Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / When the Doctor Said ‘Cancer,’ My World Collapsed | Veena Jetti

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When the Doctor Said ‘Cancer,’ My World Collapsed | Veena Jetti · The Hannah Hammond Show

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The doctor walks in and says this is a hepatoblastoma, great,
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let's give her the meds and be on our way.
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But then I look at my husband who's an MD and he is in tears
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instantly and I'm like panicking now.
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Rock bottom moment in your life or in your business?
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September 2019, one of my daughter's so I have twin 5 year
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old daughters and one of them got really sick.
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She was 10 weeks at the time. So we go to the emergency room
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and ultimately they ended up treating her for a UTI.
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But as part of the follow up they do kidney ultrasound and
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she was so small that they ended up picking up her liver on the
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ultrasound. And Dr. comes in and says hey,
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there's like something on her liver, we need to check it out
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and see. And it's like, OK, it's probably
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like a spot clean the machine. You know, I'm like a layperson.
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I don't know. He's like, no, no, no, we need
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to do like an MRI or CAT scan or something.
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Was all blur. So we put her under anesthesia.
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She does the imaging and the doctor walks in and says, this
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is a hepatoblastoma. I'm like, OK, great, let's give
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her the meds and be on our way. But then I look at my husband,
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who's an MD. He's a physician.
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And this man is like, never emotional.
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And he is in tears instantly. And I'm like panicking now.
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I'm like, I don't know what this means.
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And doctors like it's a really aggressive pediatric cancer on
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her liver. So today I'm here with Veena
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Jetty, who is just an absolute powerhouse and I'm super excited
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to get to know you more. I've seen you speak a bunch of
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times and you're just such an inspiration to me and, and so
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many. So just to tell you a little bit
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about Veena, she is the founding partner of Vibe Funds, which is
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a commercial real estate investment firm that specializes
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in value add multi family assets in particular.
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And she's done over a billion dollars with AB in commercial
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real estate transactions and is also a well known philanthropist
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and is the owner of a community on Facebook called Multifamily
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Mastery and. Multi mastermind close What is
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it multi mastermind? Also runs a Facebook community
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called Multi Mastermind. So thank you so much for being
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here today. I'm super excited.
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She's visiting from Texas. Yes, thank you for having me so
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excited to be here and finally meet you.
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I've heard so much about you. We've so many mutual friends.
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I cannot believe we have not met before this moment.
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Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm so happy to to meet
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you too. And I know it's great.
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And it's funny that, oh, you invest with my ex.
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Yeah, so funny. It is a it is a small world.
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It is for sure. 100%. But yeah, so I would love, I
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don't know a ton about you and I wanted to keep it that way
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because I would love to hear just kind of your origin story.
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And I know like, as entrepreneurs and especially
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people who are extreme overachievers, maybe, you know,
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there's usually a great story behind that and like, what drove
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them to be who they are today? And so can you tell us like a
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little bit about your childhood and what drove you and how you
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got here? Absolutely.
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So I grew up in Chicago. Actually, I was born in
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Colorado, grew up in Chicago. I'm the daughter of immigrants.
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So my parents came here in 1980 to my dad went to, to do his PhD
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in Colorado school of mines. So Fast forward to like 1990,
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I'm in Chicago being raised there.
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My mom starts getting into real estate investing.
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And my mom started by investing in single family homes.
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And this was like back when you could just tell them how much
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you made. And you know, my parents are
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very much rule followers. So they like filled out the
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application and everything. And the mortgage broker was
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like, hey, we'll give you $1,000,000 loan.
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And my dad was making like $45,000 a year back then.
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And she was like, I don't understand the math here.
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And I was like, don't worry about it.
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We'll just we'll figure it all out.
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So he like, I don't know if he changed like the income amount
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or what, but my mom was like, so you're just going to loan me
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$1,000,000 even though we wouldn't theoretically be able
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to afford the mortgage on this. And it was, you know, those
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loans that they were giving back then, we're just stated income.
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They were giving 110% of the home value for like redecorating
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budgets. Like it was a crazy time.
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It was like the wild, Wild West back then.
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And so he said, yeah, you're going to get $1,000,000 in loan.
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And they've excellent credit. They always paid their debts.
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And my mom said, can we buy more than one house, or do we have to
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only buy one house? He's like, hey, you can buy as
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many as you want. And she was like, oh, OK.
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And ended up meeting a really good family friend of ours.
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His name's Chris Cobb. He's a re/max realtor.
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And Chris was just starting out as a realtor.
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My parents were his first client and he helped my parents buy, I
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think they ended up buying like 5 houses with that $1,000,000
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loan. And then my mom, you know, went
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to the library because this was before Internet days.
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And so she went to the library and was like researching about
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real estate investing and all this stuff and found out that if
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you live in a house for two years out of the last five that
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you own it, you can sell it without the same capital gains
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liability that you have otherwise.
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And so every two years we would move from house to house to
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house so that we could potentially sell it.
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We didn't end up selling them. We just moved with the idea that
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we were going to sell them, didn't end up selling them.
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So ultimately, that was how I grew up, was in a real estate
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environment where my dad worked at W2.
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My mom was a real estate investor, but she never owned
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multifamily and I went to college for finance.
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That was when my degree was in. I graduated at 20 with my degree
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in finance. Went and worked at like some of
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the big firms. Ultimately left in 2012.
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Started investing for myself in single family because I didn't
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know that people like you and I could own multifamily assets.
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I thought it was only for like billionaires and Blackstone.
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And I ended up meeting a friend who's still a good friend of
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mine to this day. And he had a pretty big
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following and a good understanding at that time of
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multifamily, but he was still getting started a little bit.
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This must have been like his second, maybe third deal.
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And he reached out to me and said, hey, do you want to
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partner up on this deal? And I was like, yeah, what could
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possibly go wrong? And so we partnered up and many
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things can go wrong. By the way, that's a.
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Spoiler it's like everything can go wrong.
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I just didn't know what I didn't know.
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I was in my state of unconscious incompetence and so ended up
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buying. It was a 200 unit deal.
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We bought it for 15.9 million in Dallas, which you absolutely
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cannot do at this point in any part of the market cycle.
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And we ended up selling it about 3 1/2 years later, three years
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and three months later for 24,000,000.
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Wow. That is so cool.
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I love that and so was it. Did you guys raise funds for
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that? OK.
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So I had committed to raising $1.2 million and it was so hard.
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I literally cried every day for six weeks straight because I
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thought I ruined my family's financial future and I didn't
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think I was going to be able to close it.
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I really thought I'd lost. I think we had put up, it was
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either 100 or $200,000. And I was like, oh, I just lost
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like $200,000. Thin air and earnest money and I
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cried every night and thankfully I was like, I just kept going as
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the thing it because if you quit, you definitely are going
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to lose that money. But if I kept fighting and I
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kept pushing through, I knew there was still a shot that we
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could get it closed. And we ultimately did get it
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closed and it did really well so.
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Amazing. And So what?
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What were the concerns that you thought you weren't going to get
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it closed? Nobody wanted to write me a
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check. That was the big concern, right?
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Because here's what happens when you first start to raise money.
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It's a new, right? And people don't really know you
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as this person who's in private equity who raises capital,
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right? So people go, OK, how many of
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these have you done? And you can't lie to investors.
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It's not a good way to build a relationship.
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Do not lie to that. And so I was like, this is my
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first one. And they're like, what?
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Like it's my first one. And they're like, amazing.
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I totally believe in you. I think you're going to be
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great. Come back to me on your second
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or third or fourth one. And I'm like sitting there
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thinking how am I ever going to get to a second or third or
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fourth one if no one's going to give me a shot to close my first
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one? And so I thought I wasn't going
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to actually be able to raise the funds.
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I mean, it was, it was tough. It was really challenging.
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Yeah, well, and that's relentless.
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That's the name of the podcast. And it was relentless.
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And so had he had a track recorded.
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He had just started too, so he didn't really have a track
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record that I could leverage either.
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OK. And how did you ultimately end
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up being able to raise the funds?
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Was it just a bunch of small investments or did you find one
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good partner that was? It was mostly small investments.
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I had one larger investor who I think he wrote us a check for
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370,000 and everything else was 50K here, 25 K there, 100K here.
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The most challenging part is because we were raising on a
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five O 6 BI could only use people I already had a
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pre-existing substantiative relationship with.
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And what I realized is I hadn't nurtured my network enough.
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And so for the next raise, I learned really quickly from that
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first raise and I went out and I started making relationships
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with people and building relationships with people before
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I had a deal on the table. So that way I had the
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pre-existing substantiative relationship with them.
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In this case, what I had to do was I had to go back to people
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I'd already reached out to. And it's like walking this fine
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line of being like thirsty and being like, please give me your
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money. You don't.
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Nobody wants to give you money if you're doing that.
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But also just having more confidence.
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Once I had pitched the deal so many times, I must must have
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talked to 700 investors, 1 by 1 by 1, just dialing day after day
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after day just to get that closed.
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Wow. And how did you build up your
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Rolodex of those 700 investors? So that was all people that were
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already in my network. And it was like everybody in my
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network, like Susie, who sat next to me in second grade math
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class, was on that list. And I had no way of filtering
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it. I was just like literally every
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person that I have any kind of a relationship with.
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Thankfully, I'm just like a relationship person in general.
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So before I even knew I was going to be doing this, I'd
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always maintained relationships. And you know, some of my friends
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joke and they're like, Vina, you collect people, like, that's
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your thing. I'm like, what do you mean?
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I collect people. They're like, you have so many
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people in your network, like people from different
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backgrounds and walks of life because I think that diversity
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is such a big strength. And so I've always been drawn to
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people from unique or different or interesting backgrounds.
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And so yeah, I just, I kept reaching back out to them.
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And because it was a 5O6B raise, they didn't have to be
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accredited. Made it a little bit easier, but
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I had to have the existing relationship with them.
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And So what did you guys just how, how did you find that deal
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and what, what was your like exit strategy for it?
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Yeah. So that was on market.
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So it came to us through a broker and like I said, my
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partner brought it to me. So it was definitely an on
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market deal. And then as far as exit
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strategy, we were going to go in renovate.
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I think at that time we were trying to renovate 30 or 40% of
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the units and then exit to whoever the next buyer was.
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So we're going to prove that this business plan works and
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then be like, hey Hannah, come buy this asset.
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We did 30%, we got this much return.
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You could do the other 70% and get a bigger return, or you
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could do 30% and then pass it to the next person.
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What ended up happening was 15 months in, we added a
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supplemental loan. So we pulled a lot of the equity
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out of the deal and we gave investors their, I think we gave
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them 40% of their money back in month 15.
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And then we, and so investors were very happy.
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It was much easier to raise capital after that, by the way,
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because I'm like, hey, I just gave you 40%, give it back to me
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and let's go buy the next deal. And that's how I continue to
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grow. And then at month 39, we ended
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up exiting the whole deal and selling.
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It was early. We were supposed to exit 5
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years, but sometimes the market just moves faster than you can
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imagine. I had another deal more
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recently. We bought in 2020 and we bought
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that for 80 million. Ended up exiting that for
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110,000,018 months later. Wow, yeah.
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That's amazing. Yeah, that's so.
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So you had a good successful deal on your first one.
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How did you like find your a cruise and I mean had you guys
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done any multifamily before at all or was this truly?
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Converse Multifamily. And did you just go out and find
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a general contractor that you liked?
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Or so property management companies usually have someone,
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if you're doing like third party property management, usually
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they'll have someone that they've used or like a few
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contractors that they've used on other assets.
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So what I didn't know at the time that I know now because
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that your property manager is really like one of your partners
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in the deal and you can leverage like their resume, their
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experience, their track record, their contacts, their insurance
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policies. You can like leverage all these
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things from the property management company, especially
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when you don't have that infrastructure yourself yet.
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So our property manager at the time, they had a construction
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person like AGC that they worked with pretty closely.
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And so we got some better pricing on it and they managed
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the construction process. OK, awesome.
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And was that the manager that was already in place or did you
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find a new? One, no, it was a new one.
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We very rarely leave the same manager in place because a lot
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of our business plan is that we think we can come in and be more
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efficient managers. And if we think that it's really
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hard to keep current management in place and then also have this
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belief that we can do better. So but we're really, really
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effective and really hands on asset managers.
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But typically, unless there's a very specific reason, we usually
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will switch out property management.
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And are you still hiring third party managers or do you bring
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that? OK.
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Yeah, as of now we are, there's a lot of discussion to bring it
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in house and go fully vertical. I don't love property management
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personally. Like I don't like being a
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property manager. I don't really like being
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involved in it and so I just don't want to.
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I'm resistant to it. And I also think until you have
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about 2000 doors in anyone MSA, you really don't get the
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economies of scale you want to have before doing that.
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And for the audience, what is an MSA?
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Oh, the just basically the Metroplex, right.
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So if we're saying like the Phoenix MSA, that's going to
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include Scottsdale, Tempe, like just whatever that Metroplex is.
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OK, awesome. And so I was reading about you
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and I've heard you speak and stuff.
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And so you at one point raised $50 million in eight weeks.
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Is that true? Yes.
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How did you do that? You know, that's a good
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question. I I built a lot of relationships
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up until that point. It certainly was not my first
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deal. That was back in 2022.
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Since then, we rate last year we raised 66,000,067 million for a
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deal here in Phoenix. Yeah, that was my largest raise
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to date. I will say it was much easier to
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raise capital back in 2021-2022 and earlier because everybody
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was doing well and investors were just like blindly throwing
16:03
money at the market. And we're kind of seeing some of
16:05
that fallout now, but really it was building relationships with
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people long before I had a deal and then also just having a
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track record of the relationship.
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So about 80% of our investors are in two or more deals with
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us. So we have a significant number
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of investors who just repeat invest with us and then they
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have inevitably will refer their friends or family, whoever so
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that we can, you know, continue growing that database.
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And have you stuck with retail investors like accredited
16:35
investors or did you ever go family office or fund to fund
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funds are institutional. So it's funny, I was just
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talking to my securities attorney this morning.
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So we work with Nick Mcgrew out of LA at Polymath Legal, and I
16:46
was talking to him this morning and I was like, gosh,
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everybody's talking about like a fund of funds.
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He's like, yeah, it's crazy because he and I were the first
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to do it in this industry. And he's like, I was thinking
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about that the other day. We kind of like changed the way
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the industry operates. And so we were, we were the
17:06
first to do a fund of funds and we did this back almost it's
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been a little over five years and now it's longer than that
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now. Gosh, it's already 2024, right.
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So it's actually been almost eight or nine years now that
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we've been doing a fund of funds model.
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And so we call it like the Cinderella method, but basically
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we pioneered this structure. Now everybody's using it.
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So to answer your question, yes, we do fund the funds.
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We do have family offices that invest with us.
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The vast majority of our capital is retail investors, but we
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don't typically have like one large institutional LP that
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comes in and takes down 90% of the equity and then we bring the
17:46
other 10%. Though I do think that that is a
17:48
shift that we're going to start seeing in the next 1224 months.
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Yeah, just bigger checks and less control, but.
17:57
Yes, less control, bigger checks.
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The the downside is that I want to still make sure we're serving
18:04
our investors and we just may not have as much room to do that
18:07
if we were to take like an institutional LP.
18:10
But also to, I think it's important to note that in this
18:13
part of the market cycle, institutional funds, family
18:16
offices, ultra high net worth individuals, they're the ones
18:19
that are moving into the market. They are, you know, it's that
18:23
Warren Buffett saying be fearful when others are greedy and
18:26
greedy when others are fearful. And right now retail money is
18:29
scared and institutional funds, high net worth, sophisticated
18:34
investors, they're not scared, they're being greedy right now.
18:37
And so I think if people actually followed what Warren
18:42
Buffett says, I think more and more retail investors would be
18:45
moving into the market. But they just simply are not
18:47
like psychologically, they're too scared.
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So we have a lot of investors that historically have invested
18:54
that are now pulling back. And so, you know, I, I own a
18:57
commercial brokerage here in Arizona and then more recently
19:02
I'm just starting my debt fund now.
19:04
I've just been doing my own capital lending for the past few
19:07
years, but I know it on the multifamily level and just in
19:10
the investment sale market in general.
19:14
It's been really tough to find deals over the past few years
19:17
since rates went down. Have you experienced that same
19:19
thing and how have you guys managed to like keep deal flow?
19:22
Yeah. So we are not a group that has a
19:25
deal every month or every quarter even.
19:28
I would love to have that many deals.
19:29
The reality is there's just not enough deals that we feel
19:32
comfortable saying yes to. And you know my JV partner and
19:36
I, we Co invest with all of our investors as LP's alongside them
19:41
and we invest significantly into our own deals.
19:43
So if I'm not willing to do that, I really can't in good
19:47
conscience put this deal in front of my investors.
19:50
And so to answer your question, we just don't do that many
19:53
deals. This is the I'm closing on a
19:54
deal day after tomorrow. It's the first deal I'm closing
19:57
all year. So we're just patient investors.
20:00
Last year I did the one deal here in Arizona.
20:03
That's the only deal I did last year.
20:05
So we're patient, we're waiting both of those deals.
20:09
So the one I did here last year and the one here, we're both all
20:13
sub 3% interest rates and we assumed the debt on it.
20:17
So it was almost a no brainer to do it that way because here this
20:22
deal has a 2.77% fixed interest rate for 12 years.
20:26
Wow. Yeah.
20:28
Can't really mess that up too much right?
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Like it's such a no brainer to that.
20:32
The one I'm closing day after tomorrow is a 2.59% interest
20:36
rates. And what kind of cap rate are
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you getting these at? So this one where our entry cap
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rate is a little, it's like a 5.26% entry cap.
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I don't know what our entry cap was last year, probably around 4
20:49
3/4 five. Percent, but there's enough
20:51
value at upside. And that's The thing is a lot of
20:54
investors, especially novice investors, get so like paranoid
20:59
about the cap rate, but the cap rate doesn't really mean
21:02
anything because it's all about the upside.
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Like you could have a 2% cap rate, but if their rents are
21:07
100% below market value, then that means not absolutely, yeah.
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I love that you said that because I think so many
21:13
investors get caught up in the cap rate too.
21:16
And they'll ask me these like endless questions.
21:18
And I'm like, tell me more about what you're trying to understand
21:22
here. Because what people don't
21:23
realize is like there's the buyer's entry cap rate, there's
21:26
the seller's exit cap rate, there's your operating cap rate,
21:29
there's your projected exit cap. Like there's so many cap rates
21:32
and it's just one piece of a much larger puzzle.
21:36
You can't do everything based on just purely what the cap rate is
21:39
when you're buying an asset that like the Arizona asset, for
21:42
example, at 2.77% debt, I can pay a lot lower in a cap rate
21:49
than I could if I was putting fresh debt on it because I'm not
21:51
negatively leveraged. I'm positively leveraged.
21:54
And so yes, absolutely, if you're a new investor, do not
21:58
get hung up on cap rates. Look at them, understand them.
22:01
Don't get hung up on it because what if you can buy and you flip
22:04
one switch and now you're operating at a much higher cap
22:07
rate? That's a win.
22:08
Yeah, exactly. And what has been your main
22:10
source for deal flow? Like are you guys going direct
22:13
to these ownership groups? Are you mostly having brokers
22:16
bring them to you? So it's a combination of the
22:18
two. So we'll have a lot of deals
22:20
that are brought to us from broker relationships, a lot of
22:22
like soft or pocket listings we'll get from broker
22:25
relationships. But also, so this deal in
22:28
Arizona that was completely off market.
22:30
And the way we got that that deal is there was another deal
22:33
that this group was selling that we bid on and we were like 3rd
22:37
or 4th. We weren't the highest bid and
22:39
we're not always the highest bid when we buy an asset.
22:43
But our terms weren't aggressive enough on it.
22:45
So we went back to them. We said, hey, look, we really
22:48
want this deal and we're like, sorry, we can't sell it to you,
22:51
but we'd love to do business with you in the future.
22:52
And we're like, great, let's do business like right now.
22:56
And so we went to their portfolio, we pulled all the
22:59
data on their portfolio, underwrote a bunch of their
23:02
assets, ended up identifying the one that was here in Arcadia and
23:08
we underwrote it. And we said, hey, we'd like to
23:09
buy this deal. Here is what we'd offer and they
23:13
just loved working with us. They knew we're young or hungry.
23:16
We said, let us close this deal and then we'll buy more from
23:19
you. So it's a, it's a lot of it is
23:21
your like relationships with other owner operators too?
23:25
And what would you say are the top five keys to raising capital
23:31
for real estate or any? Capital raising OK top five keys
23:35
First, call your securities attorney.
23:37
Do not raise capital without one.
23:39
There are so many people on the Internet that will give you the
23:43
worst advice, like broker dealer violations galore and they'll be
23:48
like, oh it's a loophole. No it's not.
23:50
It is illegal. Do not pass go, do not collect
23:53
$200. Call your securities attorney
23:55
first. Like I said, we work with Nick
23:57
Mcgrew. He's fantastic.
23:58
I've been working with him for over 15 years now.
24:00
He's awesome. Highly recommend working with
24:02
him. Second would be mindset.
24:06
I didn't do this when I first started and I really wish I had.
24:09
I coach with a woman by the name of Rosie Noel.
24:13
She's based out of Chicago. She specializes in Clifton
24:16
strengths, which is amazing, and I actually coach with her now.
24:19
I try to coach with her five days a week.
24:22
I try to start every morning with her.
24:24
I don't always get her because she has to have like other
24:27
clients or Rosie, if you're listening to this, I'm not happy
24:31
about that. I want all the time in the
24:33
mornings, but I at least coach with her three times a week at a
24:36
minimum because if I can manage this real estate, then I can
24:42
manage all the other real estate.
24:43
This is the hardest real estate I manage.
24:45
So and raising capital is scary and it seems easy until you try
24:49
it and then you're like, wow, this is hard and it's never
24:51
going to work, but it will. You have to be persistent.
24:53
So one is lawyer, 2 is mindset coach, 3 is build your
24:58
relationships and raise your capital before you have a deal
25:02
on the table. It is much different for me to
25:05
come to you and be like, hey Hannah, this is what I'm working
25:07
on. This is what we target.
25:09
Are you interested in something like this?
25:11
And you go, yeah, that's amazing.
25:13
And then I go, OK, great. I don't have a deal for you
25:15
right now, but when I do, I'll come back to you.
25:17
It's a very different conversation that can I have
25:20
this deal and I really need another $1,000,000 in capital.
25:23
Do you want to invest in it? No, that's not how any of this
25:27
works. So build a relationship
25:28
beforehand. Once you have the deal on the
25:31
table, then all I have to do is show you the deal and then you
25:33
can make a much easier, quicker decision.
25:35
So build those relationships. 4 is communication, communication,
25:41
communication and then communication.
25:44
A lot of people shy away from bad news, and that is absolutely
25:51
the wrong way to build trust and integrity with your investors.
25:55
So deliver good news fast and bad news faster.
25:59
It's the only way. Pick up the phone and call your
26:01
investors if you need to, but you have to treat them the way
26:04
you would want to be treated if you were in that situation.
26:07
And investors are very, very supportive and encouraging when
26:11
something's not going right and you communicate with them and
26:14
you proactively communicate with them.
26:16
You will get so much support and great ideas from your investors
26:19
that you would can't even imagine until you make the hard
26:22
phone call. So that is what I would say is
26:25
number 4 and #5 is just keep going, keep going.
26:30
You're going to fail if you quit.
26:32
If you never quit, you'll eventually get there.
26:34
It might feel impossible, but you can do this.
26:38
You just have to keep going and it'll be hard.
26:40
If it was easy, everyone would do it, but it's going to be
26:42
hard. But it'll totally be worth it.
26:45
Awesome. And what about a like rock
26:47
bottom moment in your life or in your business that did you ever
26:50
feel like quitting and and how did you ever come that?
26:53
Yeah. Like I want to quit today.
26:55
Yeah. I mean, this is like a daily
26:57
thing for me. And you can quit every day.
26:59
You just have to start again tomorrow.
27:00
Like that's the key is once you quit, you have to start back up.
27:04
And it's because there's so many people relying on me, right?
27:06
Like my investors, my family, my friends that are invested with
27:10
me, my tenants, my staff, like everybody is relying on me to
27:14
continue going. So yeah, I want to quit all the
27:18
time, all the time, many times in a day.
27:21
But you just keep going and you do the hard thing.
27:23
For me, the rock bottom moment in my whole life was in 2019,
27:29
September 2019, one of my daughter's.
27:32
So I have twin 5 year old daughters and one of them got
27:37
really sick. She was 10 weeks at the time, 8
27:39
lbs, teeny teeny teeny and she got sick.
27:42
So we took her to the ER to see you know, I was like new mom a
27:46
fever was like we have to let go into urgent care or whatever.
27:49
So we go to the emergency room and ultimately they ended up
27:54
treating her for a UTI. She ended up being OK from that,
27:59
but as part of the follow up, they do a liver ultrasound and
28:04
the liver ultrasound, she was so small, that or sorry, a kidney
28:07
ultrasound. And she was so small that they
28:09
ended up picking up her liver on the ultrasound.
28:12
And Dr. comes in and says, hey, there's like something on her
28:17
liver, we need to check it out and see.
28:18
And I was like, yeah, OK, it's probably like a spot clean the
28:21
machine. You know, I'm like a layperson.
28:22
I don't know. He's like, no, no, no, we need
28:25
to do like an MRI or CAT scan or something.
28:27
Was all blur. So we put her under anesthesia.
28:30
She does the imaging and the doctor walks in and says this is
28:37
a hepatoblastoma. I'm like, OK, great, let's give
28:42
her the meds and be on our way. But then I look at my husband,
28:45
who's an MD, He's a physician. And this man is like never
28:49
emotional. And he is in tears instantly.
28:53
And I'm like panicking now. I'm like, I don't know what this
28:57
means. And doctors like, it's a really
28:59
aggressive pediatric cancer on her liver.
29:02
And the problem with liver cancer and anyone who's ever
29:05
dealt with this knows once cancer gets to the liver, it
29:08
spreads everywhere because your liver takes like different
29:13
nutrients, blood, I don't know, something to the rest of the
29:15
body. And so it was the single moment
29:22
that was the most traumatizing moment in my whole entire life.
29:25
And, you know, to say it was rock bottom would probably be an
29:29
understatement. But we ended up having friends
29:34
and investors in our network who rallied together.
29:38
And one of them, her name is Doctor Kate Mangona.
29:42
I would give her anything she asked me for forever, for the
29:45
rest of my life because she intervened.
29:48
And she said, hey, I want to like, I want to share with you
29:54
and I want to share this with other radiologists.
29:56
It's a radiological diagnosis. It shares with other
29:58
radiological radiologists, comes back to me and says, I'm going
30:02
to share with you that we think that this is an infantile
30:04
hepatic hemangio endothelioma, which is a tumor, but it's a
30:09
vascular tumor and it's benign. So I was like, great, I'll take
30:16
that one over this malignancy. And she ended up being right.
30:21
We, you know, we had to take a little bit of a risk.
30:23
We had to put a lot of faith in her that she was absolutely
30:26
correct about this. And I know she was nervous about
30:30
it. And I'm so grateful she said
30:31
that. And we did this because now
30:33
Vivana is, you know, 5 1/2 years old and she's healthy and never
30:39
had to do anything beyond those few steps we took.
30:42
No chemo, no surgery, nothing. So it's great.
30:46
Thank God, I can't even imagine what that could have felt like.
30:50
Yeah, I don't recommend it. Well, well, thank you so much
30:55
for being here today. I know we're running short on
30:56
time. I would talk to you for like 10
30:58
more years. We will do it.
30:58
Again, we will do this again. Awesome.
31:00
Well, thanks for having me. Thank you all for being here.