BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 616: Making Money in The Metaverse and The Future Of Digital Real Estate w/Ryan Pineda

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

If you’ve heard of digital real estate, there’s a good chance you’ve watched one of Ryan Pineda’s videos. Ryan is a leading figure in the world of real estate investing not only in the Las Vegas, Nevada area but throughout the interwebs. He got started flipping homes and eventually scaled his business up to 100 flips per year! Since then he’s branched off into multiple different real estate-related business ventures, but his newest one may be the most revolutionary. During the lockdowns of 2020, Ryan began to research blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized finance. He saw the way that the world was moving and realized it would only be a short amount of time until real estate transactions were regularly done on the blockchain. This dip into DeFi piqued his interest, so he began researching, investing, and putting more of his time into virtual and digital real estate research. Ryan makes a strong case as to why most real estate services will move over to a blockchain model, and those that don’t will be left in the dust. Most of what Ryan preaches isn’t just speculation—it’s happening right now in the real world. If you want to get ahead of the curve, or just finally understand what an NFT is, Ryan is the guy to listen to. In This Episode We Cover: Starting businesses that help scale and optimize your rental property portfolio How blockchain could end the title company industry and what investors need to know Raising private capital and selling properties with decentralized finance  NFTs and using them to split shares/ownership in a real estate syndication  Combining digital and physical real estate investments for maximum diversification  What a blockchain beginner can do to get their start in the virtual investing world  And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast David’s YouTube Channel Ask David Your Real Estate Investing Question Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast 292 BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast 407 What Are NFTs and Why Should Real Estate Investors Care? Watch Our Video on Investing in Virtual Real Estate Connect with David: David’s Instagram David’s BiggerPockets Profile Connect with Rob: Rob's Youtube Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Connect with Ryan: Ryan's Website Ryan’s “Tykes” Project Subscribe to Ryan’s YouTube Channel Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-616 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 616. I'm still buying houses today. I'm still buying apartments and all this stuff because those things are 100% going to make you wealthy in the long run. There's no safer investment than buying real world real estate and getting all the benefits that Bigger Pockets, you know, talks about all these episodes. The reason I'm bringing up digital real estate and adapting is because it's going to happen. And there's just nothing you can really do about it. You have to be prepared that this is going to happen in the coming years. And it doesn't mean you've got to go pivot and do it today like I'm doing it.

You could focus on real world, but also have your toes dipped in this other thing. What's going on, everyone? This is David Green, your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. I'm joined today by my co-host, Rob Abasolo, and a very special guest. Rob, how's it going today? Good, man. Feeling a little threatened, if I'm being honest, a little nervous because typically, you know, I walk into the room and my hair kind of takes the spotlight.

But in today's episode, we're talking to Ryan Pineda, who is, you know, we're going to have a bit of a quaffoff, if you will. That is hilarious. Have you ever said that word before? Just to him. Just to him. I say, we're going to shoot a YouTube video one day, like a collab, and I'm like, we'll call it the quaff, the ultimate quaff off. And can you explain what quaff is for most of the people that have no idea what you're talking about? Everyone's like, why does he keep saying that word?

I don't think he knows what that word means. It's the, it's like the poof on top of my head, the pompadour, if you will. He's like my brompadour. Yes, there you go. If you don't know what he is talking about, check us out on YouTube. Watch our videos there. And you can see not only Rob's handsome face, but also his amazing hair. And my lack of, in today's show, we get into it with Ryan Paneda, a very cool guy,

who we originally interviewed way back on episode 292 of the podcast, where Brandon Turner and I interviewed him. He talked about flipping couches. He then built a business of flipping houses. He then scaled that into a whole bunch of other stuff. And in today's show, we get into the future of real estate. We're talking digital real estate. We're talking blockchain. We're talking how NFTs are going to be integrated into syndications.

It was some really cool stuff, Rob. What was some of your favorite things? Yeah, man, this is definitely one of those, you know, I'm sure you're probably immune to this, having done the podcast for so long, but I'm still getting used to this where, like, someone is just so engaging and so knowledgeable at a very niche and specific type of information where you forget that you're part of like you I'm like oh that's right I have to ask questions now because I'm just like listening to this to the I don't know to the knowledge bombs if you will Ryan's going to be talking to us a lot about well A how he flips 100 homes every year I mean that's

like that's a really big part of this episode but then we move over to the metaverse what an NFT is, how digital real estate is the next multi-billion, multi-trillion dollar industry. And it's really exciting. I mean, it's, it's very new. And it typically this type of information can be very dry and very boring. But I feel like he presented it with a lot of charisma and made it fun. So I'm like really excited for us to go and buy our first piece of land in Decentraland right after this. Yeah, this actually was a very fun show. And Ryan's easy to talk to. And so are you. to be fair. So this is one that you want to listen all the way to the end because we get into what you can expect in the future. So we talk a lot about what people can be doing right now to make

money in real estate. But in the end, we get into a lot of what we're talking about isn't super relevant today, but it will be in a couple years. And it's good to get ahead of the curve. You want to try to move ahead of where everybody else is at so that you're there waiting when the wave hits you. All right, today's quick tip is brought to you by Rob Abasolo. Oh, well, I'm nervous. This is my first quick tip. All right, a quick tip here. If you're looking to learn more about digital real estate or NFTs or the Metaverse, get plugged in with relevant discords. I mean, there are thousands of discords that can teach you about this stuff. But even more than that, get into the Bigger Pockets forums.

Connect with other people that are investing in the Metaverse. I guarantee you. I mean, we have millions of loyal subscribers. that are all probably very interested in this very same topic. So get plugged in with the community over at biggerpockets.com. And then also, if you like this type of information at all, if NFTs and the impact of the blockchain on real estate is something that interests you, please let us know. Drop a comment on YouTube. And if this is something that you want to hear more about, we'll bring on more, I don't know, educators to come and teach us about this new, new world that they're calling the Metaverse.

How'd I do? That was great. Wow. It was awesome, especially for your first time. Way to go, my man. I don't hate what you just did. Ooh, that's a callback right there that people will understand in about 45 minutes. That's it.

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Ryan Paneda, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. What's up, David? It's good to be here. Yes, it's nice to see you again. And so we first spent on episode 292 where we talked about couch flipping. Then we had you on episode 407 where we talked about how your career had really exploded. And now I don't even know if there's an adjective bigger than exploded to describe what's been happening. But you and that amazing haircut are everywhere. I love it.

It's right. It gives my haircut the run from the money, huh? That's my, my, my, we often go back and forth on who has the better hair. I think the jury's still out, though, personally. I'm sure that's what you think. Ryan, what do you think about that? You know, the first time I became aware of Rob was because he talked about my hair in a video and someone sent it to me. I said, who is this? Like, why is this guy even think he's on my level with hair? But I'll entertain it. So I'm sure that's something you have to deal with a lot in your world, Ryan, everybody thinking that they're on your level. If you guys are not watching this on YouTube, you need to be because they have very, very similar hairstyles. But the way that it's set up right now, they're both going in opposite directions. So what I'm thinking is we need to get. get you guys sitting on the other side of each other. So your hair looks like it's moving to awards each other. And it would be doing that Dragon Ball Z thing.

Yeah, we're like it's coming to touch. And then when it does and your powers combine, you two would be an unstoppable real estate force. Yeah. If we did Fusion, it would be really legit. That's what I was trying to say. Right. Thank you.

Dragon Ball Z was a little after my time. My little brothers were into it. I never got into it was Fusion. That's right. Yeah. I got some little Dragon Ball Z characters behind me right now, actually. Do you really? Yeah.

You grab one and put it on there. So do you have one of them doing fusion? No, I don't. All right. I'm going to see if I can get bobblehead dolls made of each of you in Dragon Ball Z garb. Oh, that would be pretty fun. That would be sick. I'm with it.

This is the greatest bigger pockets intro that has ever been recorded, by the way. All right. So, Ryan, for those that are living underneath a rock don't have social media or are just now getting introduced to the world of real estate, can you tell people a little about who you are, what you do? Yeah, the two-second version is born raised here in Vegas. we've been flipping about 100 plus houses a year for the past five years straight. That was when I first came on BP. It was the first time I flipped over 100 a year.

Since then, we've scaled into a bunch of other companies. We've got education, e-commerce. I've got a CPA firm. And we recently started buying apartment buildings. In the last about eight months, we've bought 460 units. Social media, you know, over a million and a half followers. I think across all the platforms and a whole bunch of other stuff I'm probably forgetting. But yeah, a lot of things going on.

Now when you say we, is this you and your wife or is this you in business partners? Well, I guess everything is me and my wife because she owns half of everything I own. But my wife isn't active in any of the businesses. She prefers to stay at home and kind of let me just go out and play with my friends. And then I can come home and be a dad and a husband. So when I say we, I just kind of include everybody. you know, some businesses I own fully just me, others I've got partners in. So definitely can't do it on my own. That's for sure. Awesome. Rob, you look like you're chomping at the bit to say

something here. And I want to take the reins off and let you go. What are you thinking? No, man. I just, you know, it seems like you've had monumental success really in everything that you do. Every company you start is really, really great. So I'm kind of curious. When you're starting a company here, I mean, I know, let's just, I'll give an example. I know you do flipping, but then you also have TrueBooks, which is, you know, a small plug for you. You didn't pay me to say this, but TrueBooks is my CPA firm, and I love it. And when you're starting these companies, is it usually because you have the itch to start a company, or is it to just fulfill a need from one of your other companies? Yeah, so I think when I first started companies, it was to fill a

need. So like TrueBooks, you mentioned, a lot of people were asking me at the time before TrueBooks was a thing, like, hey, who's your CPA? Because I was like, yeah, dude, I love my CPA, Matt, he's great. And then, sure enough, I started to refer all these people. And I'm like, Matt, why don't we just start a company ourselves? Like, why don't you just quit, you know, your job, but these other guys. And he's like, all right. And so we started TrueBooks and, you know, now we've got hundreds of clients across the country. But I wouldn't say I wanted to start a tax company. Like, for me, tax is something we have to do as, you know, Americans. But it was something that was just obviously in demand for like the people around me. And so we started it. And I think most of

the things were like that. You know, we started a brokerage. We had about 200 agents before we actually shut it down and switched them over to real. But yeah, I would say most of them were just out of like an opportunity. And then some of them later on as like my social media following got bigger and as like more partners and different things started to come to me, I saw. started to realize like I'm only going after bigger opportunities. And so getting into e-commerce, getting into big funds and multifamily, you know, getting into, you know, NFTs and crypto, which, you know, we can talk about later. Like, I'm only pursuing things that are like much bigger now. Sure. And you've sort of mentioned, too, like you, is your average deal like amount for flipping

about 100 per year? Is that always been consistent about 100? Yeah. So in 2018, it was the first year we did over 100 and since then, yeah, it's been about over 100 a year. And we haven't really tried to scale that too hard until this year where we're trying to do over 200. Yeah, and that's what I was going to ask. Is there a reason that you're staying at 100 or are you being more selective about which 100? Because it seems like scaling, it's possible that you just stay at 100, but you're just going after maybe juicier deals that have, you know, more luxury flips, for example, which seems like you're doing a lot more of that out there too, right? Yeah, 100%. And so like last year, even though we did, I think, less deals than the year before, we made twice as much.

And the reason was we did some luxury flips, like you said, but also just the market. Like, we just got really lucky with the market appreciating so much. So, you know, deals we were saying we're going to make 30 grand on made 60 or 70. And that happened like every deal. It was nuts. So, yeah. I'm noticing in this market, it's harder to get in. but when you're in, the deals end up way better than they were.

So I'll hear a lot of people say, burr doesn't work. It's too hard to get fixed or upper properties. And it's true. It is way harder to get fixed rubber properties than what it was. But when you get one, your ARV ends up way higher than you thought because the market is out of hand and the same with flipping. And I've noticed that a lot of people are complaining about that.

But when it was 2010 and there was tons of deals to buy, everybody was complaining because they thought the margins were too small. It took too long to sell the house or wasn't enough people to buy them. So it was easy in, but it was hard on the back end. And one thing I've learned about life and about businesses, you don't get both. If it's going to be easy on the front, it's hard on the back. And if it's easy on the back, it'll be harder on the front. Have you noticed this same trend in the different businesses that you're running?

Yeah, 100%. Like, there's no perfect business or else everyone would be there, right? Like, it'd be so easy. Yeah. But I will say, even with the current market state is just like the craziest market ever these last couple of years. for us on the front end, your strategy just kind of needs to change to adapt. You know, so it's like, I remember when I first started watching BP, you know, the big thing

they talked about was the 70% rule. Like, you only buy flips at 70% of ARV minus repairs. And that was how I grew up learning. It's like, dude, you'll never find a deal like that now, right? And so like you have to adapt. Absolutely. And so, you know, for the longest time, I was 80% of ARV. minus repairs. And then all of a sudden, you know, hedge funds and all these people start coming in and

they're like paying market value for homes. And so you start getting more creative with these deals where it's like, you know, there are times where we can pay 90% or more because we know we have a hedge fund on the backside who's going to buy it and we'll still make a lot of money. And so it's like you have to adapt on the front end is the point. I agree completely. And that's where a lot of the frustration comes from. This is good we're getting into this because I think. probably 80% of our listeners are just pissed because everything they learned about how to understand real estate has changed when the Fed started putting all this money, when institutional capital got involved, when wholesalers got involved, like all this education gets spread. And now stuff that used to get to the MLS and guys like you or me would be the first people to go after it. It doesn't even get that far upstream anymore. People pick it off before it gets there. So getting these deals under the parameters that we originally learned to understand real estate from doesn't work. So you have to adapt. But if you don't adapt wisely, you end up losing money and there's risk involved. And I think there's just, are you seeing this in your community, the frustration levels from people that are like,

this isn't the way it used to be. And now I don't know what to do. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, I've been in real estate since 2010. So when I got in in 2010, I saw that. They're like, man, prices are so low. And like, it used to be so easy to qualify buyers in this and whatever, right? And then we just see it progress these last 12 years and you just, there's always a complaint. There's always someone who thinks the market's going to crash. There's always the naysayers. Yet, the great investors always make money. It doesn't matter what, what's going on. They always find a way to make money in any market. And so, like I'll share with you, my strategy. Rob asked me this earlier of, you know, why not try to scale more? And, you know, even though we doubled our revenue, like with the same

strategy, it was just the market basically doubled our revenue for us. Our goal this year, is to actually not scale flipping, but scale wholesaling. You know, I've always been a big proponent of flipping because that's how you maximize profits. But also at the same time, I've realized flipping once you reach a certain level, kind of has a cap because to go and try and flip 300 houses is really hard with contractors, with materials, with raising money. But to go wholesale 300 houses, I don't want to say it's not hard because it is hard,

but like it's easier. You know, especially with institutional capital stepping in and paying the prices they're paying. Exactly. And so we're kind of seeing that now where it's like, man, there are deals where these guys are paying so much that we might make pretty close or the same as we were if we flipped it. And we can go wholesale it to them direct.

So instead of like taking on all this risk with borrowing hard money and all this stuff, like why not just put all that money towards marketing and just try and get a ton of deals. Let's go double or triple our marketing budget instead. I'm glad to hear you saying this because you're clearly successful at what you're doing and it's because you're adapting. I think a lot of anger in our community comes from someone saying that house is not worth that much money. Somebody paid that much money, therefore a bubble should be about to burst. A correction should be happening because people are overpaying.

And from my perspective, a house is worth what someone's willing to pay for it. if that hedge fund has a 10-year horizon or 20-year horizon, if they can borrow money at 1.5%, but you got to borrow it at 6.5%. It is worth that to that person. Now, that's sort of what's changing how much real estate is valued. Are you seeing that as well in the Nevada markets where you're operating? 100%, dude. Hedge funds have been here for a while. They love Las Vegas because the homes are newer. You know, we're growing. It's just a great market. One thing I'll say about the hedge funds, and I did a YouTube video about this is I've been watching them since 2010, right? Like I remember watching Blackstone come to the foreclosure auctions and pay market value on every house.

Everyone's like, those guys are idiots. What are they doing? I was one of those, you know, dumb idiots calling them idiots. And sure enough, they knew. They're like, this is the best opportunity ever. We're buying every house imaginable that we can get our hands on. And so they did it. And then, you know, you see it still today.

like these hedge funds are all buying. They're paying over everyone else. Cash. Like they're so dumb. It's like, no, these guys are not dumb. These are like the smartest people in the world. You don't, like they know things that we just can't even understand. And they have a different business model like you said. But the one thing I'll say that's different this time around than 2008 is that because the hedge funds owns so much real estate, not only just single family, but apartments and other things. You know, these guys ain't liquidating their properties. Like, they don't have to. to. So whenever people talk about rates being raised and all this stuff, I'm like, I get that. Like, it's going to slow it down. But the only way you go into like a recession in real estate is when

just there's this massive amount of supply and no. And not enough demand. And I, where's the supply going to come from? The hedge funds aren't selling. Like the moment a hedge fund buys a property, like just pretend that property's gone forever because it's not hitting the open market anymore. And if it ever does change hands, it's just selling. to another hedge fund. They're self-dealing. Yeah, it's the more likely scenario, right? Yeah. Well, that's, I'm so glad you're saying this because on our podcast, I've been spending more time talking about macroeconomic trends, like what the Fed is doing with money. So you mentioned that your revenues have doubled, even though your work was the same. The problem is what that money's

worth is definitely not the same. So you probably didn't double the actual purchasing power. You're just trying to stay ahead of inflation. And that's something that institutional capital hedge funds understand. They look at the big picture. They see how much money our country is printing and they say that's going to force real estate values up. If we can buy real estate, even though we don't do it as precise as the mom and pop investor that really analyzes that deal specifically, they just go in there and buy it sloppy. But those macroeconomic wins that they're back are so big that it makes them make sense. And I've sort of adapted my strategy based on what I see them doing. Obviously, I can't do it at the rate that they're doing it at. But instead of saying, all right, I'm buying this property.

based on what it's going to perform like in year one. I'm saying, okay, if I own a property for 10 years, what's going to make it make sense? Now the area starts to matter a whole lot more than just whatever the spreadsheet showed right away. Hedge funds have a lot of money in reserves. They're not short on capital. Okay. So if something happened and values went down, like you said, they'll never have to sell that home because they have so much money. Are we all keeping money in reserves to weather this storm? Right. Like you've got to adapt what you're doing. And maybe that'll be like the theme of today's show is how to adapt. Because you've got it down.

And I love to hearing your perspective on the ways that you're adapting. And one of them, like you're describing, is getting into things that are not just real estate. You talk about digital real estate. So how did you get interested in that concept? Yeah. So, you know, I got into crypto back in 2018 on that first hype train where, you know, Bitcoin hit 20 grand. I was like, dude, I'm buying some of this.

I don't even know what I'm buying. And, you know, I bought it at 20K to watch it. you know, right after. And then, you know, in the next couple of years, I said, dude, crypto's stupid. It's just a hype thing. Like, whatever, right? You know, because I got burned. Well, around 2020, when the pandemic happened, I started looking closer into it because

I started to see more people talk about it again and why it was important with the government printing all this money. And I started just like learning about how the Federal Reserve worked and all of the issues with it and, you know, how we print all this money. And this was before we printed all the money, by the way. Like, tons of books I read were predicting that this money printing was going to happen based on our current supply. And so, you know, short story, like, you see it. Bitcoin skyrocketed and Ethereum and all these things skyrocketed.

And you start seeing all these other companies, like, taking it seriously now, financial advisors and, like, people like Chase saying this stuff is a scam. It's stupid to, yeah, we're now opening it up only for our richest people, right? And so I'm like, okay, cryptocurrency is like going to happen and it's going to play a big role. But then what I didn't realize was, man, there's this whole other side of the coin that's actual like utility beyond just being a currency. There are these things for blockchain and for NFTs where, you know, real estate is going to be dramatically affected. And the more I started researching it, the more I was like, this is the future. Like I'm 100% convinced that real estate is going to change. so fast in the next five years with blockchain and crypto.

Like, there's no doubt about it in my mind. So for the people at home, could you give us like a very just, you know, explain like I'm five, what the blockchain is and then maybe we can start talking about some of the applications of that to real estate? Yeah, so, you know, without getting too technical, the blockchain is just really like a way of keeping account of who owns what. So, you know, like right now, the way we keep account of the money in the bank is the bank, you know, has their little ledger of all our credits and debits, just like we see. And we basically pay the bank to do that for us, whether we know it or not. They're making money by providing that service. And so when we want to go give money, like if I want to send you money, Rob, I send it to your bank. And your bank tells my bank that, hey, you know, like we agree. This happened. Ryan sent Rob money. And the banks are the ones who do all of these transactions for us. Now, there are a lot of issues with this.

One is the bank can, you know, shut our accounts down or freeze them at any moment. We have no control. Two, we can't wire after one o'clock, like it's the dumbest thing ever. We can't receive a wire after, you know, three o'clock. We can't wire on weekends. And it's just this whole deal of everything the bank restricts us with is just something we've been doing forever. Well, blockchain solves like that issue plus so many others. Instead of needing a bank to verify that things are happening, the blockchain can do it publicly.

And essentially, without getting too deep down the weeds, the public is the one verifying. Imagine that 100 people are watching Ryan and Rob transact this deal. And they see that Ryan gave Rob, you know, a thousand dollars. And they all record that on the blockchain. They verify it. Like, they know that, yeah, okay, Rob now has $1,000 more. Ryan has a thousand less. We verify this and it's done. And this happens 24-7. You don't need banks. You don't need anything. And guess what? Nobody can shut down my wallet or my money. I own it 100%. You know, the government

can't take it. I can send raw money at midnight if I want and he'll get it really fast and people will verify it. So the blockchain is great for that. And this is why we call it decentralization because you don't need any central authority to verify these things. And so once you understand that concept, it opens up the door to do these types of transactions in all the ways we can think of with real estate. So it's really exciting. Yeah. Well, I agree with everything you said. I was going to say that, but you know, you said it pretty good. So I won't even expand on it. I mean, let me ask you this. Here's a question I would have. Venmo seems to operate the way you're describing, but that's because Venmo was still tied to a bank account, right? So it's sort of an intermediary that lets you move money through

this channel, and then during banking hours, it can be moved into an account. Would blockchain be serving the same purpose, but without the intermediary? Yeah, I don't think you need either any. You don't need Venmo or the bank, right? Because you just have your wallet and you can send direct without any of them. And Venmo still has its limitations too, because, like, I sent someone $2,000 bucks last week, and then I had to send someone else like $2,500. And Venmo was like, oh, you've reached your limit for a week. That's a good point. And they force you to use emojis, which I can't stand. Like, I think that's also why Venmo exploded was they were the only app that got people using emojis versus all the other ones that were doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So they have their

limitations for sure. And I mean, that's just the most basic form of transferring money. Like when you start applying this concept to real estate, you realize like this is the future. And so like the first and easiest technology that everyone like can make blockchain applicable to for real estate is the actual chain of title on a home, right? So right now title companies make so much money. Like title companies margins are are crazy for what they make on the title insurance they charge. And the reason they give title insurance is because they're basically saying that yeah, you know, if Ryan is selling this home to David, you know, we are verifying that Ryan's the one signing. He's the true owner and that this transaction is legit. And if we screwed up by any way, you know, David, you'll get reimbursed in some

type of way. And that's like the ideal scenario, but I've had multiple title claims that never get paid, right? So that's a whole other subject. But title companies are there to do that to prevent fraud and make sure that the deal goes smooth. Well, on the blockchain, if a house was on the blockchain. There's no dispute who owns it. It's public for everyone to see. And there's only one way to transfer that house. It's whoever has that house in their wallet. Like, you know, that the ownership, basically the deed would be in your wallet. Think of it like a receipt, you know. If I have the deed right there in my wallet, nobody can ever fraudulently do that unless they stole my wallet or something like that, which is a whole different game. But as far as the actual transfer of title, the moment I

transfer to David, everyone sees it. We know David is the true owner. So it eliminates the needs for title insurance and things like that. You're definitely going to always have an escrow company to bring two people together. But the cost of selling a home should go down significantly with blockchain. And it's only a matter of time before cities and, you know, different counties start adopting this. I mean, my city just started allowing me to pull permits online. line. So I'll wait patiently for some of a place like L.A. that's just like their bureaucracy is just crazy, man. But I like this idea a lot. So I think my question here is, theoretically, I like, you know, I hold the title in my wallet, good to go. And you said, unless your wallet gets stolen.

So does that present any kind of, you know, because people get hacked all the time, right? You know, usually because they're careless or, yeah. Well, that's most of the time. Why? So is that a concern if you hold $20 million worth of real estate in a wallet that could burn down in your house or anything like that? Yeah, great question. So to answer that question, basically as this new industry emerges, there's going to be a ton of businesses built around this whole industry. And I'm calling digital real estate anything that has to do with Web 3 and real estate, you know, aka crypto and blockchain and stuff. So there's going to be businesses that are built for the specific purpose. some will allow you to basically they'll hold your wallet for you right you don't trust yourself you're

like hold my wallet i'm going to pay you a monthly fee to do this and that business themselves will have insurance to ensure like if they get hacked or they lose it like they'll have economies of scale where it's like they're holding billions or you know maybe even trillions of dollars of real estate and deeds that you know if they get hacked some way there's an insurance you know claim on versus everyone getting insurance for this. So there's going to be a business that pops up for that. But, you know, one point to think about with the title company is I know, like 10 years ago, when I first got into real estate, to record the deed at the title company,

they had to literally run the deed to like the public recorder and give it to them physically. It was crazy. That was like 10 years ago. And then five years ago or something, they all of a sudden start saying, yeah, we can e-record now. And so they start doing e-recording. And like, that's a game changer. And then in COVID, they start saying, well, you know what?

We can do virtual notaries now. We don't have to have this whole thing in person. So the trend in just the last 10 years is going towards like more and more tech, more and more virtual. And when you start to realize like the limitations that we place on ourselves of like, why can't you sell a house on the weekends? Why doesn't it get recorded if you missed five o'clock? Like, it's, it's so dumb because it doesn't have to be that way. I agree.

I mean, it just is. It is the way. So we have no choice. You know what I mean? And I always say this because, like, there are so many companies that disrupt what we were, what we've been used to, right? Like, forever we thought taxis were the only option. Then Uber comes.

Boom. On demand. Hotels were the only option. Airbnb comes along. Boom. Like a hotel on demand at someone's house. This is something like that, right? Where we only know.

companies. We have to abide by the old dinosaur rules. And now effectively what you're saying is we're still going to have all these different companies that are sort of protecting and ensuring and holding. But it's all becoming digitized and it'll be digitized on the on the blockchain. And it'll be cheaper. That's the big thing. Like even though new companies will emerge, tech always makes things cheaper. You know, if you think about a Tesla, like a Tesla should be so expensive with what it is. Like the amount of technology that car has and how much better it is than a car 10 years ago, but you can go get a Model 3 for not that much, right? Like, it's, it's crazy. But that's how tech works. It gets cheaper and better. Cell phones are the same way.

TVs, TVs, yeah. TV's used to, I remember about a 32-inch TV back in college for like $800. And yeah, that same TV now would be like, I don't know, 100 and 500 bucks. I say that all the time. TVs are the only thing that gets better and cheaper over time other than maybe cell phones, even though Well, say, David, it's all tech. Like cell phones, cars are getting better. Like I said, it's everything about it with tech. It's called Moore's Law, you know, as far as tech exponentially getting better. Becomes more efficient, yes.

So let me ask you this, Ryan. This is a complete side note. I don't want to detract. If you are buying a luxury Airbnb, knowing that TVs have an insane ROI in what you're spending, would you put TVs in every bedroom to really blow away the guests? Oh, here we go. here we go. Well, I'm actually NFTing in Airbnb, which we'll talk about later. But

I didn't plan on putting TVs in every guest bedroom, no. Thank you. It's not about them watching it. It's about the impact it makes because it's only, their TVs are so cheap. I guess point goes to Rob, though. Ryan cited with you. Yeah, we were fighting on how many rooms in our eight bedroom Airbnb needed a TV. And I was like, crazy, you know, crazy idea. What if we just made people talk? You know? Yeah. Nature's television.

Yeah. I wouldn't put 18 then now. But hey, I'll bring up another point. So, you know, like title companies are great and that's going to change for sure. But there's so many other applications, you know. I just started a fund. You know, we recently bought 460 units and we're going to try and buy over 1,000 this year. and, you know, starting a fund is not an easy endeavor.

You got to raise money. But like, I'll tell you, as somebody who's raised a lot of money, the biggest problem with starting a fund is I have to get investors to let me hold their money for the next five years, right? Because this stuff doesn't happen overnight like a flip. You know, a lot of my flip investors are like, yeah, it's great. I get my money back in four to six months. It's awesome.

Well, with the apartments, it's always, hey, you know, this is a five-year play. You know, we might get your money back sooner if things go well. but, like, you know, just know your money's locked up for five years. So there's a lot of investors who don't invest in funds because they don't like their money locked up. Well, if you were to make your fund into an NFT and essentially create shares of your fund, you know, I could say, hey, you know what, we're raising 10 million for this building. I'm going to NFT at each share is worth $50,000, whatever, right? and you now have the ability to hold that NFT and sell it at any point that you want. That brings a whole new element to funds that is going to happen.

Because right now, if the market goes up this next year and all of a sudden, the building we bought is worth a lot and they're really happy about it, but maybe they have a liquidity problem. You know, they ran out of cash for something. Or maybe they think the market's going to crash. They don't agree. They're like, dude, right, you need to sell. And I'm like, well, you don't really have a say, right? Well, they're like, well, I do have a say. I can just go sell my own NFT. And it's great because it doesn't affect me as the fund manager because I still have, you know, the building and the money, but they can exit out of it and get liquidity based on their own needs. And so if that $50,000 share went up to $75,000, they can cash out today and not worry about it. And somebody else can take that, you know, share and say, yeah, I think this is going way up. Like I'm super hyped. You will. want out of this because I want in and I couldn't get in initially. And, you know, that's going to cause funds and everything else to be this whole new game, which I'm super excited about because it takes

all these investors who didn't like funds because of liquidity and now allows them to get in these deals. And it allows guys like us to create interesting deals where, you know, we could go buy whatever, right? You guys just did your Airbnb. We could have NFTed that. And said, how would you like to own a piece of Rob and Dave's, you know, big $3 million thing? And I'm going to sell off, you know, NFTs of this. You guys will share in the profits and, you know, we'll, we'll do all the scuff. Like, it would be so epic. And that is what's going to happen because it's already happening. Like, the tech is here for that. Like, it's already here. It's just not mainstream. The moment it starts becoming mainstream, you will not be able to do a fund without

it. Because your investors will demand it. And it costs you nothing. as the fund manager to like do it and structure it this way. So that's going to be something that is huge. Yeah, I love the liquidity of this. And this is something that I've been really falling on, you know, learning a lot from you, honestly, about kind of this new, I don't know, this new twist on the fund, if you will. And I guess I have a few questions on this. So let's say that you NFT, you're a fund and, you know, someone goes from $50,000 and they're buying to $75,000. They buy out. Great. Let's say that it goes from 50,000 in value. Let's say market quote unquote crashes and it goes to 25,000 and then like a stream of those investors freak out and they just cash out. Does that inherently

hurt the value of that fund or of that property or is the property somewhat protected because it still has the real estate kind of as collateral? Yeah. So I mean, for me as the fund manager, obviously it sucks that the market crashed. And like in the real world, yes, the property lost value in that scenario. But it's not like we get a margin call and we're forced to sell the entire property because all these other people want to sell. It actually is great because I still get to, you know, have this property and we get to ride it out until things get better. And we get to swap investors for people who actually believe in it, right? Like there's going to be other investors who are like, dude, this is a steal. The fact that I get to get this.

for 25 grand, like this building's worth way more than that in the next three to five years. And I know that these investors don't want to wait. That's cool, but I'm happy to get into this. So it's just in either scenario, good or bad, it's the right way to do a fund and raise moat. You're basically kind of turning it into a stock. Yeah. Buying a share in a company, you can sell that stock to someone else that wants to buy it. If you personally are invested in something and you're like, man, I want to buy my own house. Well, you can sell your share, use that money to go buy your house.

Somebody else just sold a house and maybe they need to put their capital to use. And so they can't take that five-year horizon. Is this what you're referring to when you talk about digital real estate? Yeah. So it will do all of that and that, you know, the fund is great as far as NFTEing it goes. But when I say digital real estate, I am talking about the entire industry as a whole. Like this is going to be a multi-trillion dollar industry here in the coming years. I saw an article about a week ago from Goldman Sachs, and they were talking about how they're starting to see real estate as with crypto, this digital real estate become its own tradable asset class, which is what you were referring to.

Like, they're going to trade these shares and these NFTs heavily because it just makes real estate, which is traditionally illiquid, liquid. And you can NFT any property. Like, that's where the future is. but there's a lot of other parts to digital real estate too so the fund is one portion the title is one portion you know the other portion of this is the whole metaverse and that's what most people think i'm talking about when i say digital real estate but like you know my first thing is like how do we get the real world underway first because that's where easily like the safest and most applicable ways to do it are.

But in the metaverse, that's like a whole different ballgame that's going to be huge too, but the risk is like extremely high because you don't, you know, there's a whole bunch of different metaverses. There's going to be a ton that pop up, which one's going to work? You know, then it opens the question of what do I even do with all this land of buying in the metaverse? And yeah, we could talk about that too. Like that's a whole other industry that's going to be huge.

Yeah, I'll touch on that. But before we do. I wanted to ask kind of on the fund side, because I know there's a lot of people that are invested in funds in the bigger pockets community. If they all own NFTs in this fund, and then you as the fund manager decide, oh, hey, the property is appreciated $7 million. Can you go and sell that property if the ownership is kind of in this locked, you know, NFT that's in someone's wallet? You know, does that make sense? Yep, yep. So there's a lot of third party companies right now that will set up these funds and,

you know, basically tokenize them or digitize them, right? And so the way they're set up is that, you know, when the fund manager does sell, like those shares get paid out, you know, for whatever the principal was plus, you know, any profits and stuff like that. So it's all written into the smart contract and all that. So they'll still own the NFT. It just, really won't have value anymore. It will be like a certificate. But, you know, this is, and for everyone listening, most people are still like, I don't even know what NFT is. So like, the way I would envision, or the way I always tell people what NFT is, is it's not just a picture of a freaking ape or anything. An NFT is just a receipt. That's all it is. And so, you know, the receipt that you own this house,

the receipt that you own this art, the receipt that, you know, like Gary V, he's got VCon coming up. Like, this is your ticket to the event, right? And so at the end of the day, when you go redeem that ticket at the event, like, and theoretically, it's lost its value because you used it for that event. But you still have the art and the NFT. And, like, that has sentimental value and collectible value, too. You know, you think about all these people who have saved tickets for concerts and sports games and things. Like, you know, it becomes a collectible.

Like, imagine having every ticket. of, you know, all the V-cons you went to or any concert. Like, it's, it's, people have been doing that forever in just physical tickets. So that's kind of what would happen with the fund. It would have a history of like, yeah, dude, you want to know what I invested in? Look at my portfolio. Here's all the tickets of the NFTs. And I got this payout, you know, once the fund ended quote unquote, right?

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very, very interesting, very conceptual. So can you kind of walk us through the idea of the metaverse and then maybe some of the platforms associated with it to help kind of make it a little more tangible. Yeah. So with the Metaverse, I'm sure people, like, you know, you, uh, if you haven't seen Ready Player 1, I would say go watch that. Like that's the dream of the Metaverse. Like people literally just go there.

They hang out. They play games. They do stuff. You know, you got your own virtual land and house. Like, we're not quite there yet. Um, but there's plenty of Metaverses like sandbox to Central Land. You know, the board apes just launched their whole Metaverse. called Other Side, which was like the biggest NFT sale ever.

I think they did $320 million of land sales in 24 hours. Freaking crazy. But, you know, in these metaverses, the way you got to think about them is the same way you think of commercial real estate. So, you know, what gives a piece of land value in the metaverse is the same thing that gives value on land here in the real world. So the reason Las Vegas is valuable where I'm at. versus, you know, I don't know, some BFE town in Midwest, I don't know, is that Vegas has a lot of people here. We have, you know, casinos. We've got wealthy people. We've got jobs. Like, we've got pretty good weather. And the reason that houses in Detroit are worth, you know, $10,000 is because whatever. People don't want to be there.

There's bad weather. There's crime. There's, you know, that area is just not great. So, you know, the land itself is there, but people just don't value it. And so there's going to be a ton of other metaverses that pop up. But if there's no one there and nobody values it, then it doesn't have value. And even, you know, if you look at the earth today, I think I saw a statistic that 10% of the earth is actually like used as far as the land. So that means there's 90% that's like not valuable at all. If I go drive to California from here to Vegas, I'll see land all day, but nobody values it. Nobody lives there.

There's no proximity, but it's there. And so I think people need to get that out of their mind that land in the Metaverse is infinite and therefore it can't have scarcity or value. That's just not true. Like the world has pretty much infinite land that will never fully use. So in the Metaverse, what you want to do is be in the right places where there's the right people, the right attention, etc. And then when you buy these pieces of land, it's the same way here. It's like, how big is the plot? You know, who's it next to?

Is this land next to Snoop Dog or someone else? Like, is it next to, is it downtown where all the things are happening? You know, what can I build on here? Right? There's always going to be, you know, just like in commercial real estate, we can do different exit strategies. Are we going to build a multifamily? We're going to build a storage. We're going to build whatever.

Granted, you're not building that in the Metaverse yet, but you can build cool buildings on there that can represent your own business right now. You could go lease the land to somebody else who has a plan to build. You could go start building for other people. You could have games in a store right there. The list goes on and on, you know, on what you can do with a piece of land to monetize it. And the beauty with digital real estate, at least in the Metaverse, is that you don't have all the headaches that you have in the real world with maintenance and with, you know, tenants destroying property. Natural disasters. Yeah. Evictory. Like, dude, evicting somebody in digital land, you just kick them out. They're done.

So, like, it becomes easier on that. But, yeah, I would just say if you're valuing it, it's really just the same way we value real estate out here. You know, just like if you go look at commercial real estate and you see all the foot traffic, they'll tell you like, yeah, there's this many cars that pass it every day. You know, you can get that data, too, in these metaverses of, like, this is how many people interact on this platform every single day. you know, here's how many are hanging out in this sector, you know, and you would just learn about new developments that are happening. So you're kind of hoping, you know, you're investing with some obviously amount of education and hypothesis behind why you're buying land in the Metaverse,

but effectively you're hoping that it becomes, where you invest becomes the it factor. It's like in L.A. and New York, of San Francisco. That's where a lot of cool things are happening and thus people want to buy land in that section of Decentraland or sandbox. or whatever the board ape one was. Yep, it's totally speculative right now for sure on which one to buy. And look, I mean, dude, if you bought Landon, Cali, New York or even Vegas 20, 30 years ago, you killed it. So, and it's not going to take 20, 30 years to, like, figure out which ones end up being the one.

Like, this is, tech is happening so fast. Like, whatever you buy today, you might hit the jackpot a year from now or a couple years from now. All right. So let me ask you a question from the perspective of the person who's listening to this. they agree with what we're saying. I see blockchain as a future. I see NFTs can make things more efficient. They agree with technology and they want to invest, but they don't understand the world.

That's always where people get in trouble is they're like, I got to jump in and I believe in it, but I don't know where to jump. And so they hope that where they go is the right space. What advice do you have to the people that know they need to take action and do something, but they don't want to go invest in what will be a barren wasteland in two years? Okay, so Rob, this all ties back into what you asked me at the very beginning was how do your businesses start? And so they all start in literally the same way where there's a problem, there's a question, but there's no solution. You know, up to this point, like, I've been a big believer in this and like I'm telling people about it, but they always asked your question of, where do I go to learn more about this? Like, who's the go-to authority? And I'm like, I guess I might be.

I talk about it a lot, but by no means what I say go to me because I'm not like making that much content about this, you know, and it's such a new emerging industry. So, you know, the more I started to think about it, the more I was like, all right, like, I believe in this. I want to create businesses around this. Like, what am I going to do? And so I actually started an NFT project for my own called Tykes, T-Y-K-E-S, where it's essentially going to be a digital real estate mastermind. Like, if you buy the NFT, you get access to the community. It's going to be like-minded people, like you're talking about David, people who have come from the real estate space who understand that Web 3 and crypto is going to change the world and they want to get in early. Or it's for the crypto people who are already in this space and they want to utilize what they know for real estate because they want exposure to real estate.

And I don't even want to get off topic, but there's so many crypto people that have all this money in Ethereum or Bitcoin. and they want exposure to real estate, but they can't get it because they don't want to go to U.S. dollars or anything like that. So the fact that they can go buy an NFT that owns real estate is so important to them. I've heard it from so many people in Tykes already that they cannot wait for that to be more mainstream. So essentially, you know, I'm creating this digital community where all these people are going to get together, investors and builders and business people. like I want to create the businesses that are going to service this industry as it develops. I want to get the investors together to, you know, invest in startup businesses, in Metaverse land,

and, you know, all these things are going to happen because it's just so new and so early that, you know, as time goes on to people who are in early and anything, always crush it. And so, like for people who want to learn, I would just say, you know, join our community right now. You can go to tikes.io, and we've got thousands of people in there already looking to go. We have not minted the NFT yet, so everything is pre-Mint. Like everyone's just hanging out, getting hyped, talking about stuff just like this. But once we mint here in probably early July, then things are going to get really fun because we have a whole bunch of stuff that we're going to be doing with real-life events,

courses, trainings. I mentioned earlier, I NFTed one of my Airbnbs so that my Tykes holders can go stay at it. And we're going to go be buying sick real estate all over the country. Then I'm going to NFT strictly for my Tykes holders. And it's going to be revolutionary. Yeah. So can you actually walk us through how your NFT Airbnb, there we go, is going to work? Like what are some of the, I guess, logistical things?

Like, you know, I own a Tyke NFT that then, gives me access to your property for a certain amount of days in the year. Is that? Yep. Okay. So around there. Let's talk about SEC versus non-SEC. So like when we start a fund and we attach an asset to an NFT, it becomes a security, right?

And so now we got to do things that way. And that's fine. Like that's totally cool. But when you do that, if you're doing a 506C, everyone's got to be an accredited investor. and you've got to go through that kind of process. If you do what I'm doing, it's not actually attached to the asset in that, you know, they own the Airbnb.

That's not what's happening. What's happening is more so like a timeshare. They own the dates to go stay at that property. And so I'm calling it actually a Tykes share because I don't know what else to call it. It just doesn't exist. NFTBNB? You can call it that, but I'm calling it a Tyke share. So essentially what will happen is, you know, if you meant a tyke, you can do what's called staking it.

Essentially, like, you would lock it up. And so that when you lock it up, that means you can't sell it. You can't do anything with it. It's just like when you deposit money into a CD or something, right? It gets locked up and you get a return. When you lock up a tyke and stake it, you're going to get a cryptocurrency native to the Tyke's ecosystem. It's going to be called Tycoigne. And with that Tycoigne, you're going to be able to be able to stake it.

buy all this stuff in the Tykes ecosystem. You can buy, you know, tickets to our real life events. You could buy education, courses, trainings. There's going to be a whole bunch of things you could buy. But one of the things you could buy is the dates to one of these Tykes shares. And so I've already bought a house in Las Vegas. It's a one and a half million dollar house. I've already furnished it. We've already got it ready for this Tyke share. All this is out of my own pocket. I haven't and made me money with Tykes. But the reason I'm doing this is to prove what's possible with digital real estate with my own skin in the game.

And with this, basically what will happen is we'll take the dates. Let's just say, you know, there's 365 days a year to keep math simple. Let's just say there's 300 days that we're going to go turn into NFTs. And we break them into three-day chunks. And so basically there's 100 day or there's 100 NFTs that each represent three days out of the year. And so maybe Rob, you go and get July 3rd to July 5th, right? You get the 4th of July in yours, like your height to come to Vegas for 4th of July. And, you know, basically you're going to own the rights to those dates for whatever period of time we put on that NFT.

It could be one year. It could be two. It could be three years, right? And you now have this NFT for the rights to stay there. And you can do many things with it. You could go stay there and enjoy it. you could go sell it to somebody else and make money. But at the end of the day, it's not a security because, you know, you don't own the property. You're not making cash flows from the

property. The property itself is actually not making money. It's losing money because I'm letting you stay there for free with coins that we gave you for free. So it's a really crazy concept that's going to be fun to do because essentially for me, as Tykes grows bigger and we get more amazing people in the community. I want to attract them with these cool things, these cool events and like innovative things to show what's possible. And we're going to end up doing deals together, whether it's businesses, whether it's funds or joint ventures or other things. You know, I'm just trying to get a bunch of cool people together so that we can see what happens from that. Because we all have been in masterminds here before. Like it's super

powerful. And it just doesn't exist for digital real estate yet. But it is now with tight. and we're literally doing what we're like preaching. It's not like this is not theory. This is literally we're doing it day one, not like we're promising to do stuff. So I really like the idea of that. I mean, it's very cool and I'm kind of curious. You bought this house. Did you buy this house when you NFTed it with the intention of making any sort of cash flow from it? Or is the house just sort of a cost of doing business that will eventually kind of grow into a way bigger? you know, profit machine in this industry. Yeah, so the house, I actually bought it just as a normal rental for myself.

I was thinking about Airbnb and or just making a long-term rent. Like, it was cool. Like, I bought this before Tykes. But as it got closer to being completed, and as the roadmap and game plan for Tykes started to kind of finalize, I was like, dude, this house would be the great, you know, first Tyke share. And so I said, you know what? Instead of like making money and cash flowing on it, like I was going to.

I'm going to put it as a Tyke share. Now, with these Tyke shares, like I said, I personally lose money because I'm not making any income. Like, people are staying there for free. Like, when you go spend your Tycoigne to buy that NFT, we actually burn the tie coin. It's just a way to control inflation, unlike the government, right? For us, it's like you said, to me, it's a cost of doing business, you know. But at the end of the day, too, I still own all these houses. So I'm getting depreciation.

I'm getting the tax benefits and all this stuff like over the years. And if I own a bunch of sick houses in like Tahoe and the Dominican and, you know, wherever around the world, like that's also going to benefit me, even if I'm losing money for a couple of years because I'm not making any cash flow. Like the amount of exposure and press that it gets tykes in the community will far outweigh, you know, any cost of like the maintenance. Yeah. And that's a good point to bring up.

Because I often say real estate has a personality. Different assets behave differently. And different human beings work better with different asset types. For instance, you might have a really intelligent high C on the disc. Numbers-oriented person. They tend to love multifamily. It's a little bit easier to predict how that's going to perform than residential, which is a little more, in my opinion, art than science.

You don't know what areas are going to go up in value. You don't know what the Fed's going to do. You don't know what rents are going to do. where how many other homes are going to be built. The comparable sales model is much more difficult to predict than the income-based approach model that multifamily runs on. Well, you also have times in your life where certain assets make a ton of sense and times where they don't make sense.

So you might be a doctor making a buttload of money and you just want to put money in somebody else's investment and make yourself a return on that and you're good to go. You might be a person who's trying to claw your way out of the W-2 job and you want to house hack a duplex and put three and a half percent down. but 10 years later, that might be a terrible property for you to own. It doesn't make sense. And so what you're describing, Ryan, is a deal that could lose you money in one area of

your ecosystem, but make you much more money in a different area of the ecosystem. And for where you're at, that makes total financial sense. You have other things to offer people. You're putting these coaching programs together and you're doing these events and you have these other businesses. So to you, this is like a lead magnet or what we might call, what's the word that we use when a loss leader. Yeah.

Right. But for someone who doesn't have those opportunities, this would be a bad strategy. So I just want to highlight, A, so you don't get a lot of criticism. Why is you buying a house? It doesn't make money. And B, so people don't think we're saying you guys should all go do the same thing. If you're not in Ryan's situation, then that personality of that deal doesn't work for you. No, 100%.

And like I said, you define it great. It's a loss leader. You know, at the end of the day, two years ago, I made the decision. to go super hard at social media, just like Rob did as well. And I just like, you know what? I'm going to dump all the money I can into social media. And so like right now I spend 40 grand a month just making content. Do I make 40 grand a month like from sponsors or ads?

No. Like I lose money every month for my content, at least if you just define it to that. But I make a lot more from content because of all this other backend stuff. And so the way I see Tykes is very similar. like if I can just create a great product regardless of if tykes itself makes me money, I know all the things that come from tykes will make me way more than whatever it's costing me to acquire the right people into the ecosystem. And like that's the whole game plan.

And, you know, people don't know this too. But like with NFTs, there are royalties. So every time somebody like sells a tyke, you know, I'll make money. And so the hope for me is, and this is not like what it's reliant on. but the hope is that, you know, there's enough royalties that would pay for the operational expenses of, you know, running these things. And if there is great, if there's not, whatever, like it ain't, it's not going to matter either way. Well, yeah, I think are your future plans to keep minting Tykes? Or is it more to launch Tykes II, right? Like a whole other NFT project? Or is it

always going to live under the Tykes umbrella. So first thing is, um, Tykes is so important to do well on this first launch because it opens the door for everything else, right? Like if it does, if it flops and it sucks, then, you know, there is no Tykes too. There's nothing. You know, there's nothing else. Right. So, um, that's why I'm like leaning on the side of let's just deliver such extreme value that there's no way it fails. Like that's my whole thing with this. Um, but as far as what it leads to, like, what's the next phase? There's definitely going to be other things if Tykes is super successful with like Tykes two and creating all these other things we can do for them now because phase one was so

successful. We can go buy more houses. We can throw more events. We can do a whole bunch of things that really grow the community. But the main thing, and I want people to understand this, is that I want Tykes to be the ultimate place for the best people in digital real estate to get together so that they can do business together. And so if, you know, I get investors who want to help fund a startup business or, you know, you get all these guys who have great ideas, but they don't have influence or money,

but now they can go partner with me or anybody else in the Tykes community, it now brings, it's like an incubator and it brings these ideas to life. And so, you know, along with Tykes, I'm building a back-end business, which I can't really share right now because it'll get stolen. But in a couple, probably very shortly after Tykes is released, I'm going to launch this back-end business, which is, you know, in my opinion, you know, we talk about opportunity vehicles and like the next big thing. Like, I think this business is going to be like my biggest business out of all of them. Like, I truly believe digital real estate is going to be bigger than all my other businesses combined just because of the opportunity. And so I'm focusing all my time and energy on building out this back in business, building out Tykes, and then solving a lot of the problems that I already foresee happening in digital real estate

and giving people the solutions. And when you say digital real estate can be bigger than all your other businesses, are you referring specifically to the fund that you can put together to buy real estate and let people use it? Or is there more than just that? No, way more than just that. I would say the business, even this first business and every other business that I end up building in the digital real estate space is going to be more valuable than everything else I have combined. I mean, like, think about this, you know, theoretically, let's just say, you know, I'm building the next Zillow for digital real estate or Redfin or any big physical, normal real estate tech company, but, you know, building it on this. digital side, because it doesn't exist. There is no Zillow for this, right? Zillow's worth,

I don't know, $12 billion. Like, I can build a company that's worth nine figures. And if things go right. Providing services in this space. That's what you're referring to. Exactly. And so if I have the community where there's people who are passionate about this and they're going to help me build these businesses and they're going to get rewarded for helping me build these businesses, it just creates these win-win incentives all the way around that basically fund this Tykes ecosystem where it's like if you want to be in digital real estate, you better have a tyke because that's where things happen. Okay, so it's 2022. You're listening to this podcast. Ryan is very charismatic and he's making you excited about possibilities. Rob is very handsome and

also has amazing hair. So now you're just intoxicated by the opportunity and the possibility of what we're describing about. But you've also been hearing, I'm supposed to house hack a place with an FHA loan and get started and then buy another house later and you're confused about what your path looks like. Could you, is it possible for you to paint a picture or tell a story of what the person who wants to build wealth through real estate could do in practical terms, what steps they take in what order combining digital real estate and traditional real estate? Yeah.

So when I talk about digital real estate, you know, I'm talking about like these are things that aren't yet here as far as being mainstream. And when I talk about it being bigger than everything else I own, that that's years from now, right? It's not tomorrow. I mean, it'd be great if it was tomorrow, but probably not. I started just like what David is saying. I bought my first house with an FHA loan. I house hacked. Well, before that, you actually bought a couch. That's true. And, you know, when we first did that video or that first episode about couch flipping, it wasn't famous yet. Like I said it on them like this is what I did. Like it was this weird thing.

And then I did a YouTube video on it. All of a sudden it became a phenomenon. Which is crazy to think about in hindsight. But yeah, you know, I bought my first houses like that. I'm still buying houses today. I'm still buying apartments and all this stuff. Because those things are 100% going to make you wealthy in the long run. There's no safer investment than buying real world real estate and getting all the benefits

the Bigger Pockets, you know, talks about all these episodes. The reason I'm bringing up digital real estate and adapting is because it's going to happen. And there's just nothing you can really do about it. You have to be prepared that this is going to happen in the coming years. And it doesn't mean you got to go pivot and do it today like I'm doing it. You know, I'm doing it because, as David said, I'm in a different position where I can go try and capitalize on this thing that is going to happen here in the near future and be prepared for it and give you, the services you're going to need, you know, to use, like in the future. So I would say focus on real world real estate.

And if you want exposure to digital real estate, that's cool. Buy a tyke. You know, just be in the community. Start to understand what's happening. You know, just immerse yourself. Don't go out and buy all the Metaverse land because you just listen to this. Like, I'm not saying go do that. I'm saying just start to understand what's going to happen and start dipping your toes

it. But don't ever neglect your real world business. I'm not. I'm still buying a ton of houses, like, and I'm trying to scale that business on all fronts. So, you know, do what I'm doing. Like, you can, you can focus on real world, but also have your toes dipped in this other thing. Yeah, that's a great answer. Diversify, right? I mean, you can't go all in on one thing. This is something I've really just been learning really over the past year is like, we know that I like Airbnbs. I have a lot of Airbnbs. I don't have any plans on stopping. But after really just thinking about what a good investment portfolio looks like and like talking to people like Cody Sanchez, who we had on, I think, I think a couple weeks ago. I don't know when that was when that actually

went live. But, you know, she talks about small boring businesses and car washes and this and that. Like I'm looking to just completely diversify. And I think that is the, you know, like diversify strategically into things that I'm passionate about. 100% did 100%. Well, one of the things we talked about with Cody is what you're doing, Ryan. Now, obviously, most people are not going to do this at the skill you are. It'd be great if they did, but if we're just being completely transparent, Ryan at one point was a professional athlete.

He has an insane work ethic. You're very intelligent. I don't know how you don't look any older than the first time we interviewed you. It's kind of pissing me off because I've aged about 30 years and the three years ago that we did this. You're looking younger. But you got that going for you, right? You're very, very driven. You're a focused human being that sort of had your mind molded in this direction of,

I got to work with everything I have to achieve a goal. You didn't achieve the goal that you originally wanted to. And so now you've got this fire that you're applying to your new thing. Like, not everybody has that. But for those that do, this is a path that should be considered. This is just my opinion, okay? This is not, I'm not speaking for bigger pockets. This is not me stating it as a fact.

I think it is going to continue to get harder and harder and harder to find cash-rolling properties in real estate, it's not going to get easier. I don't think we're going to have a crash. I think that like we started the podcast saying institutional capital is going to step in. They're going to buy up a lot of the traditionally cashling stuff that new investors would start with. They're going to go in those markets with cheaper price points with a better price to rent ratio and they're going to look for the multifamily properties that as a training wheels that every investor traditionally learned how to operate as a real estate investor. And they're going to be soaking those up and it's going to get harder and harder to find them.

but you still want to find a way to bring income in that isn't just from a job. And this is a really good path, especially when there's connections to real estate. It's sort of in the same world. Ecosystem is a really good phrase. So I think your model, it doesn't have to be done at the scale you're doing it at or that I'm doing it at, but the principles absolutely apply for people that are trying to improve their lives. And Cody talked a lot about how you can buy businesses that are related to real estate. You can buy your CPA firm.

You can buy the property management company. You can buy different pieces in your world and get income from that. Yeah. No, 100% agree. And I agree with you, too, that it's going to keep getting harder and harder. It's funny, when I first came on Bigger Pockets in 2018, the majority of my deals were from the MLS and wholesalers. Like, you know, I did over 100 deals just from those two sources.

As I go into 2022, like, that has gone down significantly. You know, the MLS obviously is much harder to get. get deals now. Wholesalers are much smarter now. They know they can go direct to the funds and other things. And so they don't sell me the deals they used to sell me anymore, you know? And so in order for my real estate business to continue to be strong, we've had to adapt. We had to start getting deals differently. You know, we had to start marketing ourselves. We had to start selling to hedge funds and building connections. And so we've been able to adapt and just, this has probably been going on for like the last two years where like things have gotten crazy. So from two years in 2018 to

2020, you know, my business had to change dramatically. And now in 2020 to 2022, it's changed dramatically again. And so if we think 22 to 2024, I agree with you, David, like it becomes more and more competitive. Doesn't mean you can't succeed. We're going to always find ways to succeed. But it does mean you need to also look at other ways to make money. And it's not always going to just be, you know, buy a duplex and house hack it. Like there's a lot of other new ways to make money, especially in digital real estate, that these guys are not in on yet

because they're too busy doing, you know, taking all the real world real estate right now. But they will be in on it in time. Yes, you're always trying to stay a step ahead of them. That's why you have to adapt because they come in, like Godzilla, just stomp on all the buildings that we were trying to make.

So you got to go build another civilization. And this supports my unpopular opinion that the goal of real estate, is not to buy three houses, quit your job, live on the beach, and never think and never grow. It's just, it's not the way that nature intended us to live. And when you do that, you don't see the hedge funds coming in and stealing all the properties. You don't see the changes like we're talking about with digital real estate, right? You're just looking at the Mai Tai that's in your hand, patting yourself on the back for three years of hard work. Like, we want people to get out of a job

or a life they don't like. There's absolutely a way to improve. And you're a good example. of that, Ryan. But that doesn't mean that the goal is to just quit, retire, and become a vegetable that just doesn't think anymore. If the world is changing so fast because of technology, that you have to be doing more. You have to be listening to more of this content. You have to stay a step ahead of the competition. Do either of you two have a different opinion? It's okay if you do. No, I don't think so. I mean, I agree. I don't disagree with it enough to have a firm POV to like disrupt our friendship in the podcast, you know? Like overall, I'm like, yeah, that sounds good.

I love how Rob says this. Rob's a big fan of saying, I don't disagree. Instead of saying I agree, you never really know where he stands. He's like the master of Switzerland. I don't hate that opinion, but I also don't love it. Ryan, can you give me a solid answer? Not the politician answer that Rob did. I'm not a politician.

I always tell you straight how I feel. unlike Rob, who's, we're going to start calling Rob a coward for being in. Rob the coward. That's my new Instagram. Uh, handle. Robb coward at gmail.com. At Gmail. So, no, I'm all about innovating.

I mean, as you can see, like, just in the four years since my first bigger pockets, I, you know, we flipped. We had to change how we flipped because wholesalers weren't sending deals the way they used to. And in 2020, you get a pandemic. Everybody's trying to pivot and adapt. And I said, you know what? I think social media is going to be what's big. It turned out to be the right play. You know, two years later, everybody's now trying to understand social media and, like, actually use it.

And now I look, where's the world in two years? 100% real estate investors are going to be in digital real estate. I can, I don't want to say I can guarantee it, but like, it's going to happen. And it's going to keep getting more mainstream. And the sooner you get in, the better it is because you're, you know, a first mover. So that's my opinion on it. Yeah, it's not really, it's not crowded right now. I mean, I think real estate is always like, everyone flocks to this one thing. It gets super crowded and then the next person moves over and they're

like, oh, I'm making a lot of money. Everyone moves. I mean, it's like for a long time is multifamily and then long term rentals, obviously, short term rentals comes along and these dumb YouTubers open their mouth and then short term rentals become very, very popular. Now that's the thing, right? So now returns went from being 40 to 60% to like 15 to 30%. Oh, boo-hoo, right? So a pretty good return. And the same thing now with like NFTs. And I could totally see this metaverse stuff being the same thing where we're all like

sprinting right now. There's a lot of space to be, you know, to be had right now. There's a lot of space to play in. And then in two years, it's going to be like, all right, we're all here. Now what's next within the metaverse. I think with the metaverse is like it seems it's so much more expansive. because it's not real world, right? Like there's a finite amount of space on Earth,

but in the metaverse, you know, it's infinite. So it's like very interesting to see the possibilities, honestly. It's like, I'm just barely understanding this right now, but I got to imagine it gets pretty crazy in a couple of years from now. In two years, you and everyone else will like, you'll know so much more. Like you'll be, I don't want to say an expert, but like it'll be normal. You'd be like, yeah, okay.

You know, we have our crypto wallet and here's how we do things. It's pretty simple. Yeah, well, you're finding the good fight, man. I mean, I think the hardest thing in this space and the reason I haven't really tackled it all that much is just the education component. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm explaining to an investor how a short-term rental works and they're like, wait a minute, people are going to stay in the house and we're still going to make money. And it's like very hard sometimes to like work with an investor and teach them just Airbnb like to invest in me. I'm always like, how am I going to explain to them crypto or NFTs or like, you know, the Metaverse? So you're doing. you're doing it right. You're like educating people in a very digestible way. That's going to pay off for you big time because after just this conversation, I'm like, yeah, I feel empowered and very knowledgeable in the world of NFTs and the metaverse. Like, I know enough now to at least understand where to start researching. And that's always the hardest part for people, I think, getting into this. 100%. And I'll tell you, too, it's not easy because it's not like a mainstream

thing. Like if I know, if I make an Airbnb video on YouTube right now, it's going to crush. right? People love Airbnb. Can confirm. When I make videos on the Metaverse and how to open up a wallet and how to buy an NFT, they flop every time on YouTube. And as you know, as you know, it sucks as a creator because you spend a lot of time. It hurts the algorithm. It may affect your other videos after that one. But I'm putting them out anyway because I just know that they need to be there. People need to understand how to do it. And then, you know, I can point them to it. Like, look, I already made you this playlist. Look at every video. It flop.

but the information is good. If you're serious about this, here's how to do it. And those are the influencers that I think people should trust. Because like I was telling people on this podcast when shelter in place first came, I think you're going to have a lot of inflation. I think the government's going to print a lot of money. They've shown that American taxpayers don't want to take the hit that we need to take. They shut down the entire country.

And a lot of my contemporaries were screaming, the sky is falling, get out of real estate, cash is king, we have a huge depression, and I was the only voice that I knew that was saying, that's probably what should happen, but I don't think it will. And I got a lot of heat for that. There was angry people that, how could David possibly be telling people this? And lo and behold, we've had maybe the hottest market I've ever seen since that point up to now. And so it's often the case when people tell you what you should hear, not what you want to hear,

that you don't like it. Their videos are not getting as many views. They're not popular. but just like you said, now everybody's looking at what you were saying back then. Or what I was saying in their saying, that makes sense. It's the same thing with what you're doing. Your videos that at the time will be four or five years old are going to be very popular. At least you can point back and say, I told you guys what was coming even though it wasn't popular.

And you know, the example that stands out to my mind about this is QR codes. Do you remember when QR codes were very first released? I don't remember how long. Yeah. Nobody cared. It was a long time ago. like it was a quick like, oh, it's that thing. What am I supposed to do?

All right, whatever. But it never really caught on and it was just kind of mildly annoying, but you knew about it. And then when COVID came and restaurants didn't want to put menus on the table, QR codes exploded. And like everybody was using QR codes for all kinds of stuff, right? That happens as things evolve. This is right there, but no one needs to go to that. We still use title companies because it's comfortable.

We're used to it. That's what realtors like using. That's what loan officers like. That's what sellers like using. Well, there will come a shift where something happens and people say, I don't like that anymore. And boom, people flock to the new thing. So just I want everyone to keep that in mind as like you're saying, these videos are not popular. That doesn't mean that they're wrong.

Right. Hey, man, I don't disagree with that at all. You're a coward, dude. Love it. All right. Well, Ryan, this has been great having you on the show. I really appreciate your time. I know we're talking about getting me on your show.

so we'll have to do that. I'll make a trip out to Vegas and we can record something. You got a response to his text messages first. Yeah. You know, you can't just ghost them. Yeah, it's true.

That's the problem we were saying with the group text messages. Everyone assumes that somebody else is going to reply to it. So then nothing ever gets done. I've been keeping that thing alive for the last hour. Yeah. So anything you want to leave our audience with Ryan before we get you out of here? Yeah. I mean,

if this digital real estate thing is something you want to do, definitely join the Tykes community. Tykes.io, t-y-k-E-S-D-I-O. We'll love to see you in there, and let's pioneer this new wave of digital real estate together. Ryan, where can people find out more about you? They want to just get your killer TikToks and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts. Where can we find you? Easiest way, just ryanpaneda.com.

It's got links to all my socials. We're on every platform, so yeah. David, what about you? You can find me at David Green 24. Most boring name ever. I mean on YouTube at David Green Real Estate, where we make topics about stuff just like this. This is what I see coming. It might not be here yet, but if you want to get ahead of the curve, that's where you can do it.

And then how about you, Rob? You can find me at Rob Built on YouTube, Rob Built on Instagram, Rob Billto on TikTok. And that's pretty much it. You can find me on those? I don't know. Sometimes I'm on TikTok. It's follow them all. It's all good.

Yes, follow everything. Rob Billto on TikTok. I just, that never stops making me laugh every time I hear that. Ryan, what's the channel or the medium that we're going to put our, when we do one together? Where can people follow if they want to see that? That podcast will be on YouTube. So go to Ryan Panade on YouTube. And we're going to cut that thing up into a ton of reels and get David's most embarrassing things he says and make some great, great clips out of it.

I trust you will make sure you get the most unflattering angles and comments as possible and then blast them out into the world. We're going to definitely take them out of context for sure. Yeah, but it doesn't scare me because I am not a coward. Rob, any last words? No, too scared to say anything now. All right, well, thank you guys. This has been a lot of fun. Ryan, we appreciate your time.

And Rob, I just appreciate who you are as a human, as always. Appreciate that. Appreciate you guys. This is David Green for Rob. I don't disagree. Alba Solo, signing off. I knew you were going to say that. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very very

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