Conquer Property Management: Powerful Tips for Lasting Success

Stephen S. (00:02.734)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. You’re in for a treat today. Welcome back to the show. If it’s your second, third or hundredth time joining us and welcome. it’s your first, you’re in for an absolute treat because I got Matthew Ballantyne in the house and today we’re going to be talking about what’s happening in the market and how to get ahead in real estate. Just remember before we get started at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs.

two to five X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Matt, welcome to the show.

Matthew Ballantyne (00:37.807)
Thanks, Stephen. I appreciate it.

Stephen S. (00:39.436)
Man, I’m super excited to get into our conversation. We had probably one of the longest visiting sessions pre-show. And I even mentioned to you and for our listeners that won’t hear that part, I was like, man, we should have probably just been recording from the beginning. before we kind of get into today’s topic about what’s happening in the market, for everybody’s sake, can you just share a little bit about yourself and how you got here? You’ve been in the business over a decade, close to…

decade and a half now. Just tell us a little bit about yourself and what got you to where you’re at today.

Matthew Ballantyne (01:11.663)
Yeah, so I did not choose this path. I want to be really clear. This was, I I chose it at a certain point, but it was more opportunity came about and, you know, my family had always been in real estate before. See, I was raised here in Arizona. My mom was a realtor. My stepdad was a general contractor. So we were going through the whole fix and flip thing right before 2008. There was a ton of market movement. There was a lot of money to be made. And then I graduated high school in 2006. So now you know how old I am.

Stephen S. (01:15.874)
Hahaha

Matthew Ballantyne (01:40.591)
But from there, know, everything kind of fell apart for them and I watched them lose everything that they had. you of course I was like, I’m going to go to college. I’m going to get, I’m going get a degree. I’m going to do these things. Started going to school to be a psychiatrist and, uh, and help people out. That was kind of my calling. At least I thought it was. And, um, you know, during that time working at Cracker Barrel, making a whole $14,000 a year in 2010, um, going through my school, my education. And, you know, I saved up enough money to buy myself a butter cycle, like all good

college kids do, right? You gotta get on two wheels. It’s better than a Chevrolet, right? And you know, two weeks after having this motorcycle, I got hit by a drunk driver, a T-bone. So my right leg was the point of impact. I still have the leg. So, you know, don’t get any funny ideas about what I look like there. It’s just, it’s kind of weird looking, but it’s still there. And it works just fine. I run with the kids, but.

Stephen S. (02:12.169)
Naturally.

Stephen S. (02:17.358)
You bet.

Matthew Ballantyne (02:37.967)
But yeah, we ended up getting a little bit of a settlement from that. And I was unable to work. I was unable to do what I was doing. A buddy of mine at Chase was like, you should come work with me at Chase. I was like, all right, I’ll do that. And I had some money left over after all the core stuff was settled out. If anybody’s been in a car accident, they kind of know what I’m talking about. And I was left with about $60,000. And now this is all in 2010, which 2010 was a low point in the market, right?

I remember what my parents had done with real estate and I was like, never want to flip a house today in my life, but I’m going to go buy this and stop paying rent. Like if I buy this house, I can not pay my $500 a month rent, which by the way, that’s what rent was in Arizona for a one bedroom back in 2010. Things have changed a lot today, right? And I’m sure we’ll get into that a little bit too, but.

Stephen S. (03:24.238)
Shoot, I was living large, man. I was paying like $5.35 for a two-bedroom.

Matthew Ballantyne (03:28.129)
I know, yeah you were. That was nice. You were out in Kansas or Florida at that time?

Stephen S. (03:33.902)
I was in Kansas at that time. 620 square feet, Boston Heights.

Matthew Ballantyne (03:37.323)
Yeah, I love it. That’s that’s beautiful. Yeah, homes are a little more expensive here in Arizona, so the rents were definitely cruising. But my place had a hot tub in it. Can you see that?

Stephen S. (03:43.084)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Stephen S. (03:48.566)
No, I can’t. It had a hot tub with the hole we dug in the backyard and filled with garden hose, but that was only if you set fireworks off in it before you got inside.

Matthew Ballantyne (03:57.167)
This is two things you had that I didn’t have. had a backyard and you had fireworks. Come on. If you want a better living life with a backyard and fireworks, Kansas City, that’s your place.

Stephen S. (04:03.589)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (04:11.33)
There you go.

Matthew Ballantyne (04:12.975)
So yeah, I was in a one bedroom studio and I ran this calculation which now I know is called an exponential growth calculation, right? That’s what I’ve learned in the industry since I ran it. But I looked at it and I said, hey man, if I take that $40,000 and I’m like, well I’m not paying $500 a month in rent. If I can just save that 500 plus a little bit more and I don’t spend it.

I can get another house in about five years. That was my calculation at the time. Now it’s less than five, right? Or it’s a little bit more than five if you do just the 500, but at that time, I remember it pretty vividly. It was like 700 and change that I was gonna put aside. And I was like, and then if I do that again and nothing changes in the market, I can buy another house in two and a half years if I’m running out the first one. And then if I keep doing that, I can buy another house in 1.75 years. And I was like, man, in like 10 years, I’m gonna own five homes. This is great, right? So I did it.

I bought the house, blue carpet, red walls, absolutely disgusting. My wife was like, she wasn’t my wife at the time, she’s my girlfriend, she’s my wife now. She was like, this is the, I’m never living here. She cried when she saw the house. She’ll deny that statement, so anybody listening, please don’t mention that to my wife. But.

Yeah, she was like no and I was like, I’m gonna do this. Like my dad was a general contractor. I had done construction my whole life. I was like perfect, ripped out all the carpeting, painted all the walls, put in all new LVP flooring. Bad decision for homes, LVP is not fun. Or not LVP, was the luxury, the linoleum flooring, not the luxury vinyl. LVP is great. Yeah, it was the stuff that buckled, right?

Stephen S. (05:41.71)
Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Ballantyne (05:42.893)
We just ripped that out of that house. I still own it today and it’s still one of my best rentals. I continued through that process of going through that and just loved the whole thing. But the one thing I hated was how mortgage guys were. Didn’t answer my questions. Didn’t pick up the phone. Like after I bought the house there, like I got a call two weeks later from somebody saying you got a lower interest rate. I was, I called up my guy. I’m like, dude, you’re my mom’s, you’re my mom’s guy. What happened? And he goes, no, no, no. I gave you a great interest rate at the time, but you can’t refinance for six months. And he hung up the phone and I was like,

I don’t like this guy. And I was working at Chase Bank. And the very next week, not planned, just happened, job for mortgages popped up. And I was like, that guy can drive that car, have that kind of life, have that kind of, you know, all those things in his life that I wanted to see myself have, I was like, I can be nice and do his job and I’ll make more money. And that was literally the plan. So that’s how I got into mortgages. And that’s how I got into real estate investment.

Stephen S. (06:39.466)
Wow. So it’s almost like I know we were talking a little bit about before the show about some of the things that you’ve done in your career that that you felt have separated you from, you know, maybe the average person that are things that sales trainers have taught for, you know, three decades, four decades, even all the way back to Jim Rohn, the principles of, you know, helping other people instead of helping yourself and then ultimately being able to help yourself because of how many people you help.

But it sounds like almost in the same sense that you almost accidentally stumbled upon living in a certain way and service to other people, the same exact thing happened with your real estate investing career and also your business as a mortgage guy.

Matthew Ballantyne (07:24.303)
100 % like I didn’t hear about zig-ziglar until this last weekend when I was at growth house immersion I’m not even kidding I had no I think that’s how fresh it is for me and I was like they mentioned it because I you have to introduce yourself at these these mastermind conference when you’re talking to investors and everybody else and and this woman Hannah I can’t think of her last name but she does the infinite money glitch

Stephen S. (07:30.048)
No way. Really.

Matthew Ballantyne (07:49.311)
They talk about infinite baking, her and her dad Brent. They’re really big in the space. They’ve been doing it for years and really just great people. And when I was talking to her about myself, I explained to her like how I just help everybody. Like that’s kind of my thing. He was like, Zieg Ziegler, you help a hundred people and you help everybody get what they want, you’ll get what you want too. And I was like, cool. So I did some research on it and yeah, that’s a pretty famous quote that I was ignorant to until just recently.

Stephen S. (08:13.24)
That’s amazing. Wow. So now tell me about what you’re excited about right now with what you’ve got going on. What’s kind of happening in the market that you’re seeing? Why should people be investing in real estate? It’s a multifaceted question, but what are you really excited about most right now with what you’re seeing?

Matthew Ballantyne (08:31.821)
Yeah, so again, a lot of the information that I have is self-taught. I’m in the industry as well, and I constantly do research. So this is not coming from a place of a higher education, like a master’s or a doctorate degree in real estate investing. A lot of real estate investing for me has been hard won and earned from my own personal mistakes and listening to the people that have come before me. One of those people, Zach, Zach Keeps, I don’t think he’ll mind if I say his last name on this. He’s a friend of mine and…

His terminology is it’s not timing the market, it’s time in the market. Now, Zach, very similar story to mine, he’s a little bit older than me, has 315 homes, I think he said in his last three games. And I really appreciate what he says, but it’s like, once you plan something out and you have that basic framework of like, I’m gonna buy a house in two, three years, I’m gonna save up that down payment, this is what I’m gonna do. It doesn’t really matter what the market’s doing, whether it’s going up, it’s going down, interest rates are up, interest rates are down.

It’s really about that family dynamic of what kind of an environment you want to be in. Because if you’re not happy with where you live, or if you’re not really vibing with your own environment, you’re not going to be in a good place. And the second I see somebody change their mentality or their mindset shifts from…

I’m going to do this to await. I’m not. They weren’t really ready to do in the first place and they spent a lot of time spinning their wheels and going through the process through analysis paralysis and everything else where they just finally got themselves out and then they wait five more years and they’re they’re still renting. I think you were telling me about that rent calculation of someone in Florida at $4,800 a month. It’s like 60 grand a year. It’s not just that though. It’s like

Stephen S. (10:12.621)
Yeah.

Matthew Ballantyne (10:15.799)
When I think about retirement, or I think if anybody thinks about retirement, and this may or may not be right for you, I’m not, know, there’s somebody smarter out there than me that definitely probably knows more about this than I do, but I know for myself personally, when I think about retirement, mortgage payment or rent payment does not equate to the calculations I use, right? And it’s like, if you’re in your 20s, your 30s, you your 40s, and you still don’t own a home, it’s…

Stephen S. (10:34.51)
Hmm.

Matthew Ballantyne (10:40.931)
How far back is that day gonna get pushed, right? Regardless if you’re gonna be a real estate investor, have multiple rental properties like I did or like a lot of the other guys do that are in your podcast, just that fact is like owning that home is gonna set you up for a much better life, you know?

Stephen S. (10:57.122)
Why do you think that is? Because I think that’s one of the split opinions in the real estate world, You’ve got Cardone who’s over here saying nobody should ever buy their own house. And then you’ve got Dave Ramsey saying, well, you should never go into debt and pay off your house as quick as possible. So what’s the sticking point to that? What’s your opinion on that topic since you brought it up?

Matthew Ballantyne (11:21.261)
Okay, so first off, I respect both of those guys a lot and I want to be really, really clear. I in no way do I compare to a Grant Cardone or a Dave Ramsey in my real estate portfolio. Okay. I can tell you I’ve helped thousands of individuals become homeowners and real estate investors. And I kind of fall in the middle of the two pretty strategically, but also because I listen to both of them and I like what they have to say. When it comes to Dave Ramsey,

Stephen S. (11:32.835)
Sure.

Matthew Ballantyne (11:49.775)
Think it’s really smart that you buy your home, but saving up 50 % for your first house is really unreasonable Especially when homes today are you know 450 500 thousand dollars sometimes even more depending on which market you’re in and great card. I’m saying you should never own your own home It’s like well that takes house hacking out of the mix You know if you and that’s what I did I mean I lived in it as a primary Moved out of the next one moved into the next one moved into the next one and I continue to rinse and repeat that process

So there’s a strategy to it, but if you’re just doing it without really any thought process and you don’t actually sit down and make the plan yourself and you’re trying to take somebody else’s plan and apply it to yourself, I mean, they both have good plans, right? And they’re both strategies for success, but if you can’t resonate with that idea and it doesn’t really come from you and it’s coming from somebody else, then you’re just trying to force yourself to be somebody that you’re not, right?

My biggest takeaway from anybody who’s trying to do this isn’t that they need to follow my plan directly, or they need to follow Grant’s, or they need to follow Dave Ramsey, they need to follow Zach Heaps, or even yours, right? It’s they need to find out what makes sense to them.

and actually put it into practice. We were talking about Bradley Tate before, right? Goal setting. That first plan that I wrote was almost identical to the way he talks about goal setting. I sat down on my bed in my one bedroom apartment, which was on the loft, and I took out a piece of paper and a pencil, and I started writing down that math. And the excitement I felt when I realized I can have the life that I’ve always wanted to have, and I don’t have to go get my doctorate degree. Like…

It changed something inside of me that made it just easy to tell all of my friends, sorry dude, I can’t go out this weekend, I’m buying a house. And after I own the first house, they’re like, dude, you already have a house. I’m like, yeah, but I’m buying the next one. And all those people fell away that weren’t really helping me get to my plans because they just wanted to go out and party, right? And the people that really supported me, they’re still my friends today. You know? But that wasn’t, it wasn’t because like I didn’t even think special, I just…

Stephen S. (13:32.802)
Hmm.

Stephen S. (13:42.402)
Right.

Stephen S. (13:45.966)
Hmm.

Matthew Ballantyne (13:52.419)
took the time to look at my situation objectively and you know, I dreamt a little bit and then I went after it.

Stephen S. (13:58.7)
You bet. You know, on your point there, I really, I don’t even remember where I first heard this. It’s probably at a network marketing meeting like eight years ago or something like that. Every now and then a good quote I do. Yeah, probably so. I mean, every now and then there’s a great quote you hear and it sticks with you. It pops out every now and then. I was involved with it when I was 18, man. I thought I was going to retire by the time I was 20. I was wrong. Yeah, you know, but

Matthew Ballantyne (14:10.455)
one of those multi-level marketing moves. Like multi-level marketing?

Matthew Ballantyne (14:26.191)
Of course. That’s the steel of my mentality. I mean, every day I’m going to retire and the next day I’m going to be broke.

Stephen S. (14:29.274)
This true. But you know, this one thing did resonate with me and I swear it’s probably where I heard it. But what it comes down to and what you just said to your point there is, is for people that want to be successful, what ends up happening is the older you get, and I think this does happen for most people, but especially people that want more and want better for their lives, is that ultimately what happens is your circle grows infinitely smaller in size, but wildly greater in value.

Matthew Ballantyne (14:59.545)
No, I would absolutely agree with that statement that you just made. But then there’s a certain point when you get to it, right? That’s where I’m at right now. Where I found some groups. I’ve started doing podcasts. I’ve started to kind put myself out there because when you get to a specific place, I was talking to client the other day and she was like, Matt, I’m not like you. I know we’re the same age, but you have so much more than me. You’re in such a better situation than I am.

You don’t have the time. I’m like, no, I have the time for you. Like, I want to help you, but I don’t want to talk about what I have and what you don’t. I want to talk about how to get you what you want, you know? And there’s that disparity between individuals at a certain point where they feel like they almost don’t have the right to ask somebody who’s successful how to be successful. But what’s crazy is like this, successful people will literally tell you everything. They’re like, let me give you the roadmap, right?

And so I found out through recent developments and through working with guys like Jesse Ray over at Growth House and some other places that there is a place for those higher net worth investors to find people that don’t just want something from them. They don’t want money. don’t want anything but time from each other to talk to one another about our problems. And I’m not super wealthy like all of them. I’m a lot further than some people and not as far as a bunch of other people.

Stephen S. (16:22.018)
Right. Yeah, I mean, think the more money you make, no matter where you’re at, the more money you make, the more you realize how little you actually have in the current scheme of things,

Matthew Ballantyne (16:23.83)
out.

Matthew Ballantyne (16:33.453)
But to your point, it’s all about that. It’s not about my individual capital. It’s about the relationship capital that I have, right? It’s like the people that I know in my life, and I’m a firm believer of I’ll be friends with anybody. Like, you want to be friends? Then we can be friends. But the second that friendship turns into something that isn’t beneficial for me and my family and isn’t aligned with my goals and my skill sets and where I want to go in life, then it becomes…

more of a detriment to what I wanna do, then that friendship doesn’t really have a place, you know? And it’s sad to say that because I’ll do anything for my friends, but there’s a lot of people that I’ve had in my life that they’ll get to a certain point and they’re like, hey, can I have this or can I do this? And I’m like, yeah, sure, no problem. But then when that expectation isn’t met, it’s unfortunate. You have to continue moving on with your life and know that somebody else is gonna come in. And what I found through that is that you develop.

the most meaningful relationships with the people that you really should have when you open yourself up to having those relationships grow, you know? And the ones that are supposed to grow do. The ones that aren’t supposed to grow, kind of fizzle out on their own.

Stephen S. (17:42.072)
Well, and think that goes back to there’s really, when you think about it, there’s three types of people in the world, right? There’s givers, there’s takers, and there’s matchers. There’s people that are going to give and try to out give no matter what. Then you have people that are going to match. They’re not going to give first, but they’ll match whatever’s given. And then there’s people that are only out to take. And when you put two, three, five, 10 givers in the same room, I mean, it can legitimately change the world. And so to that point, you know, I think, and I see that in you, I see that you have that giving mentality.

And so I think that’s one of the downsides of being a giver too is just, I think a lot of us, I’m the same way. We think everybody’s the same. And to an extent, we have to, in some cases, navigate the reality that not everybody is going where we’re gonna go. And not everybody wants to contribute or be a part of that path. And so it’s kind of tough because in some cases,

I don’t know if this has rang true for you, but I don’t have a whole lot of relationships that I’ve had for more than 10 years. And a lot of it comes down to because I’ve continued to level up and try to take people with me and either they have their own ideas or they just weren’t the right people to be in the right room. And so to your point on being in the right rooms though, is, excuse me, something you hit on, what are some of the things people should look out for in terms of picking the rooms to get in?

Matthew Ballantyne (19:05.027)
I think they should just go to the rooms. I mean, you don’t know if you’re in the right room until you get there, right? And each room has its own different skillset. mean, like what you guys do with your investor groups is really kind of magical where you’re trying to match the right people. Like you spend a lot of time and that individual capital and the relationship capital that you guys have with the other people that you work with to make sure that you’re matching people up with people that are actually going to be able to benefit them, right?

One of the big takeaways that I had was, you know, when I was kind of reviewing a lot of what you guys do, it’s you’re not looking for those takers, like you put it. You’re looking for people that actually want to help, and they’re not just looking out for like a lead source for more business to come in so that way they can make more money. It’s like…

you’re going to get that if you show up and you give to somebody and you help them understand where they’re supposed to be, but you’re not going to get it if that’s all you’re worried about. And so people can sense it. mean, it’s definitely not difficult to pick those people out of a room when we come into contact with them. But I think like for yourself and myself, like we get burnt a lot on that same thing. I mean, we were talking about the insurance company that I built, right? I built an insurance company this last year. was kind of like, just, okay, let’s do something new.

It was an idea it was in my head and I was like, okay my friend I wanted to help him out great guy put the insurance company together and then afterwards it was like It was a cool project that we had but then after that project was done He kind of was like I don’t want to do that anymore. It was really easy for me to be like cool This isn’t for you, but I didn’t want to set an expectation that was gonna be missed and then like lose that that relationship So very quickly I was like, hey, why don’t we just pause and just not you know Not do anything with this for a while Well while you kind of figure out like what you’re going through to give him that

Stephen S. (20:16.098)
Right.

Matthew Ballantyne (20:45.937)
grace to make sure that he could take care of that. But in that process, it’s like I look back on it, I’m like, how much time did I really, did I really need to spend that much time there? And so I learned something from that failure, right? I’m like, hey, this wasn’t, this wasn’t a super lucrative activity. It doesn’t think you’re gonna happen, but like.

Maybe in the future, just, you know, I rely on the people that I know to do what I know they’re gonna do as opposed to trying to start something new with that person and force it. Like you were talking about pulling people up. It’s so difficult to get somebody to like see the vision. So that sometimes you just have to do it yourself until they’re ready to follow, you know?

Stephen S. (21:21.314)
Right? Yeah, 100%. And to your point, getting in the room, you don’t know if it’s going to be the right one till you get there. Then what you touched on about us, what’s super funny is I actually sent out two proposals for new members actually today. And we have a list of 20 plus benefits that a member gets when they’re a part of InvestorFuel, for example. Right. And then at the end of it, we have a portion where it says member obligations. Right. The first two are just, hey, here’s you need to

Matthew Ballantyne (21:27.279)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (21:50.304)
Obviously pay right because the higher you pay to be in a room typically the higher quality people are there But the third thing which is the last piece of the entire sheet is be a giver to the community Share your knowledge expertise and experience with others. That’s literally the only obligation other than making sure you pay your dues on time Right. So that’s a that’s a really really solid point What are you what are you doing right now to

give back to your community in some of the ways that we’ve already talked about. So I know that you’ve mentioned that a lot. You love to be a giver. So what are some of those things that you’re doing right now as far as like education and things like that? I wanted to make sure we highlighted and touched on that because we did talk about that before the show.

Matthew Ballantyne (22:35.769)
Yeah, so I do teach a lot of other mastermind conferences, real estate investment groups. There’s about three of them that I’ve built classes out for that I teach for them.

I’d love to say it’s really consistent, make myself sound great, but like it’s just in its beginning kind of stages of being able to do that. So that’s kind of a pet project. It’s something I really enjoy doing is helping the community members understand like how credit works or how to budget and save. Not exactly like the Dave Ramsey approach, but like something in the middle, like we were talking about there. So it’s like, that’s kind of part of it, but just recently over the last year, I’ve gotten to know

our local president for the NAACP. And he is, we have a lunch schedule here this next Thursday to talk about bringing those same type of courses to.

their members in that community. I also take those classes to other businesses that are local here in Arizona. I’ve taught at places like Destiny Springs Healthcare. It’s a behavioral health hospital kind of lined up with the psychologist thing, right? So I found a really big calling for that. I’ve done it with a high grade, Aerozone to just like name a few companies where we go in a couple of times a year. We teach their employees like good financial education, you know, habits to ensure that they have a resource that they can go to. And these aren’t just like a, show up and I’m to

to sell you a mortgage, right? That’s not at all what the class is. It’s truly like, this is how credit works. Like this is what the banks don’t want you to know. This is why they don’t teach it. Let’s explain to you like how to have a decent credit score without really thinking too much about it on a daily basis. And we break it down to really simple steps. We talk about budgeting and savings and going through all that. So that’s really like what I’ve been focused on lately besides just helping my normal clients in my daily life, kind of going through like the mortgage process and helping them go through that.

Matthew Ballantyne (24:22.787)
But it’s cool because I’ve been able to take a field like finance, right? Where we all have our ideas about finance guys. And I’ve been able to kind of change the dynamic around from like just a big paycheck to like let’s really help people get where they want to go and talk about their dreams, their goals and doing that. So it’s really, really rewarding when you do it that way.

Stephen S. (24:44.268)
Yeah, you bet. So Matt, let me ask you this. If you had to go back to the beginning of when you got started, which again, kind of funny because it was almost unintentional how you got where you’re at now. But if you had to take all of the lessons that you’ve learned over the past 15, 16 years, start over all over again in that same position, what would you do different and what would you do the same?

Matthew Ballantyne (25:12.943)
Great question. So I would start exactly the same as I did, right? I love the way I started on this, but in about 2018, I took some large, one of the cool things about owning real estate is you get a lot of equity in those houses, right? And so I got away from my initial plan and I started to see other investment opportunities. I invested large amounts of capital into private ventures and other, you

Stephen S. (25:27.854)
Sure.

Matthew Ballantyne (25:42.403)
businesses, which I still own some of those as well, but it actually set back that real estate portfolio to a point where I got to my 10-year goal. I got my five homes. That was great. But then after that, I didn’t get the next five. It kind of got stalled out because I made such large capital investments into these other businesses and these other companies where it drew my attention away from what was being successful, what was working, what I knew over to something that I really didn’t. And so…

anybody who’s doing this, if they have that kind of a plan or if they’ve been going through it, the biggest thing I would tell them is like stick to your plan. Don’t get distracted until you can afford to be distracted. If that makes sense.

Stephen S. (26:19.476)
Mm. Yeah. Can you dive a little bit deeper in that of not affording to get distracted until you can be?

Matthew Ballantyne (26:25.291)
Yeah. Yeah, so I’m not going to name specific company names, but I invested, I invested roughly half a million dollars into the cannabis space. Right. Um, was doing great. were getting 198 % return on, on our dollar from a very small net investment of 12,000. So was like, cool, let’s go. Like, you know, gloves are off. Let’s, let’s pound this through. Let’s retire it, you know, 25 years old. It was actually 35.

Stephen S. (26:36.749)
Hmm.

Matthew Ballantyne (26:53.807)
Sorry, I misspoke there, but right after that bulk investment came through, which I still own part of this company, it’s still great. mean, the owners are phenomenal people. Everything’s going great with them. They’re actually looking at doing a big exit strategy, which if that happens, I’m right back in the race with everybody else and actually much further ahead.

But for the last few years, the industry has changed so drastically and I can’t see it, touch it, feel it, control it, right? I have no input or say to what happens to this company. And that’s the part that I think is so difficult for me, is I can’t affect a positive change for this massive amount of money that I put in there. And that’s why I said, don’t get distracted until you can afford to, because in reality, like I can’t afford to, I’m doing fine, right? I still have the cool toys and the stuff, but.

Stephen S. (27:28.814)
Hmm.

Matthew Ballantyne (27:41.997)
But I look back on that moment and I’m like, if I would have just kept on my path, know, 2018 buying four or five more homes with that money, how much further I would have been ahead. And it’s the same thing like when somebody looks at buying real estate, they’re like, I wanna wait until the market crashes, I wanna wait for something else. And it’s like, just look back five years ago. Like, should you have waited then?

You know, and it’s not about being able to get back to 2010. It’s like, how is this like, if you get nothing changes from today, except for the fact that rents we know go up by about 3 % or, you know, when I’m renting or, you know, if mortgage rates are going to, you know, they’re going to fluctuate, they’re going to go up and down, they’re going to change. We’re going to see those differences in the market. You know, real estate is going to appreciate on average most of the time, unless we have a major financial crisis.

Stephen S. (28:03.906)
Yeah.

Matthew Ballantyne (28:33.037)
you know, what’s the real risk? know, and real estate has always been kind of touted as one of the safest investments you can make. What’s crazy to me is that I put money in something that I didn’t really understand. And the more I look back on it, I’m like, I don’t completely regret the decision because it’s opened up a lot of doors. It’s put me in a lot of places, a lot of different people, but it’s also been a very expensive introduction to some of those other things, if that makes sense, you know? And like I probably could have gotten there on my own.

Stephen S. (29:00.195)
Yeah.

Matthew Ballantyne (29:03.183)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (29:03.894)
Yeah. Well, Matt, thanks for joining us today. If anyone wants to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Matthew Ballantyne (29:10.847)
so I am the insane person that actually gives my cell phone out on podcasts because I am, I’m yeah. And I’m totally fine with that. mean, really I’ve, I’ve had a lot of, I’ve done it on podcasts before I get calls. It’s totally fine.

Stephen S. (29:15.776)
just before you do that, all seven million people are going to call you.

Matthew Ballantyne (29:29.645)
It’s just kind of how I operate. I would prefer text messages for anybody listening. It does make it easier for me to manage. If you guys can text me, that would be best. And the best number to text is 602-400-3238. That way you have a direct link to me. It’s not my assistant. It’s not a huge team. I don’t send you out spam. I’m just here to help out with whatever you guys need.

Stephen S. (29:50.062)
That’s his CRM number, you guys are now signed up for the text list. You gave consent. I’m just saying, trying to protect us all from the A2P laws.

Matthew Ballantyne (29:53.071)
I know right? Yeah, you can say. And you’re no longer on the DNC list unless you know I’m just kidding.

Stephen S. (30:05.05)
man, I love it. awesome. Where else can they go to connect with you for maybe a less aggressive approach for them texting you and then?

Matthew Ballantyne (30:06.083)
Yeah, yeah, that will forever live on the web now. So we’ll be always here with this.

Matthew Ballantyne (30:16.353)
yeah, less of aggressive approach is my email and it is pretty simple. It’s matthew.balentine.yahoo.com.

Stephen S. (30:26.79)
Well, everyone you heard it here first go go drop him some communication show him some love let him know Yeah, you found him through fuel and then I hope you enjoyed today’s show and we’ll see you on the next episode Matt Thanks for being here today. Really really grateful for our conversation

Matthew Ballantyne (30:41.079)
Yeah, do you mind if I give him one more actually? So my Instagram is actually a really good way to get a hold of me as well if you want really less aggressive. It is Mortage Period Mat. That’s it. Yep.

Stephen S. (30:43.277)
Yeah, absolutely.

Stephen S. (30:55.832)
There you go mortgage period Matt you heard it here first folks. That’s what I was hoping you would drop would be like a social media profiles They could just go follow you. I love it. Well again everybody. I hope you enjoyed the show. We’ll see you on the next episode

Matthew Ballantyne (31:02.831)
Edit that part out.