In the last episode we learned why you should be optimistic about investing in Retail Real Estate, and in this episode I will be giving a review of an event that I went to a couple months ago called the Investors Summit at Sea. I’ll also share a few lessons learned on this cruise that are simply invaluable. I’m doing this review because it was the best event that I have been to not only in terms of content, but most importantly, of getting to know people in the industry.
This review is really from the bottom of my heart, I am sharing this with you because I think that everyone that is in real estate investing should attend. As you may know, I took this year to get into real estate investing full time. I have been learning a ton over the last couple of years, and one of the podcasts that I have been listening to is called the Real Estate Guys Radio Show. As I was listening to their show, they were telling their listeners about this event that they have been doing for the last 17 years called the Investor Summit at Sea, a nine day cruise with over 200 investors (next year it will be seven days). The cruise takes us to a few countries in Central America, but I was not there on vacation, so I did not care about which countries we went to, what I cared about was to learn, and meet people in the industry.
First and foremost, I want to get pricing out of the way because it’s expensive, but there is a huge value behind it. The cheapest option for the cruise is $6,000 if you share a room with someone. When I signed up for this, a couple of friends thought that $6,000 was pretty expensive, and my answer to them was “I am sure that I will learn something that will be worth a lot more than $6,000 for my real estate investments”. And obviously I did! And not only that, you cannot put a price on the network that I came out of this event with. I went all by myself without knowing anybody there, without knowing anything about cruises. Thankfully, my Uber driver told me that the cruise line was one of the best, so that was my first sight of relief as I was arriving at the hotel.
The first night we were on land in Florida, and I have to be honest, during the first get together that evening, I was wondering “What am I doing here? It seems like everyone knows each other. I don’t know anybody. What’s going to happen during this cruise? I’m not a fan of cruises. Do we really need nine days in the middle of the ocean?” So I went to bed at 7:00 PM that night. The next day everything changed. We were in the cruise ship and I started really getting to know people.
Summit at Sea Itinerary
During the days that we were in the ocean we had sessions starting as early as 7:30 AM, these sessions were mostly for people getting started in real estate investing such as how to analyze a deal, and how to protect yourself with your investments. After that, we had a major session around 10:00 AM where speakers like Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad would speak. At lunchtime we had breakout sessions, there were about 10 leaders who would be talking about a specific topic during lunch, and you could choose who you would sit down with based on the topic that was interesting to you. These topics ranged from: how you should prepare your investment strategy today if something happens to the economy tomorrow, things to keep in mind when doing syndications, how to analyze and select the right target market, and even things like how to improve your health (which was a very popular topic). In the afternoon there were also breakout sessions based on what topics were interesting to you. These topics could be anywhere from how you can improve your multifamily properties income, things to keep in mind when investing in senior housing, all the way to how to buy gold, and how to invest in oil and gas. For dinner we would be assigned to a table with one of the main speakers, and every single night we had different people in our table – this takes a lot of work on their end – making sure that you don’t sit with the same person at any given night.
Here are some of the people that I had dinner with: Peter Schiff, a well known economist who predicted the 2008 crash exactly as it happened. Ed Griffin, the author of a very popular book that you should read called The Creature From Jekyll Island. He is also the creator of the Red Pill Expo coming up in June (and you should definitely attend if you can). Kyle Wilson, who is an amazing marketer, he was the business partner of Jim Rohn, who was a very popular speaker and the first mentor of Tony Robbins. I also had dinner with Robert Helms and his lovely wife, Kara. Robert Helms is one of the creators and hosts of the Real Estate Guys Radio along with Russell Gray. They are the ones who have been putting this Summit together for the last 17 years and they are just wonderful people (to put it mildly).
During the days that the ship stopped and we were in land you could do whatever you wanted, or you could sign up for some excursions with the group such as snorkeling or going on a real estate tour in Belize for example.
Now I’ll talk about some other activities that we did during the 10 days: we played the Cashflow Board Game, which is a game that Robert Kiyosaki and his wife created. It’s similar to Monopoly but for real estate investors, this game is great for you to get your creativity going for your deals and it’s also great for kids to get them started thinking real estate. We did a book study on the book A New Earth (here is a little shout out to my mentor who gave me this book right before I went on the cruise and it was a very funny coincidence that we had a book study on this book). There were some parties after dinner where some attendees played instruments. One of the evenings we watched the movie The Matrix and had a group conversation about what we all got out of the movie.
There were 200 people that attended the summit and each and every single person in the cruise was amazing. They were salt of the earth, humble, a wealth of knowledge. There were people that had raised over $400 million in syndications all the way to 19 year olds who have read over 30 books so far this year. The conversations were so good, the people were so awesome, that I literally did not want to miss one second with them. For you to have an idea of how good these people are, a few of them came to me at the end of the cruise, they gave me their business cards and they told me “If there is anything that I can do to help you, please reach out to me, and I mean it.” Wow. Just wow.
I now have over 100 new friends that I can contact at any time. A few of them are already helping me with my investing goals. Others have introduced me to people in their network and I really hope to be able to give back to them by maybe helping them bring technology to their properties and to their funds.
Now I want to change gears and quickly share with you a very tiny percentage of topics that I learned during the cruise. By the way, because of the recession in 2008 where everyone lost a lot of money in real estate, they decided to start bringing different forms of investing strategies to the summit and that’s why they now teach you about buying gold, investing in agriculture, investing outside of the United States, they bring economists, etc. So you’ll learn about several other investments strategies besides real estate.
Lessons learned specifically for real estate investing.
– Have a team, management is key, get very good managers.
– When things go wrong, it’s almost always because you had the wrong people in the wrong chairs.
– Don’t try to do things that are too small because you cannot afford to get the right people in the right chairs, so go big in order to be able to afford the right people.
– Really evaluate if you want to get into a tertiary market.
– Cut your losses early.
– A market has thousands of submarkets. Just like within your city, there are very good areas and within that very good area, or that upcoming area.
– Make sure to change your investment strategy if it is reaching a peak.
– Don’t say I can’t do it. Say, how can I do it? (you can do a joint venture deal, you can get a few partners, etc).
– Always be building and growing your team.
– The best time to get started is yesterday.
– Get mentors and ask them questions that you already think you know the answer to.
– FHA HUD loans can take a while to get approved, they have heavier fees, but when it’s done, you get a 40 year loan, fixed, non-recourse debt. This is very good for construction loans and refinance loans.
– Don’t wish for no problems, wish that you get better at solving them (I love it!).
– Statements, close the mind, questions open it. (Double love it!)
How you can prepare for what is coming in the economy.
– You should have five uncorrelated assets. For example: real estate, gold, stocks, and a couple of other things.
– Lock your rates for 10 to 12 years, and get 30 year loans. You should have at least six to 12 months worth of operating expenses as a backup.
– If you are a syndicator, you should always have cash calls in your paperwork.
– Underwrite your deals based on historical rent and historical cap rates (rates similar to when we were in a recession back in 2008).
What have I learned about the economy and government
Here I encourage you to do your own research to learn more about these topics:
– The federal government hasn’t been audited. Has anyone thought about that before?
– Pension funds are America’s greatest retirement crisis in history. State pension funds are not governed.
– Fidelity Investments has $7 trillion under management, $2 trillion of that is in 401k’s, and their fees are $40 billion per year.
– Inflation is a form of taxation. The Fed is committed to increase inflation by 2% every year.
– The money we deposit in the bank is not ours anymore. The bank now owes us that money, this was passed very quietly under the Obama administration.
– The number one asset in a government bank is student debt. It’s the only thing that you cannot remove in a bankruptcy.
– If you want to revoke your citizenship here in the US, you owe the government three times your income. and if you owe $50,000 in taxes or more, they may revoke your passport.
– Asking for help in schools is called cheating, they tell you not to make mistakes, and these things are the complete opposite of what it takes to be successful in this world. And now a days in schools they are telling you that you cannot hurt people’s feelings. Imagine what is going to happen when these kids get out in the real world!
– The stock market is 100% manipulated.
– The Baltic Dry Index is a good indication of where the economy is going and that index is going down right now.
– At a $100,000 income, if you pay 40% taxes, and if you put your remaining money ($60,000) at a 12% return, it will take you 5.5 years to get that money back to $100,000! And that’s why you should invest in real estate – because of the tax benefits.
– The debt in the US is at $180,000 per person.
– Russia makes all of their gold miners sell them the gold, they print money and they get the gold, and now Russia is buying gold outside of Russia.
– The dollar will likely be backed by gold at some point in the near future, for around 20% of the money.
– Carnegie changed the way that we are educated in school within two decades. He funded professors and then made sure that the universities would get more money if their students went on to take high government positions. They did not want the common men to have access to property, and without private property you are dependent on the state.
– If the economy is so strong, why did the Fed stop raising rates?
– Higher taxes and higher inflation in the future will pay for the tax cuts today.
– The budget deficit is higher now than in the Great Recession. We have three times the debt since 2008. In 2008 we had $7 trillion in debt, and today we have $22 trillion in debt.
– A strong economy has surplus, not deficit.
– This upcoming recession will be blamed on Trump because they are for capitalism.
– The Democratic nominee will likely be a socialist in 2020.
– The dollar will plunge, get into foreign stocks.
– Central banks work for the banks. That’s why they bailed them out in 2008.
– The more you research, the crazier you sound to others. And I have to agree with this, as I have been learning a few things over the last couple of years, I saw how some friends think that I’m crazy, especially for saying that the economy will probably tank soon.
– A few years ago when you took a three hour drive, you had to stop at gas stations to wash your windshield from bugs that were all over your windshield, and today you might have one bug or two on your windshield.
– Get off fiat money.
– What can the average person do? Stop being average.
This is a very, very tiny piece of some of the things that I learned during the summit. These are all life lessons. Your mind should be tickled. Do more research on these items. It was a wonderful summit and I highly recommend it. At the end of the cruise I felt like I had finally met my people, my tribe, people that I’m not used to meeting in Silicon Valley. They will be friends for life.
Lastly, if you are 18 to 25 years old, they give you a very special price of $2,500 for the summit – this is an amazing price! It’s 1/3 of what us, fully grown adults pay, and it’s a very good investment for your future. If for some reason you cannot afford $2,500, and if you are within 18 and 25, they even have a scholarship program that you can apply to. This is how giving, how generous, and how committed these people are.
The next Summit will be from June 11th -20th, 2020.
Sign up for the Summit at Sea here: https://realestateguysradio.com/summit/
Make sure to mention my name Steffany Boldrini to get $100 credit in the ship, which can be very useful for internet usage.