REI187: Building a Family Legacy w/ William Rojas

25:48And they said, well, we're going to do our business plan. And we really, into the next two years, we really have, would like to have more leverage on this deal. So we would come in and go behind in a subordinate position to the senior loan. And we'd take it from 60 % loan to cost to maybe 75 % loan to cost. We'd be subordinate to the senior loan, but we'd be in a first position to any equity or joint venture or press equity in the deal, equity being the sponsor's capital. And what was interesting of this, the rates were a lot higher. For an investment perspective, we were charging points up front.

26:26We were double digit mezzanine loan points or rates. So the senior mortgage could be 4 % and we could be at 14 and it would blend up five and a half For the sponsor. It was great for certain business plan I wanted to hear if you what we're going through now reminds you in any way of some of those early When you were at wells fargo and and beyond Just is there any kind of similarities that you're seeing right now from today to like kind of the coming out of the great financial crisis or even You know early days of the great financial crisis I started my career at Wells. We were doing loan originations, portfolio management.

27:06We were also doing workouts for troubled assets. So I started seeing groups that were very well capitalized, start losing deals and hand the keys back, things that they could have avoided. One of the things I tell my brother, who's one of my partners right now, is if you go back to 2008 to 2011, anybody who bought during that period was nervous and scared. And it was a point of uncertainty, right? It wasn't like, oh, I'm getting a steal on this deal. It's like, think this sounds good. All my fundamentals check out. I'm at a good basis. I really hope the world doesn't end in a year or two, but we're going to make a leap of faith on a risk-adjusted basis.

27:46And then in 2013 to 2017, everybody who saw the sales comps from 2009 to 2011 or 12, they were calling those investors geniuses. How could we have missed that? So I think that's very similar to what we're in right now, where you had Russia, Ukraine last year, you had the Fed very aggressively raising interest rates or the Fed rates higher than ever before in history and at a faster rate. And you have a lot of people right now that have liquidity, but are scared to jump in. And I think the groups that capitalize over the next six to 12, 18 months are going to, and focus on the fundamentals, basis, rents, comparables, and have a business plan in place to weather the storm, longer term fixed rate debt, reserves, capital plans in place.

28:35They're going to do very well in five years. People are going to say, how do we miss it in 2023? So those are kind of the similarities that I'm tracking right now. That's interesting. I had an interview with Levi Bankert and he lived through the 2008 crisis and very difficult time for him. And I think he's making these same moves now to prepare longer, fixed rate debt, some of the items that you mentioned to get ready for what may be down the road, worst case scenario. I want to hear about your first deal that you did on your own. I think it was a triplex, if I'm not mistaken. Talk to us about when that happened, how that deal came about, just the specifics of it, whatever you want to get into, value add, how you did that.

29:18Talk about that a bit, if you would. Absolutely. Was a lender at a school, then I worked at a developer and we were also doing these loans. After that, I went to go work at Rockwood Capital, an institutional real estate private equity firm. I closed on a billion fives of transactions during five years after while I was there. I did all different asset types, office, residential, ground up multi-family, retail, and a lot of mixed use. while I was at Rockwood, we were doing a lot of office and mixed use projects in certain parts of Los Angeles. Got very comfortable with the markets, understand why we were making these very significant bets.

30:00Some of these deals were north of$300,$400 million, right? We raised certain funds just for these deals. And I started looking at why we invest in these areas? Why is this firm, why are our investors very focused on these areas of town? And it was public transportation. It was employment nodes. It was a central location. It was an area where tenants and office employers could attract talent to work at their companies. Took that information and said, where else in LA could I start investing on the side? Piggybacking off of where institutional real estate was putting in an enormous amount of investment capital for the long term.

30:40So it was really trying to focus on path of growth versus established neighborhoods. Came across an area very central to Los Angeles next to a lot of tech employers that had previously been neglected, but it was a very central location. This project I found, the first one was a vacant triplex. I think the selling points for me was that it was vacant in Los Angeles. It's very difficult to get started on value-add business plans because you have tenant situations, you have a local regulatory environment that makes it difficult whether you have a case or not. It's just a pro-tenant market and that's okay.

31:19I'm curious, since it was vacant, was it in pretty rough shape when you bought it? Not bankable. Very rough. A lot of deferred maintenance. We'll get into more background of my partnership, but we have in-house construction capabilities. So we weren't scared about the condition. Most of the time we buy properties very quick. They're not bankable. We're either putting in mostly cash, all cash or hard money loan, first few deals. And we don't care about the condition because we're going to redo it all anyway. It was in very challenging shape, but we saw the potential and then we got to work, Took it down in the studs, got our architect on board, redesigned the floor plans.

31:58Part of the property was previously neglected and just had weed growing five feet tall. We turned those into individual outdoor spaces for each unit, added some storage, really tried to give a differentiated feel to prospective renters that were coming out of maybe a 200 unit apartment building. And they were ready to graduate from their dorm room to the big apartment complex to now more mature, older millennial, quieter environment. And that's what we were trying to deliver. So was this a deal that you did on your own or was your dad involved, your brothers involved at that point? What was that first deal?

32:36How was it structured? Me and my dad and my brothers were all involved. And my dad and I were majority of the capital. My brothers were in there, what they had, and we put it in and we did very great. We did very well on the investment. And that was the first kind of proof of concept moment that we're onto something here. We can build for cheaper with in-house construction. We know how to structure the deal with refinances. And that first one was very important for me because I was still a W-2 employee and wanted to use that as a springboard to eventually quit the W-2 life and start my own firm.

33:13So as opposed to cashing out a bunch of money, it was just refinance, keep it very simple. cashflow that so that we could use for me to springboard into full-time investing. So let's talk about your dad. I know that he builds high-end homes in Beverly Hills, I believe, right? Yeah. All the high-end homes in LA, areas in LA. So we're talking millions of dollars, several thousand, what, over 10 ,000 square foot homes? Yes. I wanted to hear why you ended up not, and this is kind of taking a step backwards. Why did you not end up right out of college working with your dad doing the family business?

33:54I'm in a similar situation and kind of chose the same route that you did. And I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. It was more of a personal decision on, I worked very hard in a challenging academic environment. And I figured I was in a lucky position that the construction company would always be there if I wanted to participate, but I wanted to carve out my own path and get a different skill set. You know, we talked about it on long road trips and different dinners that we had together. I'll build and you buy and find the real estate, right? I took that very seriously and said, let me figure out the real estate industry first and development business.

34:34And then we can partner at the appropriate time. And I was in no rush to join the construction company or partner with it, but was working very long hours. I felt like I established myself in the industry, had a great skillset. And I kind of knew I was ready to start my own firm when maybe I didn't have all the answers, but I knew how to get the answers about 10 years into my career. Wanted to carve out my own path and then come back to the construction company down the road. Totally makes sense. And you were working a ton of hours too, like 80 hour work week, you know, like working a ton, right?

35:09Yes. Yeah. You touched a little bit on your grandfather. You've talked a little bit about your father. I know family's super important to you. I wanted to hear more about your grandfather coming to the U.S. Talk to us a little bit about his story because I found that pretty fascinating along with your dad's story as well. My grandfather was an amazing man. He's recently moved on. He's no longer with us, but still a big influence in all my family's lives. He immigrated to the US, got a work visa, got his paperwork in order, became a dual citizen, started a commercial landscaping company. My dad is one of five, so he was supporting a lot of young boys early on in his career, working six, seven days a week.

35:55And he really, looking back on it, it was amazing what he was able to do barely knowing the language and making connections with his clients. These people that owned apartment buildings in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And when he passed away, we found old boxes of loan agreements and joint venture agreements that he had with some of his clients that were written on a yellow note sheet. And it was like, there's no excuse for me not to be able to capitalize on the experience that I have and the opportunities that I've been presented. When he was cutting deals on a note sheet, buying his first property, saving up, buying the second property and so on and so on.

36:35And he had, you know, he left quite a legacy of a portfolio for us here and in Mexico. He was still partnering with his siblings in Mexico, gas stations, hotels, office buildings. And just gave me a role model to look up to when things got tough and I wanted to make excuses. Didn't have that. So your dad then, talk to us a little bit about that because he had siblings that were more in a professional career. Not that real estate or entrepreneurial stuff isn't professional, but talk to us a little bit about your dad's path too. So my dad, he's one of a kind. He's one of my heroes, my role model.

37:17I wouldn't be where I'm at without my father. He's been my first coach in all my sports life growing up. My best friends still call him Coach Bill. And he wasn't the academic type. He's very smart. Even now, I'll be on a job site with him and he can do mental math very quickly where I'm pulling out triple checking on the side and not letting him see that I'm checking the math. And he's very brilliant with numbers, but he wasn't an academic type and he didn't go to college. He has some of his siblings are a lawyer, doctor, they're running the other company and he wanted to carve his own path. The deal my grandfather made with him was you're not going to go to school.

37:57The money that we have saved to invest in your education, I'll partner with you and we'll do a business. They He bought a property in Englewood near LAX and California, Los Angeles. And they designed permitting that property into a restaurant. So he put all his life savings and that money, investment money into that restaurant. And he had a great first few months, maybe a year of success. And then some turmoil in Los Angeles with Rodney King riots, uprising of the neighborhoods. A lot of people scared to come out of their house. And that business fell through the cracks and they always kept the real estate, which is a very big lesson for us.

38:40You know, the tenant may have survived or not, but the real estate always stayed in the family with him, my grandfather, my grandmother. And he moved us to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. There was a big earthquake. The 94 Northridge earthquake started. He had his contractor license at that point. And he had a lot of work for a lot of years after, started small, block walls, driveways, renovations to small houses to then getting connected on homes that people have seen on reality TV shows across the networks. And he always took those lessons from that restaurant failing to how he carried himself after and saving and putting money aside for us, for our education, as opposed to buying boats and RVs and things like that.

39:28It points to me like so much of a lot of business. There's many factors that go into it, but a lot of it is just timing and luck. I've heard Moses Kagan talk about how had he started his career in 2005 or 2006, it would have been a totally different situation for him than starting it in 2009 or 10. Timing is a big part of it. And it's crazy to me that you're... So he started with the restaurant and now he's doing these super high-end homes. Is he completely self-taught in terms of real estate and the work that he's doing now? Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating over the last few years that I've joined and bought into the construction company and basically put it into our real estate platform.

40:13I've spent more time with him on job sites and when he's doing inspections with the city inspectors or people from all over the city know him, right? The people that are running the building department in LA were junior inspectors when he was getting started. And he has a very old construction license. and it just shows that he's been able to weather so many different environments of building during the Great Recession. I think he was renovating apartment buildings like two hours away because that's the only work that he was getting, right? And he continued to partner with different developers that had different needs and wants and yeah, self-taught every single step of the way and continued to learn from certain experiences on different projects.

40:59I wanted to hear how you ultimately knew when to step away from your W-2 job. It sounded like you bought that first triplex. You took it down to the studs, added a ton of value. I'm not sure if you pulled equity or did a cash out refi or what you did. But I want to hear about how you thought about making that transition from a high salary W-2 job to jumping out on your own. What was that like? Because there's a lot of people that are in maybe a similar boat thinking about making that transition. And there's a lot of fears and trepidations with it. I was torn on the decision, right? I never let it get in the way of my W-2 job.

41:39I realized and appreciated the jobs that I had and the opportunities that I had. So I always wanted to do a good job for my employer because whether the UO was working for, they had a lot riding on it. So I took it very serious. I always had in the back of my mind, wanting to do my own deals. Started talking to my wife, who's a big support background, backbone for me of, if you want to do it and you think you can do it, I'll support you. Right? So that was a big piece of it. Not everybody has that luxury in a partner and a spouse that says, I believe in you, figure it out. My last job before going off on my own, I got connected with two very smart individuals that are still mentors of mine.

42:18and we were buying properties in Southern California and in Texas. I was very transparent to them that I was going to join, but I was also interested in buying properties on the side. And they said, all right, so long as it's not of institutional size under 10 million or whatever, just don't let it get in the way of our work and you're fine. We'll support you. I didn't want them to find out down the road thinking that I wasn't committed. So I was transparent and upfront with And my portfolio on the side started to snowball. Instead of paying ourselves and we did create value and refinance, it just rolled into the next property, rolled into the next property, right?

42:53And we started to grow slowly organically. And around 2019 is when I was going to Texas quite a bit, probably every other week, every week. And I was starting to miss meetings for deals that I was personally guaranteeing or that my house was on the line for. and I said, it's not fair to my employer. I'm thinking about this other stuff and it's also not fair to me, my family, what we're doing, not being all in on this business. I gave notice January, 2020. I stayed on for a few months and we all know what happened on March 12th when the NBA shut down and the pandemic started. Had some serious conversations with my employers about transitioning out and they said, are you sure you want to do this?

43:37We're not sure what's going to happen. You can still work from home. I consulted for them for a few months, managed relationships, managed the people that were working under me or with me. And in June, 2020 said, you know what, it's time to cut the cord, sign the separation agreement. I've still talked and do a lot of networking with those guys and our mentors of mine and look at deals together. But it was time to, what I said was never waste a good pandemic. and when you have an opportunity to jump out on a moment in time where the market might be resetting, go and don't look back. In hindsight, that moment might be now, but at least I have the back of house and the foundation for my platform established so that we can capitalize it now.

44:23So for somebody kind of thinking about doing a similar move, did you have cash flow in place that you felt pretty comfortable leaving that salaried position? You had enough income coming in to support your family or you've got two kids, a wife. Talk to us about the financial piece of it. I will preface it with everybody's situation is personal to them, what everybody has going on behind the scenes. I would advise anybody who's trying to make the decision, do the best decision for you. Don't try to compare yourself to other people. I would do that early on and I would say, Well, then I'd find out somebody had a very wealthy uncle that was backing them.

45:03And then I'd say, you know what, I'm done comparing myself. I did set up the first few deals to get a small cashflow coming in to pay my monthly reserves. Over time, bought in to the construction company and took a small salary. By no means was I making what I was making previously, but it was enough that I could pay my mortgage, have dinner on the table, and then I could really focus on my own business and growing our platform. What I didn't want to do was I didn't want to be in a position where I had to do a bad deal to take an acquisition fee to keep the lights on. And that's the luxurious position that we're in today.

45:41We don't have to do a deal just to do a deal to get fees coming in. We can be disciplined to do only the deals we want to do. That's what I would advise other people trying to jump out. Do what's best for you. Some people might jump cold turkey, I did a little bit more thoughtfully and over time. I think the point you made about we're all kind of prone to comparing ourselves to others and that can be dangerous. There's a quote, comparison is the thief of joy. Like you said, you have no idea like the backstory or the advantages that maybe someone else has had that you may not. I think that's a good point.

46:16Just kind of stay true to your own path. and it sounds like you have. I want to hear more about how you ended up structuring the company. It's TRG Investments. Talk to us about just how you guys are structuring it. There's like two divisions basically from my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong, but go into a little bit about the partnership with your dad and brothers, how you guys divide out duties. Just go into a little bit about more into what it's like working with family as well. Your thoughts on that. Sure. So yeah, TRG Investments, right now, the organization is myself and my father, the two managing partners.

46:54We own a majority share of the company, but our other brothers are owners in the company and have the ability to gain more ownership over time. The initial seed capital was from the two of us. And also the two of us were putting our assets and our houses on the line, signing guarantees and backstopping loans. So there was a little bit more just disproportionate ownership up front. But over time, we have mechanisms to change the ownership structures as we grow. Myself, my father, who's been a GC for 35 years, I've been in real estate, institutional real estate the last 13 years. I have two younger brothers.

47:30One is about two years younger than me, and he has followed my dad to the construction side. So he has over a decade of construction experience, project management. He's now recently taking over our property management arm and our property management division. So he's helping with our assets locally and dealing with maintenance updates and our portfolio upkeep. And then my youngest brother, he's about four years younger than me, and he followed my path. In college, he saw what I was doing. And I always told him, I don't want you to follow me and not be happy about your career choice. Do what you want to do, right?

48:09If you want to do accounting or investment banking or anything else, tech, go for it. Don't follow me. I don't want to get the blame down the road. And he took an interest in it. And he's worked at some very, very reputable institutional firms. He still secured a large broker shop, national firm, CBRE, national firm. And he was part of the land sale division and multifamily division where he was a wizard with land use and understanding a gas station on this corner, three different options of how you can develop that property. And then they would package it and then they would sell it or take it to the market to sell to developers.

48:46So he got very great experience on land use and development in LA. And then worked at a developer before joining us about a year ago. So right now it's one company and then our construction company is a separate corporation. We use almost exclusively our construction company on all our projects, but there's still paperwork to keep everything separate. One's a corporation. This is an LLC. There's a holding company and subsidiary LLCs. Myself, my dad are talking about directions of the company. My youngest brother, Stephen, him and I are running, trying to grow our portfolio and the financials and acquisitions and development.

49:31And then our other brother, he's on the construction jobs as well as property management. So talk to us about some of the current projects. In particular, I wanted to hear about the restaurant that your grandfather helped your dad buy. That was early nineties. It sounded like your grandfather then maybe had the landscaping business at that property, but it's super interesting to me to hear what's happened to the property now and what you guys are up to with it at the moment. Can you go into that? Yeah, absolutely. So the restaurant that we alluded to earlier in the conversation, my father left the restaurant business, leased it to a few other restauranteurs.

50:08They stayed for a few years and then they moved on. My grandfather had a commercial landscaping company, which he then leased the property. He had his office there. He had part nursery there and plans for a lot of different projects. And he stayed with them through about 2018. And my grandfather and my dad came to me one day and said, all right, I want to be bought out. My dad said, I'm going to buy a mall. They looked at me and said, what can we do on the property? And I said, I don't know. Let me figure it out. I called an architect friend of mine who just started his own architecture firm. Him and I worked on some very large institutional deals together.

50:49and here we are doing our own little side deal together. He just started his firm. And we started the process. We met with the county of LA. It was near the flight path of LAX. It was also commercial zoning, meaning retail and office was the designated use or intended use. And they said, yeah, this is going to be very difficult to develop here. I'm sure you don't want to do an office building or retail. And we said, no, we want to do housing. There was a way to do housing, but it was going to be a small lot, a couple of small units, four units, I believe is what we could do on it. And there was going to have to be some type of commercial component to it.

51:26We submitted the process and started the process. Then a new Senate bill was passed January 1st, 2020 in the state of California, which streamlined affordable and workforce housing in certain commercial corridors. This property fell under that designation and the county planner called us and said, hey, new opportunity to pursue this project. Why don't you explore this new SB 35? We explored it. We were able to entitle it for 11 units, ground floor parking, two levels of framing above it. We are the contractor. We are the developer on it. No outside capital, just our own internal capital. And we are pouring the foundations tomorrow and going to be starting framing here in about four weeks.

52:17So was the original restaurant, the original structure there? Did you have to take that down? Was there some demolition involved with all of this? Yeah, we demoed the building, the restaurant building on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving last year. So we were all there and it was an emotional moment. My dad was telling me about the memories he had at that property that he did the roof shingles himself. And he was on the roof when he heard the radio that Magic Johnson got sick with, I think it was HIV. And there was a couple of other stories that he told me about that him and his father shared at the property.

52:55He was okay with new beginnings at that property, but yeah, it was demoed, fully demolished in November of last year. And then we had our groundbreaking right before Christmas, groundbreaking ceremony. So what's been the hardest part with that project? What's been the most challenging thing you guys have run into so far? Honestly, LA has been mimicking Seattle for the last two months. So there's been a lot of rain more than usual. So just managing stop and starts with weather issues. As far as the rest of the build, it's pretty seamless for us. Again, we have a deep, deep bench of subcontractors in the Los Angeles area.

53:36We're using some of our subs that do the$25 million homes. And then we're using some of the subs that do student and workforce housing, smaller projects, and we're overseeing everything. And then we have our own internal labor and team on payroll that are doing jack of all trade type work as well. Aside from that project, you've also ventured into Texas, it sounds like. What are some of the deals that you guys are doing there? Texas is a new growth market for us. I have experienced, my brother has experience on executing investments in Texas in the past at previous firms. And right now we're working on value-add multifamily projects in Austin and in San Antonio, and in select sub-markets within Dallas-Fort Worth.

54:22So right now, we're working on a 400-unit project. We're trying to get under contract. We don't currently own anything there, but we do have experience and a lot of relationships with brokers and property managers. So I think that's going to be a big growth market for us. very complementary to diversify our investor base and investments. California, Prop 13, where taxes are locked in. Texas, you have the largest population growth and huge corporate relocations happening there. Between the two sub markets and two states, you have the fourth largest economy in the world in California and the ninth largest economy in the world in Texas.

55:01So we think it's a great focus of us to diversify over the future. And for our investors that want a little bit of both, some want ground up, some want value add, some want California, some want Texas. And we're going to keep working hard sourcing those opportunities and let our investors pick which ones they want to be part of. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle.

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58:44All right, back to the show. I wanted to hear how you decide whether or not to take on outside capital. It sounded to me that where the restaurant was, that 11-unit project, that's all funded by you guys internally. how do you decide whether or not to take in outside investors? Talk us through that. Aside from checking our bank accounts at a moment in time, the first few deals, it was a handful of deals. We really wanted to prove the concept to ourselves first with our own money. We really wanted to make sure that we had a couple cycles of taxes done, reporting in place, managing property management and tenants, and really wanted to do a test run with our own capital before we took anyone else's money and had that responsibility as a fiduciary.

59:32The way we see it is when you get an investment and when you get someone to sign and invest in your deal, you're signing up for an obligation to perform for those individuals. These people's savings are at stake, college funds are at stake, and we take that very seriously. Last few deals, we started working through partnerships, some joint ventures, and started taking friends and family capital. And I think we're going to continue to grow that. We're going to do some joint ventures with institutions going forward. My brother and I have a lot of comfort presenting and the way you structure those deals and due diligence for the institutional deals.

1:00:09So we might use that to grow our platform, but we will also be doing smaller deals where we can bring in friends, family, family offices. And that might be a different business plan. That might be a hold forever business plan versus a institutional deal where they're in a fund and there's a five year hole where they're focused on IRR, the family office and our syndications might be more focused on wealth preservation and cash on cash and other things like that. Yeah, that makes sense. I wanted to take a step back a little bit, actually, to my very first question. I don't think we touched on why you think both college and NFL players end up doing really well.

1:00:50You made the point to me on the telephone yesterday about why football players or athletes in general end up doing well in real estate. Can you talk about that real quick? Yeah. Yeah. That's bringing it full circle. So the first thing I would say is any collegiate or professional athlete is very competitive. To get to where they're at, they have to be very competitive. And there's a certain skillset with having a task at hand and working through it and figuring it out, whether that's the playbook or executing on the field. So first and foremost, it's the competitiveness, right? It's the type of person you are.

1:01:22Second, you think about where a lot of people go to college, college towns, or where they're playing in the NSL, they're traveling a lot, right? And they're exploring the city and maybe they're spending their off season in LA, San Francisco, New York, Miami, and then they're getting ideas of what's happening in those markets. Then they're going back to Indianapolis, or then they're going back to another city within the US that doesn't have the same growth that LA or some of these other cities have seen over the years. So they're starting to implement strategies that you see on the coast or other areas implemented in a smaller town and less competition, more opportunity to create value, and you can kind of set the market.

1:02:08So I think the ability to have all those exposures to all those markets help real estate or NFL players and college players become very well-versed in real estate investing. Yeah. I think DK's first investment, I want to say it was either in Indianapolis or it was Indiana or Ohio, one of the two. And there's an old adage that if something like on the coast, like if something is killing it, like in terms of a business concept in New York or Miami or LA, bring it to Columbus, Ohio. And And if it works here, it'll work anywhere. It applies to real estate too. I wanted to just kind of wrap up here with a fire rounder.

1:02:45Are you up for that right now? Absolutely. All right, cool. I wanted to, this is a question that I got from a guy named John Marsh, who has done some really interesting work in Opelika, Alabama. If you've never heard of the guy, I really recommend you checking him out. I think you'd like him a lot, but he's got a podcast. And one of his questions that I liked was like, It's what have you read recently that you think I should be reading? That's a great question. I read a lot of real estate books. I am a real estate fanatic. I think a very interesting book I read over the years, but I continued to read is Powerhouse Principles by George Perez.

1:03:25Yeah, he leads Related Miami, the huge development company. And it talks about his background working in the public sector, working in affordable housing, working for the cities and the municipalities and then gravitating towards the private sector and then his partnerships with public and private. He talks about his condo projects in LA, the ones that work that didn't work, his international business and how he got comfortable doing business outside of the US. And for me, it's been a great example of just thinking bigger, not getting too comfortable with doing a small project here or there, but thinking bigger than and getting out of your comfort zone.

1:04:05So I would recommend Powerhouse Principles by Horde Press. Is it a biography about his life or is it, it's kind of a nonfiction about how? I mean, it goes into his experiences, but it's not his biography. He talks a lot about case studies, a lot of deals that he did, things that worked, how he runs his meetings, not a biography, but very much influenced by his life experiences. Got it. I will have to check that out. That's one I've not heard of. So I love getting new, new recommendations. I wanted to hear about, aside from your father, your grandfather, who is your real estate or entrepreneurial hero?

1:04:43I would start with LA locally, right? A guy that has become a household name in the city, but we've known about him for a long time here. It's Rick Caruso. He's a developer here, the king of placemaking. He developed The Grove in Los Angeles. He's developed other shopping centers, lifestyle centers, really. He's really took in a big interest in experiential retail. He's found properties in areas and communities and then catered the retail to that demographic. But just his attention to detail of the plants, the water fountains, the way the aesthetics look. And he's taken big inspiration from Walt Disney.

1:05:25He said, you know, a lot of my projects resemble how Walt, you know, and Disney created Disneyland and his attention to detail with the sounds and the parking experience and the valet, everything. For me, he's been someone that I follow. And one thing that I do and have done over the years, when I work out, I listen to podcast books, but I also listen to commencement speeches from college graduations and hear tidbits of advice from other leaders in different industries. And I think one I heard from him was, what was the biggest regret when you developed, you know, the Grove in LA? And he's like, I had so much conviction that I was going to create this value here in this area of placemaking.

1:06:05I'm kicking myself. I didn't buy everything around it. I knew it was going to be successful. So that always stuck with me. That's interesting. Eric Weatherholtz calls that the halo effect, you know, like developing an area that's an amazing place. But then like, because of what you've developed, everything around it, the ship rises because of what you've done. So it sounds similar that Rick had a similar kind of thought process or wish he had a similar thought process. In terms of commencement speeches, I wanted to hear more about that. Do you have any really great ones that come to mind that I should listen to or our listeners should listen to?

1:06:38I don't have one off the top of my head. I listened to a lot of, a lot of them and I don't do it as much anymore, but definitely when I was younger, especially firms I wanted to work for, things like that, I was listening to. I'd pick Harvard class of HBS class of 2008 commencement speech, right? And it's probably worth digging back into now, hearing what advice people were giving in 2008, 2010, because history repeats itself. So I'm sure a lot of those messages could be relived today. Yeah. A hundred percent. For the younger generation. A hundred percent. I agree with that. But what about, do you have some favorite podcasts that you go to podcasts when you're working out that you like?

1:07:18What are some of those? Aside from yours and the, I would say Guy Raz and how I built this. I love listening about all different industries, right? I think real estate, you know, whether you're in housing or retail or office, it's all about what people are up to. What are they doing? What are they interested in? So I like to just understand other businesses and the psychology of their business and how They're attracting customers and how they're building their businesses, right? So that one's very, very interesting to me. Capital allocators with Ted Seides is an interesting one for me. That's more macro economy, more high finance, but also people investing a lot of money in a lot of different sectors.

1:07:59And then this one has been a great one for me as well. Real quick, and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but do you have any investments outside of real estate? but no, I don't. Other than my 401k, I'm all in on my real estate holdings. And I always say to my wife and myself, when we feel we're at a good point to diversify, we'll diversify. But right now we're all in on building this business. And quite frankly, I think I can generate a higher return on my own investments than the stock market or all these other markets. And there'll be a time and place for diversification. But right now in growth mode and business building mode, I'm all in on my real estate home.

1:08:40Yeah, I love it. There was a gentleman I interviewed, James Nelson, who's a commercial real estate broker in New York who came out with the book recently. And he said the same thing that you've got way more control with real estate, with stock market or other markets. It's very difficult to gain an edge. And we didn't really touch on this, but you do have kind of an unfair competitive advantage in many ways, just having everything in-house and being able to really efficiently do things. Can you talk a little bit about that? Just how that is in some ways an unfair advantage to you compared to somebody else that doesn't have what you've got going on?

1:09:18Yeah. No, I think competitive advantages can come in a lot of different ways and shapes and sizes. I think for me, maybe we didn't have the seed capital or backstop capital that maybe someone else might have. But what we did have was we had in-house construction, right? So we can build more efficiently, control the building process a little bit more than other groups. And then we can also build for cheaper, right? So, you know, some people ask me, well, what's your return on cost on this investment or what's your return on it? And I'll have to, you know, disclose, you know, just making it very apparent, my numbers are not your numbers and they won't be, right?

1:09:55We can build that cost and not take a profit on construction for anyone else you hire is going to get paid for doing the work on your project. So I think that's a big competitive advantage, but also just bringing in the white collar experience with the blue collar experience and being able to have a call with a private equity company, going through a deal, talking about a waterfall split and a promote. And then 30 minutes later, I'm in the car talking to a plumber about what sewer cap you use. And I think that's a big unfair advantage for me because I feel comfortable in both scenarios. That's a huge skill set actually to have that, to be able to go back and forth between both worlds.

1:10:39And some people have one or the other, but it's great to be able to have both like you do. Yeah. And I'm working on the construction side, but I also have my father and brother to to take a majority of the role on the building side. I know enough to be dangerous and I'm learning more, but I'm going to stick to what I know, which is creating value through real estate and generating strong risk-adjusted returns. Totally makes sense. Will, this has really been a lot of fun. I've loved learning about you. I loved hearing about football and just your career path and what you guys have been up to with the company.

1:11:12For our listeners that want to learn more about you or maybe to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get in touch? Yeah, I'm pretty active on Twitter. I'll go through phases where I'm very active and then a live deal or something will come up. But Twitter is the best place to find me. My DMs are open. My Twitter handle is Rojas, my last name, TRG. And you guys can find me there. My Instagram is private with just a lot of kid photos. And then our website is TRG Investments. That's where you guys can find me. Cool. Will, thanks so much. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate your time today.

1:11:46Thank you, Patrick. Appreciate it. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network.

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