Tokenization, DeFi, Smart Contracts, and Global Investing with Phil Butler

Phil Butler (00:00)
I have every truly successful person goes through a dark spot, a really bad, dark place. And, and if you are going through a dark spot, I’ll just talk to your audience for a minute. If you’re going through a dark spot, that means you’re just getting set up for the good stuff.

Scott Bursey (01:28)
Hi everyone. welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I’m your host Scott Bursey.

And today I’m joined by someone I’ve really been looking forward to chatting with Phil Butler, who’s been making serious moves in the residential real estate space. For Phil, real estate is more than just closing deals. It’s about building the communities he calls home. He leverages his extensive local network and sharp negotiation skills to give his clients a competitive edge in the Arkansas market. If you’re looking for a real estate partner who values integrity as much as results,

Look no than Phil Butler. Phil, welcome to the show.

Phil Butler (02:07)
Good to be here, Scott. Thanks for the kind words.

Scott Bursey (02:09)
I think our audience is really gonna take something away from your sharp insights into market trends and your no-nonsense approach to finding value in today’s landscape. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Phil Butler (02:22)
Sounds good.

Scott Bursey (02:22)
So first off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days?

Phil Butler (02:29)
Well, even though I tend to be called the old guy in the room, I’m the older person that always shows up. But even though I’m the old guy, I believe with all my heart that there is massive changes happening.

in the technology behind real estate. Okay, and the technology behind real estate, of course, is tokenization and smart contracts and moving the ownership or the proof of ownership to blockchain.

And so that’s a lot of the work that I’m doing these days is in real world asset tokenization. And that’s starting to be called WRAT, real world asset tokenization. And so that’s, that’s kind of my main area right now, along with some other technology, real estate plays that I’m involved in.

Scott Bursey (03:26)
That’s quite a playful. And what markets are you operating in?

Phil Butler (03:29)
Well, the market actually, when you move to tokenization,

you move to an international blockchain driven space just by the definition of it. So am I buying a shopping center in Chicago? No. I helping do a RWAT project for Dubai? Yes. Because it moves

globally, when you move things to the blockchain. And so also working on tokenizing farm ground in the Midwest, that would would, there’s a lot of advantages to that, that I could talk for two hours on why you tokenize farm ground. So so where where’s what market I am, I’m in the international market. And I’m not buying a shopping

center in Memphis or a multifamily in Dallas, that’s just not the way I operate.

Scott Bursey (04:39)
Well explained and thank you for elaborating on that. Love it. Hey, what caught my attention about you was the way you’ve been able to simplify the complexities of the buying process, making your clients feel like they have a master strategist and a neighborhood advocate all in one. That’s not easy, especially in this climate.

What’s been the key for you keeping your machine running smoothly, Phil?

Phil Butler (05:57)
if we look at $39 trillion of debt,

that we hit yesterday, okay. The interest rates, we were led to believe that the feds were probably gonna drop it up 25 basis points or whatever, but nothing happened. They locked it for another ride and the debt continues to go up. But…

What’s happening is on a global scale, which is where I tend to operate, if you look at what’s going on in the United States economy, the same thing is going on in China, in Russia, in UK, in other major economies. Debt continues to go up at a pace that almost cannot be serviced. people have a sense that there’s a reset.

coming and they don’t really know what to do about the reset. And so I felt so strongly about that, Scott, that I started a podcast just to deal with that question.

And ⁓ the name of the podcast is Bridge to Blockchain. even like we were chatting before we went on the air, I believe that the website is going to be up today or tomorrow, but it’s so new. And that’s another thing that’s happening right now. Things are changing so quickly.

with AI and technology and blockchain and RWAT and all of the things that’s happening so quickly that it is a full-time job just to stay up with the technology. Okay, so now having said that, so bridge the blockchain is coming soon just to help people understand. my…

My background is I’m an Indiana farm boy. I grew up on a farm in Indiana and now I live in southern Arkansas. So I tend to break things down to the simple point. Quick story, I remember when my grandmother was having surgery and the young surgeon came out to give the update of her surgery and he went in such big Latin words.

words.

And he walked away from the family. had no clue what he said. It was frustrating for the doctor to come and give us a report. And right behind him came the old guy with his white hair, disheveled, and he kind of looked like an Einstein guy. he was his coat was rumpled, but he took a pin out of his pocket and he said, well, your grandmother had a spot right here on this little artery right there. And it looked like that we were able to do

You get my point that he took it simple, okay? Then we understood.

We understood what he was really saying because he used a pen and his fingernail to describe stuff that the other guy did 14 letters of Latin per word and we had no clue and only added to our frustration. So my goal, my goal is to not add to the frustration.

that is going on in the financial markets and in real estate and talking about blockchain as it

As I often say this, I speak a lot in environment. one thing I always say, blockchain is here, whether we like it or not. may not, but it’s not going to go anywhere. AI is here, whether we like it or not, it’s not going to go away. And so the tools that use AI and use blockchain, those tools are not going to go away. And they’re only going to get better and faster and more. So that’s

going to add Scott until we understand how to express these complicated tools in simple language. It’s just going to add to the frustration.

Scott Bursey (10:48)
Understood

and You know that was broken down very very very good and go ahead if you wanted to elaborate on that because It adds a lot of substance

Phil Butler (11:03)
No, it’s just people are looking for simple explanations of complicated things. you know, I came up in the world of being a stockbroker and ⁓ being involved in publicly traded companies ⁓ and the whole Wall Street thing.

But what happened is people don’t, a lot of people know, some people don’t think about it, but just to make it simple, now most of the trading on Wall Street is done by…

what used to be called computer programs, now we call them trading bots or trading robots do most of the trading on Wall Street. And if I’m an individual investor and I’m trying to buy Ford or Tesla or Caterpillar stock, it’s been traded a hundred times by a robot before I can even jump in the game. Okay.

Scott Bursey (12:02)
Isn’t that the truth?

Phil Butler (12:04)
And so that type of technology that has infiltrated, ⁓ I’ll stick with that word, has infiltrated Wall Street, can be insidious and…

nefarious. But on top of that, it’s when that insidious, nefarious technology starts to take over. And we don’t know what to do about it. We don’t know how to explain it. We don’t know what the algorithms mean. We don’t know how an AI agent can create its own AI agent, and how the AI agents can talk among themselves and leave us out, which is really happening already. And we don’t know how that is happening until

we break down the technology into the fact that it’s just a bunch of carefully arranged ones and zeros. That’s all it is. It’s ones and zeros carefully arranged.

Scott Bursey (13:06)
just the simplest form makes the most sense.

Phil Butler (13:09)
Yeah, exactly. So go ahead.

Scott Bursey (13:11)
Now…

On that note, Phil, every operator I know has a moment where things kind of got real. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time that you had to pivot fast. Do you mind sharing one of those with us?

Phil Butler (14:09)
And I don’t mind sharing that at all because it actually might be part of… I never thought of… You’ve made me think of something that I had not thought of, self-analyzation here. But there was a time when I lost $42 million. Okay. And that was based on stuff that happened in Wall Street.

and a thing that some people think shouldn’t even exist, which is the ability for people, market makers to sell stock short, meaning that you can actually create bad news and drive down the value of a stock. Okay, so if people take short positions, and then they feed the market with negative information, they can they financially benefit by creating a false

narrative. Okay. And so that kind of false narrative cost me dearly tens of millions of dollars. And so the games that can be played with publicly traded stock or with equity positions, those games do not exist in blockchain. Okay.

that it’s totally transparent. And when that ledger moves from one block to another block and, and it shows up in the next block, all it does is verify the information in milliseconds, but it is transparent and it’s verified. Next block, transparent, verified. And the games that can be played with selling stock short, or insider trading, both on the long and the short.

on the positive and the negative. I think more money’s been made on bad news that people knew that XYZ company was gonna lose a contract or going to get hit with a lawsuit. I think more money’s been made on selling stock short than buying stock long. But anyway, to answer your question,

The loss and the pain of losing a fortune on Wall Street may be, this is the new revelation, that might be the subconscious driver behind why I’m so excited about the decentralized finance.

nickname DeFi. People call it DeFi. Okay, well DeFi stands for decentralized finance. And there’s a lot of advantages of DeFi over centralized finance. That’s another topic. We’ve opened up 18 cans of worms here. But no, to answer your question, I lived through…

⁓ the darkest times of losing fortunes. now God has given me the energy and the strength and the brain power to get it back.

Scott Bursey (17:16)
And Phil, I find this incredible. You know, how moments like what you just described, that you feel like a disaster in real time often become the foundation of the next 10 years of growth.

Phil Butler (17:31)
I have every truly successful person goes through a dark spot, a really bad, dark place. And, and if you are going through a dark spot, I’ll just talk to your audience for a minute. If you’re going through a dark spot, that means you’re just getting set up for the good stuff. Okay.

And so I lived through it. And the fact that you go through those bad times and in, know…

I will talk about 2008 and 2009. That hit so many of us in the real estate world. that those years, I wish I had time to study it. I believe that the United States came within a half an hour of going out of, I think we were that close if Barack Obama had not stepped in and done some things at the very last second, because 08 and 09, we were hanging by a thread.

and the thread was on fire. so I appreciate anyone who said, you know, I’m in a bad spot, things are bad. Well, hang on, it’ll get better.

Scott Bursey (18:45)
And honestly, that right there is the filter. It’s, you know, that inner drive digging to find that extra gear to keep yourself in the right mindset. It’s what separates the dabblers and defines the investors who actually have the staying power to weather the cycles. Let me ask you this.

Phil Butler (19:03)
Yeah, an 08 and 09 was

a really bad cycle. you know, it separated the people who have willpower from the people who don’t have willpower. It separated the people who really want to work in this in this industry from the from the people who might have been dabbling or playing with mom and dads or grandma and grandpa’s money. In other words, generational money that they kind of got

hold of and they were dabbling with generational money where other people were really truly building wealth. So it separated those two camps, those two audiences, those two worlds. 0809 separated those groups.

Scott Bursey (19:48)
they ever. And let me ask you this, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Phil Butler (19:54)
focused on what please Scott.

Scott Bursey (19:56)
solving or scaling next.

Phil Butler (19:58)
Okay, yeah, it goes back. Thank you for clarifying. It goes back to the first point that I made. My focus now is on the fact that ⁓ tokenization, which is basically a smart way of saying there’s a contract that is digitized and that contract that is digitized shows ownership.

Let’s say it’s a title, that the title now lives in real time on the blockchain, it’s alive, and it’s verified, and it’s in a ledger that’s traveling around the world. So that’s tokenization, and tokenization wraps smart contracts. And the smart contracts…

I believe that they’re going to be moved heavily into the insurance industry. They just fit so well into the insurance industry relating with claims and premiums and if-then statements, which is what an insurance contract is. If I have a fire, then this happens. If I have a wreck, then this happens. So the whole contract is an if-then statement, which fits perfectly with smart contract. So those kind of thought

processes, is it processes? Processes. Those processes, plural, is where I’m working on with real world assets tied to real estate. And as I already said earlier in this podcast, I mentioned RWAT now,

is entering into farm ground, into office complex 50 million, 100 million, 200 million. There is no size limit of what a smart contract can do or smart contracts can do. So where I’m working is in the world of asset.

management related to real estate using tokenization.

Scott Bursey (22:07)
That’s huge. And that next move is where the leverage lives. It can either perfect your operations or detonate your workflow, depending on the strategy that you deploy. Now on a different note, but very interested to know Phil, how do you maintain your edge when things are going well, when they’re smooth? It’s easy to grind when you’re broke, but how do you stay hungry?

when you’re successful.

Phil Butler (22:32)
Great question.

When I moved, I’ll make it a personal story. When I moved to Southern Arkansas, I bought a boat, I got a slip. I live close to a beautiful lake that is one of the top lakes in Arkansas. It’s about five minutes from my house, beautiful lake. so I’ll give a plug out for the Clark County Visitors Bureau. It’s called Lake DeGray and there’s no houses around.

around it, it’s all natural. It’s a large, beautiful lake called Lake DeGray, close to where I live. And so I came with the idea that I was gonna be on the boat, I was gonna go fishing, I was gonna have my grandkids go skiing, and we were gonna do all that stuff. And then what’s happened is that business opportunities,

are coming at me so quickly. I wish I had the brochure. I got a boat for sale if anyone wants to buy a boat. I already turned in my slip at the marina. Those kind of things. I am motivated not by the fear of scarcity.

Scott Bursey (23:33)
hahahahah

Phil Butler (23:50)
I’m not motivated by the fear of scarcity. I am motivated by the fact that if I don’t work 16 hours a day, I’m going to lose opportunities because this whole world is changing so quickly. like I already said, was fresh today is going to be stale tomorrow.

And so you have to stay up on top of it so much. And so I’m working on a worldwide basis. I am on international Zoom calls most days. ⁓ And there’s new technology that is I’m handling it under one of my other companies called Zoe, Z-O-I.

And I have a company called Zoe Financial Corporation and Zoe Financial Corporation and you can find that at Zoe- there’s a dash there, z-o-i-financial.com but zoefinancial.com is a

is an international company that deals with this new technology. And I know, I know this is a real estate platform, Scott. I know that. And I also understand that tokenization applies to everything from creative content to music. It can be a song or it can be 200 acres of farm ground in Indiana. Tokenization fits all the way across all of those spectrums. The only thing it requires

requires

is ownership. Who owns the thing? Who owns it? Okay, and how much is it worth? Okay, those are the only two things that are required in tokenization. And so that is doing wonderful work in office buildings and apartment complexes and farm ground.

So that’s what keeps me going.

Scott Bursey (25:51)
Thank you for that explanation. And now I know a lot of our audiences either earlier in their journey or looking to level up, Phil. And I think they’d benefit from hearing this from you. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Phil Butler (26:11)
I’m going to be transparent, Scott.

confidence.

knowing that I am an expert in an area that many people are not.

That’s not bragging. I’m not trying to say I’m smarter, better than anybody. I’m just answering your question. I have a sincere confidence in knowing that because I was in Wall Street for 35 or 40 years, and now I’ve been in blockchain world of DeFi for 15 or 20 years, that adds up to me being involved in business for 52 years, and that’s the real number.

that confidence and it’s part partly being wiser and older but what’s made the difference is please don’t mix up the word confidence with self-engratiating ego it’s not ego it’s just quiet confidence knowing that

If you got the question, I probably got the answer.

Scott Bursey (27:15)
And I’m confident in that. Now there’s something that I’ve been wanting to ask you. If you were starting over today with 50K, okay, and 10 years of experience, only 10, but zero portfolio, what’s the first lead gen channel you’d turn on today?

Phil Butler (27:34)
Legion.

Podcast and webinars.

I mean, social media, know, okay, do I want to jump on with another 50 million people that are trying to use? No, I think that my voice and my wisdom and not bragging, I’m just, it’s just a fact that my understanding of a financial landscape,

Scott Bursey (27:37)
Absolutely.

Yes.

Phil Butler (28:00)
deserves more than me spending some money on Facebook.

Scott Bursey (28:04)
I totally agree, totally agree. All right Phil, before we wrap, if somebody wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, you know, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Phil Butler (28:17)
⁓ because of the website for bridge the blockchain going live tomorrow or so. So I wanna give out my business email for right now, which is the best way to reach me is phphil, like philb, philb at.

Zoi z o i dash financial.com. [email protected] is the best way to reach me. And by next week, I will be turning on my AI agents who will be answering the phone on other things. And, you know, I can’t believe I’m saying that here I am an old guy saying I’m going to turn on my AI agent and he’s going to answer the phone for me. That’s that’s that’s I never thought I’d hear myself

say those words.

Scott Bursey (29:10)
Well, it lends credence to what you said at the beginning, that you’re able to take your wisdom and apply it to today’s technology. And that is a great skill set.

Phil, this has been more than a pleasure. I appreciate your time, your story, and definitely your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. Thanks again for being here.

Phil Butler (29:31)
Thank you, Scott, for the opportunity. sincerely, sincerely want to thank you for the great questions and the opportunity to be with you today.

Scott Bursey (29:39)
It is our pleasure. And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming up with operators just like Phil, who are out there building real businesses. We’ll see you in the next episode, everybody.