REI189: The Power of Compounding w/ Aleksey Chernobelskiy

26:57Go to public.com slash T-I-V-P and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash T-I-V-P. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on. But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investors Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors, and now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you, or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with.

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28:13And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. I'm now thinking about your Sam Altman post about the... You said that it was one of the most important... What was it? An essay that he wrote? Yeah. Yeah. It was just a blog post. I just was thinking about that, about the 1%, improving 1%. One of the points was that. Can you talk a little bit about why that made such an impact on you? And then also how you implement it in your own life? Just to set the stage, humbly said, obviously, I don't know, Sam, but from what I can gather, his last venture before OpenAI, let's say, was not a complete failure, but not a success either.

29:01And he worked on it for many, many years. And I think it was probably pretty challenging to walk away from it without a big success. Then he's been working on OpenAI for several years. And I think in many ways, he never got fame until, I don't know, like six months ago, do or take, you know, there was a Microsoft deal and a whole chat GPT, obviously. And the beauty of this blog post, I think, is it was written in 2019. So he probably knew what he was sitting on, but no one else did. And it was just very insightful because I think there's 13 different topics that he touches on. And one of them is, to your point, apply compounding to yourself.

29:46Many times I think about compound interest. Many people don't even know about it, but it will blow your mind if you really think about it. And one way I apply this to my life is funny enough, it's Twitter. So like ever since I started with zero followers, I have a spreadsheet that I update literally every day. And my goal is to get 1 % more followers. Now, I think about that as a daily goal and also a cumulative goal to not be overly obsessed with followers and more obsessed with the quality of the content. And what happens is like, look, when you have 100 followers, getting one more is very easy.

30:27It's like a very attainable goal. Now, I think around the 8 ,000 range. And for example, yesterday, I didn't get 80 followers. I think I got like 15. However, three weeks ago, one of my posts went viral and I think I got 1 ,000 from that post. And so again, you kind of were like, okay, I didn't meet the goal for today, but I'm still over what the goal was had my polls not went viral. So it's like, great, okay. And you just keep going. Every single day, day in and day out, consistency is massive. And if you apply consistency with the 1 % rule, I've personally seen it work with growing a Twitter following.

31:06And it's just pretty amazing to look back and think, it just took, let's say, an hour of daily effort, 30 minutes, whatever it is. And then over time, it just compounds. And you look back and you're like, yeah, I built... It's not a big following, but it's certainly something. And it's all based on this rule. I literally have this spreadsheet every day. What were some other points from the Sam Altman blog post that also made a big effect on you? I think the two that I pointed out, one big one was that the only way to get really wealthy is owning something. And his point more than anything was typically careers are fairly linear, whereas owning something is not linear.

31:49And I don't know, maybe I just, I think that was cool because I like math. But I think it's very, Patrick, it's something that I just, coming from Russia, you're just like, get on the career train, stay on it forever, stay at the same employer forever. and that success. And you just read something like this and you're like, well, wow, I never thought about that. I also think it's amazing hearing it from someone who was not so successful when he wrote it. On paper, at least, you could say. And I'll tell you one more thing related to that is one quote that I really loved is, he talks about how, probably going to mess it up, but it was something along the lines of, I don't care how long it takes me to find a new opportunity or a new job, because I know that the goal is once I find that opportunity, the rest of my life, career beforehand, should essentially become like a footnote.

32:52In other words, what I'm about to, the rocket ships that I'm about to jump on is so meaningful. and that's why I'm so patient because I need to find the right thing and that one thing and by the way I think it's very true in his life right like open ai became a massive company and everything that he did beforehand is like a footnote on his life compared to this one thing and hopefully happy to continue but yeah no no no I'll definitely put uh that post in the show notes. And so people can read it on their own if they'd like, because it's very good. And I do want to move on to talking about real estate.

33:32So you're in Israel at Yeshiva, right? For two years. When did the real estate bug bite you? How did that come about? It actually didn't. All of my experiences before real estate were investing. I did quantitative investing, distressed trade claims, not real estate, just a trade claim in a chapter 11 or chapter seven bankruptcy proceeding. Then I did strategy consulting, a little bit of private equity turnaround work. And then I really didn't touch real estate until I moved to Phoenix. And in a funny way, so store and really any single tenant investor, or I should say most of them, If you're writing a long-term lease that is, let's say, 15 years, and you only have one tenant in the building, so the majority of your work in terms of investment thesis is around the credit.

34:28Because if the tenant leaves and defaults, you have a vacant building on your hands. So because of that, I joined Storr as a portfolio manager when I came, but I think what it brought wasn't really the real estate knowledge. Funny enough, it's a REIT, but it very much functions like a private equity type of credit place because so much of the work is credit related. And that was a really good fit. So I did a lot of work on the portfolio side in terms of managing the portfolio. So when you got hired on at store, what capacity did they bring you in at? Were you an analyst? What were you up to for them initially?

35:12I was, I mean, I guess officially, my first title was portfolio analyst. And I got brought into the portfolio management group, which I think at the time was roughly 4 billion, give or take. And I worked on a lot of, you know, anything that we, that 4 billion that we owned, we needed to understand it and keep track of it. So we already presumably understood it since underwrite. But if you bought something a year ago, something could completely change. And the goal was always to have a really good handle on the strength of your contracts throughout the term of the lease. So just because the business was doing really well and underwrite and gave you projections that made sense a year from then that were good, that doesn't mean that they've reached them.

35:58And so we would collect quarterly financials from the sort of consolidated entity and any properties under it that we owned. On a quarterly basis, we would process them. Anything concerning, we ultimately brought back to the owner of the business or the private equity sponsor in some cases. And ultimately, of course, if you own the real estate, your only decision is hold and take on the risk or sell, right? That's really all you can do. But there's quite a bit of analysis that goes into how is the tenant doing? How does it compare to our expectations before? How does it compare to last quarter?

36:35And I guess my larger point, Patrick, was I had a credit bug. I liked analyzing financials, understanding businesses, and that's what really brought me to store. And then I realized, wow, real estate is fascinating. Explain, you mentioned single tenant leases. Talk to us a little bit about, explain that for some of our listeners who don't understand what a single tenant lease is, some of the challenges of those, what you were looking at. And then I guess just more broadly, what exactly was Storr focusing on in terms of their portfolio investments? I guess a few definitions first. First, there's something called a sell leaseback, which is essentially, imagine Patrick, you own, I don't know, five child cares, and you own and operate from those locations, meaning you own the real estate and you also operate out of them, i.e.

37:29you own the operating company. At some point, you had to put a mortgage on your properties and it's probably like 60 % loan to value? And the question is always, where does the other 40 % come from? And more importantly, is it the best use of that 40 %? So to anyone who is trying to grow their business, in most cases, it is not the best use of their cash to park it in real estate. Because if you're an operator, you can make much more money operating your business and expanding through acquisition or through organic growth, right? But your money is sort of stuck in your real estate. You get what I mean?

38:12That's where the sell these back transaction sort of began. You essentially call such a person and you say, hey, how about we buy your 40 % equity out? You pay down the loan, meaning you sell the building to us, you take the proceeds, pay the loan 60%, 40 % you'll keep as cash, minus taxes, obviously. And then you can do whatever you want with the money. In other words, you can take the money, you can invest it into the business, you can buy another business, right? You can, I don't know, invest it into Bitcoin. But that's how the sale leaseback concept started. You sell it, you sell the building, and then you lease it back.

38:49In other words, you as a tenant, and as the original owner of the building are able to stay in that building, you sign a 15-year lease, right? So it doesn't displace your business. And in the meantime, you're able to capitalize on the 40 % equity. So that's what store did. We specifically did single tenant sell these backs. In other words, we think of a freestanding building that has one tenant inside and there's the operator. And again, we do sell these back, lease it back on a 15, 20-year term. And within that, there's a lot of granularity. Sell these back market is a massive market. Billions and billions trade every year.

39:33Within that, we play, there's sort of like the investment grade Sally's Backspace, which you can think of doing a Sally's Back to McDonald's, In-N-Out Burger, Starbucks, whatever, like the investment grade type credits. And then there's the mid to low, low to mid market, which is sort of like the step below that, which is anything from three pizza shop mom and pop operation to let's say like a KKR backed 50 million EBITDA manufacturing operation. So that's where we played. I think, did I answer everything? Yeah. So you grew the portfolio. It sounded like it was about 4 billion when you started there.

40:16And when you left, it was around 10 billion. So talk to me about that growth? What was that like trying to manage that process? Yeah, I can say I did it about myself. I worked for Public Read. So there was a sales team, an investment team, a portfolio team. And at some point, I actually essentially took the investment team and the portfolio team and merged them under myself as part of a reorganization. And so the beauty of that was anytime you look at transactions... So we've been talking about child care. So let's say child care. So a child care transaction comes in, I'll assign it to one of my vice presidents that cover child cares.

40:55So in other words, they don't only have questions based on what the prospective tenant sent us. They might also have questions based on the, I don't know, call it 400 million of child cares that we own already from the portfolio. And that vice president covers that entire exposure, right? So there was sort of this feedback loop. And once you close on something, that childcare would sort of come back to that person to manage for the rest of the lease term. Do you get what I mean? In terms of scale, look, I mean, I think the managing team did a phenomenal job. I think firstly, the business model is very well thought out.

41:36Chris Volk started sort of like this idea in many ways. And it's just extremely well thought out. There's a massive market for it. Not that many people want to buy, this might be interesting for some of your viewers, not that many people want to buy low to middle market single tenant buildings. Why is that true? Because they're more complicated. You know, there's more structuring involved. Sometimes I would get balance sheets that don't balance. And the immediate reaction is like, oh my gosh, like, what do you like? What planet do you live on? You don't have balance sheets that balance. And then once you see more of them, you realize these people have been operating this business for 20 years.

42:19And it's a business. And their controller quit a year ago. And they just made a mistake. They're not in the business of financials. And you ask, obviously, plenty of questions to make sure that everything is really sound. And there's always an art to how you ask those questions. Because if you get on a call with a prospective tenant and say, why doesn't your balance sheet balance? They might not want to sell their building to you anymore. So there's a way to ask things, right? But yeah, it's a fascinating space. And because of the, I guess I could say, sophistication that's involved on the origination side, the competition is just much less.

43:02We typically acquired in the eight to nine cap range, while In-N-Out and McDonald's and all those guys, they were trading in the fives. 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. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows. We Study Billionaires is our flagship podcast, and we've made a name for ourselves over the years by interviewing the best investors in the world, including Ray Dalio, Howard Marks, Joel Greenblatt, and many, many more.

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46:29That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. So back to the Sam Altman quote about having an equity stake in something. At what point did that kind of feeling develop? You're working for a store, you're doing pretty sophisticated deals, growing a portfolio from 4 billion to 10 billion. At what point did you say, I want to get a little bit of the piece of the pie for myself? Did that come about pretty early in your career at store or maybe later on? Yeah. I mean, I think I was very blessed to... I essentially got promoted like five times within a four-year period.

47:14And as you move up the chain, typically in a public read, they give you shares that vest over a period of time. And so I got a piece of the pie. Granted, it's a 10 billion AUM company or market cap, however you want to think about it. And so it was a small pie, but it was a meaningful pie to me. Some pie, right? Exactly. And so that really helped me build some wealth, thankfully. And I'm very thankful for it and all the opportunities that store gave me. But then ultimately, to your point, I realized, and this was pre-Sam Aldman, But I realized that, generally speaking, your career opportunities at a big company, it's interesting.

47:58I think they're generally linear, then they get exponential, and then they become linear again. because you have senior leadership or whoever, like you have the executive team and are they ever going to quit? If they do, are they going to hire someone externally or blow you? You just don't know these things. So a lot of it is very chance-based. And the question is, how many years do you want to wait? And for me, it was just becoming difficult to wait longer and longer. Yeah. So talk to us about those next steps, what it was like to leave. because we've got listeners and I've talked to several people recently that are at in a position where they're in a great career, but they're ready to take a leap to doing something on their own entrepreneurially.

48:44And that's a tough transition. Can you talk about that, what that transition has been like for you and just what you've got involved with? And maybe just advice to people on how to handle that big step. I think that probably the biggest piece of advice I would have is learn as much as you can while you're out of place. Generally speaking, I think it's very easy to assume that you can figure things out. And many times that's true. You can call an attorney or you can call a friend or whatever, right? But while you're at a company, you sort of have a ton of things that you can learn and a lot of people that you can learn from.

49:21And I think probably 90 % of the time, those chances go to waste, you know, because you're just sort of on this one-track mindset. But if you know that one day your goal is to start something on your own, I think that'll change your perspective and how you view the world and how you view your job as well. So I think that's one. Two, hopefully I'm not being annoying, but relationships are big. I always encourage people to keep track of all your relationships starting college, if not earlier, on one place. And at some point, all of them will become super helpful. And sometimes a relationship that you spoke to 10 years ago, randomly on the phone, will become your capital source 10 years later.

50:09So what does that look like for you? You said you keep track of all your relationships in one place. What does that look like for you? I literally have a Google document, and I'll just keep track. First name, last name, firm, city, state, cell. And then I'll just keep track of notes. So when I spoke to them, what it was about, when was the last time I spoke to them. And many times, just to give you one example, I think I wrote about this in my thread. I also did this with a bunch of people that rejected me. I had so many interviews during undergrad and I've kept in touch with a lot of them. Many times you get a rejection email, even if it's from HR, by the way.

50:52And many times you just won't respond. I took a very different approach. And I said, wow, no problem. Thank you. Here's a few things that I learned. It was a pleasure, blah, blah, blah. And then many years later, I'll reach back out because I randomly remembered some of the lessons that I learned in that interview process, or maybe I wasn't prepared for something. And it was a meaningful lesson. and the hiring manager will be like, what? You said thank you and you remembered that I grilled you on, I don't know, the Cap-M model and that was such a meaningful event in your life. Yeah, I'll get coffee with you in New York.

51:29That's cool. People don't do that. And Cap-M is what? Capital asset pricing models? Yeah, I just picked something random. You know, like you'll get these like crazy questions, in my opinion, many times dumb questions in interviews, but whatever it is, you know, like, or you got grilled on a modeling test and you completely failed. And one path is to just, you know, shut down and say, well, shoot, I suck. Like onto the next one. Another path is I suck, but like, let me get better and stay in touch with this person because this person helped me realize that I suck. and then you reach back out and you're like, hey, I had like, I'll tell you, I had a funny experience.

52:11At some point in my life, like very, very early on, I didn't know anything about real estate. I got introduced to like one of the senior people at, I think it's like$50 billion fund. And, you know, he brought me in. I was like super nervous. I could barely talk probably. Still very like introverted as a person. And he asked me what a cap rate is. And I totally like Patrick, I butchered this thing. I remember looking it up and I said it right, I think. And then he had a follow-up question and I just totally failed miserably to the point I think he laughed, but I still stay in touch with him. And it's like a joke now because everyone makes mistakes and you learn.

52:54And then years, years, years later, I ended up running a$10 billion portfolio for a real estate company. Life takes you in different directions and it's so valuable able to stay in touch with people because you just you don't know how you might be able to help them years down the road so let's circle back leaving store you've talked about a little bit what that's been like what what are you up to today and how long ago did that happen when you when you left them was that over a year now yeah i left a little bit over a year ago about 14 months today i'm essentially splitting my time a third a third a third about a third of my time as consulting across a bunch of different asset classes.

53:35I've done a pretty big engagement with one of the largest office platforms in the US. I've done some consulting for single tenant funds. And what type of consulting are you doing? When they bring you in, what type of work are they requesting you do? It's really all over the place, right? I mean, some of it is investments related. In other words, like we're looking at this investment. What do you think? some of it is more call it like strategy you know so for example like the office street was thinking about going public and i helped them interact with the the investment banker out of singapore because you know they were just kind of speaking a language that was not so familiar and then you know like i have an existing contract to the software company it really varies you know but But again, it's very relationships driven because you don't know what people need until you speak to them.

54:33And sometimes, this is the funny part, is sometimes you don't even know how you can help someone yourself. You get into something and you say a comment and they're like, oh, I've never thought about that. And you're like, oh, that seems like a pretty simple idea. But it's a simple idea to me based on my experience at another company. and I'm coming into here a little cold turkey, let's say, on what Office is and how it functions. But you learn about it and you learn enough. And then new people bring interesting ideas. So that's kind of like where I spend a third of my time. Then another third is looking for transactions myself.

55:12Some of that is single tenant at least. I've been kind of picking up on that in the past two months as cap rates have, I don't want to call stabilized, but got better before things just didn't make any sense. But I've also looked at a vacant office building recently, a mixed-use building. What's your take on vacant offices? Oh, gosh. It's funny. If you would have asked me this three weeks ago, I would have said, don't touch them. But a few weeks ago, a local sponsor in Phoenix went under contract on something. and he told me about it, which is actually the third. Third is, you know, help with capital introductions.

55:50You know, he asked me for potential is some help to fundraise the money. And Patrick, I mean, the deal is ridiculous. I think office is so illiquid at this point that there are some opportunities that, I mean, you can screw up five different ways and still make money. To be candid, like I didn't look much into it, but now I'm starting to. And you mentioned prior to our recording or me pressing record, you've got your own rentals too. So can you talk a little bit about that? What that's been like? And if you have a strategy further on down the road that you want to continue to expand that portfolio?

56:27I have two rentals in Phoenix. I don't know if I have a strategy for rentals specifically. I sort of think about... In many ways, I fell into that. We lived in those houses or plan to renovate them and then something didn't work out and we moved and I just decided not to sell because it's a decent like passive income play although sometimes it's not so passive as most real estate investments so I would just whenever a broker tells you that something is passive income you should not believe them but I think you know it it I think more than anything playing in the residential market expanded my mind it was in the same way that store expanded in my mind to the possibilities.

57:06I mean, it's crazy to see the company acquire$2 billion of transactions. It's also really mind expanding to buy something on your own. I personally find it very mind expanding. By the way, I don't even know if that's a phrase, but I'm using it anyway. I look at some local businesses to buy nowadays, and it's a very fascinating exercise. Hypothetically, could I close on a business shirt? I just don't know what to buy yet. But as things come up on the market, I look at it, I look at different real estate opportunities. And to me, it's always a question of, I never knew, my wife always talks to me about this.

57:44She's like, why don't you just get a job? Why are you so hesitant? Just go be an accountant, whatever. I could never really explain myself until that semi-alcoholic quote that I literally sent it to her yesterday. I was like, this is perfect. This literally explains what I'm hesitant about. It's like, I don't want any opportunity. Like I really want something that I can be at for many years and it will make the rest of my career seem like a footnote. It's a big question of where should you spend your time and where the return on that time will be the best, you know? I love it. What was the phrase mind expanding?

58:21I forget the phrase you you. Yeah. I totally just, I don't know. I think that's English. Yeah. No, I didn't know English when I was 11. So I, I didn't know English when I was 11. And one of my only B's in college was English. So I can officially say, sometimes I'll say like, is that English? I don't know. That's funny. That's funny stuff. I wanted to get into a quick fire round. If you're up for it, we've got about, I don't know what that means, but let's go. Okay, let's do it. Now it's just kind of a rapid fire questions and you can just kind of give me your quick thoughts on things here. So I wanted to hear about like any, your favorite real estate books, anything that's made a big impression on you.

59:02To be honest, it's not real estate books. Personally, I like learning just by doing. I have a hard time reading like long form books, but non real estate books, I think probably the two that were most impactful for me is there's one called Deep Work by Cal Newport. I just did a Twitter thread on that yesterday. No way. Okay. I think I've given probably 50 of those as gifts. And then the second one is Never Split the Difference, which is a negotiations book. Both have definitely changed my life. Never Split the Difference. What's that guy's name? Chris Voss. Is that right? Voss. Yes. Voss. Yeah.

59:43Yeah. That's a good one. that actually comes up a fair amount and people mentioning it as a book that uh to check out yeah it's very good we mentioned twitter quite a bit who do you feel is putting out great content on real estate twitter oh man so many people are your top two or three follows i'm afraid to even people because who am i who am i gonna forget i don't know look i mean like i really enjoy some of the things that Shupongai puts out. Moses Kagan is very good, especially like Moses Kagan's, I guess you could say personality. You know, like his tweets just feel like very down to earth.

1:00:25It's not very corporate-y. It's very friendly. And I, you know, I've had some conversations with him too. And like, he's just phenomenal. You know, some other folks that I've connected with that, you know, are just very impressive. and i'm trying to remember their anonymous names i think he's like eb something he changes his name like every other day did you end up going to that new york event that um was it strip mall guy put on somehow i got an invitation i was very touched and i actually booked a ticket and then like always one of my kids got sick and then my wife you know put down the hammer it looked like a great event yeah it looks really fun i mean i was so excited for it hopefully i can come to the next one i want to hear a little bit about uh like your number one inspiration is that your kids your your wife your parents who's your number one inspiration i think pre having children i could probably name a few people generally speaking it's uh people that this is hard to find.

1:01:31But people that are, let's call it like, you know, in the billionaire ranks, but are extremely humble and simple people that, you know, just as a person, I appreciate that a lot. And I think it's very difficult to find. Do you have any entrepreneurial heroes like that? Can you do you have any names that like, come to mind? There's a pretty substantial owner in New York, like the Shrone family, Roby Shrone. I mean, he built a massive empire, very humble person. His kids are incredible people, spend a ton of time in the community. It's amazing to see, you know, live in simple houses, drive simple cars.

1:02:15Like it's just, it's beautiful to see. And for me, it's very, very inspiring. And, you know, I know like one of the top people at Goldman that also, So I think he still drives a 1990 Toyota or something like that. So the people like that, I just really cling on to. And then I think if you were to ask me now, in a weird way, it's my kids. Meaning they can't inspire me professionally because they're learning their ABCs. But in another way, everything that I do is really for my wife and my kids. And I look at them and they're so unassuming. and they're just like, Daddy, why do you have to go to work?

1:02:55That's not a bad question. Sometimes I need to ask myself that. And sometimes it just reminds me of priorities. And that's something that was definitely difficult while in the store or really any company is just balancing time between a family and work. And one of the big benefits to being on your own is having that be a lot more flexible. Alexei, this has been fun. I really have enjoyed getting to know you a little better. I really appreciate your time. For our listeners that want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, what's a good way for them to do that? I think you can probably Google my name and not find anyone else.

1:03:34I'm probably most active on Twitter now. I'm less active on LinkedIn and hoping to get back on my blog as well. So you can maybe put in my Linktree link and people can find it there or whatever. they can find it. And what's your Twitter handle is what again? Just my last name. Yeah, it's literally my last name. I think, again, if people will call my name, like all these good things will pop up. Absolutely. And I'll put all this info in the show notes, the Sam Altman, the blog post, a lot of the other things that we've talked about. Deep Work, Never Split the Difference, some good stuff that you've mentioned along here will all be in the show notes.

1:04:13So yeah, Alexei, thanks so much. Really appreciate the time. Hey, thank you. Patrick, it was a pleasure. I'm looking forward to staying in touch. 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.

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