The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mathew Pezon, CEO of Pezon Properties, Owner of 200 Apartments with No Investors or Partners and How He Did It

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Mathew Pezon, CEO of Pezon Properties, Owner of 200 Apartments with No Investors or Partners and How He Did It Pezonproperties.com About Mathew Pezon Mat and his wife, Anna, started doing property renovations themselves in 2014 and now own over 200 rental units without any investors or partners by buying deals off market. After side hustling for almost a decade (and almost getting fired right out of college!), Mat quit his corporate job and now buys and repositions small multifamily properties full time. He'd be a great resource to share how to achieve financial freedom and scale a business to $25M in assets, starting from nothing. Additionally, Mat is a great resource to discuss the mindset of the entrepreneur, how business processes set the business owner free, and steps entrepreneurs can take to really know their financial numbers. There is a big place in Mat's heart for helping historically disadvantaged groups learn to invest in real estate. He donates time and resources to facilitate credit counseling, financial literacy, and real estate entrepreneurship at The Real Estate Lab in Allentown, PA. He has been educating newer investors for years and is eager to share that knowledge with your audience.

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Uh, anyway, guys, for 15 years, we've been bringing you the smartest people, the most brilliant minds, the CEOs, the billionaires,aires the pulitzer prize winners all of the people who can uplift you inspire you take you to that next level in life and that's what we do and when you listen to chris voss show you bask in the astronauts the u.s ambassadors the congress members the governors uh you join an elite crowd of people that to just spend their day bathing in the chris faust show glow three to four shows a weekday 15 to 20 shows a week we run like a radio show because radio i miss it i miss it does anyone else miss it i don't know this probably is a discussion for this time we had an amazing gentleman on the show and if he doesn't inspire you you may want to get your

you you may want to go see a doctor and get checked. 13 years ago, this gentleman had no money, no rental properties, 50K of student loans and debt. And guess what? His first boss at a college told him he was the worst employee in the company and should be fired. Wait, they tell me that every day. Today, he owns more than 200 rental properties without any investors or partners. He transformed his circumstances by adjusting his mindset, learning entrepreneurship, and side hustling intensely to buy real estate while working a full-time job. You are going to learn a diamond's worth of information here. So please refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives.

Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the big 130,000 group on LinkedIn, chrisfoss1 on TikTok, and chrisfossfacebook.com. Matthew Pizon joins us on the show. His wife, Anna, buy, renovate, and hold single-family and small multifamily properties for long-term in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania region. They have three children under three years of age. That's always fun. Sleep's overrated. Matthew worked for 13 years as a chemical engineer before a recent career change to a full-time real estate investing. He is a 2013 Fulbright Scholar to Madrid, Spain, where he completed his wife have been buying and operating rental properties

primarily in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Outside of investing, he enjoys maintaining his Spanish language skills, spending time with his family, playing guitar and violin, staying in shape and traveling. Welcome to the show, Matthew. How are you? Oh, Chris, thanks for having me. Thanks for the intro. There you go. That's quite the bio, man. It's exciting as hell. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want to have people look you up on the interweb, which is in the sky? Yeah, sure. PisanProperties.com. That's our main home buying website and all of our socials. There you go. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what your day's like, what your business is like, and all that good stuff from your words.

Yeah, sure. So I transitioned to full-time real estate earlier this year, and day-to-day I'm training my team. We have a team of nine full-time employees, then myself, and we're out there pounding the streets. We're buying houses, renovating houses, operating property. There you go. Now, you've made quite the journey. Tell us your hero's journey. How did you grow up? What made you take a shine to real estate? And of course, you're welcome to

expand on this story of someone calling you the worst employee ever because I think it's just funny as hell. Yeah. So I'm a recovering engineer and I say that. So I'm from the fourth generation of engineers and I went to engineering school, chemical engineer, and that's what I wanted to do. Love that stuff. Love the analytical thinking. But when I got to that first big chemical company job, went into an IT role, my boss said I was terrible, that they shouldn't have hired me. I had no place there. It was awful.

I mean, I was crushed. I had studied for four years. I had all this debt. How was I going to pay for this stuff. It was awful. I mean, I was crushed. You know, I had 50, I had studied for four years. I, uh, I had all this debt. How was I going to pay for this stuff? It was 2010. There was no job market then. Not like today. And, uh, I just, I just felt like my dreams were coming apart.

Right. No, I felt like I was letting my family down. Like I was letting myself down and I just felt that I needed to do something, something else. I had, I had nothing. I needed to do something else. I had nothing. I had no idea about investing. I had no concept of the future, building businesses. And that was a turning point for me.

There you go. And so it just wasn't your gig, even though you had like a generational sort of expectation probably to go, hey, you've got to go be an engineer. Your dad did it and everybody else, huh? Yeah. Well, no, you've got to go be a, you got to go be an engineer. Uh, your dad did it and everybody else, huh? Yeah. Well, no one said I had to, and they, they were, they, they encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do. It was more just, yeah, I, I, I wanted to, I wanted to do it and I was good at the numbers. And, um, so I chose to go into that field and I'm thankful that I did learn a lot of good skills, but, wasn't a very good employee, according to that first boss. Well, I'm still not a good employee to this day, so you got something going on.

So do you coach people now? I can see some stuff on your website that you've got going on. Do you coach people? Do you help people about mindset and wealth, or do you focus on just taking and buying houses and properties? Mostly buying houses and properties. Some of the philanthropy that I do is related to helping folks from disadvantaged groups that historically wouldn't have been able to own real estate and invest. So trying to break down the wealth gap, wealth barriers, and break down that barrier to entry for communities that didn't have that access. So I volunteer. It's a huge passion

project of mine. And I love doing that to, of course, provide housing, but teaching others to do it so they can better themselves and their communities. That's what really gets me going. There you go. So how does someone reset their mindset about wealth? How did they go from, you know, talking about what you, you know, were kind of, hey, go be an engineer, do the nine to five, do the paycheck to paycheck, and hopefully it all work out. You know, you've got $50,000 in debt. How do you go from that to having a mindset about wealth and acquiring and building companies and what you're doing now? Yeah, the answer is, unfortunately, at first, pain. That was very painful for me. How am I going to afford this? What am I going to do? So it starts oftentimes. It doesn't have to, but it starts from a place of challenge

and how am I going to overcome this? Something bad happens to kick off that hero's journey. And then when you say, okay, I don't want to be in this place or I never want to do that again, that's when the process starts. So for me, I told that story, but then it was, okay, what am I going to do? So in my case, I did my master's in management. Okay, I want to do business, get educated and uh then apply those things so it took probably two to three years of solid education before i really pulled the trigger ah and so what so you kind of had to hit like a i'm just sick of this i'm not going to take it

anymore right moment yes yeah you hit that moment or go beyond it and you just say i'm fed up you just fed up it's like that network movie i i'm mad as hell i'm not going to take anymore go to the window and scream we were talking about this yesterday on the show with another uh author and uh yeah it seems like i remember when i uh finally lost weight and made some other changes like i quit drinking booze um i just get tired of you know i'm just like i just wake up with hangovers and you know i i don't even drink that much anymore at 50 your body just goes yeah we're not doing it you know one beer and you got to hang over the next morning and um and i just was like i'm just not doing it it's just

not worth it anymore fuck it uh same thing when i lost weight i just got tired of being miserable and tired of being miserable being miserable whatever being miserable, being miserable, whatever that means. And I just said, I'm just not going to do this anymore. I'm doing something different. And so I think maybe it's important. Do you think it's possible that it's important that we kind of identify that we're unhappy sooner so that we don't have to drag so long through that bottom? Yeah, I think so. For me, it was just about realizing that I thought this is where I wanted to be. Or even if you recognize that you don't want to be in a certain place, really accelerating that pain and saying, you know what, I could see where this is going.

Bring it up a couple years and say, no, I'm not going to do this. You might be able to plug along for a little longer, but you know, I saw, you know, where, where my, my, uh, father and, you know, my other, you know, grandparents were, where they were financially and things like that. Not that there's wrong with that outcome, but I saw the writing on the wall and I knew where, where, um, where it would lead me. So I just, I said, look, you know, fortunately I had that experience, but even if I didn't bring up that, that change to the present, cause you see where it's going. Do you, you know, I think too, was there anybody who inspired you or maybe motivated you when you hit that bottom or did you find someone to help lead you out of it? Sometimes, you know, when we hit that bottom, one of the key things we do is we find some sort of proponent, like a book or a leader or someone

who inspires us. And we kind of, that message resonates with us because we finally, you know, we finally, the bell's finally gone off in our head. Yeah, I definitely found someone. So actually, it was about a year, year and a half before I really, I was kind of languishing a little bit, just not excelling at my job. But then when I found Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, oh man, it changed. I realized, wait, I'm not the only one who thinks this is all stupid. So that was an eye-opener for me. And of course, going to business school and things at the time, it really, once I had the mentality and then I had the tools, that's when I could start making the change. It wasn't just the mentality or wasn't having the tools and not even

thinking to use them i needed both so it did you was there an inkling that you started to have after reading rich man poor dad or rich rich dad poor dad rich dad yeah that you you're like i need to start my own company or i need to i need to do my own thing rather than rely on someone else yeah the seed was planted i wasn't ready yet. I was still afraid because of those loans and this other stuff. I mean, now it's student loans are easier to repay and that's its own thing. But it took time and I wasn't ready. I wanted to just get out of debt. And I realized that that mentality was wrong after I got out of it, but it is what it is. You probably were married and had a family too at the time maybe uh so this is

before i met my my wife um uh we've been together 10 years but uh it was about two years before that three years before that so because sometimes it's hard to take a risk when you've got a wife and kids because you know you're trying to provide stability for them and all that stuff as a provider. So how do you make your first deal? How do you get to started down the pathway? Yeah. So fortunately I had my wife's girlfriend at the time, her support. She knew that I wanted to get into the business, just got back from business school. So I went around with investors who were doing this stuff. I asked questions at the time there were foreclosures, not anymore. Um, and, uh,

every Saturday, you know, my friends were out, uh, I did, I lost some friendships because of it. Cause they were out late drinking all this stuff. I was up at 6.00 AM going to meet these investors and just different, different paths we were on. Um, and, uh, yeah, I got educated, met with these investors, learned about properties. How do I underwrite them? What do I want to buy? What needs to be repaired? And I saw probably 100, 150 properties before I pulled the trigger. So yeah, I just got ready and was scared out of my mind when I bought that first one. There you go. You know, uh, you provide a great lesson. You, you put in the work and a lot of people don't do that. They're like, Oh, I'm drinking on Saturdays and I spend Sundays, you know, uh, with my head, uh, you know, hung over, uh, I'm partying,

chasing women, you know, doing all that stuff. Um, and I remember going, when I, I started my first company at 18 and our first successful multimillion dollar company started at 22. And, uh, and then I had three overnight, uh, within a year or two. Uh, and it was maddening. And I remember seeing all my friends partying, you know, chasing girls, doing all this stuff and me, we're trying to run three companies at the same time and um you know just consuming my life and everything that i was doing i mean it got to the point where i'm

like we need to install a shower at the office because i don't even know why i bother going home with a shower and change clothes um but it was worth it in the long run the sacrifice um you know and and i've always had i always used to have guy friends they say to me you know what's different about you chris i'm like what you know because we would go clubbing uh once we got successful and and they go money's first for you and women are second and i'd be like well yeah i mean watch a Scarface, um, and first to get the money. Uh, but yeah, women, women cost money to date them. Um, so I need the money first, but they're like, you know, with us, it's about women first money second. And I'm like, well, that's why you're broke,

dude. And that's probably why you work for me. And you're always broke. And so you did the work. You went out and saw, like, what did you say, 150-plus homes? Yeah. You're out, you know, in the early morning hours, meeting with people, networking, doing the work, and, you know, being accountable. And a lot of people just don't get that. That's what you've got to do as an entrepreneur.

You're like, hey, how come your little company didn't work out there that you started? And you're like, well, I don't know. I just try and I set up a website and then nothing came. And so I just gave up. And a lot of people don't realize you've got to do the work, man. And sometimes you're going to, like you said, 150 houses, you're going to turn a lot of, you got to turn over a lot of dirt to find the diamonds. Well, that's right. And even today, when we know what we're doing, we're still making a lot of offers and not getting them accepted or looking under the hood, figuring out we don't like it and terminating. I mean, it's just part of the business, but you got to have that relentless pursuit. Otherwise, you'll look at two deals,

say they don't work and stop when all you had to do was look at 20 more. You would have done one. Yeah. It's a numbers game and people don't realize that life is a numbers game. Dating's a numbers game. Business is a numbers game. Meeting right people and networking with them is a numbers game. You know,

sometimes you'll meet someone and they're not a right fit for maybe your network or they don't really help you, but sometimes you meet someone through them. And, you know sometimes you'll meet someone and they're they're not a right fit for maybe your network or they don't really help you but sometimes you meet someone through them um and you know working that those numbers games uh you know ted turner had that great advice that was so brilliant who built cnn and and uh the cable company um and it was you never lose anything by walking away from a deal right yeah you can always come back if you want to come back to a deal, but if you say no to a deal, you don't lose anything. What you lose is if you're only looking at two properties at a time and you try to choose the lesser of two evils, and instead of going and finding, maybe fleshing it out with the numbers to go look at 20 more

deals, you might end up with two turds in your hand, right? Yeah, well, that's right. And the opposite is true too. I mean, you can get just stuck looking at deals, never making offers. And I see that happen in newer investors too. They want to educate forever and never take action. So there's a balance in the middle there. You can't walk away from all the deals and you can't not do the deals. You got to do some. Yeah. And I mean,

you've been, you've been working, I think you said you've been doing this for 13 years. That's right. Yeah. And you just retired to full time this year, correct? That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Earlier this year. So you've been doing the full time work and then, and then doing this on the side and, and, and building it has it been hard to try and do both and juggle them at the same time oh yeah it's it's no doubt um

you work your nine to five and then in the evenings and even during the day um weekends you're you're doing the other thing it's two full-time things so you know fortunately i have a spouse who understands that and and she was on board but um yeah i mean you're, you're doing the other thing. It's two full-time things. So, you know, fortunately I have a spouse who understands that and, and she was on board, but, um, yeah, I mean, you're going to be ducking in conference rooms. I mean, I was doing that for years, you know, trying to, trying to make sure no one finds out, you know, just, uh, buying properties and calling sellers over your lunch break, walking outside, you know, making deals happen. I mean, it's, it's hard, right. But, but it's harder to be that person who's told they're the worst employee in the company and you should be fired. That was harder to me. Yeah. I mean, that'll, that'll definitely do it because,

uh, um, you know, it's, it's definitely difficult to pull that one off. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So the, um, I, it's, that's just crazy, man. And you, you went through all this stuff. You've learned the business. Now it looks like you, you buy homes in Pennsylvania. Is there a reason you stay in that area?

Yeah, that's, that's actually where I'm from. So I'm, it's a, it's a great rental area. And, uh,

it just turns out that that's, uh, uh, it, the, the business model worked with my location, but it's not necessary i mean you can you can buy i mean with with the internet and and you could find buy you could find companies

to do the work anywhere in the in the states so it's uh uh it just happened to work out that way for me there you go uh and so what's the market looking like in real estate like some people are like oh god it's over it's it's uh it's's over. It's, you know, interest rates are up. It doesn't seem like things are going the place they need to anymore. What is the market like nowadays, and what should people's attitudes and mindset be towards it? Yeah, I mean, the attitude and mindset should be pretty local. Each area has its own dynamics. Where I am, we've benefited a lot from some of the urban flight from New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey,

people seeking a more affordable way of life. So if you're in those areas and people are leaving, it's not good for them, but it's good for us. So it's hard to generalize real estate. It's, it's, it's hyper local. Um, but, uh, I mean, rates are up. It's true. So it's harder to get, it's harder to get that financing and that, that those good loan products like two years ago, it was like a heyday. Right. So we just want to, yeah, you want to do, you want to do good deals right now.

You want to make sure they cashflow. Um, you want to be careful, but, um, if there's an opportunity, like I don't care what the interest rate is. If the numbers work, you do the deal, right? Really? Yeah. Yeah. I don't, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like if it's, you know, for years when I was getting started, I was paying 12, 14% to do a good deal. And that's when mortgage rates were four. So to me, it doesn't matter as long as the deal can support it. And there's a big enough cushion there, do the deal. There you four. So to me, it doesn't matter as long as the deal can support it. And there's a big enough cushion there, do the deal. There you go. So when you first bought your first few properties, how did you get them financed?

So I initially would do, I was doing renovation projects in the beginning. So I was paying like a hard money lender, a bridge lender. And yeah, so I was acquiring them that way and then refinancing them with like a traditional bank. So yeah, a lot of the times the properties on the market were either overpriced or priced around market. So I always wanted to get good deals, but then they had problems. So I would use short-term lenders and then refinance there you go and you just built it up but now now i imagine you do some different things when you go from house to house on deals well yeah that's right so i i would just it was one deal to the next i the goal was okay if a property is worth a certain amount i would try to be all into that property for 20% less than that amount. Cause I can get, I can get a loan for, uh, you know, uh, 80% of what it's worth. So I wanted to

get that 20% basically for free. Um, because I solved the problem. Well, it was sellers had problems with either they're behind on their taxes or mortgage or a family member passed away. They inherited it. They didn't know what to do. I'd solve the problem and try to get a house for free, basically. And I mean, it's, you know, because that, that was my fee. I mean, you know, some people couldn't repair the property. Some people couldn't, uh, they couldn't sell because the resident wouldn't let anyone in. Right. So there, there's always a problem. And so I would solve that problem. It was either a people problem or a property problem. And my fee was that equity. And once I fixed it, I'd refinance and do it again. I love that mindset of thinking from it that way and just being a problem solver.

That's what most entrepreneurs are. They solve problems. They come up with a product or a service that usually solves their own problem they were having. And they're like, hey, other people like this and how to build it out. What's the makeup of Pennsylvania? Is Pennsylvania changing demographically with people moving? You know, everyone's kind of moving from the outside in, I think, from the coastal cities inward. Yeah, that's right. So depending on where you go, kind of central and Northern Pennsylvania is actually decreasing in population, but on the Eastern Eastern part where we are,

I mean, there's a, there's a hundred thousand people coming into the area in the next, you know, 20, 30 years. I mean, it's going to increase.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's one of the top retirement areas, actually. You wouldn't think that,

but a recent report came out on us news and world reports and Pennsylvania, because the low taxes, the affordability, the amenities, the healthcare, it is one of the top places to retire. So people are moving here in certain areas, and it's benefiting us locally, at least on the eastern half of the state. There you go. And that John Fetterman senator you guys have is funny as hell. I like how he's just turned in. He's just Zuckerman. He's just Jeff Zucker, the U.S. senator with his dress code.

Yeah, I mean, look, shorts and a sweatshirt, you know, it's not the senator or anything, right? Who cares? God bless him. I could be senator because I love shorts and black shirts and black shorts and flip- flops too. So I'm like, damn, he's broken the barrier where I too could be a Senator someday and not have to wear a suit. So there you go.

You talk about what are some top tips for hiring the right property manager? Why do you need to hire one? Why is that important? Yeah, that's such a great question. I mean, I self-managed for about four years. And there comes a point where, look, you're working a full-time job. You're also trying to buy their property. You want to have a life. You have relationships, family, kids.

You really don't want to be taking that no heat call at 9 p.m. on a Saturday. You're watching a movie with your family. Trust me, I've been there. It's just the worst. And then you're trying to call contractors. And it's just, yeah. So it's a barrier between real life and your life where you can hire a service to resolve things. And you can do what you need to do with your family and other things. And

that's why I love property managers. And I only work with third-party property managers because I didn't want the employee issues either. So at the time. Oh, so you don't hire an attorney, I guess. Have you changed then? You said at the time, so. Well, I'm not really looking to do my own management just yet. I might be forced to eventually, but my property managers are performing. I borrow a lot of money, but that doesn't mean I need to start a bank. I have a lot of insurance policies, but it doesn't mean I need to be an insurance carrier. So even though I could, at this stage, it's taking me away from the next deal if I were to start up that company. I like that concept because I'm the same way.

I like the ability to fire you. People who are related to me will say, hey, can I come work for you? I'm like, no, I really like to fire people if they don't do their job. And I'll probably fire you. And it's not that I have a firing thing but you know what i mean it's if you've got someone who's a third party it's much easier to cut them and when they're they start fucking up then with an employee you know you got to give them three notices and you got to try and be nice to them and hey man joe can you like get your shit together and uh you know what the other guys if they if they

do a real faux pas you can just be like hey man the contract over bye see ya yeah yeah you know it's easier to exit that situation basically and you don't have any blowback of like lawsuits or people going you've misfired me wrong um and so and the other thing is too i found a long time ago was um i learned this from i think the guy ceo of discover card or something and he said always have never have one vendor who controls everything always have two or three vendors uh in a given in a given segment of whatever's being provided to your business because if they know they have to compete and they're competing with other people, they'll do a much better job and they'll hustle harder unless they know that they have all your business. And the problem with having everyone have all your business,

a lot of the car companies have that issue right now. With like Tesla, Tesla makes pretty much everything for their car, to my understanding. But one of the problems that GMm and ford and chevy have in trying to make ev cars electric vehicles is they've sold all the parts to different branches you know some guy makes the radio some company makes the radio some company makes the thing and so it's harder to get all the software to match up and hardware to match up where Tesla can, we built it, it's all integral. And so having multiple vendors and third-party things,

I think really makes all the difference. Well, yeah, it does. I mean, and finding the deal and buying the right deal, that can be very forgiving in the case of non-performance later. But I mean, you got to run that asset, right? You have to, you're providing an essential service to people. They live in your building. So you can't skimp on that management quality. And if you can, you won't be in the business long, or if you do, you won't be in

the business long. So it is a core competency. I haven't really looked to do that vertical integration just yet with management. i've just been focused on building building the deal arm right now but maybe in the future i do i mean there's there's certainly we've certainly achieved scale so there's you know it can be plug and play to a certain extent and i think the managers know that that like okay well matt has options and even it's not that there's not just a okay well, well, he doesn't work because I work with two main managers. They kind of know that, but they also know I could, I could bring it in house too. So I'm kind of the third, I'm the, I'm the, the, the bigger gorilla I'm

sitting over on the side, but they know I could pull it. Yeah. There you go. And so, uh, now, um, what was your best advice for people that want to do what you do? I mean, you've really played the long ball here. I mean, you've been doing it for over a decade, but you still kept your day job. And the one thing about real estate is it's a really long, slow income ball where, I mean, you're playing for decades, but the value of real estate is always going to go up. And you're making that depreciation money and all that sort of stuff. What do you give advice for people who are fighting off market deals, negotiating with sellers to buy them and the vision for playing that long ball? Because you're not going to get rich overnight usually doing real estate. Yeah. I mean, first you have to know why you want to do it and you have to know what your investment strategy is. I love single family homes

and I told you my why, but listeners need to know theirs because it's going to get hard. You're going to have people, contractors run away with materials and money. You're going to have resident issues. You're going to have slip and fall issues. There's all the issues, right? So you have to know why. And after that, when you know your investment strategy, you have to get educated. You have to build your credit. You have to save money. You have to be prudent with your budgeting because you can't put down a chunk of change that you don't have. So you've got to really, you know, get those things right, get your credit right, you know,

and, and then you have to find your team. Cause once you buy this thing, now you're stuck with it. It's yours. It's your problem. Now you can't, it's not a stock. You just liquefy. I mean, it could take three months to find a buyer, right? More if you ever sell so um you know then once you have your team uh and you got everything else before that

you're educated you know then you're looking at the property people just want to go look at properties and that's just not how it works they skip 10 steps and they didn't set up the foundation you know it's you gotta they're they're picking out the the kitchenet before they even laid the, they even poured the concrete to the foundation. You know, they're just, they're too far, they're too far out in left field to even build a strong business. I saw that a lot with some real estate friends in the, right before the boom, the bust in Las Vegas from the 2008 great recession um they gone i had i had a couple of friends that they'd spent like 20 25 grand going to all the carlton sheets seminars and all the all the seminars to teach you what you're supposed to do and then they went out and they did every single thing that you're not supposed to do that they spent 20 25 000 doing they'd spent they spent all that money just

blowing it and and i i said i remember saying to him really you have done everything that you're not supposed to do like they bought homes that were 2400 monthly payments on on no down, you know, those crazy negative AM loans from 2008. And I'm like, you bought homes that are, you have to make the service payment on it, $2,400 a month. But the rental market in Las Vegas, max for, you know, a full family is $1,400. $1,600 on the luxury side at that time.

And I'm like, you you're a thousand dollars upside down well we just have to find the right renter no you don't no one's going to rent that it's stupid because they can they can get 500 homes for less than that and you're right people people go crazy they they get focused on getting down that road and they don't, you know, do the basics as it were. Oh, that, that, that is so true. I mean, all, all those mistakes or they, they, they want to go out and look at properties, but they, they can't buy them cause they can't, they're not bankable. Um, you know, so, you know, and then they're just, instead of they'll go down rabbit holes of getting educated, but meanwhile they're overspending and everything in their personal life, their credits in the toilet that, you to go in order because you can't skip steps in this

business. You can, but you'll get burned. Yeah. And maybe fix your personal debt first and stuff like that. Like pay off real your credit cards. It's funny how people look to investments where they're like, hey, I want to invest in maybe real estate or stocks or something, and yet they're paying these exorbitant credit card rates. Right now, I think the reports are in studies that we're on a credit card drug mission ever since COVID. It's like keeping the economy running, so I don't know, maybe it's half good. But people are just pouring credit card debt. Like it never before. I think it's a record we've never seen before.

And, you know, it's like, those things will bleed you out first. That's actually the thing you should get rid of first. Well, yeah. I mean, and, and if, if you're living your personal life outside of your own means, I mean, gosh, what are you going to do with your business? I mean, it's just, it's common sense, right? But people don't think they're looking for the silver bullet. They're looking for the quick fix.

And this, yeah, I mean, this, this business is a slow, uh, I, I, I forget who said this, but someone said real estate is slow and dumb. I mean, it's, you can see the trend, follow the people, follow the jobs, follow the people. It's prices aren't going to shoot to the moon. Now, recently they, there was some appreciation, but I mean, it's prices aren't going to shoot to the moon. Now, recently, there was some appreciation, but I mean, it's like, look, it's just be methodical. You just do the math and the math will tell you what to do. Yeah. I mean, that's the beautiful part about real estate investing is it's not so much cyclical. It is kind of with interest rates, but

there's not a huge amount of new is kind of with interest rates but um you know there's not there's not a huge amount of new property there's a really inventory property we have problem we have in this country i've not enough sfrs being built single family residences in fact multi-families are being thrown up like it's going out of style um which isn't going to fix the problem i mean we actually need like i don't know some government hand down to say hey you get thirty thousand dollars off builders if you buy sfrs we need like a huge levittown sort of uh rollout going on but that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon you know so many cities have these laws and regulations where they're like not in my backyard you know and uh so they're they're kind of you know creating

their own problems but uh you know own problems. But it's interesting. You can invest in Bitcoin or something that's crazy and extremely volatile. The great thing about housing is it's going to always be around. So as we go out, Matthew, give us your final thoughts and pitch out. How can people onboard with your site? What sort of clients are you looking for, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, sure. So we help anyone in Eastern Pennsylvania who's looking to sell their property, primary residence, rental, off-market. We charge no fees, commissions, anything like that.

And we buy direct from home sellers. So you can reach out to us on our website and we'd love to work with you. There you go. And give us the website as we go out. Sure. Pisonproperties.com. There you go. Well, very insightful. My friend have done all this stuff and I love the story too. You're clearly not the worst employee ever according to the guy from 10, 20 years ago.

He did me a favor. Sometimes that's what we need. Sometimes we need somebody to kick us in the butt and kick us over the finish line, as it were. And then you're like, hey, thanks for that. I kind of needed that wake-up call, as we've talked about on the show. So thank you very much, Matthew. We really appreciate it, man. Yeah, Chris, love being here.

Thanks so much. Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing is just killing it over there. It grows like a weed.

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