Transform Your Finances: Private Money Lending

Stephen Schmidt (00:01.958)
Welcome back to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. I’ve got a special treat for you guys here in the studio I got Shalom with us which he’s probably gonna correct me if I’m not wrong But I’m pretty sure that means peace or something along those lines But we’re gonna be talking about some real estate today as we generally do and as we go into that shalom has been Flipping his own properties himself, but he is also a private moneylender

and real estate investor who actually partners with his borrowers from start to finish. So we’re going to get rocking and rolling, but just remember before we do it, Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, 2 5X their businesses, which allows them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. With that being said, Shalom, welcome to the show.

Shalom Yusufov (00:51.266)
Thank you, Steven. You absolutely nailed it. It means peace and it means hello. Actually, my grandfather, my name came from my grandfather who was also in construction back in the Soviet Union. So real estate just runs in the blood. Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (01:01.074)
No kidding. Really? That’s super interesting. Are you, so are you first generation here in America or?

Shalom Yusufov (01:10.414)
I’m first generation here. My dad immigrated to the USA in 93. My mom immigrated here in 96. They both came from Azerbaijan, from Baku. And they built a little nest egg for us here. And I always say my parents became millionaires, but if they stop working tomorrow, they don’t see their millions. My job is to be able to not work tomorrow and still see those millions and preserve those millions. So on that journey here.

Stephen Schmidt (01:37.379)
love that man. So let me ask you this, because your first gen and being raised in an immigrant household always has some very deep values from what I find at least most people are raised with. What was it like growing up to then set you on the trajectory for what you just said there of being able to actually grow that wealth for your future generations?

Shalom Yusufov (02:02.669)
Absolutely, yeah. I feel like my dad is an exception to this, but I know a lot of immigrants, a lot of first generation. But my, our, I guess our parents, when they come here, they’re very afraid of, because they don’t know the language. They don’t have a job here. My dad came here with a hundred bucks in his pocket and he knew the words boy and girl. That’s it. He didn’t know anything else. He couldn’t even say hello. He just came here.

And he grind his way into dentistry, which is what he does, but he’s very, very conservative. A lot of people are when they come to this country, they hate debt, they hate taking on risks, they hate open businesses, they want something safe because they have went through a lot of trauma and a lot of PTSD from their past lives. And when they’re coming to America, they want everything to be stable and steady and no risks. My dad taught me that if you want anything good in life, you have to

Stephen Schmidt (02:31.148)
I’m kidding.

Stephen Schmidt (02:37.409)
Right.

Stephen Schmidt (02:46.69)
Hmm.

Shalom Yusufov (02:55.297)
take risks, you to make difficult decisions. And he’s done that a few times, he’s lost a few times, he’s won a couple times. And it really set me on the path that in life, you gotta take risks and investing in real estate was a calculated risk, but still nonetheless a risk.

Stephen Schmidt (03:11.202)
Yeah, man, I love what she said there. And, know, I think you’re 100 percent right that it goes down to ultimately like trauma that people go through wherever they’re at. it’s almost like when you get into a better situation or a better place, like just not being in the in the darkness or whatever that looked like, you know, not not everybody’s moving out of like a, you know, a war stricken area per se. But when you’re out of it, it’s it’s interesting to see how people raised here.

in America have this, I’ve got all the time in the world mentality, you know, like, just, you know, work a little bit here and there. And ultimately they end up wondering at 40 years old, like, how did I get here? Like, I mean, like the life that I’m living, you know what I mean? So it’s really interesting. I got a lot of respect for, got a lot of respect for that. So let me ask you this. How’d you get into the real estate biz, man?

Shalom Yusufov (03:53.069)
It’s silly.

Shalom Yusufov (04:03.245)
So I went to Baruch College, undecided my major straight from high school. It’s here in New York City. And I’m like, you know what? I’ll save some money. stayed home. Fun fact, I got an undergraduate degree for $36,000 with no aid or any debt. So that was my first steal. But I tried a bunch of different things. Look at my mind open. I knew I wanted to do something in business. They didn’t know what it was exactly. I was a political science major to start, just to have something on there. And so I did a…

internship with this company called Project Destin. They’re a diversity, equity and inclusion company. But they took a shot on me and brought me into that program. And I learned a lot about the fundamentals of investing in real estate. What is gross rent? What is net rent? What is vacancy? How does financing work? And then from there, I started interning at a lot of institutional companies because real estate is a career. You could be a real estate analyst and a developer and asset manager, a property manager. There’s so many things to do within real estate.

And so from there I’ve interned at various different institutional companies. go on my LinkedIn, I’m going to tag it at the very end. You can see all the companies that I’ve worked at, but some to note are Bricksmore, Macarosa Group, and Uniball, Radonco, Westfield, all private equity firms and REITs. And when I graduated school, my dad got really, really sick. So I had to find a way to provide money for my family. And I couldn’t find a job in New York. I had to stay in New York to help take care of my dad, and I couldn’t find a job here.

And that’s when I did a lot of networking. Whenever somebody gives me an opportunity to learn about something, I’m like, I’ll take them up on it. Maybe I might invest, I might not. I could be wasting our time, but I took up this one woman, Grace Gudinkoff. She said, hey, I’m raising money for this deal. Do you want to hear about it? I’m like, okay, sure. I’ll listen to you. And it was a perfect opportunity where I could get, a private money loan for her on her primary residence. And I was able to a return similar to rental property without the commitment.

So instead of a 30 year investment horizon, it was a six month investment horizon, which was perfectly at a time. And since then I started diving into private money lending. And that’s, and that’s my history since.

Stephen Schmidt (06:14.396)
No kidding, Now, so how did an Envy Investment Group come to be and what makes your approach different from traditional lenders?

Shalom Yusufov (06:23.979)
Yeah, so we are on our rental side, we are really focused on ethical business. We are not slumlords, we provide you a good place to live. If things need to get fixed, we fix them quick. And we treat our tenants like the people they deserve to be treated. Unfortunately, a lot of these markets, people just don’t take care of those properties and people are living in horrible conditions and they’re just increasing rent. On the lender side, we choose to be our

each and every one of our borrowers partners. We major here in New Jersey. That’s our main kind of forte. I know a lot of the contractors here. was, I’m right now I’m in Long Branch, New Jersey in my dad’s office sitting here doing this podcast. But we, lend all across the nation, but we make sure to take care of our borrowers. If they have a problem on their investment horizon, like for example, we had one deal where there was a septic, an assessed pool and we couldn’t get past that. We were able to help them figure out that, you know, there is water in the street. Let me call the

the the township for you. Let me help you figure these problems out. My main goal is to make sure that my borrowers are well taken care of and that they have their partner. I’m investing your deal with my money as a debt partner and it’s important that you succeed for me to succeed because I want you to come back and borrow from me again 10 times over so that we can both grow our wealth and that’s the the mission of an investor.

Stephen Schmidt (07:44.611)
Now how has your lending criteria evolved over the last 12 to 18 months? I know there’s been a lot of changes, new administration, a bunch of different stuff going on the last 18 months. It’s been a circus, but like what’s kind of changed or how have things evolved in the last two years, let’s say maybe?

Shalom Yusufov (08:04.013)
Yeah, I I only started the company in 2023, my very first investment. So it’s only been two years, but recently we’ve been a lot more stringent on the scope of works that we ask for and pricing on materials. We asked our borrowers to try to itemize everything as much as they can, labor materials for different things. And then we compare it to different projects that we’ve done, because we also have rentals. We also have flips that we do. And

if it’s in a similar market, we kind of expect the prices to be kind of the same. But it’s great because if a deal doesn’t pay for, doesn’t pencil on our side, we might not lend as much, but we also tell our borrower, listen, I’d be careful if I was you going into this deal because it might not make the profit that you want, right? We’re all seeking some kind of return for our investment, a proportion to the risk. And so some investors, when they’re coming out in the beginning, they may not know some of hidden costs of permitting

or inspections, like right now we’re going through a lead inspection, HVAC inspection, and then we have to the CO, it’s taking extra two weeks, right? So they may not know these hidden costs of holding costs and not calculate taxes and a deal might fall out of contract for one reason or another. And we try to make sure that our borrowers are well set up, especially in their first, second, third deal, so they continue to invest in real estate and not get discouraged.

Stephen Schmidt (09:24.95)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s great, man. So now you offer DSCR, hard money, small commercial. I mean, you do a lot. So can you just break down like how you decide which product fits the best? Is it case by case or what does that look like?

Shalom Yusufov (09:39.628)
Yeah, so first would be hard money. Hard money is basically your fix and flip loan. On our hard money loans, we lend up to 90 % of purchase and up to 100 % of construction. We want our borrowers to have some kind of equity in the play and put their money in so that we know that they’re serious as well. But it all really depends on the deal. Some deals we only lend 70 % of purchase and 80 % of construction. It all really depends.

where the ARV is, what’s the purchase price and how extensive the work is. Moving on, we have private money. Private money has a little bit less guidelines and hard money. And those are where we can do debt and equity partnerships with our borrowers, repeat borrowers. We only offer that to our repeat borrowers. Moving on, DSCR, like long-term 30-year mortgages. We don’t look at your W-2, we don’t look at your PESTA, it your income at all. We look at the property’s income and we look at your…

credit worthiness, right? Are you responsible? Do you have any late payments on your credit? How many credit lines do you have opened? Maybe if there’s a cashflow problem, can you go into, and do you have a credit line available that you can dip into and then repay that back in 30 or 60 or 90 days? And that’s why we use the credit for everything else. We look at the property to make sure that the property pencils, right? And if it doesn’t pass our criteria, likely you’re not gonna cashflow on that property. Now, some people do invest for appreciation. That’s a whole different ball game.

Stephen Schmidt (10:58.934)
Hmm.

Shalom Yusufov (11:06.381)
But those are mainly the kind of loans we offer. The small commercial side is a little bit less built out. Right now I’m working on a 12 unit loan in Chicago. And I didn’t have a lender that would lend in Chicago. So I’m just a one man show, I’m a small lender. So I will call each and every single bank until I find the best terms for my client because I’m on your side, I’m fighting for you. And so I called 30 or 40 banks, but I found one that was able to set up the financing for this purchase.

Stephen Schmidt (11:07.02)
Right.

Shalom Yusufov (11:35.757)
Actually, it’s an interesting deal. We’re to get a 6.5 % interest rate on a 25-year amortized loan for a 12-unit building, is unheard of in this market.

Stephen Schmidt (11:43.968)
Wow. Yeah, that’s insane. What’s so speaking about like the deals? What’s a red flag that immediately makes you pass on a deal?

Shalom Yusufov (11:54.862)
If someone is a first time home buyer or flipper or they’re buying their first rental property and they’re asking me for a hundred percent financing, that raises a red flag. If you’re getting into this business, I want you to put something into it, right? If you don’t believe in yourself to put five, 10, 15, $20,000 into it, or if you don’t have the discipline to go and save that money in order to investing in this business, how does it look like to me as a lender? I want to know that you are committed.

Stephen Schmidt (12:06.174)
Wires up.

Shalom Yusufov (12:24.461)
Right? Because I’m putting up a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, in order to make this deal happen. But I want to see that there is ownership on your side as well. so across the board, we’ve originated somewhere near $4 million right now. Every single time a borrower has a hundred percent financing, they’re less inclined to do the work because they have less to lose. They don’t have their money in the deal versus someone who has even $5,000 invested.

They are they know that their money’s on the line. So they’re working harder on those deals. Another red flag I see often is communication and organization. When you’re working with your lender, I want you to be organized. If I sent you a list of documents I need, send me like Google Drive folder, like with the pictures and the purchase agreement and the listing agreement and your LLC docs and the property expenses and the insurance quote. I want it to be organized, right? Because if you’re messy sending me documents, I can only imagine how

unorganized you are on the construction site when you’re doing innovations or when you’re managing rental payments and stuff isn’t being recorded. So those are main two we see across most of our borrowers.

Stephen Schmidt (13:34.89)
Yeah, what’s the most creative deals? Right, right. What’s the most creative deal structure you’ve ever helped fund?

Shalom Yusufov (13:36.713)
potential borrowers, I’d say. Not borrowers, potential borrowers.

Shalom Yusufov (13:45.39)
So we’ve done debt and equity partnership with one of our clients here in Pemberton, New Jersey. This deal came to us in end of November, right around Thanksgiving. So Monday I come, I log into my computer and my client, he’s like, we need to fund this deal in 10 days. We got to make it happen one way or another. I’m willing to see what you have to offer. We had that property at a pretty good deal. So we were able to do a debt and equity partnership where we provide a hundred percent of the financing.

We got a 3 % origination fee on that. And then we took a 25 % equity in the property. So we modeled out the property would sell in four months after all construction, permits, sitting in the market and closing. And it was a successful deal for us, but that borrower proved that he has the ability to perform on a deal like that because he did, I think three or four with flips with us beforehand. And we’ve seen his work before. So.

It gave us the confidence investing with him on 100 % financing on debt and equity partnership.

Stephen Schmidt (14:49.1)
What are your favorite deals?

Shalom Yusufov (14:52.845)
my favorite deals. I haven’t, I’ve been underwriting a few of these. haven’t actually originated alone, but my favorite deals are built rent because these are ground up construction. You’re building a portfolio for yourself, which is, these are brand new properties. They’ll have zero maintenance or repairs, right? And the newest and cleanest properties are attracting

Stephen Schmidt (14:53.558)
What are you like real bullish on?

Shalom Yusufov (15:22.347)
best tenants. So it kind of hits every single criteria. You’re getting the best tenant, you’re having the least repairs, and you’re building a lot of value in there. So built to rent intrigues me a lot. I’ve looked at a few built around properties myself, and for other borrowers, nothing is penciled out yet. With the current interest rate market, as you know, it’s a little bit tough, but we’re still working with those borrowers every day to underwrite properties and make sure you find something that fits that fits all our buy boxes.

Stephen Schmidt (15:48.706)
Now how do you how do you under ideals differently as both a lender and an investor?

Shalom Yusufov (15:55.374)
Yeah, that’s what makes us unique because we see the pain points from each side. From the investor side, we see why you would want to leverage so much. From the lender side, we see why we want to be so conservative. And so we underwrite properties, we pull comps just like everybody else would. We reach out to local brokers to get their opinions on future values, on current values. We try to get as much color from the market in terms of operating expenses and contractors.

to make sure that you are in line, that someone is not selling you a dream and saying, hey, the renovation is gonna cost 20,000, but in reality, you gotta change, you foundation work, you gotta change the floors, the kitchen, you gotta paint, you gotta change your roof. That’s already, we’re already talking past $20,000. And so making sure that our investors understand what they’re getting into and communicating that picture. For us, it’s easy to disclose a deal and want the next one, but we wanna take care of our clients.

Stephen Schmidt (16:41.964)
Hmm.

Shalom Yusufov (16:53.805)
because like I said, we drive on repeat business. So if you are successful with us one time, twice, three times, you’re almost guaranteed to come back to us.

Stephen Schmidt (17:01.94)
Right. Now, are you seeing more borrowers shift from rentals to flips due to market conditions, vice versa? What are you seeing right now?

Shalom Yusufov (17:11.723)
Yeah, right now we’re seeing a lot of people do flips. They want to build up their capital in order to do a rental. if I had this one client who does flips and rentals before he would do the 50-50, now he would do like every three flips, he would do one rental. And he flips in one market here in Jersey. He buys rentals in Philly and he has about 30 doors there. But it’s really helped him kind of.

balance out the portfolio. So I’d there’s always a happy balance right now. It’s more flipping to build up that capital. And in Jersey, we have a really healthy market here. As you may have heard, Netflix is building their new studio, it’s becoming the Hollywood of the East Coast. Let me say some myself. Yeah, it’s…

Stephen Schmidt (17:52.515)
is wild. A wild place to do it. Like, of all places, New Jersey, right?

Shalom Yusufov (17:58.636)
Yeah. I mean, you got New York city, you got Philly, right? You got the mountains, you got the shore. So you can get a lot of different scenery here. but, prices here have been, have been growing, but places like Florida, right? When you go to Miami, things there have been softening a lot, but even in Orlando, things have been going through the roof. Like I was just listening to a builder’s podcast and Orlando has a record number of

Stephen Schmidt (18:15.318)
Mm-hmm.

Shalom Yusufov (18:28.253)
new builds coming into the market, because there’s less weather effects there, no hurricanes and cheaper insurance. So people are going from Tampa, from Sarasota, from Miami, from Boca, and they all settling in Orlando.

Stephen Schmidt (18:42.348)
which then clogs it up even more. But I’m a little jaded. I lived an hour from Orlando until the last year and a half from now. Man, I’m telling you what, any time I’d have to drive through there, was a freaking nightmare. But it’s also one of the top visited places in the state too. But living there was fun.

Shalom Yusufov (19:02.349)
I mean, not even in Orlando. think it’s like, now we’re out, right? So, people think Orlando, think Disney, but it’s not even in Orlando. It’s basically, it is a good job. It is a good job target for the that do live there.

Stephen Schmidt (19:05.472)
No. Yeah, it’s outside Orlando.

Right.

Stephen Schmidt (19:18.69)
Yeah, 100 % man. So this is good stuff. This is really good stuff. So you also though have properties not in Jersey, right? I know you mentioned your guy there with different types of deals that he was doing and whatnot, but you actually are doing a little bit of all of it and you have rentals that aren’t even 500 miles close to you. So like,

How did that come to be? And how did you get over the fear of investing out of state?

Shalom Yusufov (19:46.721)
That’s right.

That’s why.

Shalom Yusufov (19:54.014)
Yeah, so I had one of my borrowers, that same guy with the debt and equity partnership with, he’s like, Shalom, you got to buy rentals. And I’m like, you’re right. I got to buy rentals. I got to have some money coming in. Sometimes loans are doing good. not sometimes they’re not doing so hot. And so I got to have some money coming in when things aren’t stable enough. And so I’m looking for markets, right? And I stumbled across Milwaukee.

Milwaukee is very interesting market and I really believe in it because it’s the real estate there is so cheap. It doesn’t make sense to build new. So you don’t have new supply coming on market. The rents there are high. And the laws there are very landlord friendly. And that’s the main thing that attracted me there. Right now I live in New York city in Brooklyn and over here, if you have an eviction, it may take you two years. You got to pay like

almost like 60, $70,000 in attorney’s fees to get someone out versus in Milwaukee, it’s 30 days if they don’t pay, you’re in the court for 30 days and 60 days you have a tenant out of your property. Now, when our new president came into office, he enacted a lot of these new tariffs where he wants things to be produced in America. And it got me thinking, where can companies produce things and build their factories

and still keep prices down. It’s gonna be the middle of America where land is cheap and labor is cheap and there is some skilled labor. And so Milwaukee checks all these boxes. There’s no new supply coming. They are in need of quality housing because a lot of the housing there is in disrepair and distressed. They have a lot of skilled labor and cheap land outside there. So companies are coming in and they’re gonna be building factories. For example, Honda is moving their civic plant from Mexico to Indiana.

Stephen Schmidt (21:30.773)
Right.

Stephen Schmidt (21:36.738)
This is old.

Shalom Yusufov (21:47.724)
and they produce 400,000 cars a year just from that one plant. So companies are moving to the Midwest. And so it’s gonna be double down on that Metro. We’ve helped several clients come through us, because I built a T-Mobile down there with a broker and a property manager and myself as a lender. If someone wants to go buy in Milwaukee, we set them up with all these systems to make sure they’re all good and provide them support throughout the lifetime of their investment to make sure that their property is taken care of.

and they’re providing good housing and they don’t have any vacancy.

Stephen Schmidt (22:21.73)
100 % man, that’s a smart strategy. Where’d you learn all this? College?

Shalom Yusufov (22:26.573)
I use my common sense. I use my common sense. A lot of this isn’t even taught in school. I did say major in real estate finance, but they teach you the finance behind these large 100 floor skyscrapers in Manhattan. They don’t teach you the finances behind the duplex in Milwaukee and the single family in New Jersey. My approach is I started thinking, how can I take the efficiencies of how big companies operate with the

Stephen Schmidt (22:42.667)
Right.

Shalom Yusufov (22:56.321)
business model of mom and pop landlords, make it to come together and you have an efficient business where the tenant is happier because they have a great place to live. the investor is happy because it’s a seamless transaction for them and all the support around that, the property management, the lending and, transaction specialists, like the agent or the broker are, are also succeeding because everything is getting done quicker and in volume.

Stephen Schmidt (23:21.25)
If you could automate one part of the lending process like tomorrow, what would it be?

Shalom Yusufov (23:31.524)
With AI, think underwriting could be done a lot more efficiently. Right now it’s a lot of my touch, my gut check, my feeling. I just know some pockets of Jersey really well. So I know that something is more expensive in one or another. Jersey is very decentralized. it’s like, township by township, things are very, very different. But if someone puts that into some kind of model,

Stephen Schmidt (23:36.706)
Mm.

Shalom Yusufov (23:56.52)
And gives it to AI like chat, GPT. And you can say, Hey, these are my, this is my finances. This is my insurance. This is my LLC, like underwrite this property for me and give me a package. I think it could, it’s something that’s the future. I am not afraid of AI. try to use AI in the business. It’s scary how much, how much it could do because one day it could replace us. It could replace you on the podcast here. could place me as the, as the speaker here. and, and in my business, but.

Stephen Schmidt (24:09.548)
for sure.

Shalom Yusufov (24:25.674)
I think that we all still need that human touch to make it, to get everything across finish line.

Stephen Schmidt (24:33.024)
I agree with you on that. think from my take, my perspective, my personal belief is AI is phenomenal and it should be utilized very, very well. And the people that learn how to use it the best that still have the ability to be authentic, like that’s who’s really going to like win in the next 10, 15 years. like, you know, it’s like anything. Industries have been replacing themselves for

Literally thousands of years right like there used to be a guy that walks down the street with a torch lighting You know lighting up street lights, know what I mean? So it’s like and then well electricity comes along puts him out of a job and it’s like well Not necessarily just it just creates a different job environment where you have to learn new skills and adapt, right? But yeah, yeah, I love what you said there. That’s really good. So let me let me let me do this with you here

Shalom Yusufov (25:10.337)
Blank post, yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (25:30.242)
I haven’t done this in a while and I have this little thing I do sometimes which is a speed round of questions. So it’s just rapid fire questions. You give me the fastest answer possible and we roll through it and then the last question is more of a thinker but it’s real fun. You want to play? I need like some game show music. All right. There we go. All right. Flip or rental?

Shalom Yusufov (25:47.873)
Let’s do it, I’ll do my best.

Shalom Yusufov (25:54.573)
slip.

Stephen Schmidt (25:55.69)
most underrated financing tool.

Shalom Yusufov (26:00.962)
private money.

Stephen Schmidt (26:02.39)
deal you’ll never forget.

Shalom Yusufov (26:05.741)
Do you own my first rental?

Stephen Schmidt (26:07.778)
One thing you wish every borrower knew.

Shalom Yusufov (26:12.119)
You have to pay to play.

Stephen Schmidt (26:13.536)
Hmm and last but not least what’s next for Indy investment group in the next 12 18 months?

Shalom Yusufov (26:21.293)
That is a really good question. And that’s a thinker. So next we want to take on development. We are growing in the financing space and that business is, it’s still in infancies, but we’re constantly putting out new products and talking to new borrowers and creating a meeting in the mines there. We have our rentals, but next for Envy itself is development and flips. I think that…

There is a lot of underdeveloped or not efficient space, especially here in the Philly and New York metro areas that could be, that need to be really efficient in order to fill the needs of a lot of these markets. So next development, it’s really hard to make a pencil. I said before, built to rent is one of these things that really intrigues me. But constantly looking at new ways to do that.

Stephen Schmidt (26:59.255)
Hmm.

Shalom Yusufov (27:19.277)
Whether it’s finding materials or finding new ways to bring down hard costs, even with lumber going through the roof, but there’s a lot of aspects to that. And that’s one thing that AI can’t replace. AI can’t replace the human mind that thinks of how to overcome these different problems because I know a guy who would get me flooring for 99 cents a foot. AI doesn’t really know that guy. AI knows that Home Depot sells it for $2 a foot, right? And stuff like that, I think is what’s next for Envy development.

Stephen Schmidt (27:43.573)
Right.

Stephen Schmidt (27:49.362)
Love it, Well, if people want to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Shalom Yusufov (27:54.635)
Yes, you can follow me on Instagram, photographerwithanf or my company Envy Investment Group. It’s GRP, Envy Investment GRP. If you want to reach out to me, you can email me, Envy Investment GRP at gmail.com or you can go to my website, Envy Investment GRP.com.

Stephen Schmidt (28:15.468)
Fantastic. You said it’s photography with an F. What?

Shalom Yusufov (28:19.243)
photographer with an F. When I was in high school, I like photography as a hobby. And so I created that account and I love the username. So I’m never going to give it up.

Stephen Schmidt (28:28.322)
Yeah, that’s pretty sweet, man. I can’t believe that was actually available. I’m dropping you a follow on that one right now. Just kidding, I can’t find you. I’ll figure it out later. But anyways…

Shalom Yusufov (28:34.348)
Yeah.

And I urge the audience to one thing I want you guys to take away from this is when you’re approaching investing in real estate, you have to have the right mindset. Mindset is one thing that I’ve seen a lot of borrowers that they’re missing because they get, if one small thing comes across a road, like a speed bump or something, they’ll be like, this whole deal’s in the tank. I’ll screw it. Whatever. I’ll lose money on this one. I’ll try to find the next one.

Stephen Schmidt (28:48.418)
Mmm.

Shalom Yusufov (29:04.745)
Or they walk away from a deal just because it gets a little bit too hard on the underwriting side. So you have to have the right mindset. Try to make a deal work if you can, especially if you’re already in it, try to find the best opportunities. Don’t let something just bring you down over one hiccup or another because nothing good comes easy. I always say my life, nothing good comes easy and you really got to put in the time in order to figure out these problems. So mindset is number one for all you guys out there who are eager to get started in the space.

Stephen Schmidt (29:32.802)
100 % that’s great advice man. Alrighty y’all well thanks for tuning in hope you enjoyed the show we’ll see you in the next episode. Shalom, thanks for being here brother.

Shalom Yusufov (29:42.722)
Thank you, Stephen.