Latest / Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy / Eco-Luxury Glamping Next to Zion: Real Estate Reimagined
Transcript
- [Mary Meyer] Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy. I have with us today Roger King, who is a guru with real estate, been at it for 30 years. Eyebrows raised when I said yeah. For sure. Your back's going to hurt a little bit by the time you get to be a guru, right? I think there's something true in that. Yeah. So yeah, Roger, we have a podcast sponsor, Mindiii M-I-N-D-I-I-I, which is an IT company. So they do all the back end stuff for websites to keep data safe. And I just want to mention that and now dive into you. So 30 years in real estate and then second generation because you learned also from what your dad did. I'm just remembering. [Roger King] Still learning. Yeah, I bet. I bet. He's a wealth of information. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Tell us just a little bit of your background fast for everyone to get you a little bit. Yeah. [Roger King] Well, like so many of us, I grew up in the 80s playing the drums to Journey and Rush and thinking I'm going to be, you know, as famous as all of those guys clearly. I'm so talented. [Mary Meyer] Clearly. [Roger King] Clearly. You know, that's what you think as a 17 year old, right? And went to, you know, eventually got my went to Berkeley College of Music and realized instantly that there were guys that were much younger that were, you know, 15 years and more advanced than me already. So it was a really beautiful experience, challenging, tricky, made some dear friends and you know, was a professional drummer for a long time. But when I got out of Berkeley, yeah, when I got out of Berkeley, I wasn't a very good jazz drummer. And that was, you know, what my whole focus was. I didn't want to play Journey and Rush anymore. I wanted to play jazz and learn that entire history. And that takes a long time to really kind of figure that out. And so in the meantime, I'm going to start buying and fixing and flipping houses with my dad and my brother-in-law. And so we converged in Orlando late 95. It started in early 96, driving for dollars around the various neighborhoods in Orlando in a, you know, little Honda with no air conditioning and writing down addresses for vacant homes. It looked, you know, like they could be sold. And finally found one in about six months, put it under contract, and in about three weeks made my first $25,000 wholesale deal. And boom, okay, I can do this, everybody can do this, right? And that was obviously pre-internet. We faxed in the offer to the lawyer that owned the house in North Carolina. It was a fun experience. And it really started me on this path. In a few properties down the road, we borrowed some hard money from a guy. Tom, I forget his name. He's still active in Orlando. And I remember driving up to his house to sign the loan docs and to get a cashier's check. And he had a Porsche in his driveway. And I'm like, nice car. We walked in, he's got this beautiful, you know, home office. I'm like, this is what I want to do. Because I knew that, you know, in about five hours, I'm going to be tearing up the, you know, urine stained carpet, you know, in 98 degree humidity. It was like, this is not how I want to spend my time. I want to sit at a desk, right? I want to figure it out. And so, but I had to go and build. And I had to understand how all of this stuff works. And over the course of these 30 years, you know, I've built and fixed and flipped homes and, you know, luxury custom homes. You know, I transitioned into mobile home parks. I've loaned money. I bought non-performing and performing notes. I've just got a lot of experience. And I keep seeing new models of the real estate industry that I want to try. And so about four years ago, I started my first hospitality project. I'm into another hospitality project. Next week, we're closing. And I'm developing a very large eco-luxury glamping resort. And it's, you know, a lot of fun. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, I'm going to save the eco-luxury glam, glamping for the end. I'm going to make sure everyone keeps listening. I'm the most, I'm so interested in that. [Roger King] It's so cool. It's crazy. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Yeah. So, so this is why I say guru, you have, you, you've learned a lot over the years. And yeah, I, you know, I did a similar thing. I wasn't with college, but I wasn't good enough to get, I didn't even try to get into Berkeley. I knew I wasn't at that point. I played piano, but I did go for, for the first year of college to be a music major. And ear training is what got me. I'm like, I'm just never, it's just never going to happen. So, and then I changed. [Roger King] Yeah, I get it. [Mary Meyer] But that's a tough skill. It's hard. It's hard to do. [Roger King] Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not for the faint of heart. You know, you got to want it. [Mary Meyer] That's very true. Okay. So back to real estate. You started out, did you learn, did you, is that what, like if someone's wanting to buy their first home like that and redo it, how many are you, should you know some skills? Like for, or do you hire people for everything? [Roger King] Well, it depends, right? I think it really depends on your economic status, right? Do you have a million dollars in the bank or 500,000 or bucks, right? [Mary Meyer] Yeah. [Roger King] So, so that's going to help determine how you proceed down that path. I had 10 bucks, right? So I'm going to go drive for dollars. I'm going to go fix, or excuse me, I'm going to go find a property that I could eventually fix and flip. But if I don't even have any capacity to buy it or the experience, I'm going to try to wholesale that contract and make five, 10, $20,000. I think that's a decent way to really start. And there are a lot of guys who build their entire careers for, you know, 10 or 15 years, only doing wholesale deals, where they just put as many properties under contract and then sell the contract to a flipper. [Mary Meyer] Oh, okay. So explain that a little bit more. I, I've actually also been a REALTOR [Roger King] Okay. [Mary Meyer] I've never heard of what you just said. This is very new to me. [Roger King] Okay. So a wholesale deal is, let's just say you've got a house for sale, right? And it's been on the market for 15 months. Nobody's put in an offer. And I come to you and I say, I can, I can give you cash, but it's going to be below what you think it's worth. And you say, you know what, I'm tired. I'm going to sell it to you for $100,000. And I know, I know from like listening to tapes or whatever, that if we put $50,000 into it, it could be worth 250. But you don't have that 50 to put into it. And nobody's making an offer at your $150,000 price. So I say, I'm going to give you $100,000. And I'm going to close it in 30 days. You say, done, I'm okay with that. And I'm also going to tell you, I'm going to make money on this house. You say, okay, I understand. And I call up one of my investor friends that has $110,000 and he pays you the hundred and he pays me 10 for finding the deal. Okay. So then he puts in his 50 and he makes $90,000 on it. That's in everybody's best dream of how it all works. And it's tricky. It's not an easy play necessarily, but it happens. And I've done a lot of those to get started. [Mary Meyer] So to get started in something like that, do you need to know the investors get connected with the people who want to do the flipping of houses and then do it like that? Or how would someone start? [Roger King] Yeah, you could. You know, there's so many ways now with the internet. And there's a guy on the internet, and I'll try to find his name and send it to you after this, because he's got a really cool process. He says, go on Zillow. Find those people that have had properties listed for 60, 90 days or more and say, hey, I'm going to call them and call their agent and say, look, I don't know if I can make your deal, but here's what I can offer. Maybe they'll take it, maybe they won't. So I think that that's one of the ways. The other way that I did it, everybody has seen those signs on the side of the road that say we buy houses cash. And after the great financial crisis hit in 2008, and I lost all my equity in a company that I was with, and my income had gone out the door, I started putting up signs in 2010 to say we buy houses cash. And people kicked the tires on me for a few months. And then in November, somebody called me and said, hey, you spoke with my husband a few months ago. He just died three days ago. And I need you to buy my house in LA. And that was November 18th at 8am. And I looked up the property, went over to their house, put it under contract, told her, look, I'm going to make money on this. And she said, that's fine, just as long as I don't have to come up with another payment ever again. So her daughter was there, explained everything we can do. And in about 30 days from that day, I had doubled what she was asking for. And I made $180,000. Wow, 30 days, right? Just from one sign that say we buy houses cash. [Mary Meyer] Wow. [Roger King] So it's a it can happen. I can't promise it for everybody. But you know, I put up 150 signs to make that happen. Was that my 10pm Friday night hustle? Yeah. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] And I mean, I know there's a lot of companies now that do this. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, also that buy the houses and do the things like that. [Roger King] But people can still go out there and do this. There's a lot of people with a lot of money, who if somebody called me up and said, Hey, I found this deal, can you do it right now? I'd say, Sure, we could we could do that. That's not what I'm focused on anymore, right? Fixing and flipping houses. But there are millions of investors, people that have capital, ready to buy a house, ready to buy a duplex, ready to buy a quadraplex. Yeah, it's there. Okay. So just for those of you just starting out, maybe you're 20 years old, or 40 years old, or 50 years old, you've got to restart. Go get some bad at signs. Go get a Google phone number so they can't trace it to you. [Mary Meyer] Google phone number. That's a good, that's a good one. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. [Roger King] Yeah. So there's there's a lot of ways to start. And I encourage everybody to do it. Okay. [Mary Meyer] That's good. Good advice. So you've done a lot of things besides the flipping of houses of flipping houses is something that you know, people can do to kind of get as they start, I think. Yeah. So the next phase was you built your big built big luxury homes too, right? [Roger King] Yeah. So so I started seeing some of the people that I was funding. So I did the wholesale. And then I started transitioning into private lending and partnering with people. And then I started to see what kind of profits those folks were making. I'm like, huh, I want to participate in that profit. Because if I'm coming in with all the risk, I should see some of the reward. So I was raising capital from investors, and then funding these projects with using what would be called the Florida land trust, which is a certain structure, so that everybody in the deal was protected. And it's I don't want to get into the minutia. But you know, this trust structure would actually own the house. And then my partners and I would split up the beneficial interest. Okay, so I would bring the capital. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. So this is also a thing that's taken off, right? Of doing this, the trust and people going in on. Yes, yes. [Roger King] Well, yeah, what's funny about the trust thing is, you know, my dad started investing in real estate in 1980. And I watched him go from nothing to building a portfolio of about 40 houses in six years. And then Reagan changed some tax laws on capital gains. And it wiped him out because he had sold notes on those homes. And the way the capital gain thing tax law had changed, that even if you have unrealized gains, you still have to pay the tax on it. So on paper, he made $30,000. But he only made $2,000. But the new tax law said you've got to pay tax on the 30. And he lost lost everything. The lawyer at that point, the lawyer at that point told him, look, if you had put these into a trust, and assign the beneficial interest, it wouldn't have been the same thing. And that's when he started learning about trusts. And that's when he started telling me, look, protect your property in these trusts. And it's okay. And now it makes sense. Now the pieces come together. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, I have done a podcast with someone here who talked all about the trust and protecting businesses and real estate and all that stuff with trust. So yeah, it seems like a, it's like the silo the business into things where it can't spill into your other life if something goes badly. [Roger King] And things go badly all the time for really good people, for really smart people. And so how can you protect yourself against people that are less than ethical, right? That have no integrity, that are actually trying to come after you? Well, if you own your property in a trust, you don't own the property, the trust owns it, you just control the trust. Yeah, it's a really important tool, really super important. So it's happy to share more information on that for anybody. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, well, you know, whatever you got, let us know. So this is something, are you still doing this, where you buy properties and put them in a trust? [Roger King] You know, I'm out of the residential fix and flip and long term whole thing right now. Yeah, I'm more into commercial side of real estate. It's just more economies of scale. So after the luxury custom home development, the multifamily development, you know, I really transitioned heavily in 2018 into manufactured housing, mobile home parks. So my partner and I, we own about 13 or 14 of those right now. And we're buying, you know, we want to buy another 2000 spaces. So another 20 parks over the next couple of years. [Mary Meyer] So I kind of do understand it, because you said this is a financial thing. And then one of the things, how do you say it on your thing? durability over glamour. And you've done a lot of glamorous stuff. [Roger King] So some glamorous stuff. Yeah. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. [Roger King] But but I've tried to make those durable, right as the top priority. How do we protect our capital at all costs? Maybe not all costs, right? But you know, I mean, like, that's the top priority is, even if we have a $2 million property, how do we protect that? How do we mitigate those risks? One, obviously, is using a trust structure for ownership. The second would be, you know, just make sure we're on budget on our construction costs and our time, right? Are we hiring the right contractor or not? Look, even I get burned on those things. And I just finished a project in California last year and totally got burned by the contractor. And you know, it's just part of the business, right? Nobody, I don't know anybody that comes out of real estate without a few teeth being kicked in. It's just right. But that's, you know, you've got to have the fortitude and say, Look, it's going to happen. I don't want it to happen. But I'm going to be prepared as much as I can. And, you know, sometimes people, again, are less than ethical. And you've got to figure those things out, move on. Right. Learn the lessons the hard way. [Mary Meyer] So in 2015, you started with mobile home parks? [Roger King] Is that I started to make I started to make the pivot. Yeah. Yeah, because I saw the flip. Yeah. So the fix and flip model was sort of slowing down and kind of dying where I was focused. And and I wanted long term cash flow. And the fix and flip model doesn't really provide that it's a transaction based, you know, focus. And and I knew that there was some opportunity in mobile home parks, met some guys in San Diego who had started a couple years before me. And it made a lot of good sense. Okay, so why mobile home parks, in your words, barrier to entry, I would say that they were very inexpensive at the time. So you could buy like we bought our first mobile home park outside of Oklahoma City. And it was one hundred and forty space park. And we I think we paid, gosh, one point five million for it, which was very expensive. And, you know, we sold it five years later and made five hundred thousand dollars on it. Not fantastic, but on our first park, you know, we got a little bit beat up, but we still came out profitable, which was great. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. [Roger King] So I just think that, you know, those economies of scale and, you know, there's more capital, more investors want to see a larger project because they want to see higher profits. They want to see that even if five units go unleased or unsold, you know, there's 90 others that are covering the nut every month. So that's what investors really like to see coverage. Yeah. [Mary Meyer] So is this something you think people can get into? Yeah. Well, that's what you mean. [Roger King] What do you mean by get into? Right. Do you want to. Yeah, I don't know. Owner like an active owner. Right. Do you want to buy a mobile home park? You. Right. Or do you want to invest in a mobile home park? Those are different mindsets. Right. And yeah, people can invest in those. There are hundreds, if not thousands of mobile home park owners that are always raising capital. They'll take, you know, 25 or 50 or hundred thousand dollars. And that's, you know, people call that passive investing. I don't really think of it as passive. I don't think you should just say, hey, who do I send the check to? I think you need to do your diligence on, you know, who is the owner? Have they done this before? Have they been successful in the past? What happens in a downturn? What happens with this happens? What happens with that happens? And just understand that they know how to go through all those phases of a project. Yeah. And I would say, you know, somebody can invest their 25 or 50 or hundred thousand dollars that's sitting in their IRA or their self-directed 401k and take that money and put it to really super protected use. I love that for people. Some people are more adventurous, right? They want to, they want to buy the park. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. So is there a good, how do you gauge them? How do you gauge if one is not worth purchasing and another one is? Yeah. Are they all worth it? [Roger King] Oh, well, they may all be, they may all be mostly worth it. I think, you know, you got to know that you can't, you've got to have a buy box. You've got to have a standard. I don't want anything anymore less than 40 spaces. And then it became, I don't want to have anything less than 60 spaces. Now we're like maybe 70 spaces if there's something else that we own nearby within a two hour drive, because again, you know, we want to reduce our costs. So we want to have a regional manager that can manage three or four of those properties. So we, we build these little hubs, right? So that's one way to determine, you know, if you should buy a park. I don't like the sewer lag. There's a sewer lagoon scenario for these older parks. So our first park in Oklahoma City, everybody's sewer sewage ran into this particular acre and a half lake. Okay. And the sediment would settle, right? And you have to clean it out sometimes. We had our third summer in the monsoon that occurs in Oklahoma started to overflow this lake. So we had to hire a truck, you know, like a sewage truck to pump out our sewage. And then, you know, it just became too costly. So we say no more sewer lagoons. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. That's a term I'm not heard either. But it doesn't sound fabulous. It's not fabulous. [Roger King] It's not bad. But it's how many of the parks in rural areas, you know, were developed, they've got to pump it somewhere. And they didn't want to and put a septic tank in. So they have this other two or three acres that they could do a sewer lagoon. [Mary Meyer] Okay. So no sewer lagoons. [Roger King] So no sewer lagoons. Yeah, don't do that. Yeah. Especially on your first one. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. I'm so curious, because I don't know a lot about maintenance. Is it less maintenance to do mobile homes or more than a, you know, multi-family building or multifamily? [Roger King] Yeah. It's different kinds of maintenance. And it depends on what your model is. When you buy a multifamily, you know that you're renting every unit out, right? With a mobile home park, our original plan when we got into it was, yeah, we're going to rent all these out. And it's going to be great. And we've got the rental income for the unit. But we also have the rental income for the space. [Mary Meyer] Okay. [Roger King] So we're going to have two income streams. And what turns out is, you know, people that don't care for a property will beat up your property, especially if they're just a renter. So we realize that the people that own the home really take better care of it, because this is their, you know, $10,000 or $15,000, $25,000, $50,000 investment. So they own the home, they rent the land. And that's the model we really prefer. [Mary Meyer] I can see that. Yeah. [Roger King] Yeah. So what we do is we reduce our expenses by selling the home. And in some instances, we've even given the home to people. Because if it costs us $15,000, you know, and there's a guy, a contractor in the neighborhood, and he's like, hey, I'll fix that up, you know, for free. You know, we give him the house, and then he pays for the lot rent. And he puts a tenant in it. Then we don't have to worry about fixing that property up ever again. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. That is very interesting. That's just like, you're just bringing everyone together and making it happen. So everyone makes a little bit of money. And that's right. No one takes all the risks. [Roger King] Yeah, look, and that's, that's part of one of the, you know, reasons that I love mobile home parks more than multifamily. Because we can sell the actual home and just collect rent on the land. Maybe we have to mow the land. We don't have to fix up the unit anymore, versus multifamily. Every time somebody leaves, you got to fix up the unit again. [Mary Meyer] Right. Yeah. That's a lot. That's a lot to take in. Yeah, I know. [Roger King] Yeah. It's, there's so, and that's what I love is that all of the different things that I've learned in real estate has just afforded me a very cool life. You know, I was living in Puerto Rico for three and a half years on the beach. And then decided to, yeah, yeah, it was lovely. And, and I decided to move back closer to some of our hospitality stuff that we've, that we're building for the next couple of years just to have boots on the ground. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] So, okay. Well, let's go into that. So this is some, I, I would look, when I looked at your, it was, you have more than one website. So you have the RogerKing.com. So simple, easy to spell first and last name. And you just put a dot com behind it. Easy to find. [Roger King] Yeah. No, no D in my name. No, Roger. R O D G E R. It's R O G E R. [Mary Meyer] Oh yeah. I guess that's how I would, that's true. You can do it that way. [Roger King] As you can see on the, on the screen here. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. And then J B B E M. So J B B equity management. So J B B E M.com. And I was looking on that and the, the thing you're building, I'm going to tell you, I have had that in my brain as something that I feel like would be perfect. Like these little tiny things with like something in the middle to play music and gather and have a fire at night and stuff like that. And you guys, you're doing it. [Roger King] Totally. [Mary Meyer] That's so cool. Like you, we don't know each other, but you went right. It was right for my brain. No, it wasn't. I'm sure lots of people have thought of that, but I haven't seen it done. [Roger King] You know, what's so fascinating is I get so excited about things, just, you know, part of my personality. But when I get people that are saying, wow, that's what I want. That's what we need. That really sort of says something that, okay, maybe I am on the right path here, you know, because I, I felt like I've been on the right path and, you know, all of these different iterations of my investment career. Nobody has ever really come to me and said, that's the right move right there until this particular project. And it's a long time, you know, it's been, you know, years that I've been looking at this particular property and, you know, wanting to get into it and develop it the way that it really should be developed. And so we're building an eco luxury glamping resort on the side of a mountain in Southern Utah. And it has these 20 mile wide canyon views. You know, we're building 34 cabins on this edge where we can't have any, you know, there's no people in front of us. There's nobody in back of us. We're going to have, you know, all inclusive resort that's right next to Zion National Park. So, but it's also designed for the affluent folks that come to Zion that, you know, want to have a really truly luxury stay. You know, it's $1,900 per night is our sort of our base rate for the one bedroom. So it's Rich Carlton quality, Rich, Rich Carlton service, you know, really high end luxury stay. But, you know, with the way the economy is going these days, I mean, we're seeing this gap, this divide just increasing the, you know, the haves are having more, the have-nots are having less. And my personal philosophy is how do we serve both of those markets? Not working in the middle, but the ends of the spectrum here. And I think that the affordable housing side of these things, you know, as we continue to grow that, but also taper that off, not taper, but, you know, accentuate it even more with the high-end market and provide investors, you know, and people who need a place to live and people who want a place to stay and make a magical moment. I think finding those ends of the spectrum are really helpful for us. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. So tell us, tell me how you got into it. How did you get into this and how did you pick Zion? [Roger King] Well, it was funny because I had some friends that I partnered with years ago on a piece of land. And the partnership wasn't as fruitful as I wanted. And so made a decision to part ways. And I've kept the land and, you know, have been looking for a partner to either sell it to or build it to or build it with. And finally, a gentleman I'd known for years said, we should do that project together. Yes. So we looked at it last year. And since then he said, you're absolutely right. But I think we should build the cabins on the side of the mountain, not in back of where you have it. Like, that's right. So now everybody's door, their sliding glass door will open up onto the canyon view. Amazing. Amazing. And so he's like, we need to make this a truly luxury stay to really get that high dollar so that all of the economics work. I said, okay, let's do it. And he's already built, you know, these super high end luxury resorts already in his career. So he's my natural guy. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Well, that sounds so beautiful. So the thought is to do it by, you know, a national park that is not a lot of places to stay by national parks, it seems like. [Roger King] Yeah, it's certainly not a luxury stay, right? I mean, there's that breakfast, there's trailer, you know, they have these Airstream trailers that people can pull up and ride around in for 600 bucks a day. And it's 250 feet, right? And I'm like, my person is, you know, wanting to go explore Zion and the other surrounding parks, but also come back to a place that they can really relax. And they can go to the spa, they can go to the pool, they can ride the horses, they can play pickleball or paddle, right? They can play, you know, whatever golf simulation game, they just want a place to relax and disconnect, really feel nature. Okay, that's, that's like everybody that hears this and sees the land. You know, they get they get what I'm saying. And I can't wait till, till we open in a couple of years and have people come stay and really, you know, feel what it's like up there. Because it's magical. I was just up there a few weeks back, I got to disconnect. You know, yeah, until you take that breath. Yeah, right. I mean, but that's so part so much part of this whole, why are we doing this? So people can just naturally exhale, and they can feel and hear that breeze. It's crossing 20 miles this canyon. And it's, it's not loud, but it's present. And I just I love that aspect. And how do you pair that with a great dinner? Right? And how do you pair that maybe with a great glass of wine or cocktail? And and then, you know, at midnight, you go to the observatory. Because it's Southern Utah. [Mary Meyer] Right? Wow. [Roger King] And and we have a we're building on the property as a I don't know what inch the telescope is going to be 15 inch telescope. So it's going to be a very powerful telescope. My goal is to have you know, how do you see the Andromeda galaxy? Right? I mean, it just seems so fun to me, right? Right. Sure, for sure. Some some of these things that you just don't really get to do when you're even in New York City, how do you go look through a telescope in New York City? You can't do it. But you can do it in Southern Utah. [Mary Meyer] Right? Yeah. Yeah. So these are they aren't built yet. You're building them out right now. [Roger King] Yeah. Well, we're pre development phase right now. [Mary Meyer] Okay. [Roger King] We've started raising capital for it. We have we're, we're set to close on the property, probably in the next six weeks or so, and start our soft costs and engineering and, you know, moving dirt over the, you know, probably the first part of the year and then start construction. And we're probably going to have the cabins built down below and then take it apart and then reassembled on site. Because it's an because we're yeah, because we're we're so far up. Right. And I don't want to have the cabins just built on site. I think there's too much room for error. And I want to have a controlled environment to make sure that the finishes really last. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Yeah, that's that's fascinating. So if it's on the side of the mountain, where's all the all the shared space going to be? Oh, it's right. [Roger King] It's right. Yeah. So so the way it is, I don't know, I'll send you a photo if you want to plug it into this. There's yeah, it's kind of an amphitheater almost type space. So we're going to have the cabins on the edge here. And then over on a far side of that is where the pool, the restaurant, the spa, you know, and the pickleball and the paddle, the horse stables, all of that's going to be at the other end. [Mary Meyer] Wow. That's so fun. [Roger King] It's going to be a blast. Yeah, you can come out on opening weekend. [Mary Meyer] Okay, that sounds perfect. [Roger King] Yeah, I know it does. [Mary Meyer] I'll be there. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Well, you know, because I've been to different all inclusive resorts in the Caribbean and whatnot, which is beautiful, because it's the Caribbean. And you get the sand in the water. But there's certainly, I don't know that there's anything like this, right? In the US that I've seen. [Roger King] That's right by the national parks, or maybe there's some but there are a few like, okay, there's, there's a really well known brand that is about $5,000 a night. And I love that idea. But it's about 90 minutes away. And it's just a little too expensive for, you know, most people. There's obviously, you know, they have a large brand. And they're always building new resorts worldwide. And I honor that. But I think that's even more exclusive. I want to open it up to more people. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. [Roger King] Okay. So but we're right. [Mary Meyer] I love this idea. [Roger King] Yeah, we're about 14 miles from Zion National Park. [Mary Meyer] That's, that's so close. So then you can go take take part in everything. Yeah, exactly. [Roger King] Yeah, various excursions and whatnot. [Mary Meyer] So on your on your the Roger King website, if anyone's like, Hey, I want to invest in this, they can get a call with you on that website. [Roger King] Yeah, okay. Yeah. We're, you know, this is for accredited investors only. So people that know what that means. They happily want to chat with anybody. And even if they're not accredited, right, I still have conversations with folks all the time. And I can give them ideas on what they might be able to do what they might not be able to do, we're going to build an investment club for this, because I get so much interest in it. For non accredited folks that who, you know, who may have 50 or 100,000, they want to put from their IRA, but they can't qualify for the actual fund, but they could qualify in an investment club, and that club will invest. [Mary Meyer] Okay, so for those who have the 50 or 100,000, or, you know, that they're like, Hey, I do have this money. Can I, can I participate? You have an investment group that, that helps them be able to participate? [Roger King] I don't have it. I don't have it. Like, I don't have it. But there is one that is designed for us. [Mary Meyer] Okay. All right. So what is let's ask, I'm going to ask, what is an accredited investor? How do you get that status? There's a couple of ways. [Roger King] So you have to have a net worth of over a million dollars, that does not include your primary residence. So if you have other investments in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, whatever, or real estate, of course, it's valued over a million dollars, or, and or you have a personal income of $250,000, or a combined income, I think of $350,000. Okay, if you and your spouse are filing jointly. [Mary Meyer] So is it as long as you have that you're accredited, or do you have to go somewhere and someone says the bank says yes, accredited. [Roger King] So so you have to attest that you are accredited, you meet the criteria, right. And and, you know, we take some some precautions on that we want to make sure there's some services that do that when you're signing up, that they do it for a small fee just to verify that you test and you meet the criteria. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, all right. [Roger King] So that takes a lot of responsibility off the the sponsor, right, the operator, because like just because somebody says it is and they say, well, they let us in anyway, we're not accredited. You know, that yeah, good pose problems, we just want to, right? [Mary Meyer] protectors, there's quite a few people though, that do have that, that, you know, yeah, maybe Gen X, but they're there, they're there, maybe even. [Roger King] Yeah, a lot of crypto, a lot of crypto folks have made a lot of capital. And if they figured out ways to turn it into, you know, actual US dollars, you know, that may be another way for them to protect themselves against, you know, cryptoflation. You know, I don't know. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, I don't I don't know cryptoflation is but either it's just my invention like you're just you're just throwing the words that I've never heard. I feel like I know everything. But then I get on these podcasts, and I'm like, I guess I don't know. [Roger King] I think I just invented crypto because I because I think that, you know, things just are inflationary. Right. And when when, when Dogecoin was at whatever 60 cents, you know, and I bought into it, you know, I'm thinking it's going to go to $1 and I want to whatever. And then it goes back down to point 0002 cents. You know, yeah, I think it inflated for a minute and lost a lot. It loses money for folks. Yeah, but that's that's risk. That's investment. [Mary Meyer] I feel like I did the cryptocurrency thing in 2017 and 18. And then I then I kind of just lost my palette for it, I guess, or something. Yeah. [Roger King] But I remember being at a Tony Robbins. I was at a Tony Robbins event. And they're like, it's, you know, bitcoins at $400. Like, so if I paid 4,000, what would that look like if it ever made it to $1,000? That would be okay. And I never pulled a trigger. And I had about 10 friends at the event who put in like 10, 20,000 bucks at $400 and just made a killing. And, you know, have completely changed their investment portfolio. I think it could be great. But it's not my entire, you know, wouldn't be my entire portfolio. I'm a real estate guy, right? [Mary Meyer] Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Okay, so tell us, real estate investors, there's some real estate investors out there. And you've been in all these different types of things. What, what is a definite don't do? Get some of those? [Roger King] Oh, I definitely do. [Mary Meyer] Okay. Where do you even start? [Roger King] Do not, do not allow your affection for someone be the main reason you invest with someone. Right? Just because you think they're a nice person does not qualify them to take your money. It doesn't mean that it doesn't. Right? Just because you're good friends with them doesn't mean they're a good steward of your money. And that's a difficult conversation to have. And I would say that's really super important. Yeah. [Mary Meyer] That's a very good, can we, can we rip on that for a second? I feel like that's a really good life, really good life lesson too. Right? Right. Yeah, it is. If you're going into business with family members or good friends or something like that, that's a, it doesn't, if it's not the right thing, it's a good way for it to go south pretty fast. And yeah, and then disharmony in places that were once really fine harmonious, you know, or harmonious disharmony is harmonious. Yeah. [Roger King] Yeah. It's tricky because you want to love your people and you want to share, right? And you want them to really go and kick it in the butt, but for some reason, and I'm not even saying that it's necessarily because they're not gifted or not smart or not ethical, but sometimes things just happen. And you look at, you know, the Bernie Madoff thing from years ago when all of these folks invested Kevin Bacon, I just read, you know, he lost everything when, when Bernie Madoff was discovered and, you know, he's not a dumb guy. He doesn't have dumb, you know, financial planners, but how do you protect against that kind of thing? It's really super difficult. So even the smartest of the smart people get really beat up from time to time. [Mary Meyer] I actually had a podcast guest on. I was talking about that too. He had to, that Bernie Madoff was the second devil whammy. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] And he's still, you know, it's just, he's made it out of it, which is a great story. But yeah, that's a very cautionary lesson. It is. It is. [Roger King] It's so tough. I, you know, I mean, what are your thoughts? How do you protect against, you know, the dark times? [Mary Meyer] How do I protect against that? I start a podcast and get a lot of. [Roger King] It's smart. Okay. [Mary Meyer] It's really smart. How do I protect against the hard times? That's a very good question. Yeah. It's sometimes you just, to me, I think it's making a decision that you are going to make the best out of what your circumstances are and there's going to be a way. So sometimes that's what that is. But yeah. [Roger King] It stresses a real thing, right? Yeah. When you, when you've been, and I use the phrase kicked in your teeth, right? I have been kicked in my teeth a lot. Yeah, me too. And I tell you, you know, in our pre call call, we were talking a little bit about some, you know, more fufu topics, right? And one of the things that has been vitally helpful in this last year and a half for me was tapping. You know, I've been a big fan of Tony Robbins for decades. My first Tony Robbins event was in 1993 in Boston. [Mary Meyer] Okay. [Roger King] My first firewalk was 1998. So I've immersed in that whole program for a long time. And it's been extraordinarily helpful. And I've always heard about tapping. And about a year and a half ago, I just said, you know what, screw it, I'm going to do it. And I, you know, got this app now. And I just go through my tapping. Yeah, you start on your hand, right? You do this. And you work through this. And eight minutes later, I was stress free. It was instantly transformational. And I find those tools to be so helpful. [Mary Meyer] You know, I have not had anyone on the podcast talking about tapping, which I, that is one of the things that I've done. And I feel like I, I'm just going to do it right now. So if anyone's watching on YouTube, you can kind of see it going fast. But yeah, yeah, and then armpit. But yeah, so this is great. Thank you for saying that that you use that. And I think you're, you're referring to like, I have topics on here for mental health, physical health, finances and entrepreneurship. I'm adding and those are because I think they enter they intertwine, right? Everything intertwines. So if your health goes, so can your finances and your mental health. And entrepreneurship is one where I do feel like we need to be more interested in that possibly with the rise of AI or different things that can be going on. So there's no and it's not taught enough. So I think everyone needs to have a little bit more of a entrepreneur spirit, even if you have a book that needs to get out or you just want to teach a class, you have something that you want to share with the world, there's entrepreneurial things to put behind it. And it's, it's excessive, the amount of things you have to know to run a business, which I know from a failed business. Like that was, that was a lot. It was a lot, you know, and it can take a lot of money. So to come together and just share wisdom on all those things, but I do think it's all connected. So in the mental health for that. [Roger King] Yeah, the mental health thing is so important. Because really, how well can and how quickly can you recover? I went to a Brendan Burchard conference last year in Austin. And he said, you know, these people go up and then they get kicked down, and then they linger down here for a while, and then they finally climb back to where they were. He's like, it's this bottom space that is the real detriment. What, what word did he not resourceful? I'm dropping the word. But how quickly can you rebound and get not where you were, but higher than where you were? Okay, because there's going to be something else that makes you go back down. Right. And how can you recover faster? Yeah, I just love Yeah, because we all have stuff. Right. And just that visualization that he really went into detail on just said, Oh, I need to recover faster. After conversation with an investor, who is mad, right, or a lender who isn't performing, like when he said he was going to fund the loan, right, which just happened to me last week, and I find myself, you told me you promised me and, okay, I need to do and you know, yeah, so I got to use those tools. How can how can I recover faster so that when I talk to the next person, or get on your podcast, what do I do to be able to provide some energy for people? And not just, you know, drone on about my property and the returns, right? [Mary Meyer] I really appreciate you. Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing just how like that, that for because you're an entrepreneur. So how that how the tools can help. And yeah, deal deal making, there's always something that can go wrong. I mean, we were just, you know, we are our technology just to get on the podcast here, it just seems like that took that took we had like, we do not know what's going on. [Roger King] Why is this? [Mary Meyer] What is what is the holdup here? We're trying to figure it out. So yeah, all in the stuff. [Roger King] And in the big scheme of things, right in the big scheme of things that are inability to figure out the links and you know, yeah, whatever is so inconsequential, because we're having a fantastic conversation. [Mary Meyer] Right. [Roger King] And I'm sure your guests are feeling feeling it too, right? [Mary Meyer] So yeah, yeah, yeah. [Roger King] So yeah, I'm sure they will. [Mary Meyer] Okay. So okay, well, let's go back to what I was asking you. That was a really good conversation that came from that point. So don't, don't pick people just because they're your close people, because that could be a hypothetically a disaster. So anything else, you know, people shouldn't do. [Roger King] And yeah, in specifically in real estate, I would say that you want to have people that have responsibility, specifically like a contractor. If you're hiring a contractor for anything, you need to have the terms of the condition of the agreement written down, timeframe, what you know, what the cost is. If there's a change order, you need to have it in writing, you've got to have all those things in you. Your responsibility is to follow through on all of those sides of your side of it, make sure that your contractor is following through on their side of it. And what happens if they don't, you need to have what happens if they don't in writing. If you don't finish this project by September 14, close the business 5pm, then you start paying me money for the delay. Because they told you that they could be done by September 1. So if you agree to September 1, and they still haven't finished three weeks later, they're costing you money from taking all that time. And if you promise me you can get it done by the 1st, then you should have no problem getting it done by the 5th, right? Or the 10th. But if it's the 15th, we have a major problem. And you're gonna have to start paying me if it's the 20th. So carrots and sticks, I think are sometimes helpful. Put everything in writing, keep track of all of the emails and, you know, because you never know how that's gonna blow up if it blows up. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. So question on that, do you use a lawyer to write all that up? And what kind? Like, are there real estate lawyers, lawyers that just do real estate? Yeah, there are. [Roger King] There are. And you know, we talked briefly about AI. I think you can start with AI these days and say, I have a contractor, I'm going to hire him. And you type in the prompt, write me a contract. And then just push back on that contract and say, what am I missing? What am I missing? And really get that AI to tune it. At some point, the contractor is going to push back. You have to determine whether or not, you know, what they're pushing back on as a deal breaker. But get it in writing, you got to get it in writing and make sure that you're honoring the agreement. And that's your responsibility, that you're paying them on the completion level, right? However you want to structure that. Just put these things in writing. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. Everything changes with that first happy conversation about how great it's all going to be to the nitty gritty of how it actually functions throughout problems. And what happens if and that is yeah, that's that can be frustrating thing. [Roger King] Yeah, it's tricky, right? I mean, and we got personalities. And oftentimes contractors will take on four or five jobs. When they can't even finish yours on time, they've got four others that they're trying to do. Because they're trying to build cashflow. And like, you know, how do you how do you argue against that? You know, how do you bake into a firm schedule? You know, for some of these larger projects we're developing, you know, the contracts are much more involved. And there are releases and bonuses. But there are also those penalties for for a guy, you know, remodeling your kitchen, it may be more difficult to get some of those things into place in writing. But you want to make sure if you're just doing your kitchen and it's $40,000 rehab on your kitchen, right, you're turning it around. You want to have the majority as much money on the back end, so that they're incentivized to get 100% complete. Yeah. Right. So that you don't prepay all of this money up front. And then you have $5,000 at the end, they don't care about $5,000. They'd rather your kitchen be 15% unfinished and move on to their next job and forget about the five grand. And you've got 15% more on your kitchen that needs to get done. [Mary Meyer] Yeah. And there's so many horror stories about that all the time. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] I know a horror story that involved a family member and not completing a project. Family member paid in advance and never finished. Yeah. [Roger King] Oh, right. [Mary Meyer] Those are the so bad. So rough. Yeah. Yeah. [Roger King] That's like both of those in one lesson right there. Yeah. Don't hire your family to change out your kitchen. Yeah. [Mary Meyer] Do you have any thoughts on what percentage of your total assets you should be investing in real estate? Thoughts on that or any kind of investing tools like that? Sure. [Roger King] Thoughts on that. I think it really has to do with the season of life. Okay. So if you're in your early 20s and you don't have capacity, financial wherewithal to be able to buy a house or invest in a fund or something, it's trickier to say put $100 into a house every month. But you can put $100 into an index fund every month, which I think would be smarter than not doing it. But if you've been around for a minute and you're in your 30s or 40s and you've made some good income and you're ready to start deploying capital, I would say figure out what your risk bucket profile looks like. How do you ascertain? How do you determine what's a risky property for you or what's a very safe property for you? So I think season of life is the first question. If you want to be aggressive, your 30s, 40s, and mid-50s would probably be the last part to be really super aggressive. But then at some point in your mid-50s, you want to be in a real safety bucket that's just throwing off a lot of cash. And that could be a building that you bought all cash and you're only earning 7% or 8% on that a year, but that's a really super safe property. [Mary Meyer] Okay. [Roger King] Right. Does that make sense why I'm doing it that way? [Mary Meyer] Yeah, for sure. But tell me a little bit more about how someone would figure out what is a safe and what's an unsafe real estate. [Roger King] It's interesting. I wrote a whole chapter in my book about the 90-10 rule. And I think that your 10% risk bucket is very different than my 10% risk bucket. Right? So you have to really understand, for a long time, I was super open to taking risk. But now I'm 58. And I'm like, I don't want to take as many risks anymore. I've had my teeth kicked in. I've learned the lessons. Now I want to use that information. But you, I don't know what your real estate investment background is, you don't want to take much risk at all. You want to buy a super safe investment. Maybe you want to invest $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 into something that is throwing off income but has some growth to it. Right? How do you determine that? It really is what is most important to you. Is it income or is it growth? Or is it a blend? Because if it's a blend, you're not going to see as much income. You're going to see more growth over the years. But if it's income, you can see higher income, like an interest rate if you loaned money on a first trustee as an example. So you put $100,000 in a trustee, you're in first position, you're seeing 10, 11, 12, 13%. Every month, you're getting a check. Right? And then in 12 to 15 months, you're getting cashed out. You can do that again, just because that $100,000 has become $112,000 and you're now loaning that out. And so you're building your portfolio that way. That's one way to determine if it's growth-oriented or income-oriented. What is your need? Some people, like doctors, have really high incomes, but they don't have much growth. And they don't have the time really to spend going out looking for a piece of property because they're in surgery still. They're in their mid-50s and they're really high income earning, but they want to go spend money on a 100-unit complex. They can't buy the whole complex, even though they may be able to afford it. They don't have the time to own that property and run that property. So they want to enjoy capital as a partner on that. [Mary Meyer] Okay. Which is where the trust deed, is that what you said? Is that what you called it? [Roger King] Yeah, trust deed is also a mortgage, a type of a security instrument. So depending on what state you're in, yeah. [Mary Meyer] They're buying into the group again, is what you're saying. [Roger King] Yeah, so the trust deed is a separate, but more income play. The limited partnership where they are a mobile home investor or a multifamily investor, or a self-storage investor, something where they're not running the operation, they're just throwing their money into it for a defined period of time. [Mary Meyer] Okay. See, I'm learning a lot because I feel like I know real estate. Well, again, I feel like I know real estate, but I don't know real estate at this level. So my real estate investing career has been buying and selling personal homes. Yeah. So a lot of that, but I think I sold some too early, which I will regret that before the big rise. And me too, you know, say la vie, right? My brother, my brother bought and held, bought and held, bought and held all his homes. I think that was a better play for sure. [Roger King] But did he have income as well? Did he have a different source of income? Yeah. So yeah. So that's one of those determining factors, right? So many of those homes that I fixed and flipped, or the custom homes that I built, I still get Zillow notifications at the houses for sale again. And I'm just like, it's two and a half million dollars. And I sold it for 999 nine years ago. [Mary Meyer] Oh, that hurts. [Roger King] And I was so excited. No, but I was so excited. I was excited because we made 400 grand on it, right? Yeah, one of those things. What do you do? What do you do? [Mary Meyer] What do you do? Yeah, you keep going on with life. Yeah, great wisdom. Tell me about your book. And then also tell me how I miss the fact that you have a book. [Roger King] You know, I missed it. I wrote it a few years ago. I've never published it. It's, you know, in Amazon. Yes, totally self published. But I did write it during COVID. Because I thought as many of us thought in COVID, this is the crash we've been waiting for. Right? Because the last crash was 2008 nine. And we're, you know, we're eight year 12 year cycleers, we think, okay, any day now it's going to crash. And I thought it was going to crash in 2015. And then, you know, then I thought, okay, well, if it wasn't, then it's COVID. Clearly, everything is shutting down. What I nobody knew is that it wasn't, it was a boon during that time. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, it's crazy. Crazy. [Roger King] So I don't get everything right. [Mary Meyer] I think that was that's well, you know, and I got my real estate license in December of 2019. So that was not exactly what anyone would call good timing. Even though prices were going up, people really weren't selling, putting their house on the market. So there wasn't that much inventory and it was a city. Anyway, it was just, you know, we all know that whole thing, how that all went. [Roger King] It's one of those things where you can't, you can't time that kind of a thing. You just have to go in and go for it. And you're going to come out on the other side one way or the other. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, for sure. So the book, the book isn't available or it is available. [Roger King] It's totally available. Somebody calls me up and says, Hey, Roger, can I read that book? [Mary Meyer] Okay. [Roger King] Yeah, totally. [Mary Meyer] You just sent it. You sent him a PDF. [Roger King] Yeah, I sent a PDF. Here you go. And it's like literally me writing a book, which took me like, I would have all these challenges, you know, so investors during COVID are like, I want all my money up. And I'm like, there's not a, there's no way, there's no mechanism. It's not a stock. You can't just call a broker and sell the house. That's a month's long process. And we can't sell it for what it's, you know, what we eventually want to sell it for. And so that, you know, those conversations were tricky. Everybody was so scared during COVID. So I had to clear my brain from that stuff and sit down and write a book. And what is it, you know, how do you do the wholesaling thing? Or how do you evaluate a commercial property? And it was all free AI. Yeah. So yeah. [Mary Meyer] I'd love to have a copy of that. [Roger King] Sure. [Mary Meyer] Happy to have my email. Yeah. Okay. [Roger King] Yeah. [Mary Meyer] I'll dig it out of my Dropbox. Get it over. Good. [Roger King] Good. [Mary Meyer] That's awesome. So we are at an hour. So yeah. So tell me, tell me what, what other wisdom do you have for us? [Roger King] I would say get out and go do it. Just look, every day is about problem solving. [Mary Meyer] Right. [Roger King] And I, I, at this point in my life, my career, I know that I'm going to wake up enthusiastic most of the time, ready to go. And somebody's going to shoot me an email, a text, or something's going to pop up and I'm not going to have the best response to it. I'm going to get mad. I'm going to get afraid. I'm going to get concerned. It's going to make me second guess myself. And I have to step back from that and just say, all of that is a lie. I'm going to go tap. I'm going to relieve my anxiety, accept what it is, and then get in a better state of mind. Maybe I'm going to do my Tony Robbins power move and like say, yes, like I'm about to walk on fire because that helps too. Maybe I'm going to jump in the cold shower or my ice bath and just like, okay, change my physical state and realize it. None of the chatter in my mind is real. What I focus on is actually the truth. So how do you guys, everybody listening, how do you do it? How do you change what you're focused on from the fear, from the anxiety, from the, I'm not worthy to the, I'm not qualified to all of those stupid things that we say that don't matter. They're a distraction and get back down to I got to call investors. I've got to call the lender. I've got to call the engineer. I've got to call the contractor. I've got to call my business partner. I've got to call the bank. I've got to call the lawyers and just get on with the business and forget all the muck, muckety buck. [Mary Meyer] The muckety muck. Yeah, just get back to it. Do what you can with what you have in this moment. [Roger King] Yeah, it's exactly what it is. Do what do. Not think, just do, right? Yeah. Really truly. That's the big thing here for me today. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, I love that. Thank you. It's such a good wisdom. [Roger King] Thank you, Mary. It's been a fantastic and hard-won event to get here and finally get the hour in. I'm so grateful. [Mary Meyer] We did it. We did it right on. [Roger King] It was great. [Mary Meyer] Well, thank you, Roger. Anyone who wants to find you, just your name, RogerKing.com. Yeah, reach out. [Roger King] Can't wait to meet everybody. Thank you so much. [Mary Meyer] Yeah, you're welcome. [Roger King] I'll send you the book. Thank you. Cheers.