What's the best way to build wealth through real estate?

Well, it's the opposite of what everyone else says, obviously. I'm going to tell you to pay cash and move slow. Interesting thing about real estate, when you don't have any debt on it, is it cash flows like crazy cash flows, like lots of cash. And if you get one or two properties, pretty quickly they'll throw off enough cash to buy the third one. And then you get this positive snowball working in your favor.

Real estate has always been a great investment. There's not any more land.

Leverage is everything. Too much leverage is not a good thing. But it's again, it's the only business that you can be in where your customers are paying down your debt. Your tenants, right? Pay rent. And what does that do? It reduces your debt service.

If you're going in and saying, "I'm going to buy this property and I'm going to keep it for 10, 20, 30 years." It's always a good time to buy.

Real estate's a boring business. Private, you know, private equity and most of the time we're buying boring businesses, right? But they're making them better.

I bought it for 300,000. Very small, few employees, but you know, I built a great team around me, smartest guys out there, hardest working, super loyal.

Having the right products, having the best buying team, the best procurement team available and also having great sales side.

I mean, the first time we bought this particular piece of acreage, it was 10 million dollars for 48 acres a long time ago. And we didn't have the money to do anything with it. We just bought the dirt. And we said, "Someday we'll put a building on it when we've got the money." And we began to save and watch the cash flow, and company was growing, and just kept dumping everything we made into this concrete thing here, and it turned out to be a really, really good investment.

I'd go right into a commercial property. I'd find an asset class you like. The truth is multif family is the easiest one to get into. You could buy a duplex, a triplex, put a $100,000 down. You could easily buy a three- $400,000 property. You need to manage it yourself. You need to lease it yourself. You need to take care of it. Running all the books yourself. Learn the game. Fix it up. Keep it going. Then eventually can refinance it. Pull some cash out of that and go buy another.

you know, 2008, real estate was on sale. I had a bunch of cash then, and I bought a whole bunch of stuff at 15, 20 cents on the dollar. I was buying a lot of really nice properties at for nothing. It was a great deal.

It's risk. That equals risk. And uh the borrower is slave to the lender. And so, we've gone slowly cuz we did it with organic cash.

The home is a terrible investment. The home is not an investment, too.

It's a luxury item you want to have.

Homes don't always go up in price. The problem is most people that are 40 years old and younger have never seen a bad real estate market. I've lived through them. And by the way, homes do go down in price.

I could take you back over time. Homes don't always go up in price. The problem is most people that are 40 years old and younger have never seen a bad real estate market.

I don't borrow money. You heard the rumor, yeah.

Always the best time to buy real estate.

It's all cash? >> Oh, yeah. I don't borrow money.

>> So if somebody has $100,000 saved up right now, where would you put that money in today's world? >> I'd go right into a commercial property. I'd find an asset class you like. The truth is multif family is the easiest one to get into. You could buy a duplex, a triplex, put a $100,000 down. You could easily buy a three- $400,000 property.

I didn't buy income. I bought access to the industry. I bought access to key employees. That's game right there. That's game. You buy businesses when you need access. You build businesses when you have the tools.

A little bit at a time. I mean, the first time we bought this particular piece of acreage, it was 10 million dollars for 48 acres a long time ago. And we didn't have the money to do anything with it. We just bought the dirt. And we said, "Someday we'll put a building on it when we've got the money."

the deal has to work for both of you. If it works works for just yourself, it won't last. If it works for them only, you're wasting your own time. So it's got to be win-win business.

If you have real estate, you can never really go broke.

the most important thing about negotiation, the deal has to work for both of you.

So it's got to be win-win business. It's got to be win-win always. Always win-win.

When people try to sell a company like you did for hundreds of millions of dollars, what's the number one mistake they make? >> They didn't structure it correctly. They didn't create enough of a a platform where they implemented the right process and procedures for them to obtain the highest valuation possible.

So what what do the richest people do with their money? Like like you as a billionaire talk to the that person they don't have a great mentor out there. Where do you put your money in today's world to make it work for you? >> You know, you ask really really good questions. I do things that I understand. I've got to be able to understand in a single sheet of paper. I've got to understand what it is and and and and I got to be able to relate to it. And so real estate for me is is really easy. Farm ground, I'm a massive farm owner.

Because farm ground is really really easy to manage. I mean, you have ground, you have land, you have your inputs, you have your your seed and your and all the fertilizers and all those things and you plant and then you hope for rain and then you harvest and you sell. I mean, it's a no-brainer.

And then I also on the as far as taking risk, I bet the jockey not the horse. So I bet I bet the entrepreneur.

If I meet somebody that I like a lot and they got the fire and they don't have excuses cuz people either perform or they tell you stories. I like to invest in performers. I don't want any stories. I've heard enough.

It's not how much you earn, it's how much you save and invest.

But it's safe to say you can't save your way to wealth. You have to invest that money.

It doesn't grow linearly. It grows geometrically. It does nothing for a long time and then it explodes upwards. You want to get that flat part out when you're as young as possible.

One tiny little step at a time. One tiny conversation at a time.

Solve rich people problems and you'll make way more money.

And one of them, Warren Buffett, will tell you all the time, he can't time anything.

And by the way, nobody could time a market so you could watch all the stuff you want on the news, all the stuff you want in the newspapers. None of it's right. If anybody really knew, they'd be the richest man on earth.

You always want to be buying real estate because it's generational.

If you're not going in with the flip, this is not like wholesaling and trying to get in and out.

took us a while, but um then when something like a COVID hits, uh we don't go out of business.

I'm going to tell you to pay cash and move slow. Interesting thing about real estate, when you don't have any debt on it, is it cash flows like crazy cash flows, like lots of cash. And if you get one or two properties, pretty quickly they'll throw off enough cash to buy the third one. And then you get this positive snowball working in your favor. All this cash is coming at you and you can just you can move on out. So the hardest one is the first one. The next hardest is the second one and the next hardest is the third one. But if you buy good properties and they you know you know how to manage them and you get the cash coming in off of them, it'll lead you into another property.