The Possibility of Investing in Real Estate Across International Borders – Monica Lorenzo

 

Monica Lorenzo  00:00

It takes a lot of educating for some people, especially if they’re just into space, because that’s another thing multifamily doesn’t exist in very many places outside of the US if you can imagine that. Because what happens, most buildings are built based on pre funding, and they go out to market just to sell the property.

 

Greg Lyons  00:16

Welcome to the passive income brothers podcast. Here, we

 

Tim Lyons  00:19

take the fear out of real estate investing, using real life stories of everyday successful investors. Let’s go. Welcome to another episode of the passive income brothers podcast. My name is Tim Lyons and today I am joined by none other than my brother, Greg, how you doing today, buddy?

 

Greg Lyons  00:33

Tim, once again is a great day to be a passive income brother, I can think of no better day than today. We have a little old school Queens, New York, we have a little international flavor today. I mean, this is going to be the show you got to listen to,

 

Tim Lyons  00:48

there’s no doubt about it. So it’s funny, as big as this world can be the commercial real estate space where the investing space can be super small, right? So going to conferences going on podcast meeting folks getting connected. I mean, it’s all interrelated. And that’s what I love about this space, because it does feel like huge sometimes and overwhelming, but at the same time, it can be really small.

 

Greg Lyons  01:10

And you know, what’s funny about this guest is that I was at a conference in Dallas, the radio guys, I think, and real estate radio guys, real estate radio, guys. And our guests today sat next to my brother in law all the way across the entire convention center. And we got connected right after that commercial real estate is the smallest world ever. And so happy to have Monica on today. So

 

Tim Lyons  01:33

Monica, well, today, our guest is Monica Lorenzo. And I’m pretty sure she’s coming to us internationally today. But maybe you can tell us where you come from. So why don’t you tell you say hi to the show? And then just tell us a little bit about kind of why real estate? Where did you come from? What was your journey, like? And what are you up to these days? Well,

 

Monica Lorenzo  01:51

hey, guys, really excited to be here. And I’m coming to you from sunny and summery South America. So yeah, Montevideo, Uruguay it is on the map. Most people don’t know. But this is where I live these days. And I do multifamily and commercial real estate from here, actually, which is pretty interesting and exciting. But I actually have been in the multifamily space for over 21 years, if you add it all up. I don’t know when I got old enough to say that, but it happened. And now I have 21 years experience in an industry that started back in New York. So a little bit of a hometown is back home in New York like you guys. And I will never forget, because I started October 11 2001, which I think you guys know is exactly one month after September 11. And it was a really difficult time in New York. And I think you guys can all appreciate that. And it was a I just didn’t know what was gonna happen in this space. And I ended up starting in real estate sales, because I was trying to interview for a job at that point after school. And a lot of just industries and companies didn’t know what was gonna happen. So nobody was hiring. And I remember I was actually at an interview, where the woman was trying to get in touch, the person who’s supposed to interview me was supposed to get in touch with somebody, you’re trying to get somebody who’s in the towers. So somebody came out, they’re like, she’s not gonna be able to do the interview today. And I drove home to an expressway that was basically abandoned with just like emergency personnel heading into the city. And I went home. And we all know we just sat in for the TV for days just to figure out what’s going on. But after that, it was just like, Okay, I’ve got a pivot, there’s not going to be much hiring happening right now. So I just answered an ad to work in residential real estate sales. And that’s where I basically started my journey. And since then, have been probably in quite a few different fields of real estate. So I’ve been in residential sales, leasing, property management, on site, property management, asset management, and kind of run the gamut in the space.

 

Greg Lyons  03:50

You know, Monica, it’s really funny, a lot of people feel like they have to buy a rental property right next to their existing home, right? They’re going to touch and feel and kind of be a part of it. But you, on the other hand, have really kind of bucked that notion and have gone kind of all over the place, New York, Miami, internationally, you manage your portfolio now from internationally. So kind of talk to us about the need to not have to invest in real estate right in your own backyard. Well,

 

Monica Lorenzo  04:20

I guess being a New Yorker, we know that New York real estate is quite expensive, right? So when I was getting started, and I think that happens to a lot of people that look for a market that is affordable to them. I was already in South America. I’ve been in South America for 13 years, actually. And my family had moved to Florida and I guess back in 2008 2009, after that whole debacle, if you will, there was a pretty affordable real estate in Miami. And I just figured out how to sort of do it from here and ended up purchasing some property breeding extensively and started flipping. I come from a construction background and my father’s in construction too. So I kind of was always like summer job of swung more than one hammer nail and put up drywall and learn to do quite a bit of stuff. So I hadn’t back home for a couple of weeks at a time and just getting properties in shape with my dad, and then basically just started doing some fix and flips in Miami and getting a really good contractor base, getting good providers that were responsive, will allow you to do that. And then sort of kind of fast forward, the pandemic, with all that brought did bring the ability to have these meetings in a virtual space and have calls be acceptable in this manner. I was in the commercial space in New York in 2007 2008, working for a sponsor, and it all happened in the conference rooms, right. So we did a project, the one Hanson place building in Brooklyn, we did the repositioning of that building from the old dentist office spaces that were in there to the residential lofts that are there now with a fund for Magic Johnson, right with Kenny Johnson. Magic Johnson was in our conference room. And that’s the way you did it. It’s like the old boy club. And you guys came together and did that way. And the space has changed. And so yesterday, I was on an asset management call for a property that we have in Lincoln, Nebraska, that had been to Lincoln, Nebraska. So it’s a new space, it’s a new day. And there’s a lot of opportunities to do it in a virtual world, let’s

 

Tim Lyons  06:07

say. Alright, so there’s a lot to unpack there. I have already almost three quarters, another page of notes that I’ve written down. But what I loved is a couple things that I love Monica, number one, you just embarrassed Greg and I to no end because you said that you swung a hammer. And that’s something that Greg and I are allergic to doing. We’ve never learned how to do that.

 

Greg Lyons  06:30

That makes one of us on this podcast, at least one of us can do it,

 

Tim Lyons  06:33

or at least one of us. So thank you for embarrassing us. Because our listeners know that we’ve talked about that before that we just my wife won’t even let me hang a picture on the wall, because it hasn’t worked out well in the past. But anyway, what I love about some real estate investors that we talked to, either on the podcast or just hearing their stories is, it is so hard to get started real estate investing, right? For whatever reason, there’s mental blocks, there’s limiting beliefs, there’s, you know, negative self talk, there’s barriers upon barriers, and you glossed over something you said I’ve done a couple of fix and flips. So not only were you doing that long distance living internationally in South America, coming back to Miami working with dead, but you didn’t do one or two, you did several, right and fix and flips is a way to really stack capital to then deploy, right. And there’s different ways to do it. There’s hard money lending, there’s your own capital, there’s raising a fund, there’s so many ways to do it. But then you can do the burr method, right buy rehab, rent out refinance, repeat, or you could just do the flips, right? And just one thing on flips, I want to make sure the listeners know is that when you make a profit from flips, it’s ordinary income. Right? So and flipping is actually on what Monica to chime in on this. It’s hard, right? There’s a lot of logistics, there’s building a team and sourcing materials and having contractors and all this stuff, right. But I love how you just glossed over the several fix and flips. And then in the same sentence, almost you talking about repositioning a historic building, basically, in Brooklyn, New York City, right, I do want to reposition, like on a commercial real estate. So what I love about the story so far, Monica is that you’ve been in a couple of different spaces in real estate. And that kind of really lends to the experience piece, the education piece that’s so important for any investor out there, whether you’re active or passive. So how has that education and experience and swinging the hammers? How has all of that influenced your real estate investing journey? And then we’ll take it from there.

 

Monica Lorenzo  08:39

Okay, well, I did not mean to embarrass you at all, I had forgotten about your Yes. I won’t mention it again. But I come from a long line of hammer swing here. So maybe that’s why I had an unfair advantage. But yeah, in fact, this is something that my grandfather did in our country, right. So We’re originally from Paraguay, we just kind of wild landed here. And he would, you know, build a house. And then they would live in that one until he built the next one. And they would rent that one while they moved to the next one. And that’s how we ended up building up his own little portfolio through sweat equity, right. So the fix and flips is a lot of the sweat equity that gets talked about to and some of the other podcasts, right. And that is a really great way to build capital for people who don’t have the opportunity. And so this fear of investing, because we all have, I think the notion that it takes money to make money. And one of the greatest things that we don’t realize in the US is that you actually don’t need a lot of money to buy a property if you think about it. So I’ll just go into that really quickly. But in the US, I mean, we were at the worst point, you didn’t have to put any money down to buy a property right back in 2005 2006. And we know how that ended. But even still having to put 10 or 20% down is a very small amount of money, where almost the entirety of the rest of the world operates on a cash basis. I mean, people will go and they buy their property outright. And I’ve done real estate in revived and real estate and when a site is Argentina, and people would go with a table full of money. And we were all counting as the real estate agent, we were all counting money for this transaction, which was $350,000, that transacted in cash. And so it’s just kind of mind blowing for us to think about it for us. But if you’re putting just 10% down, you’ve got leverage for the rest of the way, you already have a very unfair advantage compared to the rest of the world. So you have to just take advantage of that. And every opportunity you can. And even still, you there’s plenty of opportunities, even if you want to partner someone else who can bring in the capital, and then you put in the sweat equity, right for the flips, or even for just a multifamily property and you start the small, five to 10 unit, we don’t want to have to start with a 50 and 150 units right in multifamily that still qualifies the five unit property, and you can occupy one and rent out the others. And I think that part of the problem, why people think it’s challenging is because we’re not really taught about this at the academic level. I mean, let’s face it, we’re not even taught how to balance our checkbooks anymore. I mean, the whole med classes are gone that used to teach us how to do that right now. It’s like, it’s all just paper money and Bitcoin. So we don’t need teach them and they’ll just figure it out when they get out there, right. And then we have to start earlier, so that people feel more comfortable with this investment and really open them up to understand that this is a possibility, and that they need to forego some of the immediate pleasures of like the latest iPhone, right, or the whatever, Air Jordans and put it in something that will really change their life, just like we know it has for us.

 

Greg Lyons  11:30

There’s no doubt about and I think a lot of people do get stopped at like lending and leverage, because it can be like a foreign language, if you’re not really attuned to it, you haven’t learned about it, or you haven’t had a mentor that kind of went through that, so that people can put the brakes on right away. But you know, there are so many ways, especially in the US, we don’t need to make a check cash transaction, partnerships, creative financing, there’s owner financing. You know, once you kind of get out of the cut and paste and start using your noggin a little bit, you can figure out different ways to start acquiring property. And that’s really cool. And that’s the value of partnership. Sometimes when someone else has done something like that. With all your varied experience, you’re in multifamily now, you’re starting to build out a nice multifamily portfolio across the US. And we are in a kind of a different macro economic environment right now with higher interest rates, people kind of putting their money on the sidelines, how do you feel right now, as an investor in just kind of this general macro economic environment, we find ourselves and

 

Monica Lorenzo  12:28

I think it’s important to be cautious. As with anything, when there’s changing tides, it’s important to sort of watch the horizon and see where things would play out. But I’m always confident because I think just like a lot of us in this space, it’s an asset back investment, right. So it’s not something that’s going to disappear. And this is one of the things that perhaps comes from my upbringing, too, is that a stock is paper well, before it was paper, now it’s just something digital on a board, right? And that there’s not even that I have to throw the papers around, I’m on Wall Street at the exchange. So in a heartbeat lose value for no apparent reason other than somebody dropped the bomb somewhere, or some ship got maroon and oil spilling everywhere. And now it’s not your stock just went down, whatever 100%. So it’s just, this, for me just seems so secure, because it’s there, and especially in the multifamily space and that particular segment of commercial real estate, it’s a need for people, and everybody needs to have a roof over their head, right. So I think that’s probably why it’s one of the most secure even more than retail or industrial. But I think that that’s one of the reasons why I find it to be something that even if the horizon changes, if you put the right financing in place, if you put some long term debt, and again, in this environment, you really have to watch out and maybe it is the short term debt to carry you through this 1824 month, dip in the market. So that then when that comes, when you come out the other end, you can put the long term financing in place. But I also know as a person who does underwriting and does market analysis as a real estate agent, and you can always skew the numbers whichever way you want them to go. So it’s really important for me, the person who’s starting out to really partner with somebody, right? We always talk about the person, you know, like and trust, because it is a different environment. And let’s face also from 2009 to now. It’s been all upward and onward. And a lot of people that are in this space have never seen a market correction. So they may be very bullish in their numbers, and it’s all going to keep going up. But the reality of some of us who were in the space in 2007 2008, is that rent concession is not just a line item on your underwriting like we were giving two month rent concessions on $3,300 apartments near Columbia and NYU in 2007 2008, when they weren’t being rented, right, so you’re giving away two months, you’re pretty much giving out your year’s profit margin, right? So it’s important And if you’re just starting out the space to get educated, which I know, Tim you did when you were first starting up, took that year in the basement right during the pandemic, to really crank it out and hone in. That’s important, grab the books, read them, listen to the podcasts, and then network and meet the people that you really mesh well with, and that you have a fairly confident sensation that they are underwriting well, and that they’re understanding what the market could do, and then take that step. Does that make sense? That

 

Tim Lyons  15:27

makes a ton of sense to me. I mean, listen, like I heard a great podcast this week talking about traders on Wall Street or quote unquote, Wall Street, right, or the more equities based type of investment houses, a lot of these folks who are in higher level positions, managing directors, they get out of school and 2006. Now they’ve been doing their financial jobs for the last 1214 years. And they have no nothing other than the Fed put right printing money, making money hand over fist, the market goes up into the right, whether it’s equities bonds, this other thing, right? Even real estate, right? I mean, if you couldn’t make money in real estate in the last five years, 10 years like you there’s something wrong with you fundamentally flawed, right? Because everybody was up into the right. And now it’s seeming to turn right. So there’s a ton a ton from top to bottom from Wall Street, Blackrock down to the mom and pop owner that have to really dial into their steel structures and their debt terms. And are they on fixed rate debt? Are they on variable rate debt? What does it mean to have capital market liquidity dry up overnight, and having to cashflow? So there’s a lot that you need to learn. There’s a lot that needs to be out there. Is it scary? Well, I guess it could be. But the antidote to fear is education. It’s experience, right? So that’s why like when you graduate medical school, you got to go through a training residency, or fellowship, where you’re other alongside other experienced physicians and surgeons, right, because no one’s expecting anybody to have that level of detail coming out of school or when they’re just starting out. So that same example, for real estate investing, right? It’s so powerful to maybe have your handheld for the first couple of years, while you’re learning while you’re doing it while you’re gaining experience. And I think that’s where Monica, Greg and I really kind of got started with surrounding ourselves with some education, sort of go to conferences, go into meetups, getting a mentor, or coach. And it sounds like a little silly, I guess, or a little cliche at this point. But I mean, I had some massive, massive limiting beliefs about coaching and mentorship, especially paying for that because I’m super cheap. And if you think I’m cheap, Greg, cool, boy. So these are things that like, I still sleep very well at night, and this is what I want to really talk to you about is long distance investing. We’re having this podcast recording, you’re in Uruguay, right? Greg’s in Virginia, I’m in New York, and you just talked to us about an asset management call in Lincoln, Nebraska. And you said you never even been there. Right. And Greg, and I haven’t been to every single property that we have now invested in either, whether on the active side or the passive side. So in when people hear that initially, when I first found out about syndication initially, I was like, Well, I have to go hop on a plane to San Antonio, or Dallas or Phoenix, and I want to go see this place. And I want to walk in, I want to see what the neighborhood is like. And yes, I mean, listen, if people want to do that, then listen, I highly encourage you to go do that, right. But when you build a team, and you have experienced operators, or you have experienced mentors, whatever it is, you can do real estate investing long distance, you can do it passively, you can do it actively. And I think you’re a shining example of that. With that being said, it’s getting harder to raise capital at the moment, right? Because there’s so much uncertainty out there, the capital requirements are larger right now, right loan to value from the lenders is going to the proceeds from the lenders are becoming smaller and smaller, maybe 50 to maybe 65% LTV at this moment, meaning you either got to renegotiate the sales price, or you got to bring more equity to the table. Right? Or you got to maybe pare down your returns to investors, which is that attractive. So how do you talk to investors now, especially the out of the country investors, right? They everybody seems to want to be involved in United States real estate. So how do you talk to them now about not only like the value of real estate, but then like, the current conditions, and then not being able to see and touch and feel and be active and stuff like that?

 

Monica Lorenzo  19:36

Okay, lots of interesting things to cover there. So let me see if I get all that first of all, in terms of the coaching and the gurus and things like that, I’m right on board with you. In fact, I was also skeptical, and again, the paying for it and we know what these programs can cost. My husband was the first one that was like, what do you need a guru for? But that was a challenge in and of itself. It’s important, it’s important because more over than the information that they give you and The education that comes through the course, I think we know that the deals happen through the networking, the contacts that you make within those groups and breaking bread with these folks at different conferences throughout the year, will really lend itself to be the partners that you find yourself in deals with, right. So that’s important on one end, or if you’re capital raising, like we do, then who the sponsors and the operators are that you know, that you can confidently bring an investor to, because of the way they will run their property, right and through interactions with them, you can really get a sense of who that person is. And then you do have a comment of not having to go out to the property because they have a track record, because you’ve seen what they’ve done with other properties. And so you don’t need to go out to these different markets and see the properties themselves. That all said, we do have investors that do feel the need, if they’re close behind, we were on a call yesterday, and they were like, no, they were out of the property saying, Well, are you guys gonna fix the pool? Like, yes, it’s in the cutbacks. Thank you, it’s all covered. So you will inevitably have those people. But for the most part, it’s a lot about educating again, people have to have a syndication model works, the security of the investment and what we do, right, educating them about the value add opportunities, and how that works. I want to say for for the person who’s just investing from their couch or investing from another country, and when it comes to investing from another country, there is always a bit of fear, because they can’t drive by it. And so that there is a little bit of that they hold. And so it takes a lot of educating for some people, especially if they’re just into space, because that’s another thing multifamily doesn’t exist in very many places outside of the US if you can imagine that. Because what happens, most buildings that are built here, and I’m speaking about South America specifically, are built based on pre funding, right, so how does that work? Really quickly, you’ll get an investor group that comes together sort of like an operator that will pull together an architect, a construction company, administrative accounting person, and a couple of investors that are sort of cash invested, they have, they’ll buy a piece of land, they’ll come up with a project that the architect will draw out, they’ll prep a couple of renders, and they go out to market to the real estate agents to sell the property. Well, this guy sells one, this guy buys 234. And with those funds, as those people begin to put money into the project, and they can fund it in one lump sum, or they can pay over time. That is how the building gets built, right. So maybe it’s a 10 storey or apartments per floor. So you’ve got 40, somewhat apartments by the time you’re done. But you also have a condo structure by the time you’re done, because now you’ve got 3540 different owners. So it isn’t a multifamily property. It’s a condo structure. And that’s how most things get built. Unless it’s sort of government style housing, and there aren’t many, in this case, then you do have something that was that’s built, but it’s not privately owned, it’s owned by the government. So it’s sort of an interesting thing that the multifamily sector that educate the foreign investor on it, first and foremost, but you’re pulling into your question, there’s a lot of capital in South America, a lot of capital, I mean, this is gonna sound terrible, but a lot of people in the US, you know, a very us focus that no, they think, in South America, they’re still in huts. And it’s like, I have contacts that own 18,000 hectares in the Patagonia, he owns part of a national park. I mean, there’s capital down here. So they feel confident investing in the US to some degree because it’s in dollars, right. Because if I go back to that example of the building that was built based on pre funding, when you waited three years for that building to get built, so for three years, there was no return. And then what you were playing on is buying it up like a preferential price and then being able to sell it maybe for 15 or 20%. More, if you’re lucky, and depending on where the market is, when that happens. But if you keep it and rent it, you’re renting at a local currency. And the return on investment is very low, because you maybe have 100 or $100,000, parked in a one bedroom apartment. So what’s your cash on cash return look like? If you take that right and put it in three of the deals that you guys have, right if 50,000 Or a piece. Now you’re maybe at a seven or eight, press right off the top on, you know, a 350 $1,000 investments that are going to then have a value add situation or have a appreciation play. And you’re going to yield a lot more than if you had one apartment where you had $100,000 in cash parked and you’re getting $400 in pesos, right. So you’re not hedging against the inflation of your local currency. So it’s a very interesting opportunity for a foreigner to go and invest in the US, again, gotta get past the barriers of being far away. But they also feel that no matter what happens in the US feel safer than their local under the local markets. Yeah,

 

Greg Lyons  24:37

it’s interesting because we think it’s so the climate is so tough right here right now to invest in the United States. But with the leverage and all the things that we have here that we take for granted, it really is easier to kind of find yields on things as opposed to waiting three years for an apartment building to be built. So it’s not all rainbows all the time in the real estate world but there are some really good things about investing in the United States, especially now, you know, there’s less buyer demand for these multifamily places right now with interest rates higher, so syndicators are not bidding up deals right now, prices are maybe pulling back a little bit. So now’s the time to invest. If he asked me yesterday, today, tomorrow, always the best time to invest. So let us be mindful of your time right here. We’re gonna move to our three question Ender here. And whatever comes to mind for these three questions. And the first question is, what do you say to people from the States or internationally that say investing in real estate is too risky?

 

Monica Lorenzo  25:35

Well, I guess it goes back to my earlier point of how risky is it? If it’s something that can’t be moved, or effectively destroyed? Right? It’s something that’s always going to be there. And it’s something especially in the multifamily space that people need. It’s a basic need food, clothing shelter, right. So can there always be up and down? Yes. Have I already lived another market cycle? Yes. But if you look at a couple of different curves and graphs that the Fed includes puts out, you’ll see that real estate prices, no matter how much they did, during recessions, they always trend up into the right. I think we can all agree that there were very few places, even in 2009, to buy a house for the five or 10 or $15,000, that they were bought for in the 50s. Right. So we will always trend upward. And even if it does take a dip, it will come back if you only in a bad position, if you have to sell it. And if you put the right debt in place, then you can just ride out the storm.

 

Tim Lyons  26:39

Love that answer food, clothing and apartments, right. That’s what we need in life. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. All right, cool. The second question comes from a mentor of ours, Robert Kiyosaki, and he says something that could turn people off. They don’t know what he’s talking about. And he says, savers are losers and debtors are winners. What does that mean to you?

 

Monica Lorenzo  27:00

I’m so sorry. But you actually cut out there? Well, it’s the second part of the question from

 

Tim Lyons  27:04

savers or losers and debtors are winners?

 

Monica Lorenzo  27:08

Well, I think, again, we’ve discussed this briefly, but people don’t understand the concept of OPM right other people’s money, and how that gives you an opportunity to play out in a bigger field. And let me just kind of elaborate on that, again, goes into the example of if you take that $100,000 From that foreign investor, let’s say and you take that and you put it as a down payments, right on three different properties, as opposed to putting it all into one. Now you have three different properties that can appreciate, right that you can if you value, add it through some sweat equity, even grow that further. And so that’s the leverage play. That’s the I put money down, and I am a debtor, right. But it’s smart debt. It’s not credit card debt. It’s not the latest iPhone that or it’s not like the big fancy car debt, it’s smart debt that you can use to grow, as opposed to saving it for due to fear. And then having that same 153 years from now or five years from now, instead of having those three multiply the value.

 

Greg Lyons  28:23

Well, that’s great. And our third and final question is from Jim Rohn. And he said formal education will make you a living self education will make you a fortune. What does that mean to you?

 

Monica Lorenzo  28:35

That’s a really great question. And I appreciate you asking that because I will never forget, I went to apply for a job in New York City at Tishman Spire, and I went to like a second or third interview already with somebody. And he saw a lot of 4.0 GPA guys that came recommended from somebody with the company that it was advisable that he hire. And he asked me something to that effect like, well, you went to whatever, Baruch great, but you’re not like the typical candidate that comes through here. He’s like, why should I hire you? And I told him, I said, Maybe I didn’t need graduated magna cum laude from any top notch university. But I graduated summa cum laude from the school of hard knocks. And I started working when I was 13 years old, because my parents just had enough money to send me to the private school, which, you know, I went to right thing. For instance, if you’re my one of rival rival school, they’re at Holy Cross. And I had to start working to keep up with the things that maybe my friends could have. And I had friends that turned 1718, got a driver’s license and got an Audi and I had a 1983 Honda Civic Hatchback that I had to have my dad teach me how to drive stick shift this sort of get the school because it’s what I could afford to buy with the money that I had made working at a pharmacy because I was 13 or working you know teaching gymnastics And so that really changed the way I went through life. I think that was different from a lot of other people who were able to, yeah, have really amazing educations and come out of school, really great schools. And my school was too. But when they came out, they really all I had was their school education. And when I came out, I already had some street cred. You know what I mean? I already had some real life experience that taught me sales that taught me customer service. And I ended up working at the airlines station manager for an Ecuadorian airline at 19 years old. Because I had started working when I was 17. In fact, I had to wait a couple of months to get my ramp access pass, because it wasn’t a team yet. And that has served me so well in life. First of all, understanding people at every level, I worked at every level right from the cashier to assistant station manager at JFK Airport. Because I really, again, I had that other sort of parallel education that comes with being out there and having real world experience.

 

Tim Lyons  31:10

Dude, I think this is a 50 Something episodes in nobody has said school of hard knocks in our last question, Greg, and it’s so true. Like, it is so true, right? I mean, uh, you can have we’ve had physicians on this podcast, I think Dr. Lee, like they talked about it. He has all these friends and colleagues with diplomas on the wall, yet they have no kind of experience with investing or real estate or whatever, or just anything outside of their purview. So I love that answer. And I think it serves you well, right? I mean, because now you have a lens with which to view your investing view, your capital raising, view your asset management, and knowing not only who you’re serving for your investors, but you’re serving the communities that were turning around and making better by providing a clean, safe, affordable living situation. So I think that’s awesome. So right answer, love it. Monica, I feel like we could have a masterclass on a lot of things, including international long distance investing, but we’re happy to have you back on for that one. But if people want to get in touch with you and find out more about what you’re doing, or just kind of reach out to you after this episode, how can they do that? Well,

 

Monica Lorenzo  32:21

you can find me on pretty much all social media or email me at Monica at CAP, Tara, capital, and I can give it to you guys to put on your show. notes.com So CIP, te R A capital.com. Yes,

 

Tim Lyons  32:35

we will have that in the show notes for everybody. Awesome. Well, guys, listen, this has been a great episode. We are so happy and thankful we’re coming to the end of the year, we just hit a year of worth of episodes. Greg Fishel birthday was yesterday, December 15. Today’s the 16th. We’re at like 31 or 32,000 downloads, and you’re one it just feels great. So we really wanted to highlight our listeners and we are appreciative of your support, your emails, your DMS, your reviews, your ratings, the whole thing, it just helps us out. And when you’re doing something like this, Greg, it’s always nice to see a written review and getting some feedback or getting that email and getting some feedback. Because you don’t know who’s listening, right. This is the three of us on the screen right now. But it’s awesome. So thank you so much. We’re grateful for you. And we look forward to serving you again next week. Thank you for listening to another episode of the passive income brothers podcast. We would be grateful for your support of our podcast by giving our show a five star rating and review and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platform. Don’t forget to take inspired action after listening to this show, so that you can start building out your passive income streams. Finally, head on over to cityside cap.com to connect with us and find out more information about how to get started passively investing in real estate