some capital raisers, right? And so I said, Hey, I can help raise capital for you. So, so we did that. I started on my first property.

[00:26:53] And then through that, my other partners at Velour's were kind of also doing the same thing. So we kind of came together and we said, Hey, why don't we, and we raised for that same property. We closed it. It's a, it's a 128 unit in Arkansas. And we said, why don't we just, uh, form our capital firm together, right? And kind of do the same thing, but just instead of just separately, we'll just do it together. We kind of, and that's kind of how we formed Velour's capital partners. And from there, um, we started to, uh, acquire more property.

[00:27:19] So we then close another 120, it just happened to be 120, 120 unit in Jacksonville, Florida, which is what we're, we're fully asset managing that as well too. Oh, and by the way, I didn't, I didn't mention too, when we found a partnership, when I found my partnerships, um, I made sure that I wasn't finding myself, right. I didn't want to find a Jeff Ervick, right. That raises capital and that's all he does. Right. I really wanted to find other people who have the same mindset, the same mentality, the

[00:27:46] same drive, the same motivations, right. But have a much different skillset. Right. And that's how you build a really good team. And so we did that. Right. And so we found folks who, who, who can, you know, underwrite and, and do the acquisition phase very well. We found folks who can do the asset management portion of it very well. And that's what they want to do. And then there's a couple of us who do the capital raising side. Right. So we found a really good partnership and team for that reason.

[00:28:12] Then we ended up getting into another deal and then we've gotten to another deal and we've gotten to another deal and then we, uh, acquired some land and then we got into another deal acquired and we jumped in another team to cry, acquire some more land. So by the time all said and done where we've got, uh, I think about, I think I have to kind of the number. I think it's like eight, uh, nine transactions. Seven multifamily. No, sorry. Six multifamily. Uh, we have a warehouse, right?

[00:28:40] So we got another warehouse that we're flipping as well too, which is actually about to sell in the next like seven days, which is amazing. So we'll exit our first property for that. And then, uh, we're also doing ground up development. So we're building, uh, right now, a hundred and, uh, uh, three different phases, but we're building the 374 total units. I say units in, uh, downtown St. Pete, Florida. Um, very, very, very, uh, I mean, I, I cannot wait to break ground, which is going to happen

[00:29:08] probably in the beginning of 2026 and the 2025. So it's, uh, it's very exciting, uh, times for what we got going on. That's great. That's great. And so you've been doing this in the last two years, which arguably could be considered some of the hardest years to raise capital. So I'm curious how much capital have you guys been able to bring into those deals? Yeah. So as a, uh, as a partnership as a whole, we've raised just over 40 million, you know, so we, our team ourselves have brought in a very big portion of that. And also we help other people raise capital too.

[00:29:38] Um, you know, I have, uh, some partnerships, maybe folks who, who, who are new in the business, want to get in and want to learn when a break in. So, you know, uh, they bring in the investors and I help them, uh, talk about the deal, understand the deal. Um, we, we make sure all of our partners have different material participation in the deal, or if they were coming in as a fund of funds, that could be a different scenario. But we've, uh, yeah, we've raised over 40 million this last year. Uh, last two years. And it's been, I'm not going to say it is, it is easy.

[00:30:05] Uh, Randy, and you know, this raising capital is probably, it's the easiest way to get in a deal and it's the hardest way to be in a deal. Right. So that's, uh, that's kind of what I tell everybody, but it's, it's, it's, it's kind of an art form. You know, just like in sales, you have to build good relationships, right? So you have to know the person you're, you're, you're investing with, right? You have to be able to like that person and make sure that they are someone you can get along with. Cause you got to be with them for about five years, right? As an investor or as a partner, right?

[00:30:33] Which our investors are the partners, right? Cause they're part owners in our deals. And then also, uh, you know, you got to trust the person, right? And, and, and one of the things that I'm very passionate about is, is authenticity, right? Like, like what you're seeing with, from me today, Randy is what you get when you see me, uh, whether I'm on the golf course, um, you know, at a restaurant, I'm hanging out with my kids, you know, I'm, I'm at a conference, you know, all that kind of stuff. You're going to, what you see is what you get. All right. So, um, I like to make sure I'm being very authentic about it.

[00:31:00] And I think if you can put those three things together, then, you know, people will see that and they'll trust you and they'll, they'll want to invest with you. Not just once. Cause it's not a one-time transaction that I'm trying to do, try and do multiple transactions, right? Trying to have multiple, and a lot of our investors right now are multiple investors in our, uh, investor club, right? So we've got a big, uh, big, big portion of that where people are repeat investors. Amazing. Amazing. Super, super inspiring story, Jeff. I am so impressed with what you've done in the last couple of years and really going

[00:31:30] all the way back to your, to your first acquisition. It's just a really great story on how you've been able to accumulate some really, really impressive numbers. So thanks so much for sharing with the audience. Definitely. Yeah. Well, let's, uh, let's shift if we can over to our final five. I have a handful of questions I'd like to ask everybody on here just from an educational standpoint. So is there a specific educational resource that you like to share with new or newer passive investors to help them on that education journey? Yeah, I think it's, uh, I think honestly, it's going to have to be YouTube or podcasts, right?

[00:31:59] I mean, in order to learn and just understand, um, you know, the, uh, either whether it's if you're a passive investor or you're trying to become a multifamily investor operator, um, you know, being able to jump on, uh, and listen to, uh, someone's YouTube while you're, you know, going for a run or going for a walk that we're driving to and from a meeting, um, listen to what other people have to say and what other, you know, gather different ideas that way. But I think that was, that's been a very phenomenal way.

[00:32:27] Like your podcast, like having people listen to your podcast, you learn from so many different people, different ways that people do it. And what are the ways that you want to do it? Right. And you kind of pick and choose and you kind of cherry pick from what people made mistakes on and what they have, what they're good at, and then make it your own. And as a sales guy, you spend a lot of time, probably behind the wheel, windshield time listening to podcasts and books yourself. Yeah. That flying around. Exactly. So when I'm on an airplane, you know, instead of watching a movie, I'm probably listening to a podcast or reading a book. Yeah.

[00:32:56] So what's, what are maybe a book or a podcast that you've recently read or you're listening to currently that you'd like to share with the audience? Yeah, sure. One of the ones that, uh, podcasts that I love listening to on a weekly basis, cause it's a very, it's, it's long, right? It's not always about real estate and multifamily. It's a lot about economics and so forth, but, uh, it's the guys from a drunk real estate podcast. Yeah. So you, you probably know those guys, right? So, you know, yep. Uh, AJ, uh, Kyle and JJ Scott. Right. So those guys are great.

[00:33:25] They've got a really good fun banter back and forth. Um, but they also have really good insights into the economy and then into different, you know, classes, whether it's, uh, Hey, we're going to talk about a promissory notes there, law, law information from Mauricio, or we're going to talk about multifamily with Jay and Kyle, or we're going to talk about storage with, uh, with AJ. So I love their podcast for that reason. So I'm a habitual listener to that one then so forth. But yeah, uh, from a, from a book perspective, if, if you want to learn more about infinite

[00:33:53] banking, go to the infinite, look up for a shoot them. Now I just said, I said it earlier, but. Noggle. Is it? Noggle? Yeah. Yeah. Chris, Chris Noggle is a good one on YouTube. He's got actually a ton of content on YouTube. I think he puts out four or five YouTube things a day. Right. But based on, and he'll have, he has a couple of like 15 minute ones that say, here's exactly what infinite banking is. Right. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. I'll do that search. Definitely. All right.

[00:34:21] So we talk a ton about due diligence, which is extremely important in this space. If you're putting your money with other operators, you've got to do due diligence. So what is maybe one or two good due diligence questions that people should be asking that are a little outside of the norm? Yeah. I mean, you get your normals like, Hey, what's your track record? Have you ever lost money for an investor? You know, what, what are, what's your, you know, are you conservatively underwriting? Well, I think maybe a question to ask is what, you know, you say you're conservatively underwriting, but what does that mean to you? Right.

[00:34:51] Are you the, you the sponsor, right? What is, what, when you say you're conservatively underwriting, are you talking, you know, dive in and ask those questions for me, it would be, you know, based on really knowledge of that market. Right. How do you know, how well do you know that market? Is this a new market for you or are you experienced or do you have an asset in that market? Already. Do you know cap rates? How deeply are those cap rates? You know, do you know what the market trends are for rents? Right. And, uh, and going back on the cap rate too, is like, what's your exit cap rate?

[00:35:21] Cause if someone's saying, oh yeah, we're, we're conservatively underwriting, but at a five, two cap rate for exit. That's how we're showing you a 20% IR. Then you're like, oh, that's a little suspicious to me. Right. Yep. So understanding how those parameters are. And if you, again, if you don't know the underwriting or it can't, you dive into that deeper, like you should ask those kinds of questions. Right. But if you don't know, then again, go to YouTube. Right. And there's a plenty of people out there that, that will walk through how they underwrite their deals or what underwriting is of deals.

[00:35:50] And I think that's an important thing. Cause every time you get a loan, the bank is underwriting you and the property. Every time you get an insurance quote, the bank is underwriting you and the asset, right. And you and your insurance policy. Right. So, you know, underwriting should be everyone's, um, you know, everyone should understand what underwriting is and how to do it. Great advice. So, all right. A couple of final fun questions here to wrap us up, but is there a recent bucket list item you've checked off your list or one you're hoping to in the near future? Well, I keep on talking.

[00:36:19] My best friend and I, we grew up together. There were, um, you know, since we were about four years old and he lives up in New Jersey. I live down here in Maryland. And one of our bucket list where we're, we're in the planning phase will be for this time next year to schedule a trip to go skiing and snowboard. I'm a snowboarder, but go snowboarding out in Italy or the Swiss Alps. Right. Kidding. So overseas go, go. So that will be my bucket list. I haven't done it yet, but that will be my bucket list because, you know, actually

[00:36:44] it's, it's actually probably cheaper to go fly over, over, over there versus even going up to like Colorado or Utah or something. Yeah. I've been seeing some friends just went skiing in Japan and it was amazing how cheap it was in the scheme. It looked phenomenal. So yeah, great bucket list. I actually have the Alps on my skiing bucket list as well. So very cool. Randy, maybe we got to plan a trip. There you go. Next year, this time, right? Yeah. We'll get a couple other real estate investors involved and we'll go up there and we'll be like, Hey, this is our mastermind. Let's make it happen.

[00:37:14] Right. That's it. That's it. I love it. All right. Final question then. If you had a hundred grand, you had to invest today and you couldn't put it in one of your own deals, where would you put it? If I couldn't put it in one of my own deals. Gotcha. Okay. Cause I was about to reference my private credit fund because I would put a hundred grand of that. Cause it's a guaranteed 6% return plus an accrued 8% in the backend. Right. So it's a guarantee. It's a, it's a, and it's not a pref equity or it's not a common equity. It is a loan to the, to the, to the property, right. Subordinate of, of a senior position.

[00:37:44] But that's where I would put a hundred grand if I had it. If I don't have access to any of my own deals, I'm actually looking for some private equity type investments in golf or a business, small type of business. Right. So I'm looking at something that could, uh, could be a business aspect and not really technically be real estate driven and private equity would be kind of like my next, my next, my next idea. Right. So we've already got done a few of those already. And that would be where I would put it.

[00:38:10] But again, I think it has to be the right deal and you have to look at the economics about the deal. And also the, um, you know, the current environment, right. Is it something that's going to be able to, or you can be able to, uh, value add that deal. Right. Cause everything had in me has to be value add, whether it's a business transaction or it's a real estate position. Makes sense. Makes sense. We're hearing more and more about business acquisition. I think the equity multiples you can get out of that by, by consolidating smaller, even

[00:38:36] a companies into one larger to with an exit to private equity, I think it makes tons of sense. So yeah, good. Yeah. Well, awesome, Jeff, this has been, this has been a lot of fun and how can our listeners find you and the folks at Velouris if they wanted to connect and hear about your new fund or any other stuff that you guys are doing? Yeah. Best and fastest way to connect is through LinkedIn, right? So it's a LinkedIn.com backslash Jeff dash Ervik, E R V I C K. You can find me there. You can hear all about my story up there. You can DM me there as well too.

[00:39:05] If you want to go to our website where we have all of our deal opportunities out there as well. So it's VelourisCapitalPartners.com. It's V A L O R I S Capital Partners.com. Awesome. But also on LinkedIn, I do have a, uh, I know we didn't really talk about it, but I think we've talked about the multitude of ways that you can earn passive income. I have a, I have a free ebook out there that people can sign up for and we'll send you the ebook about different streams of income that you can add to your portfolio today. Love it. Love it.

[00:39:36] Well, Jeff, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I think you brought a ton of value to the audience. So thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate having me, my friend, and I look forward to seeing you here soon. Awesome. All right. To our audience, as always, we encourage you to continue that education journey in the passive investing space, but more importantly than that, we encourage you to make the decision to invest in your first or your next passive investment deal. Both Jeff and I are convinced that once you do, you will just wish you had started that much sooner.

[00:40:04] So be sure to join us again next Thursday for another great episode. And don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you listen. Thanks so much for being here today. Thank you. Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, another episode of The Gentle Art of Crushing It. It was an amazing episode. We know we sure learned a lot and we hope you did as well. We want to take a second and thank you so much for viewing or listening to this episode.

[00:40:30] And please just know that we only ask for one favor, and that is to make this life magnificent. Thank you and have a wonderful day.