Paul Sparks’ Business Treasury Pays His Business Operating Expenses

Steve Trang: State disruptors. Today, we have Paul Sparks with Bunny Hill Properties, and, Paul flew in from Denver, Colorado to talk about how he created a business treasury that pays for all his business operating expenses. If this is your first time tuning in, I'm Steve Trang, sales trainer. Every month, we help hundreds of people buy more houses, deeper margins. If you wanna join us on our training calls, DM me the word sales on Instagram.

And I am on a mission to create 100 millionaires, and the information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you will take consistent action, I promise you, you will become one. And the show is brought to you by our sister company, Investor Lift. Get access to over 2,000,000 cash buyers across the country. Go to investor lift dot com, put in disruptors to get 10% off.

I've noticed recently that with this kind of chaos in our current environment, lots more people are looking at it. So check it out if that's something that you think might help you with your business. If you get value out of the show, please tag a friend below, share this episode right now. That way we can all grow together. And, this is a live show, so please ask your questions for Paul to answer.

Ready? Ready. Alright. So first question is, what got you into real estate?

Paul Sparks: Yeah. So, growing up, my mom was actually a real estate attorney. So I sorta had some, you know, experience to the real estate market, but chose to take a different route. I actually, got an engineering degree in college. My dad was an engineer, and then realized I wanted nothing to do with engineering.

So I got into sales, and I was, you know, working with a corporate

Steve: How quickly when you were in when you're in school did you figure out you didn't wanna be an engineer?

Paul: So they had this program called a coop where you would work, you know, kind of a rotation for one company. And so I would go to school in the fall, work in the spring, school in the summer, work in the fall sort of thing. So I didn't even graduate, and I realized, I'm like, I cannot do this for the rest of my life. Did

Steve: you finish engineering school?

Paul: I did. I finished. I was an industrial engineer, and it was a fantastic, degree for me because it focuses a lot on continuous improvement and efficiency and process improvement, stuff like that. So it served me well Mhmm. But I used it very little.

Steve: Yeah. So then your first job had nothing to do with engineering.

Paul: Well, I was actually a sales engineer. So Okay. I was selling automation equipment to engineers, which was a better fit for my personality, I think. Yeah.

Steve: Alright. So you're the you're you're selling two engineers.

Paul: That's right.

Steve: I mean, this is gonna sound really terrible, but in my mind in my mind, I I go to office space and you might be too young for that. But the guy that could deal with the damn engineers Uh-huh. That was you?

Paul: Yeah. Exactly. Well, you you you know as you're an engineer. Right? It's there's not a lot of engineers that turn into salespeople.

Right. Yeah. So this was this nice little niche for me where I could, you know, still engage with a lot of the technical stuff, which I liked, but not have to do any of it.

Steve: Yeah. There you go. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay.

So you start off as a sales engineer right out of college.

Paul: Yep.

Steve: How long did you pursue that that route?

Paul: So I was doing that for about eight years, but it was, you know, it was constant travel. I was for for three or four years there, I was in two cities a week kind of thing. I was working with companies like, you know, Amazon, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines. So I had to travel quite a bit to get there. And, yeah, it was just exhausting to say the least.

Steve: Sounds like there were a handful of clients, but you're always visiting two cities a week. I mean, like, were you meeting with, like, the big bosses, or are you having to go meet with, like, middle management? Why were you always traveling?

Paul: Well, if you're trying to sell a large system to a company like United Airlines, say, it's a very complex, you know, environment. You gotta you gotta work purchasing. You gotta work engineering. You gotta work design and all these, you know, different people. So, you know, it was it was years of building these relationships, building these kind of business cases with all these different stakeholders and stuff like that.

So, you know, I was fortunate to have that experience to be able to figure out how to structure deals in a very complex environment like that. And, and, yeah, some guys were in Chicago, some guys were in LA, some guys were in Dallas, so you gotta go where you gotta go.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, I'm hearing a lot of variables, a lot of balls in the air whenever you're trying to sell all these people. So I mean, on a typical transaction, how many people had to buy in to to the sale?

Paul: A lot. Right? And, and then you figure out, well, ultimately, it comes down to a few key decision makers, but there's a lot of stakeholders that are involved influencing those people. So I think with complex sales, you realize that, you know, there's not one decision maker. There's usually a bunch.

And those decision makers are taking, their advice on what to do from the people below them. So you got, you know, the the the engineers, the senior engineers, and then the directors, and then the VPs. And so, yeah, that was my experience was learning how to navigate these complex, environments and, learning how to sell what needed to be sold to each individual stakeholder.

Steve: You had to have, like, a custom sale, like, a custom pitch for each one of these people?

Paul: Not at all. Yeah. That was that was the fun part, but also the challenging part was learning how to make these deals. I mean, we my the company that I was working for at the time hired me to figure out how to sell this particular automation equipment into this new industry. So, you know, brand new technology to a new industry having to to understand, you know, really, what are they looking to solve, try to understand their problems.

It was not a lot of pushing a product because we didn't have the product. We had to create it.

Steve: And how long was your typical sales cycle with this many stakeholders?

Paul: Years. Like, a year, two years. You know, we talk about that all the time, that big difference between going from that to going to, you know, sitting at a kitchen table with a homeowner trying to, you know, buy their house. Much different sales cycles, much, you know, faster turnover. So, yeah, these these longer sales cycles definitely, are a challenge to deal with.

Steve: So how does that compare? Right? You got, I don't know, six stakeholders, 10 stakeholders. How many stakeholders typically in a transaction?

Paul: Yeah. That's probably about right.

Steve: Okay. So you got this many stakeholders. You gotta influence all of them, make sure they're all on board, making sure that they're all supporting one another, going towards the same direction versus, like, a probate situation. You got, like, two or three siblings. Like, how is there any parallel to this?

Paul: I think the sales process has a lot of similarities to it. Right? You gotta understand what's actually the problem we're trying to solve here. You need you know, everything is an emotional sale even in, you know, the the b to b world. Mhmm.

They like to make data driven decisions, but, it's all based on emotions. Right? Well, how does this project benefit that director? Mhmm. And and we see the same thing in typical real estate sales, wholesaling, things like that.

But it was adjusting from b to b to b to c. There's a significant amount of more emotion that's displayed in that in that sale. So that was definitely a shift for me, learning how to kinda handle those situations. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So we were talking about, you know, your mom was a real estate attorney. You went to engineering, and then you went to sales engineer. When did you decide maybe real estate is the way to go?

Paul: So in 2018, I bought my first house, and I didn't really know a whole lot about real estate investing, but I was, you know, making good money, traveling, selling all these, you know, these deals. And so bought a house and then started realizing I could buy another house and put a renter in that house and collect, you know, properties this way. And so once I had that sort of moment, it was like an obsession. Right? Everything I could learn about real estate, every book I could read, get my hands on.

So we bought another house, and then we bought another house, and then we bought another house, and we just kept collecting these properties. You're

Steve: just buying a bunch of rental properties with your active income.

Paul: Right. And we would move into the house. My girlfriend at the time, my wife now, you know, we would move in. I'd buy this house. Of course, she had to move constantly, which was, not her favorite thing to do.

But, yeah, we would buy it with conventional, you know, 5% down, less than 3% interest rate. You know? Great. And then a year year and a half later, we would turn that into a rental and move to the next place. So we we collected three long term rentals and a short term rental, and, they just cash flowed like crazy.

Steve: Yeah. But in all this time, even though you're acquiring rental properties, you're still working at a nine to five

Paul: That's right.

Steve: Or whatever bizarre hours because you're traveling all the time.

Paul: Not a nine to five. Definitely not. Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So then why did you pivot to go hard into active real estate income?

Paul: Yeah. Really, it was a sort of fortunate situation. I had been working this, you know, really large deal with United Airlines, and we were getting ready to take a, purchase order to roll out our solution to all their major hubs. And that was in January, I should say February, March 2020. And, you know, and then this COVID thing hit.

And so, of course, all the spending dried up, and they were like, yeah, Paul. We're gonna have to wait a little bit to write you that check.

Steve: Mhmm. And

Paul: it's it's like, oh, that's not good. You know, so it was at that point where I started realizing, well, you know, maybe this is my opportunity to, to go full time at investing and build my own, you know, business. And so throughout 2020, I was just consuming as much education as possible, learning everything I could. At the end of that year, I decided to go full time at investing, mostly because I had this nest egg of cash flowing real estate properties that allowed me to do that.

Steve: Did that deal ever close? That big one?

Paul: I think my old boss is still working on that one. Yeah.

Steve: So because they're talking about long sales cycles. So and we're talking about, you know, like, a lot of stakeholders and this is complex sale. But for comparison's sake, I mean, like, what kind of volume are we talking about as far as, like, what what is it dollar amount that you were selling?

Paul: So what we were selling, if you've ever gotten on a an airplane and you look outside when they load the bags into the belly of the plane, they've got a conveyor belt. And somebody sits there and they scan barcodes. But, you know, humans are the most rely unreliable component of every system. So what United was trying to get us to to solve for was a better way to track bags in and out of the belly of the plane. And so what we were selling was a a an array of cameras that we would mount to the conveyor belt that would take a picture of the bag, find the little barcode on there, scan it, and send it back to the, you know, the the hub, so to speak.

And, you know, this was a continuous improvement project. It was a technology project, and then, you know, we were I I forget the exact dollar amount, but it was, you know, $1,015,000,000, something like that to to roll out the first, wave of scanners. And, you know, again, when things tighten up, all of a sudden, the budget for improvements and technology shrinks pretty quickly. So Yeah. And that's what happened.

Steve: So this big check you're expecting never arrives. Right. And you say, okay. Maybe I do need to really work for myself.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: And so you said you went all in in 2021.

Paul: Yep. I, left my job at the 2020, and went all in 2021.

Steve: Okay. So, how was that?

Paul: It was a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, year one was, I think it's just it's it it aligns with my approach typically with with most sales was, like, to say we we we pressed a lot of buttons. I needed to see what, you know, wholesale was. I needed to see what a flip was.

We do these pop tops that we talk about in Denver. We did, you know, we did those. Retail, we did everything. We pressed a bunch of buttons trying to understand where where do we wanna, you know, pursue, what direction do we really wanna go here.

Steve: Yeah. And I think that's a classic challenge a lot of people getting into real estate run into. It's like, okay. Like, which direction do I wanna go? Because I remember on, as a realtor, they're like, wait.

Do you wanna be a buyer's agent or a list or a seller's agent? It's like, both. Right.

Paul: What are

Steve: you talking about? And then I get my license and I get out there and, like, why do only residential when you can do commercial? Yeah. Right? And then you could do business.

You can sell restaurants and gas stations too. Like, let's just attack everything.

Paul: There's a lot of shiny objects.

Steve: There's a lot of shiny objects. And what you learn is that, was it, a jack of all trades is master of none. Yep. Right? And, so I didn't crush any of those roles in the first few years.

So what what how was your experience trying to do all those different things?

Paul: Pretty similar, you know. I I don't think the intention in year one was to go out and crush it. I think it was to, you know, kinda press that button. Let's see what happens. Press that button.

You know? I I was in this for the long term. Like, I, you know, committed. We're gonna be an investor. Mhmm.

And if we're gonna build a business around a particular strategy, well, I wanna understand all the options. I wanna understand, you know, what works and what doesn't. So, you know, in year one, we had a lot of things that worked well and a lot of things that didn't work well. Lost money on deals. We made a ton of money on some deals.

And, so I I would say it was a it was a success based on, you know, the goals that I had in mind.

Steve: Yeah. So when you set off on your grand adventure, you didn't necessarily say I need to make this amount or I need to sum this many properties. Really, you were just trying to find your groove.

Paul: Yeah. And it and it came because I had you know, my wife was had a stable job. We had cash flowing real estate. I didn't need to make any money. So it just it gave me a lot of flexibility and, you know, options to be able to try this, to be able to fail.

I wouldn't have been able to done it to have done that if I didn't have, you know, those other things behind me as that base.

Steve: Sure. So, what were a handful of mistakes? Two or three mistakes that you learned early on that you would wanna share for anyone getting into real estate right now?

Paul: Sure. One first thing that comes to mind is, you know, I had to learn how to transition from being a an individual contributor on a team, that's all I'd ever done, to really learning how not only how to sell in a completely new environment, new new products, new everything, but also how to be a leader and build a team. I think I've I've failed at that. You know, I I I hired a lot of friends. I didn't train people.

It was, it was just a lot of mistakes that I had made in year one. Let's see. I made a lot of poor choices with contractors, you know, certain guys thinking that, you know, they'd be a great fit, for for construction projects that just didn't turn out to be a great fit. I want

Steve: this to be a pretty common thing.

Paul: Imagine that. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I got got bit by that a few times.

The one that we were actually talking about before this, I thought was, I don't know how I missed this, but one of the things that I did was sent out a direct mail campaign. Mhmm.

Steve: I

Paul: think I spent, like, 10 or $15 on this campaign with a dead number on it.

Steve: The number didn't work.

Paul: So the number didn't work, and we sat there wondering, like, why are we not getting any calls? What's going on? And it wasn't better that. I know I I I figured out that I had a a dead number on that. And And these are just the things you learn from going so fast.

Steve: Was it a typo? Was it a number you didn't renew?

Paul: It was a number that had not been renewed. Yeah. So it worked, and then it just stopped working. So, yeah, these are just the things, you you know, kicks in the shin that you

Steve: Well, don't feel so bad. I mean, that's $1,015,000. Never coming back. But we literally just got new signs. Right?

We went from Stunning Homes Realty to Real Brokerage, and so we got new signs. And the sign comes in. I look at that number. It's like, that's not my number. Mhmm.

You know, like, what do you mean? It's like, no. I know my number. That's not my number. And because I have a number specifically for sign calls.

It's like, that's not my number.

Paul: Right.

Steve: And they're like, what number is that? So we called it. Right? And just nothing. We had to get all our signs remade.

Wasn't a $1,015,000 dollar mistake, but it was a couple 100. You know, it's it's still irritating.

Paul: Well, these are the nightmares that we have now. Right? And I'm you know, it it's just a result of going so fast, trying to do so many things, trying to you know, I think one of the things I learned in year one is to slow down. You gotta pay attention to the details. You know?

For a lot of people that go into business for themselves, they're they're these, you know, quote, visionary types and, you know, we we're not detail oriented. And, I think that's what I learned in year one is too bad. You've gotta learn how to do those things if you wanna be successful in business or you're gonna you're gonna have holes all over your bucket leaking water out.

Steve: How do you fix this mistake? What did what systems or processes did you put in place to make sure you don't send out any direct mail with bad numbers on it?

Paul: Yeah. I think it it comes down to, building processes and systems around that to checklist, things to do. You know, that's it's so obvious now. Like, simple things, like build a checklist for, you know, anything you're gonna spend over a certain amount. Mhmm.

Steve: But

Paul: these just weren't processes and systems we had in place at the time. There's only so many things you can do in year one, and you're trying to inch the ball forward with everything. And, you know, I think, what's what's working for us now is inching one thing forward, putting our energy into one thing, taking that one beachhead at a time before going to take another beachhead. Right? And and how does that apply to direct mail?

It just means slow down. Do it right. Make sure it's done well, and not stop trying to do everything all at once.

Steve: Another thing we had talked about, earlier was, hiring practices.

Paul: Mhmm.

Steve: So you made some questionable hiring decisions.

Paul: Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I wanted to work with my friends. Right? And we all have the greatest intentions going into it. We wanna we all wanna be successful.

We all wanna get, you know, financial certainty.

Steve: How great is it if we make a lot of money with our friends?

Paul: Let's go.

Steve: Let's do this. Awesome.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: Didn't quite work out that way.

Paul: Well, I think it all falls back on the leader. Right? Yep. I mean, it's it's not that they were not a good fit for for that. It's just that, you know, I had to learn leadership skills.

I had to learn how to grow and manage a team and, you know, bringing on your friend and being like, let's just go make some money together. It just doesn't work.

Steve: Yeah. So what did you change since?

Paul: With the hiring process, we do, you know, the strengths finder test, which is similar to the PI and the Colby and stuff like that. And so I've just used the strengths finder, so I think that works well. But, hiring people based on their strengths, making sure it seems so obvious, of course, to say this out loud. It's just so funny. The things you you

Steve: do It's common sense after you realize it.

Paul: Right. And then hiring slowly, I think, was another, thing I sort of learned is is slow down. In your in your first year, you have this urgency, this kind of, you know, you're you're just you're getting moving quicker than you probably should be. Mhmm. And so I think just slowing the process down, being willing to wait for the right person, also hiring a recruiter to help you do a lot of that stuff and filter those things was a huge, you know, help for me.

Steve: Well, I mean, I think I would argue the other the other side because I think a lot of people are too careful, too precise, and and and have all the ducks in a row. And I think it's better to make a mess than than have a mess to be cleaned up.

Paul: That's a fair point. I certainly have cleaned up a lot of messes. That's for sure.

Steve: That's what it's all

Paul: for me.

Steve: We've all cleaned up a lot of messes, but I think having a mess to clean up versus make sure everything all the eyes are dotted and crossed and and never making any progress.

Paul: Yeah. And it's you know, I think good leaders do and then make it the right decision. Yeah. Right? You you you don't always you can't make the right decision always at first.

You have to make the decision and then make it right.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, don't hire people you like. Hire people that fit the role. Right.

Having a checklist for for your expensive marketing pieces.

Paul: Yes.

Steve: Anything else? Any other major blunders the first year?

Paul: Yes. I would say when it comes to construction, it's better to say no to projects, in favor of how do I say this? The people who I'm in business with that I'm working with now are fantastic, and I wish that I had gone back and done it differently to say instead of just doing deals to try to do deals Mhmm. You know, slow down and find and build that relationship with those construction partners because, you know, in a market like Denver, you can you can do very well on a really good on a one good project. And so I just got caught up in this.

Let's try to do as many projects as we can, and you just make mistakes that way.

Steve: Yeah. And then you mentioned earlier something earlier on the call, on the show was a pop top.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: So for those of us not in Denver, what exactly is a pop top?

Paul: Oh, we're calling them hamburgers now too. No. I think it's funny because, you know, Pop Top is, in these premier neighborhoods in Denver. You have these older brick ranches and, you know, when you walk in the basement, it's, you know, like, six foot five, six foot eight kinda ceilings. And so But

Steve: it's unfinished or finished basements?

Paul: Typically unfinished. And so, you know, very underutilized. And most people are coming in and they're just scraping that and building a, you know, 4,500, 5,000 square foot white box mansion.

Steve: Right? Single level.

Paul: Three three stories.

Steve: Right? That's what

Paul: they would normally do. But what we do is we go in and we'll, we'll chip the basement down. We'll dig it down a foot and a half, and we'll take the roof off and add a third story. So you take a, you know, an 1,100 square foot brick ranch and you turn it into, you know, 3,500, and it's got a lot of the original character of the old house. Some, you know, people like that kinda charm where you're Mhmm.

It's still sort of a I it's it's sort of halfway between a a fix and flip and a full development, and they've just been they've been fantastic deals for us.

Steve: It sounds a little bit like a structural integrity nightmare.

Paul: Well, and this is why it comes down to you gotta have the right relationships. I would never be able to do deals like that if I didn't have the construction guys, you know, on my team.

Steve: Paul is the one in charge of this project.

Paul: We would fail.

Steve: We would fail. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So you got the right people with the right experience Yeah.

That know what they're doing, and they're making this happen.

Paul: That's right.

Steve: Okay. And then, I think you shared with me that these are now your favorite projects. These are the kind of ones you wanna focus on.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: So, whereas 2021, your first full year, you were looking to try as many different types of deals as possible, but in 2022, you're you're really more focused on these kinds of projects.

Paul: Yeah. So the way I think about our real estate business is we've got two sides and, you know, I talk a lot about barbells, the strategy for investing. And the analogy is if you're gonna lift weights with a barbell, you don't load the weight in the middle. And, you know, so on one side of that barbell, we've got reliability. I want it to be easy.

I want it to be boring, almost, consistent. And, you know, that's things like, in low risk. Right? So things where we don't have to put any of our own money into it. So, retail, novations, wholesales, things like that, they really fit that that bucket.

And, on the other side, we have deals that can bring a lot of upside. And, you know, those are the pop tops. Those are the ground up development deals that I'm working on. And we try to keep things out of the middle of the bar. So we're trying to stay away from fix and flips.

You know, our experience with fix and flips is they can go really well, but they can also go really poorly. Yeah. So there's just not there's there there's, you know, it's kind of the definition for me of loading the weight in the middle of the bar. Scaling a large team is also something I you know, it takes up a lot of my time. It takes up a lot of effort.

So we're looking for either real easy, you know, low low risk or a lot of upside.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So that's interesting. So you say you don't want to scale? Because, like, right now with popping or with popular, everyone is saying, like, I wanna scale.

I wanna scale. I wanna scale. Now right now, people are talking about, like, what's going on with the market. But until two weeks ago, everyone's talking about scaling, scaling, scaling.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: You have a different perspective.

Paul: I do. And I think, you know, obviously, we're both in collective genius, so we get a chance to observe all of these different business owners and the and the types of businesses that they run. And real estate plays a big part of my investing portfolio, but, you know, where I've where I get the most reward, I think, is is structuring large deals. Mhmm. It's raising money.

And in order for me to do those things, if I'm, you know, building a large business and operating this business, that's not the best place for me. So when I go to CG, I look for guys who have the most boring business in the room. Right? They're the ones who spend very little time on their real estate business because, you know, there's there's other aspects of real estate that I prefer to spend my time on as opposed to, you know, growing a big team. So we've got a small, lean, mean team, and we do, you know, we're like a little family, and it's, and it's a great fit for for what I want.

It's this idea of getting closer to the things you want, not chasing more, right, which is a trap that I think a lot of investors fall in chasing more.

Steve: That's definitely a principle we wanna touch on later on. You talk about you wanna do these bigger deals, and we kinda when we're having lunch earlier, you you you mentioned that you were known as the whale hunter. Yeah. So it's interesting to see, like, this personality, has as, or character trait has followed you from selling to the airlines to

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: To doing real estate. So can you elaborate on closer? Because this is, I think, a really important topic that most people completely get wrong.

Paul: Yeah. So, I've been fortunate to get, mentorship from, a couple guys, Dan Nicholson, Nick Peterson. They call this, what they call the solvable problem. And, essentially, what this is is a term, to help you take your goals and turn it into a math equation. Right?

Like, we need a timeline. We need to know what we're working towards. Because, typically, when you get started, people like us, we have a tendency towards, let's just do more. Let's build a bigger team. Let's do more deals.

Steve: Yeah.

Paul: And a lot of times, that comes with trade offs. That means less time spent with friends and family, less time spent on your hobbies, and, you know, less time spent doing other business ventures that you you may wanna engage in. And so, the closer idea is based off of this idea of having a solvable problem. You gotta know what you want out of this. The biggest risk that we all run is not getting what we want out of life.

So if you don't have clarity around what it is you want out of business, you're gonna take off and make a bunch of decisions. Those decisions can largely be influenced by more money, you know, more insert whatever it is for you.

Steve: More material things.

Paul: Right. Whatever that is. And so they've helped me kind of understand what it is that, you know, is important to me, what I want to build. And so I have these guardrails and these, you know, bumpers to keep me from chasing more. And a lot of times that means you can't you can't go hire the the massive team just because you want to.

Yeah. Because it's gonna take you away long term from the things that you really want.

Steve: Yeah. So I think, you know, the way you've explained it is to me, you know, off off this, show was that if you don't know what you want, how can you possibly get it? Yeah.

Paul: How do you know when you're getting closer?

Steve: Yeah. So if you know what you want, now you can make all your decisions. Is this gonna be closer or further away from my desired goal?

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people get hung up on trying to define exactly where they want and then every step that needs to happen, you know, in order to get there. Because let's face it. What I wanted three years ago is not the same as what I want now.

I'm sure that's the same with you. Yeah. This is a moving target, and we need to have a mechanism to constantly reevaluate what is it that I really want. It's okay to change. We know this is a moving target.

We call that what an an infinite game. Mhmm. You're playing this infinite game with yourself of constantly trying to figure out how do I get closer to the things I want, and we just need the next one or two things to go right. Yeah. Because then more information presents itself, and then we can we have this framework for decision making.

Steve: Yep. One thing you touched on was the fix and flips were the things that was least attractive. So either wholesale innovation or or retail or big deals, like grand slams. Right? But fix and flip could go either way.

So that's interesting. Can you elaborate on that?

Paul: I think it comes back to me with the relationships. Mhmm. You know, I just don't have that relationship yet, where where those deals are reliable or they present a lot of upside. We've lost money on fix and flips. We've got one now that's just a massive thorn in my side.

I can't wait to get it pulled out. And for me, that does not represent the type of upside that I'm looking for, and it doesn't represent reliability for me either. So right now, it's sitting in the middle of the bar.

Steve: So is it something you say you you tell me the right relationship. So you haven't found the who to fix this problem. Is that what I'm hearing?

Paul: That's right.

Steve: So if you have the right who, then that perspective changes?

Paul: It could. In that relationship, I think what I've learned is is slow down and build that relationship over time. Yeah. Trust is earned, especially in, you know, in this business. And, that's that's how I'm approaching fix and flips now.

Steve: So going back to the pop tops we're talking about just a moment ago, you mentioned that you have the right people there. How did you find the right people? Because one challenge that we all experience is how do you find the right freaking contractors. Mhmm. How did you forge that relationship?

Paul: It was very fortunate that the second home that I purchased was a was a brand new townhouse, and the builders were amazing. It was this unbelievable product. I was blown away, and I said, I wanna get into business with those guys. And so I this was probably I would say this was 2020, I think, when I bought that house. So I wasn't even full time in real estate yet, but what I was looking at was, well, what how do I add value to these people?

What do they have? What do they not have? And through that process, I I recognized one of the things that they needed was capital. The other was better deal flow. As a salesperson, those are two things I could contribute to.

Yeah. So when I started Bunny Hill, it was really geared towards how do we add value to the types of people we wanna be in business with long term. And so we were trying to source deals. I was fortunate to to raise a couple million dollars in my first year that we use to get into some of these larger deals with them. So it was it was the perfect example of how to build a relationship with someone over time.

They weren't gonna go into business with me right off the bat Mhmm. Because they'd you know, what value did I bring to them? So I had to prove it. I had to demonstrate that value. And, you know, over the course of a year and a half, I was able to do that and able to get into projects with them.

And, you know, now we're looking at expanding. We, we're looking at building 26 townhouses at at one point in time. I'm not sure if that one's gonna go through, but the point is is you gotta find ways to add value to the people you wanna be in business with. Otherwise, what are you doing?

Steve: Yeah. And that's I I think it's a very profound point that, you know, some people may miss. Now our very first interaction, we didn't really talk, but our very, very first interaction was Brewer Method. Yep. Right?

So, you signed up for Novations training with Eric Brewer and myself. And, you mentioned that you enjoy that your team has learned this and can apply it in the living room. Mhmm. Can you share with me why you think Novations has been a great tool for you guys?

Paul: So Novations open up a lot of optionality, as I'm sure you know. So what they allow you to do is contract houses that most wholesalers, most fix and flippers would not be able to contract. And, you know, we can get these houses a lot of times in, you know, upper 80% of, you know, ARV, even even higher in some cases, and there's not as much risk. We don't have to actually buy the house. We don't have to put our money in it.

We have a longer time frame. And it's also a great fit for the sellers because we're not sitting there trying to, you know, lowball them, and they really like that.

Steve: I'm sure they do.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: So, it's been helpful for your business.

Paul: It has. And, you know, Philip, my home buying specialist out there, he's become, you know, just a rock star at being able to pitch this. I think that was the biggest challenge I had at the beginning was I couldn't quite figure out how to explain it. Yeah. Why why should they do this versus other strategies?

And once we figured out what the sellers really cared about, how to add value to them, we started getting them left and right. I think we've probably done five or six this year, and they're probably some of our biggest deals.

Steve: Yeah. That's awesome. So if you guys are interested in that, go to bruinmethod.com. So the reason why I asked you all to come onto the show, we're talking about business treasury. Now business treasury, people probably have no idea what we're talking about.

So let's start there. What exactly let me take a step back. Let's not start there. We'll get there in a second. There was a problem you were trying to solve.

Mhmm. What was the problem you were trying to solve when you kinda happened onto this?

Paul: Most new investors probably struggle with the same thing I struggle with. I know this because I've, you know, talked to a lot of people in CG, which is cash flow. Consistent cash flow, especially in your first couple years, is is really challenging. We would call this lumpy sales. You just get, you know, back in the corporate world.

Right? You'd get a big influx of cash, and then it would be a month or two of

Steve: Roller coaster.

Paul: It's just a roller coaster. Right? And especially as you're getting the business started up, you know, you're on a it's an assembly line. You're sales and marketing, prospecting, and then you're in the living room closing deals. And then we gotta get these disposed, and now we gotta raise the money or whatever it is.

And and then we gotta go all the way back to the beginning and start over.

Steve: Yeah.

Paul: So cash flow

Steve: assuming if you're wholesaling. That doesn't even mention if you're flipping.

Paul: Yeah. So there's just all these this assembly line, and there were gaps. And cash flow was definitely the biggest problem in year one. And so I would sit there, and I would look at that six months worth of, expenses sitting in my bank account, staring at this money saying it's being super lazy. It needs to get to work.

Yeah. And I had no idea about this concept of a business treasury really until I got into the world of DeFi Mhmm. And learned about it from some of the guys' mentors I have in that space.

Steve: So you your situation was you had a bunch of money in the bank account that was doing absolutely nothing for you.

Paul: Yes.

Steve: And you're trying to figure out how you can use this money to basically make more money to fund your business.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So, is that more or less what a business treasury is?

Paul: Yes. What a business treasury is is essentially your your business should operate as your operating business, but also as a bank. Mhmm. And we do this to add redundancy to the business so that you have security. You've got a cash flowing asset that you can borrow against that can produce cash flow for you, obviously, and it gives you it gave me at least a lot of confidence and ability to take on more risk inside the business because I had more reliability.

So a business treasury is designed to help you act as a bank and provide cash flow and reliability.

Steve: Yeah. And, I mean, if you look at, I think, Apple, I think they've got they're sending out more cash than anybody else. Mhmm. So is it a situation because I I think with them, they just put a cash. It's just cash.

They don't it doesn't it doesn't do anything for them. I think that actually, I take that back. I think the only thing that they do with it is they borrow against it.

Paul: Right.

Steve: They don't spend the cash. They just borrow against the cash so that they don't have to pay tax or any of that other stuff. Right. So more or less, you're you've got this pile of money, and you're just you're you're lending against it. You're putting somewhere else.

Like, what what vehicle are you using to have it build more money for itself?

Paul: So the blockchain presents a lot of interesting opportunities. And one of the segments of blockchain that we've been taking most advantage of is called decentralized finance, shortened up to DeFi. Mhmm. And what DeFi is is a way for, how do I explain this? I think it's easier to explain a centralized exchange first.

Yeah. So the way most people buy crypto is they go on someplace like Coinbase or crypto.com, FTX, one of these places, And they buy a coin, and they put it in their wallet, and they wait, and they hope that it goes up. Mhmm. Crypto has a lot of similarities to gambling, and this is how most people view the crypto space, which is why we stay away from the term crypto. Yeah.

Because it it, you know, incites this gambling.

Steve: I mean, you say crypto sounds like, stocks and gambling. For me, it's it sounds like, day trading.

Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Every time I hear someone talking about, like, here's a Bitcoin, here's where they're hearing me at, I just hear instantly in my head day trading.

Paul: That's right. Yeah. So but but ninety, ninety five, I don't know what the percentage is. The the majority of people that are buying and selling crypto are using it that way.

Steve: Mhmm.

Paul: And that's because on a on a centralized exchange, that's all that there is. It's buy low, sell high. And the analogy that we've come up with is it it's like giving your money, putting it in a savings account. The bank's gonna pay you point 2%. Meanwhile, they're taking your money.

They're lending it out. They're earning fees on it. They're making a killing. Yep. And we don't have access to that because it's a centralized banking process.

Just like in in crypto, it's a centralized exchange.

Steve: So so Coinbase is making money kinda like E Trade or some of these stock providers. Every time there's a transaction, they're making money.

Paul: That's right.

Steve: The Coinbase is making money as a centralized exchange.

Paul: Yep.

Steve: And then we're looking at DeFi separately.

Paul: Correct. So the this is a brand new space, first of all. Yeah. If you haven't heard about it, it's because it started in 2019, really. And it's it's it's gonna revolutionize finance, in my opinion, because people like us can actually benefit from lending our money to this exchange.

So what a centralized exchange does is they provide liquidity. So when you wanna buy Bitcoin, and I've gotta be willing to sell it. And so Coinbase says, cool. This guy wants to to buy it. This guy wants to sell it.

We're gonna put up the money to act as liquidity to facilitate that trade. And when we pay fees, it all goes back to Coinbase. Well, in a decentralized exchange, you and me can actually lend our money to the exchange and benefit in the same way that a bank would from those trading fees. So anytime there's volume, anytime there's, fees that are applied to the transaction, it gets paid back to the liquidity providers. This is the whole beauty of a decentralized exchange as we can actually just act as lenders.

Right. We can lend our money to the exchange, keep it all in US dollars, and earn outsized returns significantly higher than you would get in any sort of savings account. I've described this as a high yield savings account before. There's a lot of analogies. There's a lot of similarities to real estate.

The the other the, you know, analogy we came up with was, you know, imagine if you were a flipper and all you did was just buy the house and hope that it went up in value and sold it in two years. You did no work to it. Nothing. That was all your strategy was is hoping that, you know, betting on appreciation. And that makes no sense to us real estate investors.

We would never do that.

Steve: Right.

Paul: But DeFi is like what

Steve: we would do when we buy Bitcoin, and we just wait.

Paul: That's that's what everyone does, and that's why I think why everyone has such a negative connotation of the day trading involved with crypto because that's all that they've been presented with. But, you know, DeFi, the example is, like, well, I'm gonna buy this house. I'm gonna get a mortgage on it, and then I'm gonna borrow against it. It's gonna pay me cash flow. The loan's gonna get paid down.

I've got all these wealth drivers with it. Then I can take that property and the cash flow that I make from it and the equity that I gained from it and use it to buy another house Yeah. And grow my portfolio and accumulate these properties over time. That's the exact same strategy that we're using with DeFi.

Steve: So let me kinda share an example. You tell me if I'm off base here. Right? Okay. So me, you, eight other guys, we all throw in 100 k.

Right? We have a million dollars there. Right?

Paul: Mhmm.

Steve: That's our decentralized exchange. And anytime someone buys and sells off of there, there's a finance charge.

Paul: Yep.

Steve: The difference is every time someone buys and sells off our exchange, we get paid those service fees. So it's like owning a bank without having any of the overhead and keeping all the revenue.

Paul: It's beautiful.

Steve: Yeah. So it's a very interesting concept. And, you're saying that with that that model, you got it parked over here. That's able to pay for your regular operating expenses.

Paul: Yeah. So what I was able to do in year one was take profit

Steve: Mhmm.

Paul: Off the table. And instead of reinvesting it back into marketing, what I did is I put it in this business treasury strategy so that I you know, the idea being, well, it's a high yield savings account. Let's see how this works. Mhmm. And it worked really well.

It was producing enough cash flow that I could essentially use that to pay the operating expenses of the business. Now the business was profitable, so I wasn't using it that way. I was using it to compound my business treasury to make myself even stronger and and build that kinda cash reserves up, knowing that at any point in time, if I needed to use that, yield from that farm to pay my operating expenses, I could.

Steve: Yeah. So I imagine, guys, there's some questions here, so please, fire away with your questions. And, you know, for us, when when I learned about this model, well, I guess, I learned about this model at Collective Genius because this guy beat me for the belt.

Paul: That's right.

Steve: So I thought I had the best presentation. I I mean, I I was really proud of the presentation I put together.

Paul: Yeah. And the and the crypto guy won. Better than that.

Steve: And the crypto guy won. Like, the son of us. So I had to learn more about it. Right? And so as we've learned more as I've learned more about it, actually went through you you trained some people Mhmm.

Some other real estate investors on how to navigate this this, this world. And, so since then, we've, partnered up. We started the Whale Club.

Paul: Yep.

Steve: So do you want to elaborate for everybody what it is what exactly is the Whale Club?

Paul: So what we're doing is we're focused on building a community for high net worth real estate investors that want to learn how to leverage the blockchain to build their own business treasury. So it's a it's a community and an education. What what we found is that there's a there's a massive language barrier Mhmm. Between real estate and crypto. I mean, we speak a whole different language as you know by now in the crypto world.

And even the word crypto is this, like, ubiquitous. What does that even mean? Mhmm. So we have a lot of stuff that we talk about. It's, you know, it's a essentially, it's a fire hose to the face.

And what we're able to do is slow it down, drip the information in overtime so that, you know, you can learn this in a structured environment. And, you know, I was, fortunate to be able to show a lot of friends and family and people how to do all this, so I had some experience teaching it. And we started this as let's just get 10 guys together and see how this goes. Yeah. Obviously, it went well, and here we are today.

Steve: Yep. So you guys wanna find out more? Go to blockchainwhales.com. We have some information up there on to learn more about, you know, some of the basics of decentralized financing. But also, there's a seminar you'll be putting forth next week Yep.

About, this exact topic we're talking about. We're we're gonna go in much greater detail. Mhmm. Now I one thing I really wanna emphasize because we when you and I talked about this is that this is not about the crypto. This is not about the blockchain.

We're leveraging blockchain. But, really, the the core here is about some of the principles and frameworks, rubrics Mhmm. Right, for investing the right way.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: So can you share some of those things as to how we're discerning which DeFi to invest in and so on?

Paul: Yeah. So investing in crypto can be an absolute emotional roller coaster. You know, it's you've you've you know, these pump and dumps, these these buying meme coins, and, you know, I've done all of that. Yeah. I had experience with that.

I know what that feels like. And so I think what I what I realize is that investing in anything has very little to do with knowledge of that asset. Learning the language, learning how to press the buttons in crypto is actually pretty easy. We can get that done pretty quickly. What it is is how to navigate this landscape of emotion, how to build a machine, a reliable machine that can produce cash flow, especially if we're talking about business treasury money.

We do not want to subject our principle to any risk whatsoever more than is necessary. And and so when we are looking at this problem, we're looking at it through a lens of, you know, the frameworks and the principles that you alluded to. And I guess there's a couple different ways you can invest in in, DeFi. What I choose to do is invest in an ecosystem. And so we I've been feel very, very fortunate to have met some of the the top leaders and thinkers in this space.

They're, you know, mentors of mine and, have been absolutely fantastic to help me understand this space. And what they've they've showed me is there's a way to invest in ecosystems, not just one coin, hoping that it goes up

Steve: in value. Mhmm.

Paul: That's a fool's errand. So that's what we do in the whale club is we teach people how to to look at these different ecosystems, to to evaluate them, to to make decisions, and then ultimately how to build your machine so you don't have this massive emotional roller coaster that we can accumulate and increase our our business treasury over time.

Steve: Yeah. And I think one of the things is I don't wanna say, like, it's no risk because that would be a outright lie. Right. We don't wanna say this is low risk. There's risk involved.

We just we just put less risk with the guardrails in place. And you get to share you get to learn from his bonus mistakes he's made here and there.

Paul: Yeah. I mean, everything's risky. Right?

Steve: Yeah.

Paul: Getting into a car is risky. Starting a real estate business is risky. Investing in stocks is risky, clearly. Investing in in crypto is risky. These are all risky things.

So it's not about trying to eliminate risk. It's trying to, domesticate it. Yeah. Right? We want to reduce it as mount as much as possible.

Take as, you know, least amount of risk, with the least amount of effort as possible.

Steve: Uh-uh. So I do want to get to some of these questions. Before I get into these questions, I want to, run something here While we pull that up, let's jump into this here. So on IG, Joshua's growth, any current strategies to share with the market heading in an uncertain place for sellers and how to capitalize on that?

Paul: Yeah. I got a lot of thoughts on that. It it comes back to this the frameworks of building your machine, and I alluded earlier to this barbell strategy of investing. It's the same thing that we see in in, crypto and in DeFi. So on one side of this barbell, we wanna have as much reliability as possible, and we use things like stable pairs.

I know I'm getting pretty technical with these terms. These are essentially taking coins pegged to the US dollar. Now, of course, everybody I have to put a caveat on that. Everyone's familiar with what happened or if they're unfamiliar with blockchain, they're familiar with what happened to Terra Mhmm. And Luna.

And we've learned that algorithmically backed stablecoins are very dangerous. They are prone to, you know, losing a lot of value. So what we prefer to do is find stablecoins that are truly pegged to a US dollar, and we can pair those two coins together, and we can earn a very modest return, something like eight, nine, 10%. And then we can take the yield that we earn from that side, the reliability side, and we can shift it over to the other side of the barbell where we expose it to more risk with a lot higher upside. The idea here is we're trying to play with house money Right.

And and and only play with house money. And so you can't remove all the risk, but when you're only playing with house money, you have a lot less risk on the table. And so my approach right now is trying to evaluate different reliable places to to put my core capital. We talk about this in, you know, our weekly calls in the wheel club. Where can we find reliability in this marketplace?

And a lot of it just comes back to me with stable pairs. Yeah. And finding, you know, places like that.

Steve: I think though with with this question here he's talking about as far as homeowners, right, working with homeowners because we got this delta. Right? We got homeowners that think their houses are still here or it's, like, for sure going up. Right? Mhmm.

We get these homeowners with this idea. Mhmm. And the buyers, if you're wholesaling, that this market's going down.

Paul: Right.

Steve: How do you deal with this uncertainty right now?

Paul: I think our approach is, what we call optionality. We we the analogy we give on our team is, there's a big difference between wholesaling and being a wholesaler. So, you know, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right? And when you go in with one strategy, you're trying to hammer everything down.

So what we do is, as, you know, homebuyers, we go in with a tool belt. We go in and we can pay full retail. We can list that house. We can use novation strategies. We can there's a lot of different things that we can do.

So our approach is the same as it was before. It's gonna be the same tomorrow. It's gonna be in the same in a year from now. We wanna have as many options as possible so that when we're sitting in front of that homeowner, even if they want full retail, we can still we can still take that lead.

Steve: Craft a solution That's right. Fits their criteria.

Paul: Right.

Steve: Awesome. You're wholesaling real estate and you're doing deals, but you're probably a little concerned about the market recession, how it might interrupt your business, possibly unsure how to navigate these conditions. Wait.

Paul: Not so much.

Steve: Our sales disruptors event from August '19 teaches wholesalers our sales process on how to buy more houses during an economic recession. You're gonna learn how to overcome seller rejections, how to position yourself as an authority figure that sellers will trust even in declining market conditions. Sign up today. Disruptors.com/salesdisruptors and get all the tools you're gonna need to thrive and prevent your business. Nasrudama says that that was a great explanation.

So he had a light bulb moment. He or she had a light bulb moment. So I think that's that's awesome. Awesome. We're getting to a point where we can explain this without us sounding like we're speaking a completely different language, which is the biggest challenge.

Paul: Is the hardest part is taking this very technical, very computer science gamer type world and figuring out how to explain it to an audience because we're doing these things. We we understand these principles and these strategies. It's just a new domain. We have to be able to translate, and that's, you know, obviously, that's what you and I are working on.

Steve: Yep. So another question, IG. Will blockchain integration into real estate reduce the title escrow costs and closing time? What are your thoughts on that?

Paul: Yes. And I think it's gonna take a while. I think we're I I I don't even wanna give a number to it because I have no idea, but, certainly, blockchain has massive utility. We call it accounting three point o.

Steve: Mhmm.

Paul: And, you know, how we account for assets is going to change because this technology is so revolutionary. So, yes, I think over the next, let's call it, three to five years, we're gonna start to see some changes in that space. And, I think it's gonna add a lot of value.

Steve: Yeah. I think so too. I think we're probably more than three to five years away the more I think about it just because we need that first leg of transaction to record it into the blockchain. Right.

Paul: And

Steve: then when they sell it later on, then there's a faster transaction. So we need the second transaction, not the first one. It's gonna be faster. Right? So for the next three, five, seven years, it's gonna be this really slow drip.

And then maybe ten to fifteen years, title will be streamed. I have no idea. I'm just really skeptical that of the next three to five years just because, a, you have to have that first leg recorded because we're not gonna go and court every deed onto the blockchain Right. Unless someone has a lot of money and time to go make that investment happen.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: You'd have to gradually do that. And then, after that well, on top of that, there's a lot of money in title. So I think there's a lot of you know, we talk about big title fighting it. And, actually, I was I was on TikTok last night. I don't spend a lot of time on there as much anymore.

But there was a guy who talked about this, this conundrum, this, what's it called? It's a paradox. It's like, we're taking something that's decentralized, no accountability. Right? Like, this is whole other world.

Alright? Take something as complex as, like, a deed, a deed of trust, a promissory note, and it's all gonna go through recorder's office. So, like, this is poor Judy, like, who's, like, an underpaid

Paul: Right.

Steve: Overworked employee.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: And we're gonna entrust her to make sure everything's done right on the Ethereum blockchain.

Paul: Yeah. Well, I think it's gonna come to applications. There's gonna be people who are gonna create that product. They're gonna create the ease of use. It's gonna take some time Yeah.

Because, you you know, implementing that technology is not easy in such an entrenched industry like that. So I I I agree with you. It's gonna take a long time. How long it takes, I have no idea, but it certainly got a lot of utility. It's going to make things a

Steve: lot easier. Ton of utility. Yeah. I mean, in twenty years, it's been like these we're they're gonna look at us like cavemen.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: Right? Is it gonna be closer to three years or is it gonna be closer to fifteen years? We don't know. Right. On IG, l Copovich, what do you guys think about a recession?

So I guess, probably, what they're trying to ask is, do you think there's a recession coming?

Paul: I think so.

Steve: Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen with the recession?

Paul: I think people who are over leveraged and overextended and don't have cash flowing assets and have overbuilt their business over the last fourteen years are gonna fail. Mhmm. And the people who, you know, haven't done those things, are gonna be in good shape.

Steve: Yeah. I think what's, I got a chance to listen to Marcus Crigler talk. Mhmm. And he's the he's the the CPA. And he said something last week when we're at Collective Genius.

He said that, everyone should have a million dollars in a bank. I was like, man, that that sounds wonderful. Right? So now I'm actively going to get money. So, the first thing we did yesterday, yeah, yesterday, was started calling around

Paul: Mhmm.

Steve: Asking for money. Mhmm. So, got approved. Right? So we have a $100,000 line of credit right now for our business.

Tentatively approved for over 400, so that's exciting.

Paul: That is exciting.

Steve: Yeah. But that's calling around all the banks.

Paul: Yeah. I mean, what just I think it's, this is the whole concept of the business treasury. It's Yeah. We want liquidity, I think, is what it comes down to. Cash in the bank kinda makes me cringe a little bit.

Mhmm. But, of course, we need liquid cash. It needs to be stored somewhere. Where are you storing it? How is it serving you?

And, these are very good questions to be asking right now.

Steve: Yeah. And and for us, it was really about, you know, we're still making money, but, the question is if your revenue drops 30% next 30% next month for and for the next few months, how's everything looking? Mhmm. Right? Those are real questions to be asking for everyone that's in business.

Paul: Yep.

Steve: Let's see. Not as many questions here, talking about, the the business treasury. So I think maybe, potentially, we have some people that, I guess, this might be a newer term as well. Business treasury. Where did you get that term from?

Paul: It's not my term. I got it from some of my mentors. But what you're describing is is the business treasury.

Steve: Yeah.

Paul: If your business took a 30% hit in revenue, would you be able to survive that? We would. Yeah. Because we have a business treasury Right. That's spitting out cash flow that can pay my operating expenses.

It gives me a lot of freedom to move through this market without worrying whether it's a recession or not. I'm looking at it as this great buying opportunity.

Steve: Yeah. Everything's gonna be on sale.

Paul: Yeah. Everything's on sale, and it's the same strategy that we're using in crypto. We wanna create a position so that when bad things happen, we benefit from it. I actually heard, Jimmy Vreeland mention this on one of your previous shows, and he was talking about this book, Antifragile. Mhmm.

Nick, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and and he describes this. You know, things that gain from disorder. Is your business one where when the conditions of the market shift, do you get stronger or do you get weaker? Right? If you've built your business when bad things happen in the world, bad things happen to you and your business, and you you have no way to to capitalize on that.

I think that you're you're going to experience more emotional turbulence, more trouble in a downturn than those who look at bad things as this is an opportunity for us.

Steve: Yeah. Matt Ricor, one of the smartest guys I've met, in in in in the real estate community for sure, asks, where does the yield from a stablecoin actually come from?

Paul: That's a really good question. So fairly complicated one to explain, but when you are building when you have a decentralized exchange, it exists on a certain network. So the particular network in this case that we're using is the Binance Smart Chain. So Binance, which is the centralized exchange, has a network for decentralized platforms to build on. And, essentially, the short answer is is that a lot of the money comes from Binance in trading fees that come back to the liquidity holders.

Steve: Yeah. So, Matt, basically, we're looking at the all those transaction fees that, again, whether it's the the stock trader, E Trade, or whatever, these they make 15 to $100 on on a transaction.

Paul: Yep.

Steve: Instead of that transaction going to E Trade, it's going to the, decentralized bank. And for us, owning just a fraction of it, that's where we get our yield.

Paul: Right. We benefit from really three ways. One is more, the trading fees. So anytime there's volume, anytime there's a transaction, you're paying a trading fee, and that's what we're talking about here. We also get yield from the farm, and we also get appreciation of the assets.

So similar to a real estate deal, you would get appreciation, you'd get loan pay down, and you'd get cash flow from the rental property. And in this case, that cash flow comes from Binance.

Steve: Yeah. So it's kinda crazy, but when Bitcoin's on the way up or on its way down, we make extra yield.

Paul: Right. Still still trading. Still volume. You still gotta pay fee to do it.

Steve: Yeah. So it's unfortunate for everyone that's dumping or whatever.

Paul: But That's right. And, honestly, that question is more nuanced than what I've just explained, but it you know, for the sake of time, if you wanna go and check out, you know, our website or our Discord, you can there's tons of information on on that and how it all breaks down, but it's a fairly technical explanation.

Steve: Yeah. So Blockchain Whales, Matt. There'll be there'll be more information. Sorry. Blockchainwhales.com.

So, I guess, you know, for you, what is your why? Why do you why are you doing this?

Paul: Well, why I got into business for myself was really to get closer to the things that I want. Mhmm. I don't think I realized that that that that term until I got a little further in. But, certainly, that's what's most important to me is helping, first of all, getting closer to the things that, you know, I and my family want, but I think I have a a massive passion for helping other people do the same thing and getting off this idea of chasing more, defining clearly what you want, and getting closer to those things without the need for chasing more.

Steve: Yep. What is your biggest struggle right now?

Paul: I would say untangling the accounting mess that I made last year. Right? Growing really fast and, you know, I was not a business owner in year one. I was a as a salesperson. I had to learn how to be a business owner, and I made a huge mess of things.

So I'm working with my accountant right now, and, accounting is not something that I enjoy. So that's been a big struggle for me to sit down and actually start untangling this mess and getting things, you know, sorted. And, yeah, it's been that's been my struggle.

Steve: I think as far as personality profiles, I think the most exact opposite of a salesperson is accounting. Right. I don't think there could be more diverse, profiles. Right.

Paul: Well, I'd love to hand it off, but I can't because it's a mess. So I've I've gotta fix it first and then be able to, you know, find someone else to do it because, clearly, I'm not going to do it.

Steve: Yeah. How do you measure success? Well, I

Paul: think it comes back to the mantra of getting closer to the things that you want. Success is different for different people. You know? Some people want more time. Some people wanna make an influence in the world.

Some people want money. Some people want energy. Some people want to build their reputation and their relationships, and these are all different currencies that we trade for success. And so, you know, for me, I'm looking to make an impact on the people that I care about the most. Mhmm.

And, that's what success means for me. It's getting closer to to those things, being able to help those people, and making sure that I have time to do it, which means, as you know, saying no to a lot of business opportunities, saying no to a lot of things. That's I think that's what I see as success.

Steve: Yep. And what is your superpower? Well,

Paul: seems to be navigating these large complex, sales. And that's what I've done well, for my career, and I think that's what I continue to do well by raising money and starting new businesses and different things like that.

Steve: So Yeah. And what is the greatest lesson that you have learned?

Paul: That business doesn't have to be this constant uphill battle. Right? You can build a business that supports what you want rather than what, comparing to everybody else. These, you know, these large businesses, things like this, and, yeah, that was a big realization for me.

Steve: When did you realize that?

Paul: This year. You know, I was caught in that comparison trap last year. Well, you know, this guy did this many deals. Well, I wanna do that many deals and, you know, that's a dangerous game to play. You you end up getting out of your element playing someone else's game.

Yeah. So I I think it was really this year and through some of the the mentorship that I've had from, you know, guys on the crypto side have helped me understand, my game better.

Steve: Yeah. And I think that it's key. Like, it's it's it's hard to overstate, you know, like, that lesson because so many of us, like, oh, we'll just push harder. Right? I I I in order to catch him, I gotta wake up earlier.

I gotta work longer. I gotta go to more appointments, you know, get and sacrificing Mhmm. Time with family and so on. And, really, it doesn't have to be that way. There's a way to do it without having to suffer, but a lot of us choose suffering.

Yep. Is there a favorite, best, or most interesting failure besides the dead number?

Paul: I mean, the dead number pretty much tops it, I'd say. Yeah. That was the that was the one that I just I think about constantly, and it's just a representation of stop going so fast, slow down. Yeah. Yeah.

I'd say that's that's the one I think about the most.

Steve: And, what book have you gifted more than any other?

Paul: It's gotta be Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference. That's that's a classic. That's one I'll I'll reread every year probably for the rest of my life.

Steve: Really?

Paul: Yeah. I love that book.

Steve: It's a fantastic book.

Paul: Yeah.

Steve: Thinking about maybe doing an event where we'll ask him to to to be to be a speaker. You know, you mentioned Antifragile. Mhmm. And I actually put that book on my list. So we're finishing StoryBrand.

I was going through it a second time. And I put Miller.

Paul: Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one.

Steve: So I was gonna do, anti or is it anti fragility?

Paul: Anti fragile. Yeah.

Steve: Anti fragile.

Paul: So I

Steve: was gonna do that, but then, everyone's really interested right now in creative financing, creative acquisitions, creative disposition. So I'm gonna basically be locking myself in a room or whatever. Let me listen to that. So I'm gonna have to put anti fragility or anti fragile on the side for now because

Paul: I think he would he would appreciate that because he talks a lot about optionality in his book, and what you're doing is pursuing optionality with that. Yeah. There's

Steve: a lot of people that are asking questions about this, like, you know, help me with this, help me with that. I was like, I can't help you today.

Paul: Right.

Steve: Give me a couple months. Uh-huh. So, I want you to think about something you wanna leave the listeners with while I make a a couple of quick announcements. Again, guys, if you're interested in having a business treasury, something that's gonna pay for your business operating expenses, go to blockchainwells.com. Paul and I are doing this together.

I think that this is gonna be helpful for, some of you, not everybody. I don't think it's gonna be for everybody. But for some of you guys, I think it's gonna be something that could be, you know, an extra, vehicle, for your business, an extra tool, for your business. If you guys got value today, please like, subscribe, share, comment. The more reactions we get on social media, the more people we will reach, and we're trying to reach as many people as possible.

We do have our event coming up in a couple of months. Sales disruptors. Go to disruptors.com/salesdisruptors if you guys want to close more deals at deeper margins. And tomorrow's our next episode. Pardon the disruption.

We did our first episode last week. That was really fun. We got a lot of positive feedback about that. So tomorrow, 01:00 eastern, 10:00 Pacific, check that out. What are some last thoughts you want to leave everyone with?

Paul: Well, clearly, the the economy and the market is shifting. And if you're at all worried about that and you're struggling with cash flow, you you really should consider, utilizing this business treasury strategy. It's it's just it's opened up a lot of options for me and my team. You don't have to build someone else's business. You can build your business that you want, and you can do it and act like a bank and use it to support you, even in, you know, in bad times, Even though that's unseen at this point, we don't know what's coming.

But, yeah, if that's if that's something that is on your mind as cash flow and how to protect your business and your interests, definitely come check us out and, see what we're doing with the business treasury.

Steve: Yeah. And it's I think it's kinda the same thing. We've had, Chris Noggle on here. We had Chris Miles on here. And they talk about the importance of becoming your own bank, and this is just another variation of becoming your own bank.

So, if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to to to get to reach you?

Paul: So I've not been a social media person, but everyone at CG tells me I have to. So if if, if you guys wanna follow me on Instagram, that'd be helpful. I don't have a ton of friends yet. So you can find me at Paul Sparks official, on Instagram. You can shoot me an email, at Paul@BunnyHillProperties.com, or you can check us out on Blockchain Wheels.

We're gonna be doing a a webinar next week on July 7 talking about what we're doing with the business treasury going into a little bit more depth. So if you're interested in learning about that or getting a hold of me, you can find me in those places.

Steve: Awesome. Thank you very much. Have a blast.

Paul: Thanks.

Steve: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you all for watching. See y'all next week.