Leaving Wall Street for Main Street: Breaking in to Passive Real Estate Investing with Steven Libman

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Steven Libman  0:00  

So you get all that cash flow for free based on leverage, and then you get to take an even bigger tax cut and then you get to pay even less to the government because of just where the money sits.

Taylor   0:13  

Welcome to passive wealth strategies for busy professionals. Today, our guest is Steven Lippman from integrity buildings group. Stephen has a long career in real estate investing, first starting as a wholesaler and a flipper, and he has now moved into buying Self Storage, student housing and multifamily real estate. Today you're going to learn about the advantages of moving your wealth and your assets from Wall Street, the casino on Wall Street to cash flowing real estate on Main Street. 

We're going to talk about all the impact that he's had for his investors in getting their wealth out of that wall street speculation into cash flowing real estate assets. This is a Really fun conversations. He's a fun guy. We talked for a while before we hit record, and you're going to enjoy this one. Thank you for tuning in.  without further ado, here's the interview. Steven Libin. Thank you for joining us today on passive wealth strategies.

Steven Libman  1:18  

Yeah, man, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Taylor   1:21  

I'm happy to talk to you. We've been talking for a while before we hit record and we are very much of the same mind that a lot of these things and I'm looking forward to bringing a lot of you're bringing your message to our listeners. But before we get into that, can you give us your background in real estate and what brought you to where you are now?

Steven Libman  1:42  

Sure.  I graduated from Boston University in 2004, dabbled in a couple of different industries and sales and then I landed in real estate, worked for my sister in law, she opened a brokerage so I was doing some real estate agency sales, then it became a broker worked with a bunch of investors saw that they were fully Some houses and making some money and I was finding them those houses.  

I thought I think I might be able to do this myself.  then we got into some wholesaling that was 2007 eight, and was a seven, eight, no 2011 sorry.  2011 we got in some wholesales and we've grown to be the largest, at least one of the largest wholesalers in the state of doing a couple hundred deals.  we've flipped probably over 1000 houses out. it was a lot of work. it was a very much earned income position.  

I think a lot of people that read Rich Dad, Poor Dad or get involved in this business think I'm going to create financial freedom, and I'm going to get out of the rat race and going to create passive income We've created a great business. But that's all it was. It was a great job that we had.  so we started looking for to get into the commercial real estate space, multifamily student housing, self storage. We've partnered with some amazing co sponsors. so far this year, we've closed on about $45 million worth of assets. we have another 28 million or so under contract, and we have effectively shut down the residential side of the business.

Taylor   3:31  

Wow.  I mean, there's there's a lot in there.  I want to start with or at least comment on the wholesaling and flipping aspect that you used to do and you're you've moved away from you mentioned, it's a business.  you would not rate that either of those you would not rate either wholesaling or flipping as a passive wealth strategy.

Steven Libman  3:55  

No, not at all. I mean, if you've read cashflow quadrant, There's four quadrants, right? You have the W two employee when you're working for somebody, and then you have the small business owner, that's me, that is working and paying more taxes than everybody else because you're self employed, and you're paying taxes a few ways.  then there's large business owners that have some significant tax benefits, because they have 500 or more employees.  

There's just one of those of those quarters that call themselves investors.  that's the I quadrant, and that's where passive income lives, that's where your money is making money without taking your time. That to me is, I mean, that's the message of your podcast, right? This passive wealth strategy, and flipping and wholesaling is not that it's it's very active.

Taylor   4:46  

And that's why flipping for example, is taxed at such a high rate compared to anything that's considered a capital gain when we make the investment but you know, when people are getting into real estate investing Start with what we know. Right? Because we don't, we might not know about syndication but we know about flipping because look, HGTV people know about it. 

They think it's easy from HGTV, and it's certainly not easy. But that's what we're going to talk about today is getting into more of a real estate, a real estate investment strategy, from the investments that you know about on Wall Street, and moving those investments to Main Street.  you work with a lot of investors, maybe almost exclusively a lot of investors who are used to being or started as investors in the stock market, and now they're investing in passive real estate with you and making How do they make that? Or how do you help them make that mindset shift and get into real estate investing?

Steven Libman  5:51  

So it's the same way I did, right. It's education.  there are three levels of education. I think that people all put education in one bucket, but It's not you have your kind of elementary education right you're reading writing arithmetic, right and then you have your professional education which is getting you your PhD and understanding how to do work and how to earn money.  

then you have your financial education and your financial education I think is the most important and least talked about and educating your investors about their finances is you know, just like doing what you've always done to get what you've always gotten. People just they put all of their money in the stock market and kind of pray when they go to bed that it will be there in the morning. I don't do that anymore. 

Right I mean, the multifamily and self storage and student housing spaces, I know that the rent is going to be paid x y&z i could see based on history that commercial real estate assets are significantly more secure than the stock market when compared side by side over the last 200 years.  it's really just a an educational component and you also have to remember, it's relatively new. it's not that people are naive to it because they just choose not to be. I mean, in 2012 the JOBS Act is really what gave us the opportunity to invest in these things. 

But unless you know sponsors like you and me, you can't really go to your fidelity agent say, hey, put me in real estate, he's going to put you in a real estate, Investment Trust, right, you're still going to earn four to 6%.  we gotta do is cut out Wall Street, cut out the middleman and say you're allowed to the IRS sec allows you to directly invest in the things that you know, like and trust with people that you know, like and trust.  

here's why it's better. Here's why it can be more secure.  here's why you get to take control back of your life and over your finances by choosing what investment class you want to be in.  the biggest thing is, is education. It's talking to people about doing it, it's talking about money openly. It's talking about why choose this over Wall Street and It just you have to start the conversation.

Taylor   8:03  

Yeah, I think that's, I think you're hitting the nail on the head with that. I mean, broadly, I didn't get any financial education in high school or in college or anything. I mean, you learn about the cash flow a business if you take a business course, but you don't learn anything about personal finance, or investing, or any of that until you go out and seek out that education.

Steven Libman  8:30  

Yeah, I mean, I was never taught, I went to one of the top schools in the country, and they didn't teach me this, and I took finance classes. Right. But nobody sat there and said, Hey, do you know that you could pay an effective zero to 10% tax by buying millions of dollars in property and investing and creating passive cash flow? blew me away that you could learn how to do that. Right. 

I mean, I've read Tom wheelwright book, tax free wealth a few times.  the first time I read it, I was like this must be I can't believe this guy's not locked up by now. He's telling everybody how to do it. It's completely legal.  in his book, he says the IRS is two things. One, we can tax anything we want to we're allowed to give you deductions for anything you want. then there's like another I think he says 5900 pages of how to get incentivized by investing into certain things to get those deductions. yeah, it's just that's not taught anywhere in school. 

I mean, how to balance a checkbook isn't so how to take control of your financial future and how to make sure that you're passing on generational wealth is something that I think we all strive for, and none of us are taught.

Taylor   9:41  

Yeah, I think a lot of the problem I've thought about this quite a bit. I think a lot of the problem comes down to the people that we spend our time around as we grow up until say, we get into our 20s You're the average of the five people you spend the most time around and we Growing up, it's your friends, your parents, your friends, parents and your teachers.  

the likelihood that those folks that kids aren't going to know anything about personal finance and investing, teachers probably aren't going to know much. Because if they had that experience in that knowledge, frankly, they wouldn't really be teachers anymore. They would leave the teaching profession, as we know many teachers who have gotten into real estate investing, and they retire as soon as they can.

Steven Libman  10:28  

And look, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, right, like Robert Kiyosaki is and I'll mention him a few times during this podcast because I know Rob from Denver seeing him so it's kind of fresh, but he's, he's a pretty big conspiracy theorist, but he talks about how he has a book coming out called fake and he's talking about fake teachers, fake assets, fake money, and teachers right are told by the government what they're allowed to teach in his book, rich, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. 

I didn't realize this but his dad was the head of the teachers union and a PhD, but he was his poor dad. Rich Dad was the entrepreneur that was self taught and, and he said what's really interesting about teachers is that they're only allowed to teach what the government tells them to teach.  that curriculum does not have personal wealth and personal finance, in intrinsically tied to it.  

it's a problem that does start from a very young age is that the opportunity to learn about that stuff isn't typically around you.  we all know that if you grew up around your broke friends, you're broke parents and you're broke teachers. The likelihood of you getting out of that without some self education is it's pretty unlikely.

Taylor   11:38  

Yeah, I mean, even though it depends on how you define broke, but people who are in the rat race who are running on the treadmill, whereas if you want to get off the treadmill, you need to go meet people who have gotten off of the treadmill, and have found a way

Steven Libman  11:56  

and that is how I define it because I define rich as people that get to wake up and do what they want. With their time, right, whether that's start a ministry or go and donate time, energy and effort to whatever they choose to, and not wake up and have to go to work to pay their bills. To me, that's financial freedom when I wake up and all of my got to pay bills are paid on passive income than I have financial freedom.  

I defined everybody else that doesn't have that as well, because they haven't figured out a way to stop working. Warren Buffett said this, right? If you don't turn your earned income into passive income, you will work for the rest of your life.  we don't do a really good job of that in America of learning how to create passive income and passive wealth strategies to get out of that, right. You have to go to work tomorrow because you got to pay this bill. when you don't have to do that anymore. It starts to take a lot of stress off of you and your brain can do really incredible things when you don't have that pressure. Anywhere.

Taylor   12:58  

Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of reasons for that. The reason that we're not getting educated but I'm a lot of problems is a problem, so to speak is that this stuff is hard. It's not easy to go and create financial freedom for yourself takes a lot of work and in addition to the education aspect, but as you know, we talked before about some of the people that you're working with and your network that are getting out of Wall Street and getting into main street investing with you and with other people in your network that sponsor deals. 

What have you found are benefits that they get and important lessons that they've had to learn along the way in terms of making that shift from Wall Street to Main Street if we're talking specifics?

Steven Libman  13:49  

Yeah, so let's talk about why I started the shift. Sure. In 2007, eight when the stock market fell out, my father lost about 45% of his wealth in the crash, and then he died shortly thereafter.  he didn't get to ride the wave back up. the first thing that really hit me was, wow, this is pretty volatile place to keep your money if you can lose half of what you've saved your whole life in one market cycle.  

so I've been in real estate long enough to recognize that it's a little bit more secure than the stock market, residential real estate is even more secure than the stock market, even when the bottom fell out. But as you move into commercial, it gets even more safe, secure and consistent.  that's what our investors are looking for. the way that we sit down with them is just to say, hey, let's look historically at some numbers, right? 

What are some of the lessons learned that we've learned over a long period of time? And how do you diversify into asset classes that minimize your risk, and then we talk about the benefits, right? So I just had a conversation today with somebody that's said, Well, in this deal, it doesn't look like I'm getting a lot of cash flow up front. We're building a ground up development deal.  there's no cash flow for the first year. I said, That's right. He said, so doesn't sound like a great deal for me. well, what is your money doing now? So Well, it's in a mutual fund. 

I said, Okay, what happens when it goes up doesn't write you a check.  I said, Of course it doesn't. I said, Well, the same thing is going here, right going on here, your money is accruing. While we're building this thing, you're just not getting the check.  in most of our other assets that we're not building ground up, they get cash flow. they're used to that they're trained to now have cash flow, when for the last 50 years, he was trained not to ever get cash flow.  that's number one, right is the benefit is you get cash flow through these assets. As they start kicking off cash flow, you get we pay our investors quarterly, so they get these quarterly checks that they don't get from their retirement accounts.  

then secondly, They get those tax free, right? So we get to do accelerated depreciation and cost segregation studies where, on average, you're writing off between 30 and 40% of the total value of the asset.  if you're buying a $10 million building, you could write off three or $4 million total. then that gets spread around the syndication. some of these guys are writing off 10s of thousands of dollars per hundred that they're putting in.  they're taking a loss immediately. they have this huge tax benefit that offset some of their taxable gain. then the cash flow that they're earning is tax free.  

that's the secondary benefit. But you know, it takes a little bit more education to go down that rabbit hole because people are just so entrenched in the idea that nothing can be tax free, or at least tax deferred in a way that you're really not going to pay it for a long time.  there's a big education component with that, but you have you know, so you have cash flow. depreciation appreciation, the tax write offs and the tax benefits. then when you sell and when you sell, you have the Litecoin exchange that can also help you avoid the capital gain. None of those exist on Wall Street, right? 

The government, the IRS gives you all these benefits to that because they want you to create housing and jobs and the things that we do through commercial real estate.  there's benefits and incentives to do that the government has in place that are really benefit really beneficial to not only you and I as the owners of the building, but as the passive investors are owners in the building, they get the same benefit.

Taylor   17:40  

Yeah, I mean, there's so much in there. Really, I mean, if you're, if you're coming from a side of you, you're maybe checking your brokerage account every day and seeing worrying about the current sale price but you're not trading you're just staring at it and sweating over you know, how many Whatever digits you could sell everything for right now, shifting that mindset to a more cash flow and tax advantaged mindset. It's a big step to make. But there's a lot of a lot of upside. If you do make that and then

Steven Libman  18:16  

you have to do you have to do yourself the favor of educating yourself on why you would do something like this. I mean, this is all public record. Right.  Morningstar has it listed as last 30 years and their mutual fund, they've returned 3.6%. That's before fees. Right? So it's not that hard to get sold on the fact that returns are better in real estate. But for me, it's return of investment before return on investment. Right.  

it's how volatile is the stock market versus commercial real estate and when the market dropped out, residential real estate went down was four and a half percent default rate in multifamily. It was point 4% in self storage. It was 0.04 percent. Right? So I think the problem is out of the mental, the mindset is that all real estate is created equal. That's not true either, right? It's why we're shutting down a residential side of the business and going to this side of the business, because it's much more safe, secure, and consistent. If you don't believe me, you can ask any one of those indicators that are going out and getting non recourse loans for 85% of their value or 80% of the value of the property. 

That means banks and insurance institutions who get bailed out by wall street when they fail, by the way, yet, they put their money in these assets, they put your money in the stock market, they put their money in commercial real estate assets.  there's a reason for that, right? Because they're typically more educated on this stuff than we are as the general public.  

when I started reading all this stuff, it really opened my eyes to Why would I do that? Right, because I'm not the smartest guy in the room. But if I learn from the smartest guys in the room, then I become pretty smart.

Taylor   20:00  

Hey, you never want to be the smartest guy in the room, you never want to be the richest guy in the room. If you are, go get another room. But you know what you said there. It's the idea that all real estate is created equal, your average investor, your average person, I should say, average busy professional, probably just owns her own home, which is great. 

No problem with that I go for it. I love owning my own home. It's awesome. But when you're talking about real estate investment, get it getting that mindset shift into a cash flow, focus. I mean, I got like my cash flow hat on right now, right.  it's all about the cash flow. But people might focus on appreciation because they've maybe seen the value of their home Go up significantly over a couple decades that they've owned it. But they've also entirely missed out on the cash flow aspect of real estate.  free cash flow,

Steven Libman  20:57  

tax free cash flow, right.  even if you have a double Job and you're taxed at a 35% tax bracket, and you take that earned income and you put it into a property that breaks even from the time you bought it to the time that you exit it, and you just got cash flow through the whole time.  you took, let's say, a $50,000 loss, but you made a $30,000 gain, you've just moved money from your income bracket at 35% to a capital gain tax bracket at 20%. just by putting the money in a different place, you have an immediate benefit.  

you get all that cash flow for free based on leverage.  then you get to take an even bigger tax cut, and then you get to pay even less to the government because of just where the money sits. Right so your capital gain coming out of your wall street accounting mutual fund account, when you draw down on it is taxed differently than when it comes to commercial real estate.  the benefits are overwhelming when you start looking at potential, just tax strategy on top of passive wealth strategy. that's why it compounds So much faster, right? 

Just because if I can make money tax free or make money this way, it's going to compound a lot faster and obviously in the tax free way.  there's just so many benefits to it. for me by seeing the volatility of the stock market and not trusting that, regardless of your viewpoint on the president, when he sends a tweet that can literally change how the stock market goes that day, that doesn't make me feel good as an investor. Right.  I don't want to be I don't want to be part of that at all. I want to know that presidential tweet will not stop my rent from coming in next month.

Taylor   22:33  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, there's so much tied. I don't I'm just gonna leave the president stuff where it is. But today, as we record this, I saw an article today that said, it was Alan Greenspan talking and saying there's no fundamental underlying reason why real interest rates in the US can't go negative, which is implying and there's a lot of talk right now, but it's implying that There's a lot of weakness specifically in the stock market.  that's very concerning as somebody who wants to be growing their investments, right we want to be buying things that are stable, right? Yeah.

Steven Libman  23:12  

You don't want that.  that's why back to my point of return of investment being paramount to return on investment. You know, so I mean, we have some one gentleman in particular that's invested with us who's already retired.  he had his money in mutual funds, ETFs, bonds, things like that. he said he was making 6%, his advisor was telling him, he's making 6% of his money. he's drawing 6% out every year to live for living expenses.  

he said, but every time I look at my account, it's going down.  I said, Well, that's simple math. You're either drawing more than you're telling me or you're you're not growing as much as you're telling me.  he said no, but my advisors telling me that I am right.  

we look at his statement and he is growing at about 6% but that's before fees.  he He was actually growing at about 4.2% after he was paying the brokerage fees that he was paying. I said, Well, here's your problem, right? You're growing by six, but you're,

Steven Libman  24:10  

you're depleting by six and you're growing by 4.2. ,

Steven Libman  24:16  

and that was an inherent problem, because every time that the stock market went up or down, it didn't just affect his thought process of his retirement in 20 years. It affects his today, it affects how long his money will be available for him to live today.  when we put him into some of these more consistent returns, he was seeing that, well, now his account is going up every month, and he's still drawing that amount it gives him that peace of mind that his money's not going to run out. it's, yeah, it's really important, I think, to get into more stability, but the thought process, I think, for the majority of Americans is the stock market, that the stock market is more stable than real estate, and it's just patently not true.

Taylor   25:01  

Yeah, I think that a lot of it probably has to do with the recent crash, right or not recent, but a decade ago, but since it was centered around real estate, people are naturally going to still be a little skittish about real estate. 

But I don't know, I haven't been around long enough to know if that's a multiple decades type of thought process. But we are where we are today. Now, as far as I want to make sure we touch on the assets that you invest in and the types of deals that you're doing today. Because I think you have a fairly unique angle and want to make sure we cover it while we have you.

Steven Libman  25:39  

Yeah, so we we stay in three asset classes where you are in student housing, we're in multifamily, and we're in self storage. We're actually closing on our third self storage unit that we're ground up developing in Orlando in just a couple of weeks.  those metrics are great too. those are the three assets. classes you hear me talk a lot about volatility if you haven't gotten that we're pretty risk averse. when people say, Oh, you're risk averse, but you're betting it on real estate, correct? That's right.  we are risk averse.  

so we don't get involved in other asset classes. It's part education, right? We've only educated ourselves really well on at a top level. You know, here's the tops of the waves during the last recession. These are the three asset classes that were the most stable and showed the least problems. Storage specifically actually was the only asset class to actually increase in value during the last downturn. It increased in value by almost 5% per year during the last recession.  it's, Forbes called it a recession proof asset class. I didn't but Forbes did.  

multifamily again, I talked about the default rate very low and, and student housing just based on parental guarantees and government loans was Very stable too.  those are the three asset classes that we like to be in. We don't change our underwriting because of it just because it's more stable, we don't take more risk associated with that type of property, we're still conservative in the underwriting and it still has to return the same types of returns that we would look at on any other type of deal. But those three asset classes I think insulate us from the most risk in the market.

Taylor   27:25  

Okay, and we have for folks listening to the audio, by the time this post that deal will have well past close, just so you know, but if you want to catch the next one, keep listening, get his contact information, reach out to him, but we are live streaming on Facebook. We have a couple of questions coming in from one of our loyal listeners.  I want to make sure we address those if you're open to it. Awesome. first one, you mentioned 85% non recourse debt. Where have you seen that type of debt being issued.

Steven Libman  28:02  

I mean, sort of program, right. But their class a large MSA is okay. Yeah, class a multifamily buildings and large MSA is where it's basically a bond, right, New York City, San Francisco, DC, things like that.  I don't see him on my deals, but we've gotten to 80% leverage in secondary markets.

Taylor   28:22  

Okay. Cool, perfect answer. The next question that came in, what universities have you focused on for your student housing investments,

Steven Libman  28:33  

so we don't focus on the university, we let all universities but the metrics need to have the same value add upside that we'd be looking for for a multifamily deal.  what we're looking for is demographic information the same way that we would be looking at a multifamily so you're looking at a growing school population growing school demographic, a college that is building more buildings and expanding has an expected enrollment of at least 25% increase over the next five years.  it's not school by school. It's based on the demographic of particular colleges, right. we'll look at student housing deals all over the country. far, it's Iowa, Illinois, we're closing on another one in a couple of months in Oklahoma. , it's, it's not specific to university, it's specific to the demographic.

Taylor   29:20  

Okay. Okay. But that still gives us an indication as to the universities that you've ultimately drill down into, you didn't focus on the university itself, that wasn't your criteria. Hey, I want to invest near Penn State or Rutgers to go with the New Jersey bass back to you went with a more numbers based approach, which is a great way to go for a go at it. go at it.

Steven Libman  29:46  

Yeah.  and similar to multifamily. It's the Midwestern southeast, so we're not looking for schools that are in you know, tenant friendly states we're not looking for for low cap rate, low cash flow type states, right. We're looking for where is the majority of the population moving to, because typically, job growth around the university is going to be good for the university. Right? So where the demographics of the nation moving right New York, New Jersey, California most exit three states in the country.  Midwest and Southeast is where most of those people are going to those universities tend to be growing.

Taylor   30:20  

Okay. I think out of all the asset classes that we've discussed so far that you're working on them personally, the one that I'm most interested in growing in is self storage. I am a multifamily investor. I am a self storage investor. But I think that self storage, or the Self Storage asset class is a great opportunity that's not being talked about enough.  kudos for you for being out there and getting people into the asset class.

Steven Libman  30:48  

Yeah, I like the asset class a lot, especially with what it did during the last downturn.  it's still an underserved market. I mean, the numbers are staggering one and two. 10 Americans now have a storage unit.  in Orlando, we're talking about building large facilities. the first one we're building is 1193 units. 

The next one's going to be 893 units.  these are large complexes, hundred thousand plus rentable square feet, and it's not even absorbing half of what's required in that geographic area.  Orlando being the third fastest growing city in the country, they have a lot of single family homes that are going in and they don't have basements because of a high water table. homeowners associations don't allow you to park RVs and boats in the in the homeowners association so there's a pretty significant need down there and you have a lot of boomers that are retiring and moving down there but can't get rid of and I said this on the podcast so they can't get rid of the macaroni art right? If you look to my left, I have the hand paintings and the you know all the kindergarten stuff and but they can't get rid of that stuff. Right? So where's it gonna go? It's gonna go into a storage units.

Steven Libman  32:01  

We'd like the metrics.

Steven Libman  32:04  

It costs a lot less to build them, right? You don't have kitchens and bathrooms and every single unit, just steel and concrete.  this cost basis is a lot lower for ground up construction and lease up breakeven is a lot lower than multifamily is. what's interesting is the price per square foot rental is about the same as you get in a multifamily complex.

Taylor   32:23  

I'm a big fan of you mentioned earlier in our discussion about how Self Storage performed during the last recession, believe you said the annualized rate of appreciation or however you put it was 5%. Now I wanted to ask, did that include

Steven Libman  32:41  

cash flow? So it's a great question, to be honest, I just know that the appreciation and value went up, and I think it was just because of demand, right? There were more people losing their houses and they started stuffing these things.  prices were able to go up. yeah, it would it would affect cash flow. I mean, commercial real estate is based on that operating income and the only way to really drive that number up by 5% is by increasing income or decreasing expenses.

Taylor   33:06  

So make sense. Alright, so we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors. , Stephen, I've got three questions I asked every guest here at the end of the show. I'm ready. All right, great. I think number one, what is the best investment in real estate that you've ever made?

Steven Libman  33:22  

It was definitely a mastermind.  I actually got into a group of like minded people that were growing this was when I was back in the single family space.  what it did was it really encouraged me to invest in myself grow and get around like minded people that were taking it to the next level.  that year we went we five star business and the year that we did that by getting around the right people, and those were actually a bunch of our partners in our first syndicated investment deal.  it was a it was definitely that

Taylor   33:56  

nice, never want to be the smartest guy in the room, and he never want to be The richest guy in the room that is a two of my rules to live by.  it's it feels intimidating sometimes. But if you're in that situation, you know you're in the right room on the other side of that, what is the worst investment you've ever made?

Steven Libman  34:14  

You know, I always love this question because it's hard to find something that you did wrong that you didn't learn from that didn't ultimately pay off.  that's like a guru type question. But it's so true. Like if you have the mindset that either you win or you learn even the bad things that you do in your investing career, you've learned something.  

I think that trying to be on an island was really the biggest thing that held me back for years, was trying to figure out how to do it on my own.  trying not to reinvent the wheel, but it wasn't prideful. It really was just that I didn't know that other people were trying to do the same thing I was doing.  it was just really having blinders on. Once I got around those people that showed me that they were doing it too, and here's a shortcut that they took, and here I can learn from this guy's mistake. That's what changed everything.  

I think not having the self awareness that I, I could be around a lot smarter people and I could seek that out and do it on purpose was probably the biggest detriment to the growth of my business.

Taylor   35:24  

So my favorite question of these three, what is the most important lesson you've learned in investing? I think

Steven Libman  35:32  

if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far go together. I think especially in the multifamily and commercial space, many hands make light work, and everybody can really contribute.  it's a team effort. 

It's not something that you can really go and do on your own. Our first deal we found a great mentor, Sean, who he offered us the opportunity. We didn't see the opportunities before. I think I told you in the beginning of the show, like we couldn't find any deals. It was really hard.  we were working full time in this other business. we wanted to make the transition, but we just couldn't. this mentor said, Hey, I have a deal if you guys want to get involved, and doing that first deal, changed everything. Right? 

It created some passive income for us and defines the world for us. But it showed us what was possible.  it showed us what was what was kind of the next step in that revolution. that that changed everything. doing that first deal, and then the second and third, and now we're on the six in the same year. Right? So I mean, to go from zero to $75 million under management, nine months, 12 months, is it was unheard of.  the most important lesson that we learned was get around those people, right? 

They're going to teach you a lot more in a short period of time than you ever thought you'd be able to read or listen to podcasts about. It's just really being in the room talking to people and saying, Hey, this is what I want to do with them. Amazing is the higher up I get in these in these platforms where people are doing really well and they're doing good stuff is they really want to help you. They've probably been there themselves, all of the millionaires that I'm friends with which a couple years ago that would be weird just even say that statement. All of the millionaires that I'm friends with are, are all self made, and they're all real givers. 

Like they want to get you there too.  once I got around, these guys are super intimidated, right so don't be the smartest guy don't be the richest guy in the room. When I was in that room. I was super intimidated and all these guys were just normal people right and they're all normal guys and girls and they said hey, this is what we did. This is how we did it come along for the ride and then you make friends and then you create teams and then you go out and you create some real estate domination life.

Taylor   37:54  

Yeah, they're not just magical beings out there that that are know their

hard work.

Steven Libman  38:00  

That's it.

Taylor   38:01  

Yeah, absolutely.  appreciate everything that you've shared today. If people want to learn more about the properties that you're investing in, they want to, they're interested in getting started in real estate, where can they reach you? Give us those email addresses that URL, all that good stuff.

Steven Libman  38:20  

Yeah.  you can go to integrity HG the name of the company's integrity holdings group if you google us, https://integrityhg.com/.  my My name is Steven. At https://integrityhg.com/. You can check us out on YouTube. I mean, we're, we're fundable. You can just google us and you'll see us.

Taylor   38:44  

Nice. Well, once again, thank you for everything today. It's been a great discussion. Like I said, we are we talked for quite a while before we hit record.  you know about you and I have been talking for a while today and it's been a delight.

Steven Libman  38:56  

It's been great man. I really appreciate what you are doing what your community is up. too, and happy to be a part of it.  hopefully I can create some value and help some folks.

Taylor   39:06  

You've created lots of value today and I'm sure you will, in the future to everybody out there tuning in. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on iTunes is an enormous help, doesn't take you much time and it helps other people learn about the show. 

If you know someone that could use a little bit more passive wealth in their lives, please share the show with them and bring them into our tribe. Once again. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Have a great rest of your week, and we will talk to you on the next one. Bye bye

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