Welcome back to the art of connecting podcast. This is your host here, Hayden Fike back with another episode. And today we have crystals, spear, and John Stewart joining us. And I am super excited to get to talk with crystal and John about the empire they're building and also how they want to help people along the way. So I am so happy to get to have you guys here on the show today. How are we doing? Doing great. Thanks for having us so well, thank you, Hayden. I'm very excited to be here. So glad John. So why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves real fast and tell the audience a little bit about what you've got going on. Sure. My name is John sewer and I knew from early age, I wanted to be pretty wealthy. And it just happens to be that real estate was my path. And it's been a really fun journey. I can't wait to talk about it. And I'm crystal spear. I am John's wife and partner since the beginning. Real estate was not my path, but I am excited to be honest journey with him. And I have learned a lot through real estate. So it's exciting. That's awesome. So this is my first time having two people on the podcast at once. I'm pretty sure at least I think. And I just thought of something. Why don't we talk about y'all's kind of number one connection. How'd you guys meet? How did you guys end up? Getting together. So we live, we're living in. Excuse me. We are living in middle Tennessee. I was up in Hermitage and he was in Murfreesboro. I'm going to MTSS you. And we met on Tinder. Nice. Yes. Swipe right. Let's go. I told my mom that we met at a dog park and she said, Where did you really meet? Because I know you're not taking your dog to the dog. So I had to finally confessed to her that we met on Tinder. How did she take that? She was a little weirded out, but then she met him and fell in love with him instantly. I love it. So there's definitely this Parabolic curve, if you will, on admitting to someone that you met on Tinder at first, you don't want to, because people will just think it's a hookup. But now I am so proud to share that. My wife and partner and best friend of eight years. We met on Tinder. I think it's super cool. Yeah. And it's like a love story. So there there's definitely at first you're you don't want to admit it, but now I I'll I'll I can't wait to share that with everyone. So I love it. We connected on Tinder. Our first date was at just love coffee shop in Murphy's. And we were really excited that just love finally came to Chattanooga. So yeah. I have to give them some love as crazy that you live in Hermitage. Has I lived and worked in Hermitage for like most of my life? That's insane. Lived in Mount Juliet and I worked at the Chick-fil-A over there. Oh, wow. So I probably served you Chick-fil-A at some point, if you ate there. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, that's, that's a great story and a great way to connect. And so let's talk a little bit about what the business looks like. What are you, what are you guys. Working towards right now. What is, what does that landscape look like in your life? Sure. So I do want to back it up just a little bit. Because I will admit that we did sorta change courses going into real estate. I was an apartment guy, full sand. I lived in breathe multifamily and thought that that was just the way. The truth and everything. And S obviously that's not where we are now. We do retail shopping centers, specifically neighborhood shopping centers, ever 50,000 square feet. And the path to that has honestly, it's been about. It's been about what problems are easiest to solve. And we came, both of us sorta came to realize that. The headache and the issues in multi family. We're just not ones that we enjoyed solving day after day after day. And we preferred. Dealing with Retail tenants and retail shopping centers. And after solving a bunch of issues, we realize that the impact on the community we could have through the redevelopment of a shopping center was just exponentially higher than. You know the impact. I mean, while all. I'll put it this way. Like. You can make an impact on. One family or maybe a group of families through a residential property. And yes, everyone needs a clean, nice place to live. But when you can create a space. Where people can come together as a community and shop and interact and be an actual community. Like we used to be the impact you have in your society, in your neighborhood, in your city, in the county and the state and whatever. It's just so much higher when you create this nice clean place for people to live and work and play. All together again. So we found ourselves drawn to that more, more so. I love it. So. W what I think about shopping centers. I think about, you mentioned 50 plus thousand square feet, right? This is it something that's. For most people, 50,000 square feet, doesn't really register right. Of like, You think about your house? Like my house is 1800 square feet, so it's like. Well, that's a big building. It seems like it's a high bared entry. So like, what was the connection that really led you to get into this kind of obscure industry? Because not a lot, there's not a lot of people in that world of shopping centers. I feel like. That's definitely true. And I like that. Because we're not competing with every single other brand new investor who wants to get into apartments. No, one's really thinking about big shopping centers. Yeah. I think a lot of people are afraid of the neighborhood shopping centers because of online shopping and Amazon. What we have experienced as the service-based shopping centers and the, you know, bargain deal. Stores. So you're tanning salons or nail salons. Hairstylist your smoke shops. People are going to go to those. You can't get that online and you're attracting people to your center. So you're creating a community within the center and I don't know, that's, what's attracted us so much to the shopping centers. But to answer your question about a connection that led us to there, there, there is one. His name is David Grabner. And funny enough, I actually connected with him on bigger pockets before we even moved to Chattanooga. On a multi family deal and we kinda, we kinda. I ended up looking at one of his properties. He was listing for sale without even knowing it was his, and that's where I met him. Face-to-face having previously connected with him online. After that, we're just kind of stayed friends and he mentored me a bit and I don't know if it was that I. I think I was around him and was talking with him as he bought his first shopping center. Ironically. In the middle of COVID, he got a really good deal on it. And I think it was just around him and talking about it and really excited about the idea that he bought a shopping center. So. But he started sending me. Deals here and there. And w they sent one called the star view shopping center in Cleveland, Tennessee. And it, it, it ended up working out really, really well, numbers wise and That is kind of how we. Once we closed it and everything, and he's a partner in that deal. I just honestly, couldn't look back. It was. It's like a, an awakening, if you will. So. I feel like that happens so much in real estate. Like, so where the brick yard right now, which is where I'm working out of with it startup data company and. Two weeks ago, we had not transacted on any property and now we have six contracts out wait, and we sign and we've got another one that's already under contract. And wow. It's like the thing that I realized is you've just got to do it. Like you can sit there and you can bang your head against the wall and you can say like, oh, they're not going to take that. If I offer it. And you get in, sit there and think through all the different scenarios. But once you send out that contract, once you get someone to sign it, it's like, okay, this is real. Like this actually works. And that doesn't matter whether it's like a single family property or you're scaling to a shopping center. Right. I feel. That's the same muscle that you're working. It is. I was, I just couldn't wait to jump in and comment on that because man, the one that we are working on right now, and we were essentially there on the PSA, we've been going back and forth on little, little terms, but. I'm going to call it under contract. There was a shopping center that it's. Very large. It's like 230,000 square feet. In North Carolina. And yeah, the, the deal. Was they wanted a lot of money for it. They wanted like 19 million for it. And I ran the numbers and I was coming in like 4 million under what they wanted. And. You know, whatever I just offered. And And I didn't expect to hear anything back from them and I didn't for about a month. And then they did get back to me and It was they, they came down and we came up a little bit, not a whole lot, but what made sense? And Yeah, it's it's it's like what you said is you just. You never know. I mean, We haven't bought anything in two years. But you just, you never know. I mean, it, I knew it was soften up and sort of flex a little bit eventually. And so we just kept offering, kept offering, kept offering, and I'm not gonna lie. There was definitely months at a time of burnout where I didn't even want to leave. I didn't want to open Excel, you know? And, but, but we did just keep offering and keep looking at this stuff and Yeah. There's a saying of like the worst that they can say is no. And the worst that you could do is not try. So, if you don't try your. Like, it's always going to be no. And so might as well as try and at least know that it's a no, or maybe it could be a yes. And I think I this is a frame that I really like to, to think about when I'm talking to people. It's like, if you don't offer, you're taking away an opportunity for them to sell it, right? Like you're, you're taking away their opportunity for them to even work with you, if you don't submit the offer. So it's like part of the networking communication too, is getting comfortable with like, So many offers to people and trusting your relationship is good. So you have a good relationship, makes it a lot easier to submit an offer that you might not agree on, you know? Exactly. And even more so like something you really relate to. By not offering, you're losing any opportunity to form a business relationship with that person. Cause I'll say since. Really getting, putting this the center on a contract, we formed a very, very good relationship with the brokerage team. I've never really had a good relationship with a selling brokerage or selling broker like this, but. Genuinely, I feel like I can sell, I can call either one of the Andrews that are, that are selling this property. And just ask them genuine questions about either this property or any other property. And they've given me a number of really good connections and. So that, that actually has been really cool because sometimes I don't even know who the listing broker is, you know, occasionally, but in this instance it's been a. It's actually been a very good connection to have. Yeah. And I think, eh, you have to kind of think about saving the relationship if you're sending an offer where you're pretty far apart. How, how did that communication look when you're like, Hey, we're 4 million less than you want for this. What does that, what does that kind of communication look like? And how do you salvage that relationships? They're not just like F off kick rocks. Yeah, well, I mean, it starts off with, I'm just saying. Hey, is it even worth sending this offer because we're not even close to what they want. And usually because we've built up that relationship with that broker, they'll say, yeah, let's send a, see what happens or they'll be like, yeah, they're definitely not going to go for that. Our relationship is with the broker. Not necessarily with the seller. And there's been a couple of times that we have offended sellers because of our, of our offer. But that is just what made sense for us. And we trusted our broker enough to be able to submit that offer, going back to the asset class, though. It's another reason to like, Larger commercial deals, in my opinion. Oh, yeah. It's because you're dealing with. Really sophisticated tenants for the most part and really sophisticated sellers for the most part. And so when you're buying or trying to buy a center from a. A group who has$3 billion worth of properties under their under management. Then. You're, you're not going to, I mean, it's not about offending them there. They're just trying to look for the best. The highest and best offer or they're trying to transact. And honestly, a lot of the times these properties don't even come with a price tag that. They'll just come, they'll let the market dictate. And so if you offer them a low offer, well, That's what you can pay at this time, but this interest I would these terms or whatever. And so it's, it does get pretty cool when you get. To a certain point. It's not about emotion. It's about. Dollars. Yeah. You're less likely to offend with the shopping centers than you are with a apartment complex or even yeah. Or someone's house or. Far more complex. I owned and managed for 20 years and you're trying to get a good, you know, They're not, they might get offended, but You know, I'm not. Let's see the, the, the group that we're buying this, this center from, I mean they, they probably own it. 70 or 80 assets, you know, and office buildings, high rise, like. So, this is not even. Not even a huge deal for them to be honest. So. Yeah. Perspective is really interesting when you think about being so I'm in the startup world now. And so like being around all these startup founders and. Around some people that have a lot of money, you know, in the building here. And it's really fascinating when I talk about like, I'm raising$30 million for my fund. It's like, to me, that seems like a lot. Right. And other people I talked to you like, oh yeah, that's cool. You can do that in a year. That's totally feasible. Like just go to Cali and like talk to three people. He can raise that and I'm like, Okay. But that's crazy. When you, when you, when you change your perspective, I think everything changes like, and you can only gain the perspective change by being in the environment. That helps you to grow. Yes. So speaking of those environments, How do you, you know, what kind of environments are you putting yourself into to gain connections and relationships and to grow in your business as you buy shopping centers? Well to give you a little tap on the back feed. And honestly your unit has been awesome. And That's been a really cool environment to be a part of. Yeah, we try to go every month. I appreciate it. And he always stands and offers to be a mentor, which I always appreciate. I actually have gotten a really really cool couple of really cool connections. From that. So I appreciate that you, you have the space that allows me to do because it's genuine. I know some people will probably aren't genuine, but I'm genuinely trying to offer people advice and stuff like that. And I've had a couple of really cool people approach me. But also starting out, it was going to as many real estate meetups as possible. And Making those connections and offering like, Hey, can I take you out for lunch? And, you know, trying to find those mentors. And as we've grown, it's you have to grow your network. And this year we definitely. Like put making connections. Well, I like our top priority. So I created a. Goals, accountability group that I run this year. And it's just all of our local investor acquaintances and friends that we have grown our connections with going to your meetup. Going to, out to Vegas for ICSE. That was huge. Just putting yourself in those situations where you're not the smartest person in the room. And you have to ask questions and you have to go up and be uncomfortable and talk to somebody that might be. 20 years more experienced, you know And that that's really where, where we've kind of grown. Yeah, so. Crystal has done a really good job at I I'm. I'm not always super good at it, making connections a priority. In fact, I'm not good at it. So I'm very grateful that crystal really like. Literally just like focuses on the connection on the actual interpersonal connection aspect of it. And yeah, I CSC. He is probably like the most distinct answer I could probably give to that for us specifically, because that is like a retail specific networking group. And they're huge. And th they go everything from like a meetup of 10 people to, from the local ones to. Las Vegas, which has, you know, 60, 70,000 attendees. Wow. So that that's been huge. Awesome. And what are some relationships that you've made in ICSE? Like. W what kind of people, when you're going to that event, who are you looking to meet? Like, what is the intention as you're walking into those doors? Yeah. So last year was our first year and we had no plan. It was just go and see what happens. And that was a really bad idea. So this year we made a plan and we were proactive and I emailed brokers from certain states that we are interested in buying in. I tried to find other investors like ourselves and meet them while we were out there. A lot of people were super busy. So if you don't make your meeting, you know, with three months before. You're probably not going to get a meeting. But brokers, investors, tenants, tenants. Yeah. We did a lot of walking around and finding tenants. So it ICSE is cool because you do business with people that, you know, like and trust, right. So you have the opportunity to sit face to face with brokers and you can actually form a relationship. And it turns out that. There, there is an MLS for commercial, but in reality the brokers just send the shopping to good shopping center deals to the people they know I can trust and they know that can close it. That they enjoy doing business with. And so it's about forming a relationship with brokers and getting deals from them. And. Giving them confidence that you can do and perform. When you say you will. And then even, you know, it's the same thing with You know, tenant reps and the actual tenants themselves. So when I'm saying tenants, I know that a lot of people probably are thinking like, oh, like a tenant in a par. I'm talking, you go and you talk to the actual leasing people for crunch fitness, four or five below for dollar tree. You know, you're actually talking to the people that make the decisions about the spaces they're going to be going in because. Again, they do business with people that they know like and trust. And so if you get to know these folks, You can actually your. W if your space becomes available. They're going to give you first swing at it or whatever. So. Have you had any luck with gaining tenants from ICSE like did the connection you make at the event lead to gaining business? So. The only spaces that we've really had to lease have been shopped spaces, which honestly are a better fit for a local local type of business. At the moment, we do have a larger box space and I am trying to attract a larger regional. A tenant. That we got a connection from through ICSE. So yes I am in I'm in talks with them. Let's see, hot works. The They're they're hot yoga. I think. Oh, God. Yeah. So there, there, they, they reached out to me from ICSE. I'm not sure that this space is going to work out, but there is another one that I'm kind of courting. If you will. That was a connection direct connection from ICSE. So, yeah, that's awesome. And so that's kind of the gaining ass. Yeah. Buying assets and getting tenants. Let's talk a little bit about the management side of things. And you guys have centers all across the United States, right? Mainly in the south Southeast, correct. Or honestly, all of our centers at the moment are just in Tennessee. Okay. Starting next year, hopefully in North Carolina, too. Got it. Our new next year. So what does it look like? Cause I know your, your centers are kind of spotted all over the place, right? They're not in one central area. Sure. What does your team look like? What connections do you have inside of the business that help you run the day-to-day? Like what does that look like? So we did just make a hire. And she came on as part of the acquisition team. She's going to help. I am running her, teaching her how to underwrite. And respond and make offers. Hopefully. And she's also started making broker connections. Yes. So in terms of the actual asset management, if it's close by. Which are one in Cleveland is close by. I consider I manage that myself and I don't mind doing it because it doesn't take a lot of effort. So the actual day-to-day management of it, because these are larger sophisticated tenants. And the tenant is responsible from everything inside the store. Yeah, the, the management's fairly simple. We'll have to fix air conditioning, a roof leak, parking lot, you know? Stuff like that. We occasionally do. Hire a broker to do the listing. Whenever a space becomes available, if we can't get at least ourself. Yeah. So I was going to comment on that. The the leasing is separate from what you would consider property management. And if you hire a third party property manager, you can actually split that up between management and leasing. And because leasing is so specific and so relationship oriented and just. Specific industry knowledge. It is sort of its own separate thing. And you can hire a broker specifically to do leasing and you pay them for that lease. If you will. So yeah, we'll, we'll list things on on CoStar. Or sometimes even Facebook. I have gotten retail tenants from Facebook before. But the larger the space or the. You know you're, you're looking to serve a different clientele. And so those clients are looking at different places and yeah, you may want to hire a listing broker. Now if it's farther away like this one in North Carolina, which is about an eight hour drive from here, we flew when we went and looked at it because we didn't. Want to drive, but so rather than have to fly out there every time something is going on, I will hire third-party management and we have third party management. For assets and Memphis as well. Cause that's pretty far. And so the one that you manage here, like say there's trash in the parking lot, is that you like out there with the grabbers, like picking the trash about the parking lot, or do you hire like a company to landscape and make sure, I mean, I've seen a watch Ben malls videos, and you see people on a shopping centers just sleeping out in the front or sleeping out in the garbage and stuff like that. What do you guys do in that scenario? Yeah. So we have a parking sweep that we'll go around and pick up all the trash. And we have a guy that goes around and does the weed killer make sure there's no weeds coming through cracks in the parking lots. And we did have some homeless issues going on. Around the center. So we got a camera back around the dumpster. We. Fenced in the dumpster area and we fenced in around the whole back area. And that issue has Since kinda. Not fixed itself, but it's gotten better. You know, hanging signs of like no trespassing and we hired all that out. There was, I think. You and our other partner went up and put the trash cans in up at the front and our. I think the sweeping company. Changes those out every time they're out. Yeah. So this is called a Porter service and they pick up the trash out of the trash cans. And then we have it's essentially just hiring the right vendors. There's somebody, if you, if you pay someone. Money. Then there's essentially like someone who does that professionally for every aspect of the shopping center. Game, if you will like. Yeah, sweeping trucks like Street sweepers go around the parking lot and do that twice a week. And Porter service. They go around and pick up the trash out of the trash cans twice a week. And the dumpster company dumps the dumpster twice a week. And And in terms of the homeless people. That is an issue everywhere. And and I, I don't want to be misconstrued by saying this. Because I do. We also have we, we house homeless, like we're actually plugged in with the Chattanooga homeless housing issue. Program trying to solve the issue. But people sleeping on our shopping center is not a solution. And so yes, one. When I see homeless folks trespassing on our property, I'll call the police and they have learned my number and they've learned they've, I've gotten to know the corporal up there pretty well. They're on our property within three minutes and they are, they arrest the people. And take them, take them up. And honestly it has dwindled a lot. Just, I guess, word has gotten out in the community there. And then it's no longer, I don't find needles. The parking lot anymore. Like when we, we bought the place and yeah, it, it kind of feels like it's our, our responsibility, our duty to make sure that our community is safe. And if there are needles on the parking lot or. Somebody strung out, walking around, asking for money, then you know, nobody's going to want to go to the center and shop and it, it's kind of our responsibility to make sure that they're staying safe. And so unfortunately it takes calling the cops once in a while to handle that situation. Do you usually like, just monitor the camera or have your tenets? They like let you know, like they know that they have that connection and can call you at any time and then you just take care of it from where you are. Is that what you're typically able to take care of things? Yeah. So it'll, it'll ding my phone. If it's something, if there's like an alert or something's going on, honestly, where we have it. There really shouldn't be people walking by occasional ding cause a car will drive by or like. At the. When the dumpster chart comes to don't dump it out and I can make sure that he locks the gate back. But there really shouldn't be people over there. So when there are, I call the police. And they come and. Encourage them strongly to leave. That's awesome. So it's it's. When, when. I think of buying shopping center and I haven't done it before. So it's like, it seems like it would be overwhelming. Right. Would you describe it as an overwhelming experience or you feel like it's, it's a pretty easy thing to get down once you, once you've done it. I'm going to take this one. So when John got the first shopping center brought to us by, by David. He was so excited and he was like all for it. And like, this is going to be our big break. And I was like Excuse me. I'm just getting into this whole residential thing and you're, you know, rehabbing and during the whole burn method. Now we're jumping into commercial. What are you talking about? And so once we got in. I started doing work on it and all this stuff. It was, oh, this is very similar to residential. Like you have a space. The only difference is you're not. Renting to somebody who's going to be living there. You're going to be renting to somebody who is providing a service or providing a product to sell. And so the lease does look a little bit different, but I mean, not that much different. And so. I started getting into this idea of like these small shopping centers. And now here he goes 227,000 square feet. And I just can't keep up with them. But it really is. In my opinion, no different than a residential. I would, I would say there's a little bit of nuance. That once you just kind of wrap your head around it. And I would say the only real difference is. The Camry imbursement, which just means that the tenant is paying for. All of the expenses that are incurred in their portion of the. Space they're renting. So can you explain what a cam is? Cam means stands for common area maintenance. And when we say cam we're, it really is referring to. Um, taxes, insurance. Repair parking lot maintenance. Management. So really all of the operating it's, all the operating expenses, controllable and uncontrollable. And they it's divided. Across all the tenants based on square footage. And I know that sounds really complicated, basically. They're just paying their fair share of your expenses. So, what you make is actually what you make, unlike in an apartment complex, where, what you make. Is what you make before then you have to pay all these expenses out well in a shopping center, what you make is you get to keep. Or pay your mortgage or whatever. Are you guys typically leasing on triple net leases? So part of our upside is if we can pick up something that's on gross, full or full service, full service, whatever regular. Lisa's like an apartment. Transitioning that tenant or. Securing a new tenant on triple and triple net lease. Is actually a huge upside because that's industry standard. In commercial is to the tenant to pay. All of their fair share of the expenses. But it doesn't mean that every single commercial lease is that way. So if you can transition them to that, that is, that is an upside. You know, That goes straight to your bottom line. And I'm for the people that don't know a lot about commercial real estate. Can you hit on just a little bit how a property is evaluated and how you guys decide like, Based on the income. This property is bringing in. Like we can pay this much. So. Commercial property is evaluated on a cap rate, which is simply. It is a, a, a mathematical it's is it's your gross return on your net operating income, which is your bottom line dollar. So you could mathematically just if you divide the NOI by. A percentage point. Let's say. For us, honestly, a 10 cap is where it's going to be. And a tank cap on if you have a million dollar if you have a hundred thousand dollars worth of Ana Y at a 10 cap, it's going to be a million dollar property. So that just because we, 10 calves usually work out for us in that way, that becomes pretty easy to to do, even in our head. That is how properties are valued. However, Once it sort of makes it past that. Back of the napkin math, I will fully underwrite it. And what I'm looking for is. Will this property perform in the future? And because commercial leases are different than residential leases, which are almost always one year leases, right. In an apartment. Commercial lease is. Almost always three to five to 10 years or longer. So they're all, they're much longer. They're much more stable. And because of that, you can actually look proforma or in the future projected. And feel pretty certain about how the income is going to look. You know, 2 3, 4, 5 years down the line. So I will fully underwrite it with all of the options, which is just the. When a tenant has an option to renew their lease at a predetermined rate. And I'll know what the income will be. Like with. Hi certainty. In two years in three years in four years, because if I know that dollar general has an option in 2027 for X number of dollars, I would bet you. A million dollars that they will pay that if they execute their option, like they are going to, that is like dead certain. So There that, and when I'm looking at valuing them I am looking at. What am I, what is it going to look like down the line? Is it going to be a good deal for us today? Is it going to cashflow? Us and our limited partner investors. And in the future, are we going to be able to add value to this property? Through. Triple net leasing or through out parceling the parking lot, or maybe we can add an art fair in the parking lot, or maybe we can add solar panels or maybe, you know, maybe we can have ice machines or vending machines. There's, there's just so many different leavers to pull when it comes to the shopping center to make money that it. Maybe we can add storage. I mean. You know, there, there's a lot of different things you can do. And so it really becomes more of an art than a science. So it's, it's hard for me to answer you with a very objective question. I think that's great giving giving an objective answers as a perfect answer to that question. So I want to ask one more thing, cause we're coming up on our time here. But you mentioned your limited partners and I want to talk about how do you connect to people to raise capital? What does that conversation look like? So. When you have a 200,000 square foot property under contract, I'm assuming you guys aren't coming out of pocket for the. You know, a few million dollars you need to put down for that. What does fundraising look like to be able to take down these projects and what are some connections that really help you there? Yeah. So it goes back to making your early connections, right? So at ICSE I did a lot of trying to connect with as many investors as possible. And we actually did meet somebody. We actually didn't meet him. But we followed up with him afterwards. And he can And they buy like inline Harbor freights. And so, you know, that's a connection to bring into this deal. But for raising capital It's just about who, you know, and who they know. Right. And. When we were out snowboarding. This last season we met a couple out there. We were going to the real estate meetups while we were out there. We were out there for two months, so we made sure that we made connections with other people while we were out there. And this couple, they are capital raisers. We ended up making a connection with them and really held on to that connection because we like them and we enjoy having conversations with them. And now they're going to be helping us raise the money for this deal. And so it's all about making those early connections and holding our relationship with people. So the, and, and while the connections are really what sealed the deal, the. Without offering them something. So they're going to invest in your deal. If they, again, going back to know like, and trust you, they're investing in you more than the deal. However tangibly in the deal. What we do offer is a preferred return to a limited partner. So the limited partner being somebody who's providing equity equity. And it is a passive return from them. From the tax. Collection Sandpoint and everything is a passive gain non-active gain because they're not actively making decisions in the property. So the preferred term means they get paid first before the general partner who is operating the deal. Our side makes anything, we make sure that the limited partner gets paid first. And once that a preferred return has been set. Preferred return being determined, predetermined going into the deal. Once that has been satisfied, then we will profit share everything after that. And we'll split equity based on, you know, the specifics of the deal and the metrics of the deal and what makes sense. So that. Capital gain on the sale or, you know, refinance or whatever is then split based on that. But the truth is that It is about who, you know, and if they trust what you're doing and they like what you're doing and they like. If you believe in the asset class and I believe in the asset class. Going back to that, just saying. Um, retail nationwide is that a 95% occupancy. And that includes Detroit and San Francisco. So that's a huge selling point that I actually use when I'm promoting a deal. A specific sub markets are even higher than that. Some, some as high as 95, 99 0.9% occupied. So it, it If you can get in the right circles and know the right people. Raising money for a shopping center actually becomes pretty easy. And it's also always talking about what you're doing. And what you do, so. Well, if you're at a cookout with family and friends and they're like, oh, what are you up to? Like talk about it. Don't be afraid to, to talk about it because somebody might have a retirement fund that they're trying to look at. Investing in, they might just be interested enough to invest with you. So you never know who has the money because a lot of people don't go and flaunt it. So. Just always talk about what you're doing. I love it. We're going to move on into our last question here which will help each of you guys answer. And that is what is a connection to a person or a group of people. That really changed the trajectory of your life for business. So. I have mentioned David Grabner and hands down, I would say that. Our connection with him has changed. Ever changed our life, honestly. If I can. So, so I've already, ever, I definitely already mentioned, mentioned him, but I think. Even earlier than that. I did an internship. At Colliers international up in Nashville. Which was my first entry into commercial real estate. It was multifamily, but it was, it was still like big commercial deals. And so working with John Ashley up there. He really taught me a lot about how to, you know, the math, the. Like nuts and bolts of like how the math works, how, how it's valued, how to make an offer. How to How to you know pitch something because it was all about he was selling. You know, properties, but the selling a property and selling a deal is essentially the same thing. So. Yeah, I would, I would definitely hands down. David grabbed her. But, but also someone I haven't mentioned is, is John Ashley. Up in, up in Nashville. Oh, man, I'm on the spot. This is going to sound really cheesy and I don't mean it to be, but the one connection that has helped me Grow personally and grow. Our business is. My husband's sitting right here next to me, John Stewart. And again, that sounds so cheesy, but realistically when before I met him, I was, you know, working at red lobster for seven years and. Like had no idea what I was going to do and I wanted to do photography and I wanted to be an artist. And. That's all great and dandy, but that's not going to pay the bills. And he taught me a lot about not just real estate, but wanting more for myself and how to like, just go for it. And. Do it, and I would not be where I am today without his encouragement. And Without his love. So yeah. That's mine. You made me sound. Now I'm all embarrassed. Cause I didn't name you crystal. That's okay. Oh, man. Well, thank you guys so much for coming out of the show. Where can people find you on social media? If they want to follow along with your journey? You can follow us at big gay investments and that's B U G a Y and investments on Instagram and on Facebook. You can email either one of us at john@beganinvestments.com or crystal@bugayinvestments.com. Alright. Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show. On the show seriously. Oh, it's. It's been so much fun. The time always flies by. If you guys are still listening to this, if you can go and scroll up to the top, if you're on Spotify and leave a five star review, or if you're an apple podcast, go down to the bottom and leave a five star review for me. We mean so much. 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