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From Nazareth to Real Estate: Fady's Journey of Resilience and Purpose · Go Big with Gib Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Go Big With Gib podcast, where we talk to professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs about their big wins.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Today I've got a very special guest here with me on this episode of Go Big With Gibb Fatty.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: How are you today?
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm blessed.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I'm blessed, my friend.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Good to see you, gib,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, brother
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Great to have you on the show.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I've really been looking forward to it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Just to fire things off, could you give us a little bit of background?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Introduce yourself to the audience
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: So I was born in the city of Nazareth and I went to school there Until age 19,.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I came to the US to pursue my college education.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: So I left the family I'm the oldest of four and I came to the US to pursue my college education in psychology and I came to Tulsa, oklahoma, in 1994.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I was so emotional, I was so scared, I was terrified, actually, like terrified.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't know anybody here.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know what Tulsa is.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what Oklahoma is, because I come from a background of culture that is very ancient, thousands of years old.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: So the collective family unit is the most powerful thing after God.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: And, like you know, you look at yourself physically, like my God, you know, and now I'm leaving all that behind and separating from it, which was not very much welcomed in my culture.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: It's like why are you leaving us?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Even my dad he said like well, why are you leaving?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: You know, like you could study here.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: But I had to pursue that just inner drive If you ever had that where you kind of like felt every single cell in your body, in your mind, in your heart telling you you got to go, and that's the situation I was in.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: So, going back to your childhood, growing up in Israel, you've got this massive family.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: You've got history.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: You know family history that goes back thousands and thousands of years.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, were you the first of your family to leave and move to the United States, or had that been done before?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: So I come from a town.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: The total number of it is 7,000 people, dating back to the Roman Empire, literally.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful town in the heart of lower Galilee, which is the heart of Israel.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: It's surrounded by mountains and, again, 7,000 people of devout Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: That's pretty much the history of it.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: My family, personally it's about 1,000 plus people have Srawer family and I'm not exaggerating, it's probably even more All in one locale, all in one spot, and everybody kind of knows everybody.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: So being raised in that environment has an unbelievable pros to it.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Obviously that I'm reaping the benefits of it right now, even being away that many years, and my kids and children who are born in the United States of America are reaping the rewards of that Because we, each one of us, is carrying that genetic dna intelligence, if you wish both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: We carry that with us.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: We're very much connected and we go, we go there.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I take the kids, we, you know, the wife, all of us.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: We go to the homeland consistently, periodically, to just stay connected with our roots.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: So it's uh, it's uh, it's an incredible gift, it's a privilege you to be part of.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: That Was your decision to move, though.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Was that something that was kind of new to your family, I mean, or had you had other brothers and sisters or cousins that had moved to the US?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So that's a good question.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: So I have three brothers.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I'm the oldest, which made it even harder.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Now I had people from the Srar family in the US.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: It was just like a distant, distant cousin.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So from my immediate family, yeah, I was the first.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: No, that's a remarkable start to your journey and such a cool thing to do as a 19-year-old to you know to move all the way to the United States like that.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So you went to school, got a degree in psychology.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: You practiced clinical psychology for a period of time, correct?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Psychotherapy.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So I'm the one who's sitting with the patient and I would use different modalities, but usually cognitive behavioral is the most common one practiced.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And then I would do group therapy and then I would do also family therapy.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: I concentrated on two populations.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I worked with the homeless population in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is pretty rough and pretty tough.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Our program was a pilot program with the Mental Health Association in Tulsa.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Here we pick up homeless people off the streets not me but the rest of the program and they will bring them to this wing of a treatment facility and that's where we will interact with them and do the counseling and take care of all their needs medical, psychiatric and all of that.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: So I did that actually while I was finishing my master's degree in psychology.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: So I was finishing my master's degree and at the same time working full-time in a mental health program for homeless people in Tulsa.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: After I finished my master's degree then I worked at a facility that specializes with children age 11 to 17.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: And that was pretty, pretty tough, pretty challenging, but also very rewarding.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So I did that about seven years straight in a place called the Tulsa Boys Home, one of the oldest programs in the state of Oklahoma.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: It's about 100 years old and, keep in your mind, it's a nonprofit.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: So I was not doing it to make money, I was not doing it to get rich, I was not doing it to create any financial wealth and I believe that played a huge part in my evolution right now where I'm at, in creating actual financial wealth, because it created a balance for me spiritually and mentally and emotionally, because I don't feel like I'm that driven by money as much as a lot of other people that I see and then they go off the right path, because I know like the heart is a lot more important than just pursuing the mighty dollar and you forget these principles and you forget people and you just can't feel compassionate with other human beings who are like suffering or going through some hardships.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: So I did that for seven, eight years, Gib, and helped a lot of people.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So what did you do after that Fady?
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: So that was seven years working clinically in the Tulsa boys home.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: What happened next in your story?
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: So here's what triggered my transition into the business world.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I had our first son, joseph.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Then I started thinking, okay, we want to put him in school, we want to do this, we want to do that.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: So it's just normal to start thinking about like I wanted more out of life.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Somehow I stumbled upon a copy of Poor Dad, rich Dad.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: I read that.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: That woke me up big time.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I realized the whole problem with taxation and income, and it talked about all the four categories.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: If you're in the category of earned income, you're pretty much limited, and that's what got me going.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And then I started thinking about real estate heavily, and I believe in 2008,.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: That's when the collapse of the sub market in real estate happened.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And then ground zero at the time for me was Las Vegas.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And guess what?
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I decided all right, I'm going to buy some property in Las Vegas.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Everybody was leaving Las Vegas literally like ground zero.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: It's like the bomb hit Las Vegas financially and everybody's leaving Las Vegas.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I was one of the few people, I guess, going inside, going into ground zero.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: I was talking to banks how I'm going to acquire properties and people in Las Vegas.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: They were telling me you should not do that?
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Are you crazy?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: You're going to buy properties in Las Vegas right now.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: You realize, like these properties, they were acquired, they were purchased at $500,000 and now they're in the market for $75,000.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: What does that tell you?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: It's terrible.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Why are you going in?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And then I acquired two properties, short sale from a distance, and I still own them till this day, since 2008.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And they're like quadrupled in value.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: They're rented out.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: They're making money from day one till this day.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: So that got me all fired up.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So that was kind of the beginning of like holy God.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is insane.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: You know, like how long would it take me in mental health to make $1 million worth of anything?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: But then I continued working in the mental health field till I decided that I'm going to start an actual business cashflow because cashflow is king, man, cashflow is king.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And that's how I got into the next chapter of creating retail business.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: And for me at the time, to be honest with you, I wrote a risky wave that had to do with electronic vapor cigarette that was coming out.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Then I decided, you know what?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to use that to help people get off their addiction of actual analog cigarettes, you know, because cigarettes kill like 500,000 people annually per year in America.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Use that cash flow to reroute it into real estate.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: This episode of Go Big with Gib is brought to you by Irons Equity.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: At Irons Equity, we specialize in helping investors like you create long-term generational wealth and save money on taxes through recession-resistant real estate investments that create passive income for you and your family.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: If you want to secure your financial future, go to investwithgibbcom to schedule a 30-minute introductory meeting with me.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Gibb Irons Again, that's InvestWithGibbcom, very cool.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: So, guy, you've been through a lot of different transformations and right now where you are, I know you and I met through the multifamily arena.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: How did you get into really doing what you're doing now with multifamily?
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Now you're a general partner in multifamily deals and you're doing some really big stuff.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: What gave you the courage to do that?
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Rule number one you must and you should take risks in life.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: To take risk, obviously it's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be difficult, it's going to be challenging.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Without risk, there's no rewards.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, you're just going to stay in your lane and things are going to continue to be the same and routine will keep repeating itself.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: It's a mindset, it's a heart set and for me, the key words for it is creating that level of trust in the universe and God that you have, that I have that level of trust that, no matter what happens, I got protection, I got that source of all energy.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: So I'm not going to play small, but I'm playing big, because I have a purpose and I have a vision and I want to help millions of people on my path.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: That, for me, comes from my relationship with my higher power that is inside of me as much as inside of you.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: You're a high quality human being, gibb, and I believe that's one of the reasons why me and you have connected.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we could talk about coffee.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we could talk about assets.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, we could talk about our families, because we love our families, but I think there's something deeper that drives both of us and hence here we are.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to use real estate as a vehicle, but nevertheless it's the vehicle.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: It's not the ultimate goal, because, think about it why are we trying to create wealth?
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: For what purpose?
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean totally, totally makes sense.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: And I think, at the end of the day, for us, the purpose is so that we can have more time, freedom, and invest more time in the things that really matter, like our family and our mission in life and having a purpose.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: And I know your company is called Equity with Purpose.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I know that you're a really big family man.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: I know that you have very strong core religious or spiritual beliefs and I know that you're a man of integrity.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: And, at the end of the day, I don't think either one of us are motivated by a desire to be rich.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: It's not that.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: It's a desire to have time, freedom, to be able to live this life, this worldly life that we have, in a way that is really optimizing everything, where we're doing the very best we can with what we've got and we're taking and we're and we're using our gifts right.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: We've got a lot of gifts and we've had a lot of blessings and we want to to capitalize on that and really give it all we've got.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: You know, leave it all out there on on the playing field, so to speak.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: You see, gib, I mean, there are formulas in life, there are formulas for real estate to be successful, there are formulas for how to do life.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: You have to invest in yourself, you have to invest in your soul, you have to invest in your family, in your health, and you would become a better investor, a better business person, a better attorney, a better doctor, to get to those other materialistic things.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: That's the formula yeah, yeah, no, I I totally agree.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: You know, fady you.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: You touched on something earlier.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: You talked about how some of the biggest things that you've done in your life, some of your biggest successes, were at times where you were scared to death.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And you know I was thinking about that recently.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Um, how many times have I wanted to get involved in a real estate opportunity or wanted to do something with a new business or wanted to do something big with my family, like take them on a two week vacation to Fiji and a lot of times I was full of fear about doing that.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Like, what's it going to be like if I take two weeks off from work?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Am I going to be okay?
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Is my business going to be okay without me?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: You know, I think you really hit on something when you know that you, when you have the faith that it's going to work out.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: You know it's always been that way for me.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I have taken some massive risk in my life, fady, and every single time I've been in, things have worked out in a way that was beyond my human comprehension.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I found myself in places like, oh my God, have I overextended myself?
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Have I gone too far?
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Should I have not taken this bold step.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that everything I touch is turned to gold, because that's not the case, but when you face that fear and you proceed anyway, that's when the real growth has happened for me 100%, and that's the $1 million.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Question is how do you override your fear?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: The solution to that is you have to strengthen your faith in your higher power, daily, all the time, day and night.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: You have to obsess with it, so much so that you train your mind to control every single thought, to direct it towards what you really want and what you're really after.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: You have to do what everybody else is not doing.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: What everybody's doing is easy, it's cheap.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: What everybody's not doing is hard and expensive.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Look, this is a great reminder.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: You know for me and for everybody that you know, as we get into, you know, focusing on our financial future and trying to increase our wealth, that we consider you know, focusing on our financial future and trying to increase our wealth, that we consider you know what, what really?
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Why are we doing this?
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: What is the why behind it?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And and that's so powerful, and you really nailed that today, fatty.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: So so, look, I want to wrap up with with you.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate you coming on the show for, for people that want to reach out to you, what is the best way for them to do?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: that Most of my content is going to be on my channel on YouTube.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I have about 14,000 subscribers on it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: It's Wealthy Minds, fady, wealthy Minds, fady.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Fady is spelled F-A-D-Y, again Wealthy Minds.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: That's representative of what I'm after.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Facebook is also good.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I'll put also some personal stuff usually on my Facebook and you could put just my name, fady, f-a-d-y, and then last name, srawer, s-r-o-u-r, and then my two companies, wealthandwinningcom.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: If you go on it right now, you're going to see events that we've done.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: It's a pretty amazing website and also the company for real estate is going to call equitywithpurposecom.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: So yes, it's exciting man, very exciting times.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: It is exciting and you've got a lot of cool things going on on the real estate front.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: I know that you've got some activity in Dubai.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: You've got some activity in Dubai and I know that you have just recently, or you're just about to, acquire 160 unit multifamily class C property in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Congratulations to you on that.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I think you, you and your team raised about four point five million on that opportunity, which is fantastic.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things I love is, you know, we go to these masterminds and we meet a lot of cool people and just to see how far they've come, you know, I know that you've reached out to me and you've been like give, I love what you're doing.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: You're doing this and you're doing that, whether it be, you know, the podcast or or my family.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: I'm so proud of you, get very proud of you.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I want to say this put it on on out.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: There is you're a family man and you're a good human being.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: All in all, man like you, you're achieving a lot, but I don't care as much about the finances.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: I care about your energy, man, and your heart.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: So keep it up, brother absolutely.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Uh, fatty, look, thank you, it's been a pleasure having you on the show and, uh, you know I'd love to have you come back sometime, man, thanks again, it's all a blessing man.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you, it's been a pleasure having you on the show and you know I'd love to have you come back sometime, man, thanks again, it's all a blessing man, Thank you.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Go Big with Gib.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, go follow us on social media at Gibb Irons.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.