The Future of Real Estate: Smart Contracts, Ground Leases and Collective Ownership

Joshua Wicke (00:00)
Solving people’s problems by sitting back to listen as everyone’s talking and find the problems that everyone is avoiding. Solve those problems. If you can do that, you are absolutely indispensable. Even if they don’t like you, they can’t kick you out of the room because you’re the only one that can solve those problems for them. Because nobody else wants to touch them. So if you’re just starting out, you’ve never done a deal before.

And you’re trying to partner with somebody in a syndicate and you’re looking and you’re, you know, watching the things that people avoid, write that down.

Joseph Crooms (02:07)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. Today I’m your host, Joseph. Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with.

His name is Joshua Wicke. Yes, that’s a guess. He’s making some serious industry movements in the real estate industry, but he’s also got a new niche. And I think he’s really concerned about the community, people in in various environment states. So we’re gonna hear a little bit more from him. So, hey, Josh, glad to have you here. Say hello to everybody.

Joshua Wicke (02:45)
I appreciate you having me on. How’s everybody doing?

Joseph Crooms (02:47)
Great. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching the real estate industry, how you did some flipping, but also we’re gonna also talk some about this this new venture that you’re taking on about the last year or so. How long have been taking on that new venture?

Joshua Wicke (03:07)
It’s been in development for about maybe eighteen, nineteen months now.

Joseph Crooms (03:11)
Okay,

Great. So so let’s dive in. So first of all, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us your short version. What’s your main focus these days and what markets have you been operating?

Joshua Wicke (03:26)
Our main focus is trying to figure out how to save communities. And we’re focused on any market that’s underserved.

Joseph Crooms (03:37)
And when you say save communities, w what tell me what that means, elaborate on that.

Joshua Wicke (03:42)
Okay. Well let’s take, for Miami, Little Haiti. I’m I’m a minority, you’re a minority, so we both kinda understand what’s going on there. Some investors a couple of years back came looking, said, you know what, this could be some valuable property for us. How do we get these people out of here? And if it wouldn’t have been for the celebrities that circled around, circle their wagons around that community, that community would have been gone.

But that’s like a one-off. That’s a rare thing. There are plenty of communities all over the United States, let’s forget the rest of the world, that are are being gentrified. The the residents are being moved out. Where are they gonna go? You know, just because somebody, you know, sees that they can make a profit without the people that live there anymore, you know.

Joseph Crooms (04:35)
How how how how are you helping them? How wha what is your plan of action that you’ve been thinking of?

Joshua Wicke (05:28)
Well, we think that collective ownership is the way to go. Let’s—I I live in Jacksonville, Florida. So if we were to take the worst community in our city, you know, law enforcement-wise, it would be Ken Knight. What if the people of Ken Knight owned the land around there and could decide what would come in and what would leave, what projects get, you know, pushed to the front, you know, utilities, sidewalks.

Security officers so their kids can walk to the school without getting shot at every day, without having to have an outside influence come in to control that. That that’s our goal. So if we can help them facilitate the purchase of the actual land, set up ground leases so like a a gas station or a Winn-Dixie or a Publix or something like that can come in, they get the benefit and that money comes back into the community instead of being extracted out.

And they have control over the lease. They have control over the ground. So if that entity starts to make some mistakes that they don’t like or start to break up the community and fractionalize it and move the people out, those people can vote those people right off their land. That’s kind of the layer we want to add. We want to give control back to those underserved communities and then figure out how to utilize the assets that they have under their control to funnel money back into their area. So

When you drive through it doesn’t look like a war zone anymore.

Joseph Crooms (07:01)
Let me back up a little bit, but it’s gonna and we’re gonna pick up that a little more. What what has your real how what has your you or your partner’s real estate experience, how did it help shape your present thought?

Joshua Wicke (07:18)
Coming up, like trying to not even make a name for myself, just trying to figure out how real estate worked. I bumped up against it. A lot of people that seem like they were there to help, but really weren’t. You know, it’s one thing to say, you know, I have a method and I want to build a community and show all these people how to do it. But it’s another thing to say that same thing and then charge $60,000 for it because you’re really not trying to help. You’re really just trying to make some money.

And you’re trying to create a barrier that will only allow the type of people that you want in. When the reality is that everybody needs in. There’s gotta be a path for everybody, whether they’ve got money or not. You know? It’s something that we deal with.

Joseph Crooms (08:01)
How many have you well you were in the flipping business at first, Joshua?

Joshua Wicke (08:06)
A a bit of a bit of flips. Some like hold patterns. The the—I think the co-living, the co-living spaces, like where we would take maybe a s—maybe a three-to-five-bedroom house and rent each individual room to people that just didn’t have the funds to be able to get a an entire house, trying to help them get back on their feet. When I was in that world, I realized that the people that are there actually working in that space and don’t have

Much care about the people that they’re extracting money from. You know? Some of those people struggle and if they’re ten dollars short on rent, they kick out on the street, which adds to a homeless problem that they want the police to do something about. And I started to wonder, like, is some of this stuff intentional? Or what’s really going on? You know, and when I started to ask those questions, me and those people started to fall out. Like

I I don’t talk to them anymore. Don’t even want to talk to because you know why? I—I see a path to fix it and if people wanna help, they’ll help. If not, I’m still gonna fix it.

Joseph Crooms (09:19)
So w what is funding this new idea? Was it flipping business or you know, how many houses did you flip?

Joshua Wicke (10:01)
How many? Probably in in this city, probably about maybe ten to fifteen in total. Some of those by myself. And the early—in the early, you know, start you have to partner with other people until you get some deals under your belt. But yeah. Probably about maybe in the beginning about fifteen to twenty. And when it comes to capitalizing, it just depends on the specific deal in place.

Sometimes the the owners are willing to carry back because they understand what’s going on. Sometimes you’ll get outside investors that will see, all right, this makes sense. Let’s let’s help out. A lot of times when it comes to underserved communities, and and people really don’t want to talk about this, but some of the gangsters are are the ones that are really the most interested in their community. And it’s

It’s hard to separate that, but they’re the ones that are quickest to be there. Like, hey, look, my people live here, my grandmother lives here, my family lives here, I grew up here. I know this money ain’t, you know, what you want, but it could be my path to getting out of what I’m doing now and into helping my community. And believe it or not, a lot of them are really community minded.

Joseph Crooms (11:26)
Were some of them investors themselves?

Joshua Wicke (11:29)
They became investors. Once they started to understand what was going on, and how we’re not trying to take from them, we’re trying to give it back to them. Then like it snaps in their head, they’re like, Okay, yeah, I can do that. I can do that. And then we teach them how to do it as legally as possible.

Joseph Crooms (11:51)
And how many people were a part of y your business and the investment and then flipping in? did you have a network or was it just you by yourself?

Joshua Wicke (12:01)
Usually it’s just me. Mm-hmm. There there’s there’s not much money for me in what I do on the front end. So yeah, usually it’s just me.

Joseph Crooms (12:13)
So on the flip side of the new business, what really w w what’s been the key to keeping the machine running smoothly?

Joshua Wicke (12:27)
The peak. Go ahead, go ahead. I’m sorry.

Joseph Crooms (12:30)
Yeah, no, no, no. What’s what’s been the key to keeping the machine running smoothly now? Now you’re taking on this new venture. So I guess your your former investments are sorta keeping you afloat.

Joshua Wicke (12:42)
Yeah, you could say that. I I’m I’m—I don’t do bad. I mean I’m straight. Okay. But the thing that’s really keeping things afloat is taking all the methods that that I had to do, like individually, one on one, like, and it took a crap ton of time, and packing that into to code and allowing what what we would call artificial intelligence to run a majority of it. So

This new project, the Promethean Network State, is designed to take those methods out of my mind. And the methods that I learned from other people, which is really the bulk of it, and turn that into something that just the everyday person, somebody wakes up in the hood in Atlanta and goes, You know what, we’re gonna put some money together today and figure out how to buy our community so we can keep these other people out, hop onto the thing, they don’t even have to talk to me anymore.

They can just tell the AI what they want and it turns into like kind of a wizard. It just asks them the questions that they need, plugs in all the pieces, creates a smart contract and a multi-sig wallet to funnel all the funds into, gives that community of stakeholders control over those funds. And, you know, then the normal method of real estate starts to kick in, escrow and then tranches as the, you know, the rehab’s happening.

Like it just does all that for them. They don’t have to think about it anymore and they don’t have to pay a real estate agent twenty, thirty thousand dollars to navigate something that really they could do themselves if they just understood what was going on.

Joseph Crooms (14:22)
Now every operator I know has a moment when things just maybe a deal that went sideways or a moment when you’re trying to start this business that things not clicking. You mind sharing some moments with us?

Joshua Wicke (14:37)
Every time I try to explain this to somebody. Okay. Yeah, because it’s—it usually people are waiting on that elevator pitch, two seconds. Tell me tell me what this will do for me. And it just—I don’t even know how to put it into words. You know? I know how to use it. I know how to show other people to use it. And it would be better for us to just kind of slowly let word of mouth propagate than being out there trying to

explain things to people ’cause it’s just yeah, it’s rough. I think that’s probably one of our sticking points.

Joseph Crooms (15:54)
That’s the kind of stuff people don’t talk enough about. Honestly what separates the folks who are just dabblers from the ones who stay in the game for the long term. Why are you staying in this game for the long term?

Joshua Wicke (16:07)
‘Cause I care. So I’m

Growing—I grew up in a gang. Grew up angry kid, spent a lot of time in and out of jail cells, prison cells, and and realized that everybody wants to care, but n-nobody understands how to make it happen, you know? And and that turns into fights all the time. And I just found myself in a position where I could do something about it and it made sense to my mind. So that’s what I do.

Joseph Crooms (16:38)
When you say you found yourself in a position, is it the knowledge or it was both finances and knowledge?

Joshua Wicke (16:45)
I I—it it has to be everything. It it’s crazy ’cause, you know, if you’re in real estate, sometimes all of the stars have to align for something to just work. And if they don’t, you just gotta move on to something else. And this all—everything just lined up and I cared enough to make it my problem, so it became my problem.

Joseph Crooms (17:08)
And and s your substance I mean ’cause I this is a new project. I and I di and I can understand the challenges. Believe me, I’m from the inner city, I understand the challenges. S but what is supporting your machine? You are you still flipping homes and stuff like that?

Joshua Wicke (17:27)
I mean every once in a while I might find something interesting. But I mean we we still take probably maybe point one five percent off every transaction. So it’s really about the volume. Then we’ve got those those past break-even forty percent free cash flow checks, you know, starting to trickle in. And I live light.

Everything else goes—gets folded back into the business. So we got a longer runway. Yeah.

Joseph Crooms (18:03)
And and and I I I’m trying to word this because I don’t want you just to to give out a number. But you you understand what I’m saying, Josh?

Joshua Wicke (18:13)
It it—you’re, if if you’re trying to get at if there’s money—is money there, there’s—this is like a blue ocean. Nobody’s here but me and the people that wanna check out.

So if you could think about the money that could be made on every real estate transaction from this point forward, that that’s how—that’s how much money is there. We want to change the way that people do real estate. Period.

Joseph Crooms (18:43)
I get that. So

you’re scaling, but you have to scale from somewhere. You know what I’m saying? On on the on the real estate substance, what do you think your your your annual income is to to sustain this new project?

Joshua Wicke (18:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Like like we were talking about earlier, I I can say that we’re probably in about the forty-five to fifty percent tax bracket.

Joseph Crooms (19:14)
Okay.

Joshua Wicke (19:15)
It gives—it doesn’t give you an exact number, but it it gives you a a decent amount of range.

Joseph Crooms (19:20)
Okay. C can you just throw out a number?

Joshua Wicke (19:24)
No, I can’t. I I would have to probably look at several several crypto wallets, a couple of bank accounts, some smart contracts, which could probably take me about an hour to an hour—two hours.

Joseph Crooms (19:37)
What

is what does your peer group look like? What what partners do you have?

Joshua Wicke (19:41)

I, when it comes to my peer group, I I, you know, I’m a friendless person. People are either about solving this problem or unfortunately I just don’t have time. I’m not the guy that’s gonna go hang out in the club and drink all night. I’m probably gonna be the guy that’s at home on a Saturday night trying to figure out how to make a deal work. Coming from the—I I worked in the M&A space for a little while. So

But it—I don’t know if you if you’ve ever been that—been in there, you know that a deal takes a mountain of information. And it could be the tiniest thing that you could miss. So I, when it comes to friends, I don’t have—when it comes to network people, like people to interface with, anybody that’s that’s in the space that, you know, wants to

Work on—work using this method. Sometimes it’s creative finance people coming from Pace Morby’s camp. Me and him don’t really see eye to eye because I just disagree. If you’re making that much money in real estate, why are you charging ten, fifteen thousand dollars per ticket? You know? So when I find agents, like I said, we’ve been working with SVN.

In in the Carolinas, just ’cause they’ve they’ve got a a a depth of deal flow. And then, you know

Property owners, business owners, usually those connections happen face to face. We’ll get into a project like maybe buying a gas station on a highway. And that will lead us to the fuel jobber. And that jobber might have five or six gas stations that they just don’t want to deal with anymore. We might take that on. And it might not cost us anything out of pocket because the guy’s just like, Hey, look, I just need somebody to run it.

Make sure I get a check every month. This is how much I want in total. When we reach that amount, we can part ways. A lot of times that that’s how those things happen. So like a traditional broker would have a HubSpot with thousands of contacts in it. I don’t

Joseph Crooms (22:06)
That’s big. Especially when you’re you’ve already got some real estate experience, just breaking that knowledge off to people. I can understand the challenge. The next move can either compound things or create chaos depending on how you play it. Now I know a lot of our listeners are either early in the journey or looking to level up and I think they’re gonna benefit from hearing this. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Joshua Wicke (22:31)
Solving people’s problems by sitting back to listen as everyone’s talking and find the problems that everyone is avoiding. Solve those problems. If you can do that, you are absolutely indispensable. Even if they don’t like you, they can’t kick you out of the room because you’re the only one that can solve those problems for them. Because nobody else wants to touch them. So if you’re just starting out, you’ve never done a deal before.

And you’re trying to partner with somebody in a syndicate and you’re looking and you’re, you know, watching the things that people avoid, write that down.

Go find some solutions for it. Make it make sense, do your due diligence, and bring it back to them. Like, hey, look, here, I’ve solved these problems for you. How do I get in the deal? And it doesn’t work all the time, but a good majority of the time, 75 to 80 percent of the time.

Somebody in the room is gonna go, Yeah, yeah, we should have thought of that. Matter of fact, come to the table, help us figure this out. And then people can start to trust your mind and depend on you. And then they’ll just start handing you deals. Like, hey, look, I don’t want nothing to do with this. Take this. Stay consistent.

Joseph Crooms (23:47)
You can’t fake that. Relationships are everything in this space. All right, before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, Josh, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way to reach you?

Joshua Wicke (24:01)
Probably LinkedIn, to be honest with you. Joshua Wi. Joshua W-I.

That’s probably the easiest way to get a hold of me if you need to talk. Outside of that, we would most likely have to bump in each other face to face or somebody would have to pass you my name or pass me your name, you know. I work on a an older kind of peer-to-peer system.

Joseph Crooms (24:31)
Got it. Well, perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time today, Josh, your story, your philosophy, your perspective. I really do. Yeah, yeah, man. We need people in this space who are doing the right thing. This—this—thanks for giving us—for being here. For those of you just tuning in, I know you got some value or or or y—it’s a perspective that made your br—your brain say, Hey, I need to get involved.

Joshua Wicke (24:42)
Appreciate the talk.

Joseph Crooms (25:00)
Make sure you subscribe here. We got more conversations coming from operators just like Josh Wicke, who are out there doing—building real businesses, but helping real people and communities. So we’ll see you at the next episode of Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast.