The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Growth Trap: A Continuous Plan to Avoid the Traps of Life and Build a Better You by Ralph DiBugnara

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

The Growth Trap: A Continuous Plan to Avoid the Traps of Life and Build a Better You by Ralph DiBugnara Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author Ralph DiBugnara provides a guide for anyone seeking to avoid or move beyond setbacks for the sake of future personal and professional growth. “The Growth Trap is a Must-Read for anyone who is looking to achieve growth in their personal and business life and are ready to level up their game. We all experience Growth Traps throughout our careers and this book helps you overcome them.“ – Kevin Harrington, Inventor of the Infomercial and Original Shark on ABCs hit show Shark Tank This book is like a how-to manual on how to avoid the traps in life personal and professional. It also serves as a handbook on growth. Definitely a must read for any up and coming professional or anyone looking for personal growth. – Hovain, President of Cinematic Management, Hip Hop music executive manager Growth is a natural part of life between the ages of birth and adulthood, as human beings typically get bigger, stronger, smarter, and more functional with age. This growth is unintentional and requires little to no effort—but at some point, that growth stops, and an individual’s progress is then limited to whether or not they are actively seeking future development. The Growth Trap addresses a condition that Ralph DiBugnara has dealt with throughout his life—personally, professional, and directly with his brand. After seasons of stagnated growth, he’s learned the necessity of intentionally pursuing progress, rather than expecting goals to be accomplished without effort. Ralph explains how many get caught in a growth trap when they deem progress and change to be too much of a challenge. These individuals like to talk, reminisce, and ultimately identify with their “past selves,” because it’s easier than facing who they are now. And while it’s better to pursue growth and work towards the accomplishment of one’s goal, that doesn’t mean that it’s possible to avoid all growth traps along the way. Ralph DiBugnara’s The Growth Trap is an essential resource for those looking to achieve their goals and avoid pitfalls that will hinder their progress. He shares his personal experiences—as well as the strategies he learned along the way—so that readers can grow their brands and businesses while becoming true disruptors in every aspect of their lives. About the Author Ralph DiBugnara is a nationally recognized real estate expert who serves as President of Home Qualified – the digital resource for buyers, sellers and real estate agents driving today’s millennial market; and Vice President at Cardinal Financial, a nationally recognized mortgage loan company behind $50 billions of closed loans. A frequent industry commentator, Ralph is considered one of the leading voices across the next big trends in real estate.

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or at least none to myself. For 15 years, two to three times a weekday, we bring you the podcast billionaires, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and newsmakers, and the hottest authors come on to talk shop. It's showtime, baby. Welcome to the big show, family and friends. The Chris Foss Show podcast family that loves you but doesn't judge you at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law because uh you know she's seen you anyway guys uh welcome the big show we have an amazing gentleman on the show he's going to be

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We have an amazing gentleman on the show, as mentioned before. He is the author of The Growth Trap, A Continuous Plan to Avoid the Traps of Life and Build a Better You. Just came out November 29th, 2022. Ralph D. Bagnara is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking to us about his experience, his life. We'll be talking about real estate, finances, building a business, being a successful entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur, I should say, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He is, all of the aforementioned above, and is the author of The Growth Trap, as we mentioned. He grew up struggling financially financially and he knew he wanted more for himself. He didn't want generational poverty to be his future. He wanted to make a

generational change. Now he holds the prestigious roles of president of Home Qualified, a digital resource for buyers and sellers, and vice president at Cardinal Financial, a newly recognized mortgage loan company. Ralph is a nationally recognized mortgage insider, has funded over $40 billion of loans for real estate. We should call and borrow some money from him. Anyway, he also continues to manage his own expanding real estate portfolio with over $20 million. His expertise led him to start a series called The Real Estate Disruptors,

where he interviews guests on investing, property guidance, and advice. His program focuses on creating an elite network of industry leaders to help brokers succeed and the social media-driven economy. Welcome to the show, Ralph. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for having me.

I love your energy. There you go. I ad-libbed the, we should call and borrow money, so your inbox is probably going to be full of audience members going, can we borrow from you? Anyway, welcome to the show. GiveUsYour.com so people can find you on the interwebs. So it's Ralph D. Bognara, D-I-B-U-G-N-A-R-A.com, just like my name.

There you go. And any other website we should plug away at? I mean, HomeQualified.com is a really good website, which is my company for anything. If you're a beginner buying real estate or looking to invest a little further, but homequalified.com is kind of a great resource on that. We put stuff up almost daily, just trying to advise people on the current market today and how you grow a real estate portfolio. There you go. So let's tease it out in your words. People like to hear it from the source. We gave you a little bit of a profile, but give us like a 30,000 overview of who you are, what you do, and maybe some tease on the book too.

Sure. I'm a kid from Brooklyn, New York. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood. I was not a blue collar family, but my father worked five jobs. So I kind of grew up in that household in a small neighborhood. It's really a New York second generation story for me. And I got into real estate and mortgages kind of by accident. I graduated during the dot-com bubble. There wasn't a lot of jobs. I got offered a sales job. I was trying to look for something to do with my life that wasn't what a lot of my friends were doing, which is the wrong stuff. That was going to end me in the wrong places. So I took a sales job. I was trying to look for something to do with my life that wasn't what a lot of my friends were doing, which is the wrong stuff that was going to end me in the wrong places. So I took

a sales job. I took a chance on the business and the business was great until about 2008. And I hit the market crash and I lost everything and I started over again. But I've been in real estate mortgages for over 20 years now at this point. I've been buying properties for over 20 years at this point now. So that's really been my life. And now I got a family and kids and they're really 50% at least of my time, maybe someday 70% of my time now besides mortgages. And that's kind of who I am, a 30,000 foot view. There you go. I love it. And I'm glad to see you made it back from the 2008 bottom out crisis from my heart to yours i we it wiped out 20 years of all the companies we had uh including our 20-year mortgage company in 2008 and uh i just went you know i'm gonna do something else i don't blame you podcast and then live under the viaduct most of the time in a van down by the roof.

So let's talk shop here. What motivated you on a right? The growth trap, a continuous plan to avoid the traps of life and build a better you. Yeah. You know, during pandemic and COVID, I was in my office by myself a lot and working, working, but I had a lot more time to think about. And my, my children have kind of made me think back think back on my upbringing a lot and focus on that. What I realized is that I went through a lot of things in life where my growth was stopped. And what I consider the growth trap to be is kind of from

when we're born until adolescence, we naturally get bigger, smarter, faster. We learn really easily. We adapt to things really easily because we don't know anything else. So everything's new to us. And then you get to a point in life. And for me, it was really around 14 years old where growth stops becoming easy and you have to really force it. And a lot of us can't do it. And I've gotten to the point where I can't do it in life where you just don't know what to do to kind of get past it or get to the next step. And some people get stuck, stuck forever. I've been stuck a million times in my life and I'll be stuck a million times more.

But it's really, the growth trap is really stories about my growth and my setbacks and other people like me or that you may know and their growth and their setbacks and kind of how we get over those obstacles. There you go. And I mean, that's the real story of life. I mean, some people go through life or they start out in life thinking oh my life will be perfect there will be no rain and no trouble and no whatever but you know and you learn this in stoicism you you plan that there's going to be some storms there's going to be some pitfalls and the real

key is how you overcome those as you talk about in your book. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what it is. And, you know, I was at a point in 2008 was a really a good pivot for me in life in general. But I was at a point where like 2008 is a great example of it, right? Like the market crash kind of forced my back against the wall. I lost all my money. I lost the apartment I was living. I was living on Wall Street at the time and like the penthouse apartment right down the

street from my office. And six months later i was broke uh i was living in a studio apartment outside of the city um because like i was kind of hiding until i could afford and you know i kind of got my back forced against the wall and i had to figure out how to dig out of it so my goal always at this point in general is to kind of force myself against the wall so i can't the market or nobody else is able to do it for to me or for me and that's that's the best way to do i mean put the put the straps on yourself to to make it work and and go because no one else is going to carry you over the finish line right no definitely not definitely not so uh in the book you outline how growth is a natural part of life and uh I think that's, you know, people are resistant to change. You know, they, you know, for years of my mortgage company and all the companies we had, you know, people always say to me, hey, Chris, you should be a consultant. You should consult with people and teach them, you know, about all the stuff you learned and, and, uh, running companies and stuff. And I'm like, when do I have time? And so I guess the universe said in 2008,

I don't really believe in that, but my guess for the joke, the joke was, you know, the universe was like, Oh, Chris should be a consultant. Yeah. Why don't we just get rid of that stuff for him? And, uh, he's got plenty of time now to go be a consultant and write books and crap. So I guess that was, you know, this is the journey of life. You know, you're going to have ups and downs. You're going to have a thing. But having a mindset that goes, hey, stuff's going to happen. And having that tendon, you know, that muscle that you can constantly come back to where you know that that you've overcome challenges that, that which what's the old line that, which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Um, you know, and, and, and life is a big survival game. That's kind of how

the universe works. It's survival, the fittest, and, uh, it's not pretty, it's not fair. Um, and it's going to come out with you. Um um what were some of the stories maybe you could tease out or ideas and growth trap that we can throw at people yeah i think it started for me as early as high school where i was i moved from one place to another one city in new york to another city in new york and uh i was a shy kid who was in a neighborhood where i was the most popular the best athlete all these things and then i moved to a place where nobody knew me and i just just quit everything. I literally, I quit sports. I quit going out. I quit kind of everything. I was just staying in the house because I didn't know, I wasn't ready for adversity and I didn't have any interest in getting over it. And that became a habit in

general for me through high school and even through college where I just kept, I would do something until it got hard. And then as soon as it got hard, I would quit, quit. And that just became what your habits can become anything, right? So my habit became quitting until I really got into the world and I got into business and I had no choice. I couldn't quit anymore. I was out in the real world now and I needed to make money and to make something. And as soon as I started to find a little bit of success, I leaned into it. And then that became something until 2008 and then i had no choice but to quit because it made me quit right um and i had to dig out of a lot of debt and through a lot of darkness but what it gave me and i think anybody you ever talked to said a rock

bottom moment in their life what it gives you is the clarity to you can really get through anything if you really work at it i think I think my biggest failure gave me the power to kind of see the light that I could still do things through. But yeah, I think that just quitting on anything can put you in any kind of trap, whether it's growth or mentally or depression or whatever it is. But I think whenever you quit on something and don't complete it, which is easy to do and it's hard not to do, it could push you back and cost you years in some situations.

There you go. And sometimes you feel pushed back in the growth trap, but you end up finding something better that you love. And sometimes you find something that's better. I used to have hundreds of employees that we were talking about before the show at a mortgage company. Now I just have me and a couple of VAs. I love it. It's really nice. I love talking to people like yourself.

I love hearing people's journeys. And I'm 55, man. I've put up with me all my life. I'm sick of me. So I love having people come on and tell me about their lives and stuff going on. And I'm more interested in that. And I'm interested in telling great stories for audience and stuff like that so sometimes you end up just on a better journey and you're just like i'm in a better place it sounds like you did too what you went through in 2008 yeah for sure it definitely

put me on a different path and um sometimes i think we're so attached to one identity that we're afraid to give it up right like it's, it's just like, oh, that was the person I was. And for me, I was this person who made it out of a neighborhood and away from my friends in a place that people weren't making it out of. So I felt like I can't even let people know that I failed, which at the time was really probably the reason I kept going is because pride and everything else. So it wasn't necessarily the right reasons, but it gave me the power to kind of see, to see,

see my way through. But yeah, sometimes I think we're so connected to an identity and that can be anything that could be, I'm a fitness person or I'm in this person or I'm in that person or I'm a podcast person. And we don't grow because we're just like, well,

if I give that up and then nobody's going to know me for anything. So, you know, it's, it's just continuing to create yourself into a bigger, better, better person. I think is what I I've learned is something that's necessary throughout my life.

There you go. And calling into the show is Kelly from LinkedIn. If growth were easy, everybody would be doing it. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Isn't that true? Let's talk about something. You bring up a great word, identity. And so many people, especially if you're maybe a CEO or a business,

if you're married, you have a marriage identity to that marriage, that relationship you have with a person, if it's not a marriage. We carry through life all these identities or sometimes masks, because there really aren't us a lot of times. They're like an identity that we put on ourselves and i remember um i had built over i grew up poor and i grew up an identity of having money and cars and success and all the stuff that i thought meant that you know you've arrived and i thought of course it would heal all my uh childhood trauma and issues and the fact that i'm a psychotic human being, but it didn't. Damn it. So, but my, I remember going through the crisis and starting to lose everything. And then it became, it became the, what's the, what's they call it in psychology? It becomes, well, if I can just keep the three BMWs, if I can just keep the houses, if I

can just keep the nice watches, you it's you're negotiating or you're you make compromises for the compromises yeah and and the ship is sinking you know it's like titanic and you're like well if i can just keep my luggage and then you know it kind of comes down to where you got nothing left and you're in the water and you're just like if i can just keep my life i think that might be the good thing but yeah you're doing that whole that whole thing and it's really in hard because you built that identity and you have to go through the grief stage of losing it and stuff and you think that's part of the growth trap where people have that identity and they don't realize that sometimes that's not really you or not maybe who should be

no you're a hundred thousand percent right you know that that gets that that's a great way to describe it and i think i'm going to plagiarize you and go forward go for it awesome but you know i think i think at my lowest point um all i wanted to do was get back to being comfortable like you said like i just want enough money where i can have this or i just want to be comfortable i had it so good i messed it up i just wanted to get comfortable and then i got back to a point, you know, probably in about 2013, 2014, where I was comfortable again, like four or five years again, I got, I was comfortable again. And after a few months of being comfortable, I realized how miserable it was making me because I wasn't being challenged at that point anymore. So like this

place I had to be, I needed to be, that wasn't it either. Like I, you know, I needed to continue to challenge myself and continue to change and become a better person. And being comfortable wasn't what I really needed. But at some point that felt like everything, right? Because I was making all these compromises, like you said, with yourself. But I think, you know, we have to keep ourselves useful. I watched, this is a few months ago, I watched that Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary on Netflix. Oh, yeah.

And the one thing I took out of it more than anything was that he was taking care of his mini horses and he said every single day I go out to the stable and I clean up the crap and I take care of my mini horses and he said I just want to be useful every single day and that really stuck with me so much like he just needed to give himself a purpose right every single day and I think

when we have no purpose or we have no growth or we're just too comfortable we almost die like we almost sit there and we're just too comfortable, we almost die. We almost sit there and we're not living. Yeah. I went through, I built my business as my best friend for 22 years. We were friends, best friends. I would have gone to prison.

I would have helped him bury a body and go to prison. He was my best friend. And he was my business partner for 13 years as my vice president. And we had a pretty good run. And then, uh, you know, we hit hard times. Uh, and then, uh, one day he quit and that was it. And, um, I had been living my life like, uh, he was my Jackie Matling, Martin, Jacqueline Martley Lee yeah Howard Stern and I didn't think that I thought he was part of my mojo and that I couldn't live without him and there's a it's the stories in my book that people can read it's a famous story about him and he the keys to me one day and he sabotaged her

businesses and threw them his intent was to throw all the companies into bankruptcy so he could walk away from the debt which I would have gladly just paid him off and given him money rather than businesses it was the most dumbest thing anyone could ever do but thanks yoko ono um so uh we got yoko ono basically so um so trying to recover from that was really hard and that was part of my identity and then i went through that and then i realized just like howard stern realized that it had always been me all along it he was he was walking behind me he was following me i was the ceo i was the visionary doing all the stuff and it was always me and like you talked about you have to realize that you're you it's really

you the person this is a mask you wear the identity you put to realize that it's really you, the person. This isn't a mask you wear, the denny that you put on. Like I'm the real city. I'm the motorist broker. I'm Chris fucking Voss. And it was me. And when I hit 2008, I just went through the same pattern of like, okay, well, it's me. And all this stuff doesn't mean shit anymore you know that old line

from fight club where the stuff you own ends up owning you and um you know you're not your job you're not your wallet you're not the car you drive um yeah and so uh and so like when i went through the crisis with the coronavirus uh thing where everything got shut down and we lost you know tons of money for events and stuff that we normally would travel and do um i just went back to like okay you know you're still chris voss as you mentioned before you know you're still you and that is the vehicle that is the identity and no one can take that from me you know i you know i was like the only person who can take away who i am and my identity now in the core of who I am and my brain and my building is you got to kill me.

So that's it. You can kill me, run me over the car, give me cancer, kill me off. But until then, I got a fight that I can make. So what do you think of that? Yeah, you're 100% right. I think that we hear a lot of things growing up and through our adults and all those things, and they sound really good to say, but sometimes you don't understand what they are. And I think the two things that I've always heard is money's not everything. Most importantly,

money's not everything. And doing things the right way takes a long time, but you'll reap the benefits of it eventually. And as I've gotten older in life, I realized those two things are true. Money came and went, and then money came back again. And when it got to a point, I'm like, how much money do you really need in life to have the things you want? I think children or family puts that in perspective, one. And the other thing is that, you know, it's hard to do the right thing all the time, right? We kind of all want that quick way to get famous or rich or whatever it is. And whenever I've gotten to something easy or quick, and I think somebody said in the comments, right, growth is hard, or they would do

it. It's never lasted. And I think what lasts is going through the processes of doing things the wrong way and changing your identity, right? And realizing that you're the person that can do anything as long as you believe in yourself. And that's what's really resonated with me to this day. Like those two kind of faux pas sayings that we kind of say because they sound the right way are really the truth, but you have to live it to understand it, and you kind of have to keep moving forward. There you go. I remember one time we were going through a huge loss in our portfolio, and you know what that's like to lose one of your portfolio, usually because of rates or something like that.

And you've got to float and you don't have your shit locked in. And I remember it was, I think it was 98 and the Russians pulled some shit. I don't remember what it was. But basically, you know, our portfolio of, you know, we were doing like 300 loans a month and our portfolio that was on the float that wasn't locked in lost $400,000 over the course of the week. Yeah, overnight. Yeah. Yeah. And then another time we did that too with about $75,000, which is the day before 9-11.

That's a whole other story. But I remember drinking one of those nights and just thinking I was getting wiped out. Now, of course, this is pure profit. This wasn't like we were going to lose money and the company was going to tank. It was just basically 400 bucks that was pretty much guaranteed in the

bank and just hit the shit week. So you're like, well, there goes 400,000 profit. Who needed that, really? You know, I don't need another car. And so, you know, we don't need to build a new office. But I remember getting smashed one night and I was watching Humphrey Bogart in the Treasure of Sierra Madre. And I'm like, Jesus, I'm 30 years old and this is happening. And just my whole world just seems to be crumbling around me.

And at the end of the the treasure of the treasure of the sierra madre the they lose everything and i think bogey something happens at bogey and it's it's the old man miner and uh it's the young guy who was assisting them and if you've ever seen the film that's where the line that's where the famous line we don't need no stinking badges come from it didn't come from uh the great the great comedians of pot in the 70s. But you've heard that line repeated everywhere. But that's where the line comes from. And he says, he basically looks at the old man, minor, and the young guy.

And he's like, what are we going to do now? We just lost the gold. We lost the mine. We lost everything. And he goes, cheer up. You're young. You've got plenty of fortunes you're going to make over the next life and you're going to make them just go back to work and do what you did before

and there it is something to the effect of that i can't find it online it seems yeah but that saved me i was like wow i'm still pretty young you know a lot of people that became successful in life sometimes didn't get started in their 40s or 50sies. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of runway still that, you know, it's never, ever too late. Yeah. It's, it's, it's really isn't, it's never, uh, it's never too late. It's never too late to kind of get started on what's going to be next. And you know, that's the one thing I can say, I can, I'm 45 now. Um, I can say, uh, through my life and I don't know everything far from it, but I can say nothing has ever happened that completely broke me.

No shift in the market. And that doesn't make me special at all. I think that we're all – we kind of build things up in our brain to tell us if this happens, nothing is ever going to be too much to bear almost. We can – anything – I mean i mean you see this happened a few years ago and i i swear i wish i would have recorded something on this but there was that fire festival right and that guy did the fire festival and he went to jail and all that stuff right and i swear i've been saying it for the last five years i said this guy will get out of jail he will do it again because he's clearly very capable of convincing people of whatever he

wants to convince him of and he'll do and and look he's gonna and that now i don't know if he's doing it the right way, the wrong way, but the bottom line is that he's doing it again. Right. People are going to go. And it just, I don't think anything is, is going to cave you in. Like, I, you know, I just think that it's, you're going to go through, through valleys. Right. And, and, and we just have to figure out what, what that Valley is something. How do we address that Valley?

Not all, this is the end. I got the, nothing's ever going to be the end. And you know, the, the, the example you make of, of, of the rush, whatever it was, I don't remember what it was at the time, but like, like being in the mortgage business, there has been a billions of rate changes and this, this, and that, and everybody's like, what do you think is going to happen? Is this the end? And my answer is always, no, I, you know, it just, it'll go like this and it just it will get back to a high point again and

we'll get to the high point we'll think it'll it'll never be this good it's never going to be bad again and it will get bad again it'll never be that good again like it's just these extreme thoughts that aren't reality they're just what we're building it up to be in our head and you know it's never always good and it's never always bad life is always going to change in you and you have to always adapt stay out of the growth trap uh matthew fulton calls in from facebook when the quality of life slowly improves it's easier to forget how far you have come that's a great that's a great saying thank you matthew um because you know like i mentioned my earlier thing i was the

howard stern the whole time i didn't need jackie martin lee like mattingly or whatever his name is uh i didn't need him and you know howard went through the same thing where he's like holy shit it's been me the whole time it's still me how powerful you are yeah and how powerful uh you are and and me being able to do all the creating that I always did because I created a lot of our companies. And then he just kind of helped me out. And he was very supportive and he was a good partner. I was the visionary and he was the guy who could do the rudimentary stuff so I could envision something. And I'd be like, here, go do that over and over again.

It'd be fine. He loved that. If you asked him for an idea, like write an idea down on a notepad, he'd be like, I got no idea. I got it. But he was good at that. So you have built a $20 million plus real estate portfolio. How'd you do that? Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Is that a correct number? This might be old data here. Yeah, that's correct. I mean, it's probably a little bit north of that right now just because the market's crazy in certain markets, but yeah, that's pretty close to what it is. I started to build it in 2003 and I lost 95% of it in 2007. And then I started to rebuild it again in 2011. And from really 2011 until now, outside of a few properties, I've built it. And just, you know, slowly, I learned that the first time around when I made all the mistakes and I lost most of my properties, it's because I just had the wrong strategy and I didn't know it was the wrong strategy. And then the second time around, I wasn't trying to get rich or build it quick. I was just trying to build it right.

And I think that's really, really important too, right? What is my foundation? So I went into buying long-term rental properties. And when I say long-term, anything over 12 months, I've really stuck to the residential field because I know that better than commercial and I understand it a little bit more. So anything that was over a one-year lease, I started building it that way. And that was conservative and and it was safe, and I wasn't going to become a millionaire overnight over it. But long-term, it was a really, really good investment. And most of all, Chris, the reason it's a good investment, and you'll understand this, is that buying investments like that made it really, really easy for me to outrun my mistakes. So even if I bought the wrong property, as long as I was collecting rent over the long- term and I had some kind of exit strategy, it was very hard for me to get hurt.

So I started there. And then in 2019 or 19, I guess, when the COVID started, the pandemic started, and rates dropped into the twos and threes, I saw it as an opportunity to start buying even more. And I kind of supercharged my buying in that two year period. Cause it was, I could buy very cheaply as far as rates went. And I built, um, a really large Airbnb portfolio during that time, over two years,

I bought a bunch of Airbnb properties and like six different States. And so now my portfolio was kind of 50, 50 it's 50 long-term and 50 short-term rentals. Um, and I, and that's really, it's, it's made me kind of diversified and it's not

a straight line and it's very hard every single day, but I know where my money is. And I've lost a lot of money in the stock market and other investments just like everybody else. And when I found, when we go through times like this, where we're in a high inflation and recession possibly and crazy markets, I kind of try to double down on the things I know. And I understand real estate and I understand long-term real estate. So I just, when we go through times like this, I lean into that even further. And we go through times where it's a better time to buy. I lean in further and I've just built a solely over time and that's where I am now. There you go. Now on your website, you've got a few different offers and things that you're working on and you've dedicated yourself now to be on a mission to empower the next generation of real estate investors and grow love your, uh, I love your thing. So there's some programs on your website. Uh, I think there's an offer on there. There's also a network thing. Tell us about some

of the offerings that you have to help people, uh, realize some of the success you've had. Yeah. So I do a lot of stuff for free still. Um, I do like teaching and I think, you know, I'm not a saint that, you know, I, I, by doing, by educating people for free in real estate or investing, it draws people into me and we figure out how to grow a business together. And that's what I really like to do. But I have a meetup group that's completely free that you can find on my Instagram page, which is debug, D-I-B-U-G. Or you can find a meetup under my name or the Disruptors Network. And that's just free education.

I do a couple of times a month. I either do anything in my real estate investing. It could be Airbnbs. It could be long-term. It could be what's the strategy now. And then I specifically have a course on my website for Airbnb buying. And that's called The Next Real Estate Gold Rush. And it's just really about how you buy those properties, how you set them up, how you furnish them, how you market them, where you should be buying. And that's an online course that you can go through on your own. And then we meet about once a month

to discuss what's going on in the market now. So we meet 12 times a year to kind of discuss what's going on. But those are the two things that I really am doing to educate on this point. And then locally, I'm in New York and New Jersey. I have academies that we try to run once a year where I bring people in

and try to help them get licensed as either a real estate agent or a loan officer through our tutelage of doing things the right way. And I teach them how to learn the business and how to buy properties. And that's underneath my company. There you go. And so how do people get familiar with you, reach out to you, onboard with you, et cetera, et cetera?

So my website's great. And on my Instagram, my Instagram, again, it's D-I-B-U-G, which is a variation of my last name, but I'm pretty active on there. I post videos probably two to three times a week that talk about either what's going on in the market or what I'm investing in now, what I see to kind of be what's going on current event-wise in the real estate business. And that's a great way to kind of consume my content or my YouTube page and message me. I will, it may not be that day, but I will respond to every single message I get sent on there. There you go.

And that's a great measure to take and do. You know, real estate is a great investment over the long term. You know, I mean, the market will go up and down, but real estate usually goes up. They're not making any more of it. And in fact, they're not really building a lot of houses. The inventory is pretty locked down. No, it's a big part of the problem. Yeah.

What are some of your thoughts on the future of the real estate market? We should know people that watch this 10 years from now. It's 2023. I know New York and a couple cities are starting to get a little unfriendly at Airbnb. What are some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, so if you're looking to be an Airbnb owner, I'll start there real quickly.

Where I found you can be safest is buying properties in vacation areas that have always been vacation areas. Ah, yeah. So, you know, I really believe that to be the best strategy where I've seen a drop-off this year in my Airbnb income, probably 20% to 25%. But I've seen either least drop-off or the highest gain in markets that – I have a property in North Carolina, for instance. It's an ocean isle. It's a beach community that's always been a vacation area. It's always been a short-term – and that didn't drop off at all. So I think where you can be insulated from the market and where you possibly can find deals right now because it's the end of summer,

people went back to school, our vacation airs to Airbnbs. I think as far as the future of where the market holds, if you buy now over the next two years, you will see some kind of gain in equity by default because we're still about 3 million homes short nationwide of a normal, healthy real estate market. 3 million homes short nationwide of a normal, healthy real estate market, 3 million homes short for sale of a normally healthy real estate market. And we're

about 7 million homes short of a normal, healthy rental market. So if you're in either of those markets right now, you're going to see gain no matter what, just because we're dealing with a shortage. And at some point, whether it's in 2024 or 2025 or whatever it is, rates will drop again. Not to the twos and threes, but they'll drop into the fives. And that'll be a good time to, you'll see values increase again. So now's a good time to buy, even though rates are high. If you can find the right property that fits your budget,

now is a good time to buy because you're going to get artificially built-in equity over the next couple of years by accident. just by the sure this by the shortfalls in in inventory um and it takes so long to build and gets uh get all their uh you know all their citations and everything you need past city code and zoning and all that crap to build everything else i really believe that um i wish the biden administration uh would would put out a thing where they'd just be like somehow you know we've had lots of investors on that build multifamily and that seems to be kind of the way that goes there's there's some reason they build multifamily because of you know young people can't afford these high prices and a lot of people aren't getting married

anymore they're staying single for longer so they're not combining those two incomes they can't afford a home and there's kind of no reason like you know it's uh you know for a guy like me who's single i'm like i the only reason i have a home is because i have a dog two dogs and they need a backyard otherwise i would probably end up being a in a condo or an apartment or something um the uh but you know a lot of people don't need it but i i wish they would come out with and i think there's a Wall Street Journal this came from. I think it was the Wall Street Journal or the WAPO. Somebody wrote an opinion piece about how the HUD needs to, the Housing and Urban Development of the U.S. needs to maybe come up with some sort of bonus program where they're like, hey, we'll encourage contractors to build.

Yeah, I will tell you that there's more down payment assistance programs today than there maybe ever been. You know, every state, there's a few national programs, one of them being something called Chinoa. And there's a bunch of local programs, depending on what state and city you live in, that are helping people buy houses today. Because I think because affordability is an issue right now, because of prices and interest rates, the government is, they are stepping in, the government agencies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and a bunch of other, to create these down payment assistance programs. So those do exist,

and we're doing a lot more of that business over the last six months. So if it's something you're interested in buying, and you have to meet a certain income bracket and stuff like that to qualify, but it's worth looking into or at least asking a question about because it may help you get into a house now

where it would have been impossible. There you go. Well, the best, no down, easiest way to get a home I found is be a squatter. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, that too. When I lived, I was in Vegas, of all places to be, when the housing crash happened. My neighborhood, and I was up in this new area that was way far away away from the city and no one wanted to live there, especially after the crash.

And they, they were just throwing up houses. Like it was going out of style. Uh, in my neighborhood, there was, uh, you know, all these homes, I don't know, 50, 60 homes. And you would go out at night or even the day and people be like, Hey, wow. So beautiful. I hear you got stars and crickets and stuff and i'm like those aren't crickets those are the chirping of all the fire alarm batteries that no one's replaced so nobody's changed and what it was is a lot of the homes that were in

vegas a lot of california people had bought them as second homes so they weren't no one's checking on them so there'd be you know always squ that would move in, and then the house would burn down or something. Or something else would happen. The cops would show up and be like, hey, you got to leave. And they already had the next house. And literally, it was one out of every four houses on my block that was empty. It was like walking through a ghost town when I walked the dogs. It's unbelievable.

It's crazy, man. So there you go. What have we touched on that you do and help with people before we go? Did we miss anything? No, I think that's probably the most of it. There you go. We got all the keys. I'm willing to – I'm always open to have a conversation about real estate.

Whether you're somebody who's beginning or somebody who's trying to grow your portfolio, whatever it is. My father was a teacher and a principal, and he's still a professor at 75 years old and he still teaches so i think that uh my ultimately even though he told me i was never allowed to be a teacher i i have that in me that i like to educate so if you have any questions if i have the information i'm pretty transparent i will give it to you there you go an awesome sauce give us your dot coms again so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, for sure. Check me out at RalphDeBagnara.com and HomeQualified.com. And that has all the information about me, anything that we're putting out content wise, my own podcast,

which is the Disruptors Network, the book, the YouTube channel and real estate news kind of as it's happening daily goes up on those two websites. There go well ralph it's been fun to have you on the show and awesome and very inspiring thank you so much i really appreciate having me chris thank you and folks order up his book wherever fine books are sold uh november 29th 2022 the growth trap a continuous plan to avoid the traps of life and build a better you and i love our discussion on uh identity that was really good and hopefully helps a lot of people uh thanks for tuning in we couldn't do it without you did you know that i mean i just want you to know if you did you know that anyway guys uh be sure to refer the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com

for chest christmas youtube.com for chest to Goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss, YouTube.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss. And Chris Voss won on the tickety-tockety as the kids say, that's not what they say. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. A lot of fun show, man.