The Iced Coffee Hour - “I’m Selling Everything!” Why Ben Mallah Is Cashing Out Of Real Estate

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Bizee: Start your business with confidence at https://Bizee.com/ich Oracle: Right now, with zero commitment, try OCI for free at https://oracle.com/iced Notion: Check out Notion, the best AI tool for work, right now at https://notion.com/icedcoffee Chime: Open your account in 2 minutes at https://chime.com/coffee Follow Ben Mallah : On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@UC94m18wtI9QAYrXKXqFPWDg On Instagram -https://www.instagram.com/realbenmallah/ Website/Consulting - https://benmallah.com/ Apply To The Index Mastermind: https://entertheindex.com Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:34 - Ben’s childhood 00:04:06 - Net worth today 00:04:49 - RE investing diminishing returns 00:08:20 - Who shouldn’t buy a home 00:10:31 - Have home prices peaked? 00:11:08 - Housing market forecast 00:11:51 - Tariffs' effect on housing 00:14:57 - Who’s buying and selling now 00:16:17 - Current investing strategy 00:18:02 - Sponsor - Bizee 00:19:05 - Why bonds over index funds 00:23:02 - RE deals from YouTube 00:25:19 - Motivating his kids 00:29:16 - Does wealth = Happiness? 00:30:39 - Is too much money a problem? 00:32:58 - Biggest opportunities now 00:35:46 - RE negotiations 00:37:21 - Sponsor - Oracle 00:42:42 - Negotiation tips for beginners 00:44:28 - Emotional vs. strategic purchases 00:49:24 - Ben’s negotiating skills 00:52:22 - Weirdest thing he’s negotiated 00:55:38 - Consulting FAQs 01:03:28 - Sponsor - Notion 01:04:50 - Sponsor - Chime 01:07:08 - Balancing $ security & enjoying life 01:10:24 - 1031 exchange benefits 01:12:01 - Has capitalism gone too far? 01:14:53 - What holds people back? 01:21:16 - Have you always been motivated? 01:24:08 - If you started over today 01:27:05 - Why make YT content? 01:28:30 - BTC in real estate 01:33:00 - Life philosophies 01:36:25 - Rising insurance costs 01:41:11 - Dating advice 01:44:29 - Dating red flags 01:45:29 - Did wife and kids motivate you? 01:46:07 - Rapid fire questions *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The housing market is flashing red. We're at a standstill. It can't even sell them to break even all these newer buildings right now. Homes for sale in the U.S. surging to 500,000. The loan is due. What are we going to do? How are you finding good deals right now? I'm looking every day and I'm lowballing, baby. How do you lowball them without offending the seller? There's no offending in business.

I'll sell Jimmy Hart to get that house. You wake up in the morning. What the don't you're going to do? That's the question. You got to be a machine. Have you noticed any effects on the housing market from the tariffs? Tariffs, the tariffs, the tariffs. Tariffs is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary.

What do you think of the biggest opportunities right now? Speaking of timing. I mean, opportunities always out there. You're going to look for it. And you've got to be persistent. I love it. I just absolutely love it. If somebody was a genius, they could figure out and do all these.

Ben Mala, thank you so much for coming on the ice. coffee hour. That's all you got to say. I'm just thanking you for coming on the show. But remember, this podcast is sponsored by Carpool tables, baby. You better get one. Can you put one in the house?

How much did this cost right here? They start at about 20 grand, and they can go up to maybe 50, depending on what you want. And how much did you? Ford Mustang, 65 Mustang. You can get to 69 Camaro. This was the copy of the Indianapolis 500 pace car that Mario and Dreddy won and was personally here and blessed it.

And we do the 59 Corvette. And we do Shelby's. We have them signed by Shelby before he passed away. And we can make them any color you want on the felt. We can do any body paint you want. Could you do a Ford GT? Real bumper! But not real wheels.

The wheels are real, but they're shrunken down. Okay. But the fenders are, I mean, the grill's real, the bump is real. The headlights are real. The emblems are real, and they're licensed by Ford and GM. So what's your affiliation with them? With who? With these pool tables.

I created it. You created it in another company? I'm a creator. I did it because I wanted one in my house. Because the long story, the short story, the long story is this. Everyone was about three years old. All right? I wanted to get them a car bed.

Why? Because I always wanted a car bed when I was a kid. But no, I slipped on the goddamn floor. Or in a bathtub. Can you imagine a little kid? I slept in a bathtub. Can you imagine growing up like that when I was a little kid? No one to sleep in a bathtub.

All right? Yeah, it was a tiny little house. My father bought a little bungalow. You know what a summer bungalow is? Okay? And he bought it where he made us living it all year round. The shower was a hose hooked up in the backyard until he built us a real bathroom finally. And that's the way we lived.

And poor, white, but we weren't... The thing was, he wasn't poor. He could have done better. He wasn't rich. He was, you know, a city worker. He made a salary. But he was the ultimate cheapcape. I told you about my father, didn't I?

Well, it was the ultimate cheap skate. You know, he'd take two plight toilet paper and make two rolls out of it. So would he save money then and invest that money? Or what would he do with all of his excess money? He did stash it away, you know, he put it away in, like, you know, and shit like that or whatever. He did piss the sub away and some investments. But the point is, he had no quality of life.

His mentality was he grew up in the Depression and they want to hoard every penny they had. And even if they had a few extra bucks, they weren't going to spend it and make their family happy. They'd rather live with the ketchup bottles upside down, putting water in it and shaking it up to get every drop it out of ketchup.

Sounds like me. You do that, don't you? He likes to shaking a bottle. But you do it out of laziness because you're too lazy to go buy another one. He just does it for the thrill of shaking the bottle. Whatever turns them on. And, you know, so anyway, that was where we grew up. You've also been very vocal about having $500 million in assets.

I'm curious because we've now talked for a couple of years, and that number has stayed consistent through those couple of years. How is this process going? When you pay all of these taxes, how much is that affecting your net worth and your equity? I mean, a lot of your profits are going to be going towards tax unless you can 1031. Well, as you know or you probably don't know, for the past few years, there hasn't been a lot of opportunity in real estate. And that's life. It's a market. It's a cycle.

You know, so what do you do? You just keep fine-tuning and stuff you got. You sell some stuff off, you know, and you do whatever you can do. But it hasn't been a lot of opportunity in the past few years. Why not? Because we're at a standstill. You know, everybody locked in a lot of low rates. and, you know, prices went up, rents went up, and everything is just overpriced,

and there's not a lot of action going on right now. I mean, you know, the institutions, they go out and they buy their five-cap. Uda, can I say? Sure. Who does the want to own a 50 or $100 million asset and have all that responsibility and all that liability for a 5% return? and then if you know, and then if you leverage it, it used to be you'd make money on the bank. Okay, but now you're not making money on the bank.

The bank's, you know, losing money because it used to be you borrow money at 4%, right? And if you had to say a 6% return, then you're making money on the banks, you're making a two-point spread. You got that. So now you can't borrow money cheap. So you're not making money. I made a lot of money just using the bank's money. And now I can't do that because rates went up. So why aren't prices coming down faster?

Well, because, you know, we live in a world now where they keep finding new tricks and, you know, they don't want to hit the fan. Can you imagine if it was exposed to the market? I'm surprised these stock guys aren't smarter. Because, you know, if they really, really look into the bank is only worth what the loans are, correct? Mm-hmm. If the loans ain't worth what they loaned them on, you know what I mean. Then the bank ain't worth what it should be because the loans ain't worth what they should be. So what happens?

The stock goes down. Just like when I lost that million bucks on that California bank when I preferred stock, the loans weren't worth, they only worth 50 cents in a dollar. Well, then the bank's only worth 50 cents in a dollar. And eventually, if they hit such lows, then the bank, Bank just goes belly up. So you think someone is going to forgive some of this. The stock price goes to zero.

Remember, you weren't around in 2008. I used to trade Citibank at a dollar. What happened? It's worth a lot of money, man. You would have made a fortune buying a dollar. It's life. It's a cycle, and you just got to ride a roller coaster. Do you still predict, though, that when these loans come due,

these people are going to have to sell their properties because they can't afford. They didn't price in paying 7% to borrow. for these commercial properties. Do you still think this is happening? And it's just delayed out. I see it happening every day. Every day. I'm seeing more and more.

And there's a ton of shit on the market. But right now we're at the point where they don't want to sell it a loss. Okay. And they can't get their money back. Okay. They can't even sell them to break even all these newer buildings right now. They can't. And now they're going to have to eventually come to the point or banks have to come to the point and say, okay, the loan is due.

what are we going to do? We've been delaying and we've been praying and we've been doing all, you know, we can't eventually the music has to stop. And this cat has to get out the bag. And unless rates, they're basically praying is that rates are going to finally come down and then these loans will be good again. And the properties will meet the debt ratio and they'll have cash flow. Okay.

But right now at the new rates, they'll be in a negative. Okay, because your four is now a seven plus. and they can't handle that. And then who else wants to own real estate? We have no cash flow anyway. That's stupid. Yeah. Now, for the average person who's interested in the real estate market, who should not buy a home? If you can rent a property right now for less money, the equivalent property, than owning it,

I would suggest you wait, okay, and just rent it. Now, by owning it, if it's a break-even and the same, you might consider it, just like we were talking earlier, if you think there's going to be future appreciation in the value of the home, then you say, okay, well, it doesn't matter whether I rent or own, but at least if I own, maybe prices will go up in homes and I'll make some money there. So, you know, everybody's got to, you know, has their own risk tolerance. And, you know, and you got to just decide what's best for you. Do you think that people need to own a home anymore?

Do you think that maybe it's this? A home is personal. it's not business. So, you know, it's like this house. This house is somewhat personal. Well, to me, it's business. Everything is business. But, you know, homes are normally personal.

You know, because you got kids, you got wives, you got two cars. You got all these pools and all the people. And it's a personal thing. So you're paying for the, you know, the amenities, the pleasure in life, you know, what the fuck is a point of working if you're not going to enjoy your life? See, I almost think that this myth of homeownership is. is going to go the way of a college education where people put it down your throat

that you need a college degree. And I feel like there's that same sort of pressure for a lot of people that they feel like I need to own a home, even though when I look at the prices, I'm like it just doesn't make sense. The masses of people, the middle income, okay? The middle income masses of people

should buy a home because that's really their only way of giving themselves that extra protection down the road. It's a four savings account. You keep paying down a mortgage. What happens in 20 years? You're sitting around with a house.

It's going to be worth half a million bucks or more. And you're not going to have a mortgage on it. So it's a good thing for people that have trouble saving money, you know, and, you know, look at the appreciation, you know, from the house. And it makes sense for the average person, yes. What do you think about the theories that home prices have peaked overall and that we're having an aging population is going to go into care facilities? There's going to be an influx of homes on the market.

and our population's somewhat declining, and there's going to be lost demand maybe for single-family homes. I don't have a crystal blow, but I can tell you, you know, you don't know. I mean, listen, it's you see it go up, then you see it go down. You see it go up, you see it go down. You see it's stable. I mean, you know, if it's your home and you're living in it, and you can afford the payment, then, you know, of course you want to own a home, you know.

What's your overall read right now of the housing market? Now, people are not, you know, there's not a lot of houses moving. Things are kind of like, you know, unless you're in some high growth area where things are booming, you know, I mean, it's pretty much, you know, just flat, flat. Houses sitting on the market. There's not five people making an office firm like it used to be at the same time right away. And there's not bidding wars going on anymore. Rates are up, you know, and that's the thing, you know. typically if you buy a house for a million bucks in today's rate environment,

you know, you're going to be paying probably with taxes and insurance somewhere between $8,000,000, a month. Have you noticed any effects on the housing market from the tariffs? Tariffs, the tariffs, the tariffs. Have you noticed anything? Listen, I'm so sick of hearing about tariffs. Listen, one day the tariffs it is, one day the tariffs at that. It's just a, it's a game, okay?

It's a game. All right, people in the market, just forget about tariffs. Tariff's just political. Okay, it's a way to, you know, play a card, okay, to scare people and negotiate to get something else. Or, you know, it's going to, you know, if the tariffs do go through and get jacked up to the roof, then, yeah, the cost of goods are going to be more money. Okay, do we get wood from China? I don't know. I don't know.

I don't get wood from our own country. Canada. Canada, okay, well, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, listen, it shit happens and it happens, you just got to deal with it. But I can tell you right now, the home builders, I know for a fact, a lot of home developments they built were converted to BTR, which they said.

You know what BTR is? No. Bill to rent. Oh. Because they couldn't sell them. It's true. I was showing on my computer. They were on sale right now.

So why? You'll do by the whole development of houses. So they're having trouble selling these houses. Why were they having trouble? Is it just like the rates and prices? The same guy that used to see, the point is when they, when they, it takes years and years for them to go out, find the land, secure to land, get all the improvements done, the roads, the power, the water, all that. It takes years to put all that together when you build like, say, 100 or 200 homes. So when they did it, rates were low.

that type of financing you typically, to my knowledge, don't fix. Okay, banks don't fix them. They don't want the risk. So, you know, if they got bridge loans or if they got a bridge loan, they could have fixed it. Anyway, the point is when they started this project, rates were low and people were buying out of homes. Why? Because there were home loans for three and a half percent.

Okay. So that means you're going to pay $3,500, you know, on a... What is that? It's on a million bucks, you only pay $35,000, which is only $3,000 a month. Okay? Now it's double or more. So, of course, you know, people are just going to stop buying homes. There's a lot of home builders in Las Vegas right now.

There's a lot of home builders in Las Vegas right now that are offering free incentives and free upgrades. If you buy it and they're, yeah, the free upgrades. If you buy this house today, we'll give you a free dishwasher and it will be stainless steel. Or they're discount. the price of premium materials by 50% to get people. That's where it starts. Okay? That's where it starts.

And then they'll sit around, they'll sit around. But sooner or later, if they got debt, which they do, they're going to have to discount that and hopefully walk away with their pants so long. So who right now is buying and selling in the real estate market? I mean, there's not a lot of action going on. I mean, there's always deals going on. Institutions are always moving money. Why?

Because it ain't theirs. As long as they don't want to sit on your money. They don't, you know, they want, they got to put your money to work. They got to tie that shit up. Okay. So, you know, they'll buy, I don't know, anybody buys on a five cap these days when rates of seven is nuts. It's stupid, okay? Unless you're in a 1031, you're going to save taxes.

And, you know, it could be some very strange, weird reasons. But on a big picture, it's stupid to buy, borrow money at seven when you're only getting five. It means you're too underwater, you idiot. And, you know, whatever. And then you only get 5% on your portion. So right now we're in a standstill, you know. And we're waiting for the banks to finally, you know, fess up. You know what fess up means?

And open it up and say, listen, you know, we got to get rid of shit. You know, we can't keep sitting here with loans that aren't, you know, holding the value that they had when we loaned the money. And then, you know, then they'll have to sell them off, take a law. right off their losses, and hopefully the bank will stay intact and everywhere I live happily ever after and they'll do it all again. So how are you addressing your own strategy right now? What I'm doing, you know, everybody's got their own personal way.

I run a portfolio, you know, all different types of diversified assets. You know, right now we're trying to, you know, move away for retail and, you know, we're limiting the amount of hotels we have and, you know, what I'm doing is I'm always looking at a property. Is this place making me money? Or if I sell it and I take that money from the sale and would it make the same amount of money if I put it in, say, tax-free money is 5%. Okay? Because, you know, the money, I may be making more than 5% on the property, but then it's taxable. So what's my NOI after 37% tax, you know, paying tax on it?

What does that number equal versus if I just take? the money for the sale, put it in tax fee beauty bonds, and what's the difference? Well, I might take less money. Why? You know wine, right? Why would you take less money? Because you got to pay taxes on tax me? No, I take a little less money because I don't have the responsibility and the time and the work and the liability of owning a big hotel when I could have the money safely sitting there getting me return. I mean, you know, it's a give and take, you know. And then, you know, it's everybody's got their own portfolio in life to manage. You know, but right now I'm waiting because I know those apartments are coming.

I see them every day. They're just sitting on the market. The brokers all tell me, you know, they can't sell shit right now because the sellers know, but they don't want to swallow the fact that their properties don't cash flow. And the banks aren't ready to do any negotiating short sales, you know, we're waiting. You know, we're just waiting and waiting. So we talked to a lot of entrepreneurs on this show, just like this episode with Ben Mala. But one thing we haven't really covered is how do you actually get started?

Like, what's the first step? How do you set up an LLC and where do you even go? Well, fortunately, we've actually partnered up with Busy to sponsor this episode because I've used them myself and I've got to be honest, it couldn't have been any easier. Setting up my LLC took less than 10 minutes and I had utter confidence that everything was getting filed properly and professionally. Busy has helped over a million people start their business and they make the entire process super simple.

There's no confusing paperwork, no legal jargon, you just fill out a short form and they handle the rest. Plus, they include your first year a registered agent service for free, which a lot of other companies charge up to $250 for. And the best part, there are no hidden fees or surprise subscriptions. What you see is what you pay, plain and simple. So if you're ready to finally start up that business idea you've been sitting on, there's not a better place to start than busy.com slash ICH. We also have a link down below in the description. That is busy.com slash ICH. B-I-Z-E-E-E-D-C-H. Seriously, guys, used it myself. Highly recommend it. Why do you buy bonds instead of index funds.

Index funds are taxable too. Yes, but they can grow at more than 5%. And probably more than 37%. What? They could also not grow. Right? That's true. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is this, I'm not saying I do everything in bonds, but I keep a safe haven of bonds. So at least I know I got that to protect me. Why? Because they're 100% safe and they're tax-free. Anything else I have to pay 37% on, except capital gains. 20% or 22 now. So how are you finding good deals right now?

I'm looking every day and I'm lowballing, baby. How much? I'm lowballing the shit at everything. And if you don't like the offer, then write me the one you little like. And then I'll go back and show you, you know, it's a game you play. The more you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it. You got to play the game. So how do you lowball them without offending the seller?

There's no offending in business. Wouldn't they just say this? This guy's not serious. This guy's not serious. Listen, I'm not making crazy offers. My kids, my kids underwrite this stuff. They have formulas. They have underwriting.

They plug the numbers in. How much is bringing in? How much is going out? And we figure out what is the proper price for us to pay. And do we have to make capital improvements to the property? That's another factor. Okay. I negotiated a deal we just went into contract or going into contract.

You know, the place I could blink and eye and really make the place to wait should be with a million bucks. And I asked for that million bucks. We ended up splitting it. They're going to give me a half a million credit. I mean, you know, it's a game you play. But I'm going to have major 1031 benefits by buying that, you know, so, you know, there's a lot of factors involved. You got to figure out what's important to you and what are you accomplishing. But it's all about, there's no offense.

all right this is the number I came up well how'd you come up with that number this is how I came up with it it should be a seven or eight cap am I saying pretty much I don't like that one now here's the thing you could say as much as you want for the members version if you guys want to see these episodes

completely uncensored join the membership and we're not going to bleep anything everything you know basically there's no offense listen I'm not making stupid offers but on average I'm offering about 25% less than what they're asking. That's what it's what their fat is.

Does it help or hurt to have your YouTube channel? Do people ever see your offer and be like, wait a second, this is Ben Mala. I saw him on YouTube yelling at the homeless guy behind the ride aid. Does it help you at all or does it give you credibility or do they just say, ah, this is Ben, he's probably filming this. They never say this is Ben, he's filming it. Everything I do is real. and they know if I tell them I'm going to make an offer on that property I'm real it's a one-page

LOI it has my name and signature on it they take it very serious you know why because my name's not jack I got the money I mean the YouTube thing I don't I don't you know does it help in in people know who I am yes okay yes most people both brokers especially they know who I am and they will respond to me where they probably wouldn't respond to him. So it does help me because it shows who I am. I mean, there's nothing fake about me. There's nothing, you know, it's all real. So they know this guy's the guy's the real deal.

Okay, you know, like my wife said, what'd you do all day? What did you do today? And I told her, you want to know what I did today? Why don't you read the paper? You know, there's a news article about what I, a deal I just closed. Anyway, the point is it does help. How often is it that someone comes to you with a deal from YouTube, that they just want to say something?

I get them. I get them. I get them. And I almost had one, but I didn't want to go out of state. In fact, I fed it to the guy that me and you were going to visit in Georgia. Okay. I do get opportunities, but they're mostly out of state. You know, anything going on in Florida I pretty much know about.

Got it. And I don't really want to branch out, you know. I don't do deals from, you know, I don't get a lot of deals from YouTube now. So you're saying you're trying to get more liquid, but at the same time, you're still buying a lot of deals. Well, I'm always going to be buying if the deal makes sense. Because I got kids to run. My kids run everything.

I don't do it. If I tell them tomorrow, hey, go take over that 250 units over there. I'll say, fine. They'll go over there and they'll take over that. And they'll run it and they'll make money. They'll actually do something to make money. Oh, so I'm not going to pick on Jack. I'm sorry.

I'll tell you. Or they could be like Jack and do nothing. How do your kids stay motivated to actually go and kill managing a 250 unit apartment complex? I don't. But how do they? Like, how did they, how did you foster this? They're going to hire on-site manager. They have an on-site maintenance person.

But, you know, what are they saying? How are they so motivated? How are they motivated to do something? Like, me are hungry? Why are they hungry when you've done so much that they could theoretically just be a bit lazy? My kids came from nothing, the older ones, and they're hungry, and they want to do it on their own, too. They wanted, listen, I couldn't count the number of deals my kids have done or places they've lived in, like gypsies, all over the place. I tried to think about all the places my middle son lived.

I couldn't fit. I lost count. I couldn't remember. It was too many of them. Anyway, I trained them. They grew up with me. They came from nothing like me, so they have the same motivation of hunger of, of, you know, being able to know that they've made millions of dollars and they can take care of the family

and they can enjoy their life. I mean, I'm in their example. Well, look where the fuck I live. They all live in a million-dollar houses. Not like this, but they live in multi-million dollar houses. They got boats. You know, they'll get to my level when they're at my age. But anyway, what are you talking about?

What about your youngest? Who? Your youngest? Yeah, your youngest. He grew up in affluence. So how do you cultivate that, like, that hunger? Well, he's not spoiled. I mean, you know, he appreciates whatever.

he gets. And I still, you know, my youngest son, you know, I'm constantly giving him things to do. Okay. Yeah, he's the one that's going to go to college. He's graduating high school in a couple of days. He's going to college here in Tampa. And he's interested in the stock market, you know, but I think he's really gambling. He just to go. Oh, you know, stop. You're like it because he's gambling. That's why he liked stock market. Who are you bullshit. But anyway, he, he's definitely money driven, likes to make money. He has that, he has that bug that we all have. Is he born with it? Or you think that was... Or that was taught. He's been around me and he knows that money makes your life a lot easier, you know, or helps. And it definitely, you know, it's nice to go out to dinner and not worry about what the bill is, right? Well, you don't know. But, you know, luckily, I'm lucky with all my kids.

My kids have all got the bug to make money. And if I tell you the young one, listen, go do this, go do that. Listen, during the hurricane here, he was out there, filthy, dirty, shoveling sand, pressure washing, whatever the fuck we had to do, we do. You know, and he also, we go on a yacht, he works the boat with the captain, you know. He wasn't with us when you went, did he? No. Anyway, you know, I try to raise my kids to where they're definitely, what's the word I'm looking for? Motivated.

Motivated. Now, what would you say to parents whose kids are not hungry or motivated? I think kids, when you live with your kids, you spend a lot of time with your kids, typically a lot of them follow in whatever you do. You have to set the example and you have to put them in the environment. Okay, I put my kids in the environment. When Ben Jr. was in his first year of college and I saw he was just partying and having a good time, I told him college is not for you. You know, here's an address. We just bought the apartment building.

ship your car from California to Florida, go get an apartment over there in this building and take the shit over and saw collecting the rents to make sure he's fixed. And he did. Why did he do it? It was 19. It was 19.

Why did he do it? Did you like offer to pay him a lot of money? Well, yeah, no choice. I mean, it was either out or I had to walk away from him. I mean, I was going to keep paying 50 grand a year for him to party in school, you know. I mean, what are he going to do? You're not going to school.

You don't get, you take a... Cause you're not getting good grades. You had a good time for a year. I'm glad you had a good time for a year. Now go. And then this way, I'm also protected myself. By helping my kids, I'm protecting myself. Because now I'm almost 60 years old.

And I want to take a break. I want to enjoy life. You know, now let them take over and run everything. And now they all have the experience to do that. Did he resent you at all during that time where you pulled him out of school? No. How did he feel when you said, Sorry, no more partying, but you have responsibility.

That seems like such an abrupt change. Listen, he did what I asked him to do. I told him, go over here to Largo, Florida, moving the building he did. He took it over, and he was already grew up in the business, around the business. And he saw that how the business has helped the quality of our life because he remembers being dirt poor. I remember, you know, living really rough with my guy. I didn't when I was 18. So I was, you know, bad shape.

I was in the Army and, you know, Billy and Bickens meat. But anyway, I'm lucky. You know, all my kids step up to the plate. They do whatever I tell them to do because they know it's the right thing. And they get rewarded. Okay. They all live in, like I said, a million-dollar homes. They all have boats.

They all have fancy cars. They all can go on vacation. They all take, all their kids are in private schools. They all do very well. Does being rich make you happier? I mean, I've lived without. money, I wasn't very happy. So, I mean, you know, listen, it depends with, you know, am I happy all the time? No, sometimes I'm unhappy because I got issues I'm dealing with, but it's a lot easier living with money, yes.

My kids are getting a quality education, all of my nieces, my nephews, my grandkids, you know, my kids, whatever. They're all getting great educations. Why? They go to great private school. And, you know, and yes, they go on vacations and they enjoy their life. And it's a lot nicer having money. than sweating and struggling and worrying about paying your bills. At what point do you notice that quality of life change most dramatically? I mean, when you feel like you're not worried about the dinner bill anymore, I remember accounting pennies to buy lunch for my kids. Petties.

Making sure I have not to pay the California tax when you get two tacos for a dollar. A jack-in-a-box. They remember it too. I mean, you know, when you can not worry so much about paying your house note, And you don't have to worry about stuff on your cars. I mean, that's, you know, you're at a level in life where you can kind of relax. At least you know you got enough money to pay your necessity bills and you ain't got car payments and all that, you know, and you can handle an emergency when it comes up. I mean, it gives you some sort of comfort of having that stability in life.

Is you ever a point of having too much money where it just invites problems? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you know, not really because I got kids that have to think about leaving it to. So I always wanted to make as much money as I could. So I have enough to spread it around to everybody. You know, and then I want to, you know, be able to live when I'm worried about getting on my plane, you know,

whenever I want using a plane, a couple thousand an hour, whatever. You know, I want to go on my boat. And it costs $3 a gallon. I need $2,800 gallons of gas or diesel. I mean, I don't know. It's nice to have money and not have to worry about it. You know, my American Express bill came in today. and, you know, it was, you know, probably double what it normally was.

I didn't give a f***. I saw what it was. It was logical things. We don't piss money away. We don't waste money. I'm not a degenerate gambler. You know, so, you know, look, I got a car pool table, you know. It's nice.

And a lot of people when they first start making money, they're like, okay, I just need to make this amount and I need to have this amount of money to finally be happy. And then they get there, and then they raise that number. And then they get there and they raise that number. Yeah, that's what I did. I always thought I should have when I, I, I remember when I was younger, I always said, when I first became a millionaire, I said, I should have, if I'm 35, I should be worth 35 million. That was my weird way of setting my goals.

And then when I'm 40, I should have 40 million. And I'm 50, I should have 50 billion. But maybe the timing was right for me, because a lot of timing has a lot to do with it. I don't know. I don't really believe in luck. I believe in timing. He just happened to be at the right place, the right time. with the right money due to deal, you know, and then it grew to be, you know, I exceeded my goals,

put it that way. Okay. But even once you exceeded all of those goals. Did you really think about it anymore? You don't think about it. You just keep accumulating. You just keep doing it. If you're hooked on what you do and you're hooked on growth, money is the reward of busting

your ass and making deals and making shit happen. I mean, it comes. That's the reward. And your bank account grows and your wealth grows. but, you know, was that money driven? Yeah, because money was the reward. But I always had the hunger to find the next deal. Or better yet, have three or four deals going on at the same time.

That's what I like to do. What do you think of the biggest opportunities right now, speaking of timing? I mean, if somebody was a genius, they could figure out do all these empty office buildings, but I ain't seen that genius yet. I mean, opportunities always out there. You've got to look for it, and you've got to be persistent. I mean, you know, I was on the phone today with a sense. Same deal. It was $160,000 a unit about three or four months ago, all right? And the broker's

calling me today saying, you know what? I get the guy down at $130 a door. It's $30,000 a unit. It's a couple of hundred units. It's a $6 million less he's willing to take. But even at $1.30, I didn't like it. And, you know, I'm more comfortable than about a buck 10 or a buck 15. You know, I got to be comfortable with the deal. So, you know, but the point is I'm going to keep waiting or I'm going to keep making offers and I'm going to keep lowballing until the right deal comes, you know, and right now it's just moving slow, but it's moving. And if I can't buy, then I'm going to sell. If I ain't spending my time finding deals, then I'm going to be selling deals. What would you stay away from? Office buildings. I don't have any knowledge in

industrial. Industrial always scared me because there are such large spaces that if everyone empty and you need a specific type of business to be in it, it would be very dangerous. So offices, you got to know what you're doing in industrial. I mean, you know, it's all about finding a deal. Appointments are great. Retail's another animal. All right. There's only one way you're going to make money on retail.

You got to buy it with vacant space. Because when you buy it with vacant space, you're getting it for free. You're buying it on a cap rate. If you go out tomorrow and you buy 10 shops, okay, but only seven of them are rented. You're buying that property based on the rental income of those seven units. Do you have a three that don't have any income? They just come with the deal. And then you rent them out and then your cap rate goes up and you made money.

I always see those places that have like a 50% vacancy and they have these pro forma rates on them that they're just trying to price it. Because they're living in a dream world. All right, nobody buys on a pro forma, okay, that I know of that has any sense of real estate. Unless, apartments, yes. Because apartments, you pretty much know you can rent it. You know what the market is. You know the guy down the block is charging $200 more a month. Okay, so yes.

And apartments, yes. You can't buy in a pro forma if you're 100% sure that you can raise the rents and the market's higher by throwing in some new appliances or whatever you've got to do. do. But pro forma typically you don't see ever in retail. If you do it, and the sellers just dream and he's got his head stuck up as you know what. When you're negotiating in real estate, is money really the only thing that has any value in terms of negotiation? Or have you seen people win or lose deals due to personality or any other factors? I mean, everything in real estate is contractual. Okay. You got your terms. They got their terms. As long as your terms come to meet together,

you got a deal, all right? If people, it's not, I've never been emotional or anything, you know, like that with a real estate deal. I mean, I've done deals with snakes, guys that I knew were crooks, guys that went to jail for being crooks in real estate and other things. And I still did business with them, all right? Because as long as you know, you know that the guys are crook, then you know you got to watch every little thing you're doing. cover your ass a lot more than you would normally. But the point is, it's not emotional. I've come across people with all kinds of personalities, you know, and you just, you know,

you ignore it. It's not, number one, in my world, it's all done by brokers and lawyers. I don't really get involved. I mean, you know, I get involved by making sure it's a great deal, making sure it's what I want to buy. But as far as making a deal, I, just like, I don't know if you were there, right when you were there eating your hot dogs, I was telling, I said, I told my lawyer, You get the broker on the phone.

Let him deal with it. Oh, these people want this, they want that. And the broker says, okay, I'll handle it. All right? That's why you deal with brokers, you have lawyers. That's their job, you know, to make the deal happen. You just, you know, make the decisions. Now, in business, there's a saying that you could have better, cheaper, or faster,

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grand off. It's just a pleasant guy to deal with. No, I've never seen it happen on buy side or the sell side. It doesn't matter. It's all numbers. There's nothing, you know, personal about real estate. It's numbers. How much money's coming in? How much money's going out? But you're talking about commercial real estate. How does this apply to residential? I mean, you know, homeowners are a different breed. But even with homeowners, it's the salespeople that are handling the transaction. Okay. You know, unless you're doing, you're buying from our owner direct. okay, you know, that's different. I guess if you're buying them from somebody

and you shooze them over and you win them over. There was a crazy one I saw on Twitter recently. It was a handwritten letter to a family who had owned this home for generations in Hancock Park. And it was an old home from the 1920s and their only wish was not to sell it to a developer, but sell it to a family who's going to keep the home in its character.

And this person wrote this incredible letter and the seller posted this on Twitter saying this is the letter we got and they seemed perfect they were going to take care of it they were going to make this their own and they did the deal and they fucked them yep they tore the house down

immediately after closing they had pulled permit they were getting everything started the second the deal closed reminds me that old nursery rhyme or whatever or the old kitty thing with the three little pigs

they'll huff and they'll puff and they'll blow your house down But similar situation happened here. Similar situation happened right here in Clearwater Beach, right on the main ocean front here. The developers came in, this little old lady owned this nice house right on the intercoastal here, and some developer came in and he bought up everything around it and she wouldn't sell. So now she, and they did everything they could to piss her off and they cut off her power while they were building. They cut off her water.

They did all kinds of things to make her life miserable. to make her sell. She wouldn't sell. And she actually stuck it to him. I don't know what the name of the document was, but she recorded a document while she was alive saying that that house could never be anything but a single family residential house ever. And to this day, you get all these apartments and condos all around it and her house sitting right down on the tip of the land on the water. I always think about that whenever I drive on my boat. But yeah, I mean, you know, some people have emotional. You know, some people, you know, they're, you know, to me, it never was emotional.

I don't care. It's all about numbers. It's just real estate is a thing. It's material. It's an asset, you know, it's tangible is the right word, right? Would you place any value? Let's just say you're selling a shopping center or a gym and someone comes to you and says I worked out at this gym 18 years ago and I was broke.

I was coming up, and I said, one day I want to own this property, and I saved, and this is all I could afford. You're asking 12, all I have is nine. And this would be a dream, and I'll forever be appreciative to this. Would you do that? This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what?

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I think it really depends on the situation. I think there is certain ones why I'd be like, all right, screw. No. Over five, 10 bucks. You're such a lawyer. Okay, you're such a lawyer. Okay, maybe not millions. You are the biggest hitting venture.

I'm not shaving off a pettie. Who are you? Graham sold me a t-shirt that didn't fit him and hardly fit me. I know. And he never wore it once. And he sold it to me for like near market. It was a great value. I wore it like three times and gave it away for free.

You still trying to play the old California softy, whatever, or what do you call it, radical, liberal, whatever the hell they are. Anyway, the point is this. It has nothing to do with real estate in my world except the number. How much am I paying? How much is it worth? You know, what's the cash flow? If I'm selling, what's my taxes? How much, you know, it's all about me. It's not about you. For the average person, how do they negotiate? What would be your advice to teach people how to best get a good deal on something? You got to start low. But I'm not saying go ridiculously low, where it's, you know, just total nonsense, where somebody wants 500,000 of our house and you get off from $2.50. No, but you have to, you know, get it to a point where you know you're going to be happy as the buyer and they're going to still be happy as the seller. It's just a matter of two people finding the number. It's all about money.

It's all about numbers. You know, honestly, I don't remember ever having deals that were emotional. I mean, you know, oh, one lady was emotional once. It was very near here, but we didn't do the deal because what happened was she was an old lady inherited a bunch of apartments from her father. And she never ran them right. She ran them like and she she milked them for everything she could. And then I bought one of her buildings. And I went in and Vincent Handler, my middle son. He moved. He was the manager and everything. He fixed the place up. Made it really nice. Raised her rents. Um, ran it really like a nice building. And we sold it and made a lot

of money. And she found out. She got mad. She told the broker on the next building she was selling right near here, that he could sell the building to anybody but Ben Mala. Because I made money on a building. What he's stupid lady? You should have went in there and fixed the place up. You should have raised the goddamn rents. You should have added value. And you would have made more money.

But you didn't want to do it, you lazy old bitch. What's the fucking mad at me for? It's stupid to even be personal or real estate. It makes no sense. It's all about dollars and cents. You hear me? You said that in transactions, the only thing of importance is dollars and cents. When in your life have you made emotional-based financial decisions?

Have you ever had like a crazy rich person purchase that didn't make any numbers sense, but you just did it anyways? Well, you buy personal things. That's different. Real estate is not emotional. Never, ever. I never bought a place because I like this place. I like the numbers.

Now, cars, you know, boats, that's. That's totally emotional. That's a 100% emotional. What about other rich guy purchases? Like this would be an, like, I don't know how much that lion costs, but I can't imagine that it's very inexpensive. Anyway, these are just things that bring you some sort of pleasure. You like a painting.

Why do people spend 100 million on piece of artwork or 5 million to 10 million? Why? Because they feel like they enjoy it. They like it. That's emotional. Tax evasion. You know? Tax evasion.

Money laundering. He's always got a, he always thinks everybody's up to something. There's always a cynical agenda behind everything. There's a word for that. You always think that there's a conspiracy. You're a conspiracier. So what are some of the crazy rich person things that you've done? Crazy rich person things.

I saw, I came up and created a carpool table. I mean, not much. I don't do crazy things. Not much. I saw you in a video. You got stuck in the Bahamas because of bad weather. And so you flew cigarettes in a private jet to you. Like that's-

Cigarettes. It was cigarettes, which are very important. It was tequila, which is very important in my wife. And see, the plane also had to get my kids back to school, which I wasn't ready to go back, but they had to go back to school, the spring break. So the plane had to have a little. a lot of missions. It brought the camera guy out there. It brought my barber out there because I needed

a haircut. It brought cigarettes and necessities we needed. It brought a couple of friends I had that were coming on a boat because my kids are getting off the boat. I mean, I was a traffic management coordinating the United States Army. You know that. I know how to coordinate things. It's all about managing coordinating things, making shit happen without wasting money or time. Okay. I was under the impression that you literally just flew cigarettes and the barber. I flew him in because, I mean, all right, it made sense. There was a seat on the plane. The plane lands, okay, he gets off the plane. He comes to my boat. He gives me a haircut. He gets with my kids back on the plane. He gives my son a haircut while he's on the plane going home. I like time management. I love to manage my time

efficiently because, you know, you're getting done. And saving time, can't be saving money. What is the cost of owning a plane? Well, you know, everybody has their own way of owning them. You know, do I own it outright? I don't have a loan on it, but I have partners. So me and a couple of guys that I know really well, I trust, we share the cost of the plane. You know, you can buy planes anywhere from a couple of million up to who the fuck goes,

50 million or whatever, you know. Ours is probably worth. I don't know, a couple, a few million. Okay, it's good enough for what I use. I used to have two planes. I got rid of one because I never used it. So, you know, I got one plane. I got a couple of partners.

We're into it for, if the planes today probably weren't, I don't know, a couple million, a few million, then we're into it for, say, $750 a piece or a million apiece. And, you know, we pay for, we split the expenses, and we pay for what you use. If I'm going to fly somewhere, I got to pay for the gas. I got to pay for the pilot. How expensive is the gas in pilot? I mean, you know, the gas is going to run about, if I go to Fort Lauderdale and back, that's about 500 miles. That's going to cost me $2,500.

So what's that come out to be? About $5 a mile? Anyway, so whatever, that's what it is. That's typically what it costs. And it's about an hour. Oh, wait, it's $2,500 bucks an hour with gas pilot, you know. Well, no, not an hour because the pilot you got for all day. You know, you can use a pilot for up to...

Is it 12 or 14 hours a day? But after that, you got to give them a break. For how long? 12 hours or 24 hours? 8 hours? Yeah, I think so. Or something. But anyway, are there any safety issues of having your own plane?

I hear just the standing standard a little. They're all being, we have a management company and manages the plane. They beat all the requirements to make sure you get all the inspections and they check in everything. And the pilots are fabulous. They're brilliant. And my plane only takes one pilot, my jet. So, you know, that keeps the.

cost down too a lot, but hopefully they're all young guys, so hopefully we're in good shape. One thing I really admire in you is your ability to negotiate everything. Like I see you, I saw you in this one video where you're getting an Uber somewhere in like the Bahamas. And the guy was like, oh yeah, it'll be $35. And you're like, how about $20? And then the guy's like, okay. Yeah, we did $2. And then you're Gilligan, you know, you're like deckhand or whatever. He was like, it's $35. Like, but. The guy that makes, you know, $20 an hour, whatever he makes, you know, yeah, big shot with my money, right?

So do you negotiate every single price that comes your way? I mean, I grew up with the mentality of you shouldn't give away your money or you shouldn't have to overspend. I mean, if you want to make a lot of money in life, you can't go around wasting it. You got to, you know, so yeah, I have that, you know, we'll call it the Jew and me. I can say that I'm Jewish. But, yeah, I don't know. It's just natural because I know for a fact, listen.

Does it really matter that there's six of us or four of us in a car? No. So why am I paying more? You know what they're doing in the Bahamas? They charge by the head, ma'am. I charge you by the head. If you have six heads, I charge $5 a head. It's $30, ma'an.

Well, what's the difference whether it's four of us? If you order an Excel Uber, you could have one, two people. Does they want a big vehicle? You have six in it. Because that's their mentality. They want to get you for everything they can. And I'm there to say, well, wait, let's be fair now, okay? You don't need $5 a head.

When is it ever not worth your time to negotiate? I mean, you know, it's always worth a try. But if the person is just an who doesn't want to negotiate, and they just say, well, how important is to me to appease this person? And you do. You know, and then sometimes you give a little extra and you really get some benefits in life. You know, my wife was telling me, she said, oh, my God, because she's got six little kids

when I were in Hawaii right now. She says, oh, they're going crazy and the lady's acting like, you know what, that works here, and she's telling us about rules and all this. My wife learned

from being married to me for 22 years. You know what she did? She slipped her $100 bill. The rest of the week, the lady treated her like royalty. Kids can do it where to hell they want. You know what's interesting.

Owen Cook was saying something that nobody does, and that's negotiate higher. And so what he says, if you want to get the best deal on something, is if someone quotes you a price, give them more and say, well, how about I pay you double? What could I get for that? Depending on what it is, of course. It could be a service. It could be if it's a car, you know, the price is the price.

What are they going to do? Throwing for your oil changes? Maybe. But I don't know. I mean, listen, every situation is different. But I don't believe in overpaying for shit because saving money. making money. Thank you. He learned something today. What do you think is the weirdest thing that you've negotiated? A guy once told me he hated the price I offered for a property. He really was, he was,

he was emotional about it. Well, he was getting less money. And honestly, he could have sold that billing for more money, okay? He wasn't getting my terms. See, but you got to understand terms have a lot to do with money. But we'll get into that. The point was, and the story was, because he watched my videos. And that's the one time the video actually hurt me. He said, I'll take your offer, but you're going to give me a Batmobile. And it came out of like nowhere. It's just like, you know how somebody says something to you that you never expected them to ever say, right?

And the Batmobile, that Batmobile he got was really one of the nicest I've had. and it was signed by the real Batman and Robin and everything. It wasn't the wrong for the TV show, but it was worth a couple hundred grand. And I thought about it. And I eventually gave in, and I shipped it to him. So, you know, but I still felt like I was buying a building for a million dollars less than he probably could have sold it on the market. If you would have, you know, I mean, the place needed a couple little things done now, but whatever. The point was, I'm almost.

open to anything. Put it on the table. It's all about two people agreeing. You know, that's it. What's the most you've ever gained from a negotiation? Typically, the best negotiating I've experienced was with banks, buying their real estate, or I bought loans from banks. I bought loans for 50 cents in a dollar. How do you do that? When a bank has an non-performing loan, they want to get rid of it and they'll write off the loss they don't care they just want they don't want to go in front of their board

or they don't want their investors or anybody they don't want it they don't want non-performing loans on their books so they want it gone quick makes the bank look bad and once it's gone everybody forgets about it and you write off the laws and then blah blah blah blah blah

and that's the end of it and we move on so I've had most of my success with banks buying foreclosures, buying, doing short sales, buying notes, and then I foreclose or go make a deal with the borrower and do a friendly foreclosure. You know, I mean, but that's pretty much where you probably get your most benefit is when you're dealing with, because it's not personal. The banks just want to get rid of it. It was a deal that went bad.

They want it gone. They're not in real estate. Banks don't want to be in real estate. They don't want to own this. Then they got to have management companies. Then they got to have receivers. Then they got to, they're open to lawsuits. They have the liability.

They don't want to be in real estate. They just want to loan the money. They don't want to be involved in this. So, you know, banks are pretty much the ones that are most vulnerable when you're doing a deal. So you've been doing a lot of consulting lately. Yes. What's a common question that people come to you with? I mean, you know, typically everybody wants to know based on what their situation is, what's

the next step in the right direction. Okay, I get people from all different levels. I get kids, you know, in high school, graduating or whatever, or even younger. And, you know, and they want to know what the next move is. You know, they want to plan. They want to get cooking, baby. And, you know, so I look at what they got, who they are, where they're at in their life. and what would I do if I was in their shoes?

And that's what I try to tell them to do. You know, and whatever. I have guys that have $100 million to consult with me. I got people that have nothing. They're getting their first house. They've got to go to FHA. You know, I got some people that can't even raise the FHA deposit. You know what I tell them to do?

Because they have an interest in real estate anyway. Get your license. Okay? You go buy that house and you represent yourself and you found a house yourself. Well, FHA is 3.5% down. The commission's 3%. How much you get to put down on that $200,000 house? $1,000.

Does FHA allow you to use commissions on a closing towards a down payment? Of course, because, number one, it's in the closing. The money's going to you. Correct. To a money, you earned it. And FHA loans to real estate people and agents and everybody. Yes, they will. If you show them, you know, they're not illogical.

It would be illogical for the financial. them not to. That's what I was doing. When I was an agent, I would use my commission. It was a hassle. Well, back then, things had changed a little bit. Yes, sure. But I judge you so many.

You always had idiots. It's always questioned everything, you know. But if the lender is a real lender and they understand, listen, it's your money. You know, you earned it, you know. Yeah. What are the most frustrating calls that you get? Frustrating calls? Or people that you see.

People that have just got too much going on in their life and they're not ready for it. Like, you know, I have consults with people that just, they're trying to be big shots and they didn't earn it. We had the video about the guy in Vegas. He's driving a Lamborghini, okay? But he ain't got no money in the bank. Does that make any sense? I'm stupid. Why do you drive a Lamborghini if you got no money in the bank, all right?

When I say no money, I mean like at least 50 grand, 100 grand. Sell a Lamborghini and get your shit together. You know, you don't need it and you don't want. Everybody wants to be a big shop before they earned it, you know? How did he justify buying the Lamborghini? How did he? Like, what was his reason when you were like, why did you do this? Listen, you know, listen, I'm sure you've done it.

We've all done it. When I was young, I bought a Ferrari. I should have more. Okay. I really wasn't financially ready for it. When you're young and you're impulsive and you want to look cool and it's the only way you're going to get a girl is to have a nice car. You know, I mean, you do things that don't make sense.

and you have to, you know, you have to discipline yourself that, you know, yeah, it would be nice to have his Lamborghini. And, yeah, you know, I could have the, I make the payment, but then I want money for, you know, something else. Or I'll never be able to grow or never be able to save money. I mean, you can't make stupid decisions in your life. I've made them. I'll be the first to admit. I made plenty of stupid decisions, you know, when I was younger, but I learned from my mistakes. And I try to let people learn from my mistakes, like my kids especially.

I always tell them, listen, I've been there. I've done that. Okay, that was my mistake and don't do it. And if you want consulting from Ben, that'll be linked down below. Listen, I'm not bragging, but I don't know anybody out there that the average person, not the big shots maybe can call, they get real advice that I'm not looking for anything. I don't want to, you know, they're going to pay the fee because, you know, my time is valuable. I could be working on a $10 million deal.

Rafael crying, he needs to make money running the channel and coordinating and making appointments and all this. The point is this, I don't ever give people bad advice. Okay, I just tell them my opinion what I would do if I was in issues and I truly try to help them. How many other people do you know that you can, for a few hundred bucks, get on the phone that's worth whatever, 500 million or whatever, and get really good advice? to me, I become your friend. I'm like a friend.

I'm a real friend that you can trust and call to get solid, logical advice on your real estate. See, I honestly, I was telling you off camera, I think you're underpriced for where you are. I mean, if anyone books you, it's at a bargain. Like, they are getting the better deal. That's it. That's good. Well, now I can help people that don't have a lot of money. Yeah.

You know, because sometimes people who get on a phone, I feel bad. and I'll say, well, okay, because right away, I'm going to ask him, what are you making, what do you own, what do you got? I got to understand that person's life. And I'm making notes, okay, he's this age, he lives here, he's got this much coming in a year, he owns his house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay. And a lot of them, and, you know, for them an extra few hundred bucks is a lot, you know, to spend.

So I try to really help these people. And I've gotten so many compliments and so many people have come back and come back to me and said, oh, my God, I'm so glad I'm so glad I live. listen to you and I did what you said. I had people, families in the Bahamas coming up to me. You know, they were traveling from Miami. Families coming up to me and found, they heard I was there. They came to my boat, which I love. And they were just thanking me, thanking me, thanking me, thanking me, a Spanish family from Miami that listened to me and they made money. And the kids were there and it was great. I can attest to this. We, we were in the Bahamas and someone came up and

you invited them on the boat, him and his wife. I'm nice to everybody. And you, and you I'm nice to me. I'm nice to you. Carla made the margaritas. When somebody wants to say hello to me or take a picture or whatever, it's the most flattering thing in the world. I love it. And everybody I meet is always super nice, always.

I've never met an asshole yet. Well, okay, there was one Hasidic crazy Jew, but he was mentally ill in New York City once. I had to tell him go away. So you grew up poor and now you've made a fortune. What would you say are the biggest mentality shifts around money? that you've experienced. You know, when you have money, for me, it was being exposed to other people that worked hard their lives and were successful.

And I don't know. You could say it's, you know, moving up a class, it showed me the better way of living, okay? Yes. When I moved here, I still was kind of rough. I made a lot of, I made some good money before I moved here, you know, but I was never around like a lot of classy people. You know, people that, I was never around country clubs.

Now I belong to three of them. Okay? I wasn't able to expose my kids to a finer life, you know, with people just, and good people, nice people. I mean, they're not stuck up. I mean, you know, there's a lot of rich people in this area here that are just genuinely, really super nice people. And a lot of them came from nothing like me.

But, you know, they carried themselves and they lived a certain way, and I respected it and liked it. You know, at the nice house and, you know, and acting to raise their kids respectful, you know, and they talked like normal people and respectful people and had manners, you know. It's like I noticed my son, every time my youngest son talks to any adult, it's always yes, sir, no, sir, you know, and very respectful. And it really brought our quality of life and the way we felt how we lived a lot better. We've been using our sponsor, Notion, for years to keep the ice coffee hour,

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chime.com slash coffee. Chime feels like progress. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank, banking services and debit card provided by the Bank court bank, NA, or Stryd Bank N.A. Members FDICC. Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file, fees apply of out of network ATMs, bank ranking and other ATMs, according to US News and World Report 2023. Chime checking account required. Thank you, so much to chime for sponsoring this episode. What about your mentality to other things, such as like relationships or making money or other things?

Has those mentalities change as well, going from being broke to now being very wealthy? I mean, when you start making money, you ain't got time to be around losers. People that are just negative or people that are going the opposite way. I have no tolerance, whether I'm in business with these people doing with them or not. I can't even be around people that just don't give up. they don't care they're just going through life not trying and they have the ability to try that's the one the part that really pisses me off i've had people that i've worked for me that were smart they had and they had me to back them and they still do it but they're worried about stupid

like partying and chasing women or whatever chasing men or whatever the you know their parties aren't in order the kids ain't living like they should they just you know i don't like being around people that don't, they're going through life with just the bare necessities and not really trying, you know, and they have the ability to try, you know. If somebody doesn't have the ability in a nice person, I could tolerate them like you. How do you balance staying financially secure while also enjoying life? Is it much of a calculation in your brain anymore, like you budget a certain amount for certain things? I mean, I'm not a wasteful person, you know, it's just like when I took my kid this weekend for his graduation president to the Bahamas, you know, I

could have stuck us in the van and made him drive four hours to Fort Lauderdale. Okay, I could have done that. And I would have saved whatever. Few grand. Five grand, 2,500 there. I had to send a plane back. You don't pay to keep it there and whatever. Anyway, I would have saved the five grand if I would have made him drive the van.

And he would have done it. And he would have been happy, you know, but it's splurged. But, you know, for me, five grand, it's not going to make a break me. You know, it was, it made our life. easier. I pressed him and impressed his friends. You know, it made us feel like they were special. And it was definitely, you know, convenient, you know, so, you know, I don't waste money. I do things in moderation. You live your life in moderation, you know, and then sometimes, you know, I correct myself. I had a half a million dollar fan of sitting in a garage. And when the rates were going up,

and I'm saying, oh, what the fuck I have $500,000 sitting in the garage? I barely even use the goddamn car. All right? I went through the whole car phase, you know? So I sold it. $500,000, you know, sitting in the bank at that time is 5% even in a money market account. That's a couple of grand a month. I don't know. I just like doing what's practical and logical. That's the way I try to live my life.

Do I live in a $30 million house? Hopefully it's $30 million. I don't know what market right now is going down. But in Florida, you get a weird sense of buyers. It's different when you have a high-end house in Florida. You know, there's always people with money who want to come to Florida because if you homestead it, they can't take it away from you. The bank can't.

The IRS can, but nobody else can. Is there ever a price tag for you that just doesn't make any sense or just out of your league where you just wouldn't even consider it? Like what? Could just be any... Like a boat? Sure. I mean, yeah, I would not go out. Like, I want to buy another boat.

I'm selling mine right now. You need to buy my boat. You know that. I don't want it. You need those losses. So if I buy it low enough... That's not that... You keep mixing personal with with tax.

No, I think you could charter it temporarily, but then it's now an investment. Depreciate it and then sell it to me at a law, a substantial loss. You have to do that when you buy it, I think. They already be in a business. We'll talk about that later. You could transfer it to a Montana LLC for the purposes of chartering. You guys can come up with all you do this and do that and do this. I don't do that all that shit.

You know why? Because I sleep at night and know when the IRS will never with me. They got nothing to fuck with me on. So I don't cross the line or I don't even get close to the line. has to do with taxes. I just play it clear-cut. You know why? Because it's the tax system that made me who I was today. If it wasn't been at 1031, there is no possible way I would have grown to the level I've grown to. No way. The tax system that we have forced me, pushed me, to never touch the money and roll it into the next deal and defer the tax. That forced me to grow.

How much do you think you'd have if you couldn't utilize the 1031? I mean, I know right now, if I was to say I'm going to sell everything and just pay the tax bill, I probably owe about $50 million. It's fine. And it's definitely a possibility I consider sometimes, but I'm not going to do a whole $10.31. So I don't know. I might pay, I may not sell. It's a combination of a lot of scenarios. You know, when you're managing a portfolio and you're managing your wealth, it's a different.

job and you're constantly thinking about what's the right move to make you got to make you have to do your homework you got to sit down you got to calculate you got to calculate the tax ramifications on it you got to calculate the appreciation recapture depreciation cash flow there's a lot of the things you have to consider before you decide to buy or sell a property what do you say to the people who want to get rid of the 1031 exchange they're absolutely out of their crazy mind because the 1031 is what capitalism is all about, all right? It pushes you to grow, okay? It's making you want to do more.

Do you know, by 1031 and enforcing me or not forcing me, but pushing me to buy more? More materials I'm buying. More jobs I'm creating. More everything. It's just growth, okay? And that's how a person can grow on a personal level. It should take it to growth.

You know, without the banks and without the 1031, I would be a garbage man today. Do you think that capitalism has gone too far? That maybe some people are getting really, really, really wealthy and other people are just getting left behind. Listen, if people are getting wealthy legally. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void. And it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada,

reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. Because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. That's what it's all about. They're the ones putting forth the effort. They're the ones that are putting out the risk, you know, they're taking a risk, you know.

So how can you knock somebody? Listen, I'm sorry, but I believe because of the life I've lived that everybody can try. They may not succeed as well as I did, but they can better their life. Okay. When you can go out and anybody can take one course and one test for what, a few hundred bucks and get a license. and then get a loan from FHA and only have to put a half a percent down because you'd license, or you want three and a half percent. You know, you can go out and buy a fourplex for three and a half percent down, right?

Mm-hmm. I mean, we have these types of tools in our country that, you know, enable you to get ahead, and you should take advantage of them. And what about the theory that wealth inequality as it grows to a certain point can't sustain itself and you do get just a demise of the entire country when it becomes so unsustainable between the rich and poor that overall countries do better when it's a little closer to get rich or poor so now more people are rich is that what you're saying more people are rich and isn't it better more people I've never seen unhappy people being rich you have the rich extremes

well a couple cuckoos more extreme and the poor more poor basically I don't see there's becoming such bigger divide there's plenty of jobs out there for people You know, it's the individual, I think, that really keeps them down and keeps them poor. It's them. They need to train their brain to do positive things that are going to make their life financially more secure. Okay. A lot of people just don't have the mindset. They worry about stupid shit.

Okay. Or they get hooked on drugs. Or they get hooked on gambling. Or they get hooked on alcohol. or they're worrying about keeping up with their Joneses and their friends, you know, people need to focus on themselves. Forget about the rest of the world. Who cares what the, somebody's doing? Who cares?

What are you doing? What are you got? That's what matters. You got to get a plan for your life and everybody's got a different life. You know, I never went one day to high school, okay? But I always knew and if an opportunity came my way, I'm going to take it. And that's what I did. I just kept taking opportunities and maybe going a little fervent and the average person wanted to go.

So what's holding so many people back? Mentality. And what's causing that mentality, do you think? I mean, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, could it be to spending too much time worried about, you know, Instagrams and all this stuff online now? I don't know. A lot of people online making money. So there's two stories, two sides to everything.

It's the individual. It's their time management. What are you doing with your time? Did you accomplish anything positive today? Okay? Let me tell you something. I'll get depressed and pissed at myself. If a whole day goes by and I feel like I didn't do enough that I could have or should

have or, you know, I didn't do enough. Okay. I need to prove to myself. You know, I wake up in the morning. I'm thinking about, okay, I got this deal in contract. Is there anything I need to do on that deal? I need to call a broker. I need to call a lawyer.

Do I need to find out what's going on? Do I need to get repairs done over here? What do I need to do? All right? You got to keep your brain focused on what you can do and what accomplishments you can make and then you move on to the next thing. And next thing you know, you keep attacking things.

You keep knocking things out. And next thing you know, you know, then you look for more opportunities because you took care of stuff you had to do. Where do you think lack of motivation comes from? Like all of those friends that you had when you were a kid and you were growing up poor, you're probably surrounded by a bunch of other people that were broke,

and maybe they went in a different direction. Did you notice any strong distinctions? The problem where I grew up was they had the ability. They had the intelligence even, even though they weren't educated. I grew up on the streets. But they just didn't have to leave that world and apply the energy that they had

and the talents that they had, you know, from the street. to apply it in a legitimate way. If they were to take the effort and been a little more patient and put it towards something positive and legal, then they would have been multi-millionaires. You know, I ran into a guy

the other day, and this guy, he made me a lot of money, he made himself a lot of money. I won't say his name, but he was a Cuban guy from Miami. And this guy just had a personality where he talked and he was, we became great friends. We were like,

close, our families were close. Everything. We loved it. We'd go on vacations. We'd party. He loved to party. He was full of life. We had a great times. And he was bringing people buyers from Miami. And I was buying up to shit out of Orlando. And he was just finding buyers, doctors, these people, and selling deals. And he was getting me really good prices. And I was cutting them in with good commissions. And then I didn't even, I even let him come in as a partner once. And he was great about dealing with people and getting, you know, but he liked the party. He just, he, you know, I said, why aren't you here? You should be running this building. Let's get these units turned over. Let's get the carpet guy in here. Let's get the, you know, get on top of the rents we got to collect.

You know, what are you doing? Oh, you know, he's having a good time of Miami, you know, with the girls and the booze and the boats and, and that's what he wanted to do. And, you know, he always hustled and made a good life enough of living, but he never made, you know, where he could have been. He could have been major, major. Does that frustrate you to see that, that people can't live up to their... It doesn't frustrate me? I just know that when you show me that you're not on the same road as I'm on, then I got to get off the road or you got to get off, whatever.

I mean, the way I live is, listen, if I feel you're a productive person and you're positive to be in my world, then I'll give you a shut off my back. I'll work with you. Listen, I love to help people. I mean, that's been, honestly, all right, it may sound corny, but put it this way. Money can't buy it. I'm not going to say it's better than money, but money can't buy the satisfaction I get when I take somebody and help them go to another level or better their life.

I've had some serious stories of people personally coming to my events and telling me, you know, I've had like guys that I know had a wicked past, a very bad past, or they were in the game or gang bangers, whatever you want to call them. And they tell me this story on because of watching me and knowing my story and doing what I did. And they now take care of the kids. And now they're not getting into trouble. And now they're living, they feel so good about themselves that they'd be dead or in jail

like I was going to be. You know, if I didn't leave New York, I would be dead right now, guaranteed, guaranteed, or rotting away in jail if I was lucky. I mean, you know, it's a mentality. You got to want it. You got to want a good life. We're not here that long. Listen, you know, who knows?

10 years from now, 20 years to now, I probably won't even be here. Okay? It's going to be over. So, you know, make the most of it and the people that you brought into this world while you're here. That's what you should do. You know, and then maybe, you know, my kids will remember me, my grandkids will remember me and say, hey, yeah, I'm living good because, you know, my father did someone when his was here. He made it happen.

And then we made it. And then we're making it happen. And we all lived our life on this planet, you know, in peace and happiness and, you know, enjoyed it. Do you ever have concerns that maybe a few generations down, they just start wasting the money? I mean, you know, they've said that about every generation. You know, they say it in the 60s, they said the 60s' generation suck. And they said the 70s suck. But meanwhile, listen, you're either a loser or you're a winner.

It's up to you. You can be whatever you want to be. You have the power. All right. You wake up in the morning. What, though? you're going to do. That's the question. Do you know what you're doing? Are you doing something smart? Are you doing something that's going to lead to a better life? You know, are you helping

anybody? Are you making money? And it's up to you. But how do you ensure that you're like great grandkids don't go and take that money and say going to college? They go and buy like a... You can't. There's only so many things you control in life. All I'm saying is I'm doing the best I can to set them up for success. Now, hopefully my kids now are going to set their kids up like I said, my kids up and then their kids will be and we'll all keep living and growing in that same mentality okay by you know our living experience has it always been very easy for you to become motivated or have there been spells where you've lacked motivation for a couple months or a year I've always been motivated about making money because I knew money would make my life better okay make my life easier

and make my family happier and get my kids better educations and lifestyles I mean I don't know I've always been motivated since a very young age, even 10 years old. I remember thinking about, you know, because we grew up in a place where we had no money. So it was all about hustling and trying to think about how can we make next, you know, make next dollar. Do you notice any difference between generations in terms of motivation and work ethic? I mean, my kids, you know, which I don't knock them for it, but I, they don't have, well, maybe because they don't have to. See, I, I sacrificed being a parent when I was very young. I had to. I wasn't the best. I was in a parent. I wasn't the best parent. I wasn't mean in my kids. I took care of my kids. But my kids spent a lot of time

in the backseat or I'm running around in the worst neighborhoods buying boxes, fixing them up. Or then when they got old enough, I put them to work. I mean, you know, instead of taking them to baseball, which I try to do that, but they sucked anyway. I mean, I, I, I didn't, maybe I could have been a better parent, you know. And, but now, luckily, they're in a position where they can have the best of both world because of my struggle, you know, and they suffered and they struggled when they were young. So now it paid off in the long run because now their kids don't have to struggle like they did or like I did. I don't know. Hopefully we always talk about our kids being not spoiled. You can't spoil your kids. You can treat them good. You can give them whatever you want and can, but you got to

make them appreciate it and realize it didn't come out of the air magically. We earned it, okay? experience impacted you the most in terms of how you behave now? I mean, by growing up so bad and in such a terrible place, I always wanted a better life. I wanted to escape New York, you know, I mean, so that always, and then when I went to California, that was just as bad when I was in Oakland for 17 or 18 years. Was there ever a specific experience that happened? Like, you mentioned sleeping in a bathtub or something maybe that happened where you're like, okay, I'm never going to do this or, you know.

I've slept on trains, okay? I've been around, I watch people get actually right in front of me in Manhattan, New Manhattan, in New York and the Hell's Kitchen. I mean, the whole life experience of me growing up was no fond memories, just negative, negative, negative of people, the atmosphere, everything. So I was always motivated to get the hell away from it. Get away from these people. get out of here.

Go move on. There has to be a better life. You know, and luckily the Army, you saved my life. If you were to restart today, how would you do that? If you wanted to make $100 million over the course of a lifetime, assuming you're starting over right now. I mean, you know, these days things are all different, you know. I would still, you know, listen, I started by working for other people.

I managed other people's real estate. And then common sense told me, well, if you're making, them money, you can make your own money. So I went from managing and learning to ownership, you know, and then anybody can do that. You know, anybody can pick a field, any field and say, okay, I'm going to work for somebody else, learn that field, be really great at it and have a passion for it, and then I'm going to become my own. You have to become your own boss or you have to have your own company. You have to, what do they call it, you know. Self-employed.

Self-employed, proprietorship, whatever. You have to be your own person and your own create your own growth. You can't let somebody else see. You can't work for a paycheck for the rest of your life. You can't.

You know, you got to have some opportunity. Okay. It's like he's got an opportunity to bigger you grow, the more he grows. What sector do you think you'd end up pursuing? Would it be real estate? Would you try something new, like, AI?

Or do you think you'd go more the YouTube entertainment route? Entertainment, I do because, you know, we enjoy it. highly lucrative. You're making a lot of money. Yeah, it makes good money. Yeah. If you were to restart today, where do you think the most opportunity would lie and what you would pursue? I mean, nothing would compare to real estate. That you'd still do real estate, 100%. It's the oldest profession in the world next to, you know what? You know what the oldest one is, I'm sure.

It's the one that Graham is a frequent patron of it. But they had to, hey, they had to go rent the space somewhere, right? True. Yeah. It was the second. But I don't know. I always looked around and the real estate's always been the most solid way of making money. Listen, I could have been in a car business and buy cars and fix them and flip them too. I could see that. I did.

I used to survive before I owned real estate. I'd sell one Mercedes a month because I wasn't making much money in real estate. I was managing for other people. I would buy it in San Francisco where nobody could park. Parking is impossible in San Francisco. And people would sell that car. I just say, get rid of it. I'm tired of paying for parking.

I'm tired of dealing with it. And I'd buy him. I'd drive it over one bridge, the Bay Bridge, to Oakland. I'd put it in a newspaper ad and some doctor out of hayward or somewhere would come. I'd make five grand. That was my little hustle. And I used to finance it. Imagine that.

I would finance it because what the hell do I care. I mean, for one month, I'm going to owe the bank, you know, I think the cars were like 10 grand. I'm selling for 15, $10,000, even at $10. is a big thousand bucks. It was like nothing. I was using the bank's money. I'm curious, why do content at all, at least now in this stage of life? Is it for fun?

Is it for legacy? Is it money? I always, I wanted to be an actor when I was young. I liked entertainment. I always like being, you know, entertaining and, you know, but then now I'm doing entertainment and I'm teaching people. You see, you can look at all these big shot actors, okay? And I'm not knocking them.

I'm not. You know, all the guys, you know, you're talking about, whatever. And you can look at all the ballplayers. Okay. And you can look at all the singers. And you can look at all the dances. And all these people. Listen, they're very talented people.

All right. And they bring amusement and entertainment into your life. But it's nothing. Nothing. Not one minuscule of the satisfaction you get. When you can entertain. and help people. Okay.

Yeah, they're great actors and they tell a great story. But once the movie's over, that's it. You know, you saw the movie, you laughed, you enjoyed it. What else? That's it. I get to help people go through their life and improve their life. You know, educating people is very important. Okay, everybody needs education.

I need education. I learn it every day. You know, we all learn. And when you can help people and entertain them, it doesn't get any better than that. and make a few bucks while you're doing it. Now, what about implementing Bitcoin? Because I saw Grant Cardone when it comes to real estate is now doing real estate funds that are tied to Bitcoin, where he takes the rents to buy Bitcoin.

And when you buy one of his buildings, you're also buying Bitcoin. I can't get involved with something I really don't understand, and I would never, ever risk anybody's money in something that I don't know what I'm doing. So, you know, I'm not knocking it and I'm not for it because I don't understand Bitcoin and I've seen it all over the place and I know it's a new thing. And yeah, my son told me to buy it when it was a dollar. Ben Jr. He told me to buy Bitcoin when it was a dollar, even with a dollar. Why didn't you buy it? I think he was in college.

Why did you buy? Because you don't know. It's a dollar. It's a dollar. It could have been a fraud. It's a dollar. And it's run by computers. And you know who controls the computers?

people. And if the wrong people get in there, I don't know. You know, I heard all kinds of stories. You're good. You hear bad. I don't know. It's not my generation. Technology, I came when technology was born. Okay. I didn't really grow with it. That's the problem. Guys like you, I'm grown with technology and understanding is more part of your life. So, you know, what are you going to do? You can't do everything in life. Do you think it's worth it to take the time to understand it? Or do you to diversify three percent into it? It's always good to diversify because when you diversify, if something hurts you, it's okay because you've got some diversification there of other things to protect you.

So I'm not against it. And maybe if my son insisted or Aaron insisted, hey, let's open up a Bitcoin account or whatever, I'd say, fine, open it up. But I'd be doing it more for him than me. I'm in real estate, just like I don't loan money. I don't play the stocks anymore. I just do what I know. Because if I focus on what I know, I know I'm going to do well.

I know what I'm doing. This is going to either sound really stupid or really amazing 20 years from now. But I see a lot of people online, a lot of real estate investors on Twitter saying, I don't see the point in real estate anymore to try to bust my making 6, 7% when I believe Bitcoin is going to average 20 to 40% annualized returns. over the next 20 years. Why am I going to do that? But even at 10, why take the risk, the work, the- Everybody's different. Whatever works for you, you're in control of your life. If you have a risk tolerance for Bitcoin and go for it, you know, I hope you make a fortune. I know guys that

have made millions and millions of dollars of Bitcoin, millions and millions and I'm happy for them, but it wasn't my route. I focused on what I knew and I focused on necessity. People always need a place to live. People always need a place to shop. People always need a place to work. Real estate is the world. You can't live without real estate. You know, if Bitcoin, something happens

and a computer's go cuckoo tomorrow and everybody's Bitcoin can't find it or whatever to f***ing happened, computer chips or whatever, break down, whatever the fucking happens. Or somebody figures out a way to put it up. Someone turns it off. You know, you still got your house.

You buy your house. You got your house. You buy that building, you know, the people are going to pay your rent every month. I mean, listen, it's everybody, it's just like, why didn't you become a doctor? You know, you choose your path to life, and you choose where you want to put in your efforts and your time, and you go for it. You know, it just, you know, it wasn't me. Even stocks aren't me anymore. My youngest wants to, you know, and we will over the summer for his benefit to trade some stocks.

But I have no interest in it because I don't do six and seven percent. I do value add. I take garbage and I try to turn it to gold. physically, mentally, I create it. I make it happen. I'm in control. I'm not just saying, oh, Bitcoin should go up. I'm going to make money. What are you doing? You ain't doing it. I mean, to me, I like to make my money happen, make it, create it, you know, and just like, you know, you work for a living. You're creating your wealth. You're in control. If you make money, it's because you did it. Not because you invest in in Bitcoin. Yes, we got to have investments,

you know, and you pick your and choose your investments. I choose mini bonds. You might choose Bitcoin. Whatever works for you is fine. It's your money. You earned it. Looking back, is there a life lesson or philosophy that you've adopted that you wish you implemented earlier in life?

Sometimes I could have took more risk and I didn't do it. I always played it a little too. I didn't, I could have bit off more than I could chew. I said it right. I could have bit more off. And I could have shoot it. Could have swallowed it. I could have, well, I don't know if you'd like to swallow, but that's another thing.

I don't know that's that. The point is that, you know, my son's doing to me all the time, and it actually gives me a physical pain. We drive it down the street. You know, we could have bought that bill it five years ago for half of what it's sitting is now. You know, we could have bought that bill. I could have bought a lot of shit. Why do they say this to you? They just rub it in?

No, but listen, you know, the facts and the facts and the truth to the truth. Did my kids tell me to buy more property back in the day? And I said, no, I don't think so. The market's already at a height. I didn't see it coming. I didn't see rents going from 800 to 1600 in such a short period of time. You don't have a crystal ball.

Now, I did pretty good so you can't beat me down. But could I have done more. I could have done a more. I could have been a multi-billionaire. if I would have leveraged all the assets. I could have leveraged a lot more stuff than I did. I had the down payment. I could have bought up a ton of shit, but I didn't do it.

I didn't want to over, you know, bite off more than I could chew, and I could have chewed it. But, you know, it could have went the other way. My kids always say, well, you know, it could have went the other way, Dad. You know, the market could have went down or it could have stayed the same and you'd be stuck with all these. So, you know, nobody's got a crystal ball. You don't know what the future is. You can predict it. You can sometimes apply logic to it.

Like, yeah, if an Amazon place gets built up in an area where it's a deserted area and you know they're going to have 2,000 employees there, then you know damn well it pays to build, right? And you know it pays to build retail and you know it pays to create a community, a housing community. That's common sense. It's interesting. I hear that a lot, actually. When I ask people what their biggest financial regret is, especially people that are like doing well, Financially, they always say, I wish I could go back in time and have bought more equity, more assets, and invested more aggressively. But I also wonder if that's a little bit of survivorship bias, because they're here, they're doing great, by all means.

Sure, they could be doing better, but to do better, you have to have a completely different framework. Instead of being conservative and calculated that applies to every action in your life, you would then become risky and aggressive. And then that's what it would think. And you don't know where that would have also. led you. And so it's like... But I came from being a risk taker, but even though it really wasn't risk, I don't know, it's hard to explain. You know, I always tried to do deals that I knew for a fact I was going to make money. I knew that if I bought this property, I know I can raise the rents if I do

A, B, and C to it and manage it better than the last guy. So there was no risk in everything I did. You know, I always knew ahead of time, I'm making money. the day I buy this place because I know what I got to do. I know what's going to work because I already know what the market's going on. Now to predict the future, that's a different story. Now, what about rising insurance costs right now? Because I know that's a huge. It actually came down this year. I just, I just insured my whole portfolio and we got about a 15% savings. How did that happen? Because insurance got so high. People stopped using it. In fact, you know what I stopped doing? If I didn't have a loan on the property, I didn't get insurance. I only got a liability

because they get sued if somebody got hurt. I said, I'll be the insurance company. If there's a fire and it costs $50 grand or $100,000 or, you know, God forbid the whole place to burn down, which never happens. I'll rather take the risk than just give that kind of money to the insurance company. Insurance on apartments were always $300, $400 a unit, right? Now they're $1,800 a unit. All right.

In Florida, we get hit hard because of the hurricanes and all that. The problem is this. The insurance companies are the biggest crooks in the world. I'm sorry, it's true. Because they don't have no risk. You know why? Because if they do get hit with big claims, okay, and I've seen it time after time again.

They get hit here in Florida with big claims on hurricanes. What do they do immediately? They raise everybody else's rent and make us pay for it. That's what they do. So they recapture all the money they paid out. I heard another strategy that they use is not to pay out the full amount. they claim some sort of loophole or whatever. They expect a certain amount to settle.

And then the lawsuits, they expect they're going to spend X amount fighting this and we're going to spend X amount fighting this. So therefore, it's better for us to fight this thing to try to settle for less. Most insurance companies like to settle if they can because they don't want to deal with lawyers and they don't want to run up legal bees. We deal with this all the time. I mean, and the lawyers have driven the claims up so high now that it make no sense. They've been just totally ridiculous.

With something, the lawsuit that should be 100,000 is now 500,000. I mean, you know, it's crazy. The courts and the lawyers have gone nuts with lawsuits. Is there any solution to this? Stop, you know, the lawyers want to make a fortune. You know, if somebody has a million-dollar claim in a car accident, you know, how much the lawyer gets? 30%. 30%.

40. 40. 40. You're right. Imagine that. They're going to make $300 off of somebody's car accident. The lawyers have driven the settlements all the way up to the top. And who runs the courts?

Who are the judges? X lawyers. They control the whole system. The system is, you know, they're not going to go against their own people. And lawyers kind of have this, like, bond. Well, the hard part is that it costs so much to defend a lawsuit, even if it's baseless. Yeah, lawyers are charging ridiculous money at hour now. And then they got to hire people.

They've got to charge for this. It's crazy. You know, a good lawyer is going to charge 500 bucks an hour now. It's ridiculous. An hour. Do you think it could ever be feasible that we implement the system in the United States or if you pursue a lawsuit and you lose, you are responsible for the other person's legal fees? You know, sounds logical, but technically sometimes you can lose and really not, you know.

Deserved to lose. Yeah. Or maybe it was a, you shouldn't have lost so much or, you know, I don't know. I try to stand in the court system because it's just very, very tricky. But do you think that might cut down on frivolous lawsuits? I feel like instead of having to resuit.

And then he had frivolous lawsuits. Yeah. Publix. No publics, right? I think they get sued like, I don't know how many, if you count all the lawsuits, they have a slip and falls in most of a. All right.

You know, like constantly, like every day they have lawsuits coming in. It's crazy. It would be interesting instead of having to re-sue for legal fees to sue them back for legal fees, it could just be a part of the dismissal process where the jury then decides, okay, you sued. It was frivolous to this degree, 70% frivolous.

You pay 70% of the loss. Here's what you're going to have. But then if somebody sues you for a frivolous lawsuit, nine times out of ten, they ain't out of pot the pistons. They ain't getting shit anyway. That's true. So what's the point? There's no risk for someone.

The problem is you got the people in life that are who's trying to over and have some slick way of beating the system or doing something that's crooked. or doing something that's shady, and they're the ones that ruin it for everybody that really tries to do the right thing. What if there's a database for lawyers and you can go back and see their history of performance in the court of law

and that evidence and data could be used maybe? No, because most lawsuits settle outside of court. They're not going to go to a jury trial. It's easier just to settle and get 20. Either way, we don't need to solve this. I don't think you have a solution. The lawyers get paid regardless. Yeah.

Unless they took it on contingency and lose. To single guys out there, because that's a lot of our demographic is like men, 18 to 35. You have had plenty of experience dating, right? What would you say most- Not dating. Mating. Okay.

What would you say most guys are getting wrong in terms of dating? You know, you can't get too caught up in a relationship at a young age. What is a young age, how it holds? 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 18 to 25. And then it depends on what you've accomplished while you're 18 to 25. You can't get into a relationship unless you got your shit together and you got your life on track and you're, you know, you're moving in the direction you need to be and you're, you're self-sufficient, you know, and you're stable.

And then the other person should be stable too. I mean, you know, and then, you know, I mean, really, you shouldn't really be getting, I wouldn't see people having kids to like 30. I think 30 is probably the right year to maybe start thinking about having. kids if you're successful and stable and comfortable in your life. Isn't that early? Because if you're 20, let's just say you're 26, you got your life together and you meet someone. Then it's also like, well, you got to date him for a few years and then you got to get married and then it's like another year and then and then you're 35.

Okay. Whatever. Listen, everybody's different. You never know. It's all about meeting somebody that's going to make your life pleasant and productive, whether it's money wise or home life, like my wife, she don't work, but I still feel like she's productive because she's got her responsibilities. She's got the house. She's got the kids. She's got our life. She's got, she's involved, okay? You know, it's got to be people that, and we're opposites, a hundred percent opposite in every way. Imagine that. You know, it's funny how you say, oh, this person likes doing this and I like doing that. Me and my wife are opposites, and it works. I mean, everybody's different. We're all human. But, you know,

You really shouldn't get caught up in a relationship until you got your own together and you got some money, you got your career going, you got your goals set, you're on the right track, you take care of yourself, you know, and, you know, because dating, you can start dating, you can start spending money, you know, you want to wind and dine, you want to have a fancy car, you know, you want to have a nicer place. A lot of people don't want to struggle. They don't want it, they want it right now. They want to live it now.

And that's how they fuck up their credit and, you know, and then put themselves in a holy king get out of. That's the worst thing in the world is to dig yourself in a hole where it's almost impossible to get out of. Do you think guys should pay for taking the girl out every single time? I mean, yeah, I think that, you know, he's still a man. Okay. I mean, I think, you know, it depends. I mean, you know, to me, yeah, you're a guy and you date to a woman. Listen, no matter of all the crap that goes on these days, it's still pretty much expected, you know, it's funny. All these women women's lib and they want to be equal, but when you go out to dinner, they sure want you to pay the bill all day. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know. It's just, it's a human custom, I think, that's been just the man's a man still, you know, and typically, let's face it, you know, men make more money than women. And men, women ain't going to do a lot of jobs men do. So are there certain things, though, in a relationship that you would say look out for this, beware of this, that you've learned, this is like a bad character.

You got to know when the flags pop up and the signals pop up. So what are signals that you should be privy to? Anything that you feel is not, you know, conforming with your life. I mean, you know,

when you stop seeing like people, you know, like you like a girl and she's whatever, super hot and she got a lot of good qualities, but maybe she drinks too much. You know, maybe that's, you know, not, you know, a good sign. You know, if they overindulge in anything,

you know, in moderation or, you know, I mean, you know, the person's got to match you and what your goals are in life. You know, if they want to constantly worry about party, party, party, then, you know, it's not going to get you nowhere. It's going to take you down the wrong road, you know, because the party is over the next day and you forget all about it anyway, so what the hell? How much more did it motivate you to make money and be successful having a wife and having kids? I mean, you know, having the kids definitely was a motivation knowing that I need money. I got to pay for these kids food. I got to pay for these kids. I got to have a decent place to live.

I got to have a decent car to get around with. I got to have them in school. I cause money. Kids are not cheap, you know, and you don't want to, you know, have a kid and raise them like, you know, a piece of shit like I was raised, you know. See, coming from such a bad upbringing made me, you know, have a more bigger design. to really do well for my kids and give them a good life. We're going to go on to some rapid fire questions, if you're ready.

Perfect. Yeah. So what's the most ridiculous thing you've ever bought that you absolutely love? Probably my statues, like the pelican out there. There's a pelican out there that looks over the beach and is an eagle. How much were those? I don't know. Somewhere between more than five, less than ten.

Batmobiles. Cars. Yeah, Batmobile is. Yeah, that mobile is definitely... I had a lot of them. I had the ones from the movies or the wings. Yeah. I had the one when it shot fire out the back.

I had the machines that came up and shot. You know, you get in these little kicks. But I made money on this stuff, too. Yeah. You know, creating this thing. I mean, I've done all the crazy things, you know. Mostly cars. What's one thing you refuse to spend money on no matter how rich you are?

Refused to spend money on. Air. I hate that when you go to a gas station. and now you've got to put your card in. You don't pay for air. I thought it's free if you just go and ask for it. It's in California. No, but now they got machines on every gas station.

Yeah, I always go and walk in. That might be a California thing, though. I just walk in and ask, hey, could you shoot it on the air? Sure. No, they don't care. They don't care. No, they're going to pay for them. Right there.

Yeah, there's always quarters. It's a fucking compressor in the ground. Yeah, but I always, I walk in. It was some kind of convenience for ripping us off on the gas. I always walk in and just ask and the guy's like, all right, clicks the button. and it turns on. Not here. It's error.

You got paper here. Which do you enjoy more? The chase and negotiation and structuring of a really good deal or the moment you close? Finding the deal. Once you find a deal, everything else is programmatic. Programmatic, whatever the word is. So it's the- Once you find that deal and you know you got that deal.

Everything else, you get it. You get it. You close the deal. You got the money. Close the deal. You fix it up. You know, and then you can start making move. But finding the deal is the key to real estate.

Everything else is easy. You can hire somebody to fix shit. You can hire somebody to manage shit. You can, you know, finding that deal with value head components. In one sentence, what is one piece of advice that you would love to give to your 20-year-old self? Focus on making money and not, you know, having a good time, you know, worrying about having a good time. I mean, that's the biggest problem that 20-year-olds do. You know, you're just, you know, and it's natural, it's human nature, I guess.

You know, you can have a much better time when you're 30 and you're rich. Okay, spend your 20 to 30 years, 20 to 30 to 10 years doing everything you possibly can to get ahead. So you won't have to work so hard when you're 30. And then when you're 40, you'll be even better. And when you're 50, you'll be even better. I mean, really put the time because you got the most energy when you're 20 years old. I worked, you know, I partied, but when I first started, when I was 20, I know damn well, I worked constantly for the time I got up, you know, except the weekends in your party. I was working probably 16, 8-hour days.

And you would have wanted to work on the weekends to add that time. I did work on the weekends and I, you know, really started getting hooked on, you know, knowing, hey, I got to get the shit done. Because the quicker I get it done, the quicker I can make that money. So, you know, but party it was always the biggest problem. I was chasing, you know, when you chase a, you know, all that's going out and clubs and drinking. What do you feel? How do you feel about that, Jack? It's really a waste of time.

You know, I mean, you can do a little. You can do it in moderation, but you can't do a lot of it. And you can't get hooked up on what your friends are always doing and trying to keep up with your friends. You know, having money in the bank, I'm telling you, that'll protect you for the rest of your life and lead to a great life. I mean, I don't party and go out that much. But I'm talking like pedal to the metal, like head down 10 years, 20s. I disagree. I think 10 years is a really big sacrifice.

I think if you're like you should do everything within reason. So like if you know the general idea of the life that you want to live when you're 30, when you're 40, when you're 50, when you're 60, add on like 30%, maybe 40%, and shoot for that. Oh, I'd say double it. It's like I got friends, people like, you know, friendly with. And they say, oh, yeah, when I was 20, I was back. backpacking and traveling the world and, you know, and all that great experience and sleeping in hostels and, you know, they claim it was a great time. But today, they're broke. If I want to go

travel to all the places you were backpacking to and all that, I'm going to get on a plane and stay in an ice hotel. I'm really going to enjoy the place and enjoy the experience. You should have been working when you were 20 years old, not sleeping in the street and traveling all around. I mean, you know, but, and now they cry to me how broke they are. Well, you're broke because you controlled your life, okay, you know. Well, in fairness, we hear a lot of the other side of the token as well. So a lot of other people say, I wish that I enjoyed my 20s a little bit more. Gary Vee.

Actually, we asked him like, well, what is, if you could go back in time, what would you have done? And he's like, I just wish that I would have let myself enjoy my life a little bit during the 20s. So it's hard to say. Then he might not be enjoying as much now. True. Yeah. But then again, your body can do that. And he might not have what he has now to help if he has kids.

I don't even know what you're talking about. But, you know, listen, I don't know. I think you got to earn, you earn and you make shit happen, then you enjoy life. That's the way I think it should be. I agree, but I don't think. And I made my mistakes. Don't get me wrong. Yeah.

I don't think it's like on or off, like a light switch. You can do a little, you find a balance. Yeah. moderation. Everything is good in moderation. Drinking is fine. Eating is fine. Travel is fine.

Everything, party and whatever, in moderation. But the main focus of your life has to be moving ahead because the clock's ticking. And one day, you're not going to be able to do it. Time is up. Clock's ticked and you're done. You know, or you're too old to do. So time is so valuable. People don't appreciate the value of time.

That's the biggest problem that people don't realize. Because by the time you know it, you're going to be 30. And you're going to say, oh, I still got my shit together. You know, I don't have money in the bank. And I don't have, you know, where I really wish I was at. I would agree with that. I think it's the main focus that you should have in your 20s. I'm not saying you should never go out to a restaurant.

You should never go out on a date. You know, but you do it. But then, you know, you have a little entertainment in your life. Yes, it's important. You're human. But you can't do too much. Yeah. I think I sound more like a contrarian than I actually am.

Because I agree it should be the main focus. It just shouldn't be the only thing. focus. Everything is right in moderation. Everything is right in a proper place. You know, you have a proper time set aside to focus on growth. You have a certain time where you have to maintain your responsibilities. You have a certain time where you spend with your kids. You know, you have to allocate your time accordingly and logically, but growth has to be a driving most important thing. You never sacrifice the time you need to spend growing and pushing to get ahead on stupid shit. That ain't going to do something.

The next day, oh, wow, I went to a concert. Big deal. You had a good time at a concert. How's it going to help you tomorrow when your ass is broken? You spent all the money on a concert. I mean, you know, you got to think logically and sensibly. And hopefully one day you will. I hope so, too.

Ben Mala, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. Thank you for coming to my house and occupying it. Thank you for having us here. I got to say I've seen this house in plenty of different videos. This is way more impressive. And I had very high expectations. This is way better. It's beautiful, man.

That's really a gorgeous house. Well, it all could be yours. What low price? As long as it has a three in front of one. Two, zero. Two, zero. How about it could be a three in front of the one, 13? Well, because you're a cheap bastard.

That's the one behind a one. You always want a bargain, but, you know, that's fine, you know. But the people that I'm going to sell this house to are not really going to care that much. They're going to say, well, I'm paying what the going rate is if I wanted three lots on the Gulf of America. My wife's pissed about that, you know. Why does he do that? Does he do it just to irritate people, adult from America? Probably, yeah.

Is that just part of his obnoxious ego? I mean, don't get me wrong. He does things on purpose because he knows he likes to shock you. New Yorkers like to shock you. They like to stick it in there and start some. That's the New York mentality. I think he just likes being taught. And it helps a lot, but sometimes he goes a little too far.

Also, it's like cementing his legacy. Like if that sticks, then he's the guy that turned it. Yeah, I'm the guy to change it to go from America. Anyway, it is what it is. But where we're at? I was saying thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting us into your show. house and guys if you're interested in some consulting.

Go to Ben mallet.com and consult with Ben. Okay, because you're not, I'm not bragging, but I'm just going to tell you right now. You're not going to find anybody with 30 years experience has accumulated all the real estate wealth I have. That's going to give you a straight answer, not with a hidden agenda, and looking to take anything from you. Just help you out and get you on the right track and answer questions if I can. And if I can't, I'll try to find the answer or, you know, find somebody that does have the answer.

And you need to raise prices because I think you're underselling yourself. But if that's an opportunity, you're looking at a crazy deal. That's an opportunity for you guys. This is arbitrage opportunity. I'm not looking to get rich on it. We're not making any money off this, by the way. I'm not looking to get rich on it. And then upsell it somewhere else and then profit the difference.

I'm not looking to get rich. You know, I already am considered rich, I guess. So, you know, it helps a little, but I like helping people. Okay. Imagine if the whole world helped each other. Can you imagine that? How better a world we'd all live in? I don't even know.

Why are we fighting wars anymore? Why are we even going to violence and destruction and all? Why are there so many fucking idiots still in the world? If you were in charge, Ben. Can't they solve any problem by pretty much money, you know, or, you know, necessity they need? I mean, I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand what it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

How they can take something that's running and good. and destroy it. Blow up buildings, destroy people's lives. Where does it benefit? I don't understand. There's no benefit in it. There's no, there's nothing in it for anybody. And then if you do win, all right, now you're stuck with a bombed out place. What the fuck is the point? What is the problem here? And whenever people have conflict, they need to sit down, okay, and there's two sides to every story. But, you know, the problem is that I think we're dealing with people with just irrational. The Middle East has always been irrational. They're just, they're not rational.

And then the communists are not rational because they want to control everything. It makes no sense to control people. For what? You're not here that long. What is Putin in the 70s now? He ain't going to be around that long. I see the 70s. He's pretty ripped though.

He's a good shape. Wow. But, you know, why? Why? There's no reason in the world to kill people and destroy people's lives. there's no logical reason for that. I can't think of one. I just don't.

I can't. When things are peaceful, let it be peaceful. If you have differences, then figure out how you can work those differences out. But to kill people and destroy places makes no sense to me whatsoever. It just makes no sense. Humans, I'm sure with all the technology we have, we're going to planets and all the AI and the computers and all this. You know, let's face it, humans evolve very quickly lately, too, if you notice.

I mean, think back only 50 years ago how the world was so different, but we can't be human and treat each other with respect and, you know, and just get along peacefully. I don't understand it. It's like we're animals. You know, we got to get rid of that animalistic mentality, okay, and not even let it be tolerated in society, you know, and all the criminal. There's no room in this world for criminals. People that want to hurt you or, you know, rob you.

There's just no room for that. There's just no room in the world anymore. I'm surprised that we haven't evolved into a more peaceful society. You know, it's unbelievable. You guys got to vote Mala 2028. Not the job for me. I feel like you'd be a good president. We'd at least have really good infrastructure and housing.

Good negotiations, too. I could have served terms. I could have to come to the apartment of HUD, yeah. I mean, listen, affordable. I believe in everything. I believe in affordable housing. I believe in helping people. And it makes the world a better place.

But the people that don't want to act right, there's just no room for them in society. I'm sorry. You know, how many millions of people are in jails? It's ridiculous. And why are they there? You know, and how did they grow up and how did they get there? We need to change our whole society. And eventually, all the cuckoos and bad people will just eventually die off from now.

natural causes or whatever, kill each other, and then you'll just have good people left in the world. I don't know. It's, I don't know. I'll be answered, but maybe you guys do. Maybe you won't do. You're the new generation. We'll work on it.

You're the new generation. AI, I'll figure it out. AI. Guys, thank you so much for watching. It really means a lot. Thank you, Ben, for inviting us in your house. Thank you. And until next time, see you guys.