How Real Estate & AI Tech Are Creating Millionaires: Lessons from Gary Lipsky & Douglas James

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Our next guest has accumulated a ton of real estate. He's been overseeing a real estate empire, if you will, helping investors deploy capital into safe investments, strategic investments, tax benefit investments, and all things related to real estate. It's called Break Update Capital. His name is Gary Lipsky. Now as we go through this, I want you to consider maybe you're not a real estate investor, or maybe you're going to do it in the future. But there's people in your life, from your past, present, and future, that may be very interesting in real estate, or may need real estate in their life, and that's why these podcasts are important. Not all episodes will be for you. There might be someone that owns a chain of restaurants, maybe someone owns a clothing line, or maybe someone like this with Gary that is deeply involved in the real estate space. Don't just listen for yourself. These podcasts and design are for people in your life, from your past, present, and future. So without further ado, Gary, if you can give us a quick two-minute bio, so we can get straight to the money. Yeah, thanks for having me, Dan. I appreciate it. I've been an entrepreneur since I was a young kid. I had a restaurant delivery service, like a DoorDash, and a Postmates in college, because we saw that they were doing it in Boston where we were living, and so we started one in New York City. Co-produced three low-budget independent films in my 20s. Then it's funny, I've kind of had three different lives. I started an after-school, outdoor-red, and leadership-development company where we were serving 9,000 at-risk youth throughout Southern California. Then I had been investing in real estate for a while and got into it full-time when I sold that company at the end of 2016 and been doing real estate full-time ever since and built up a great team and acquired a good portfolio. So at first, it was your own capital, just focused on buying some things for yourself. What did you like at first? What was your first things you were interested in? I loved the—it was a great way to build wealth where I had control. When I invested in the stock market or other things, I felt like there was a lack of control and where I can look at a property, see the value that I can create, and get the results without relying on outside factors. So that's what I really loved about it. Then it was just a matter of scaling up over time and pooling resources from bringing in other investors. So when did you decide to go from, I'm doing this for Gary and my family, to, you know what, I'm going to have some friends or acquaintances or strangers be able to co-invest with me? Yeah, so it was in 2017, I was really studying all facets of real estate and what is confusing when you start, there's just so many ways to make money in real estate and you really have to focus, like anything in life. And so I honed in on multifamily because of the scalability of it and I thought, hey, I had to start building up my own resume doing eight units, 12 units, 14 units, and then I became a part of a mentorship program where they're like, partner with others and scale bigger. And so I did that and we bought a 42 unit for $1.65 billion and we raised $1 million on that deal. So that was the first time we kind of opened it up for others. And then from there, we just started doing more deals. But heck, it was super hard raising money in the beginning and learning how to communicate that because it's less about selling and more about sharing an opportunity and just getting confidence in that skill set. So someone that's out there that's a doctor, lawyer, accountant, building up a business and they have some extra capital, why do they invest in something like Break a Day Capital versus just going and trying to do real estate on their own? Yeah, it's hands off, it's passive income. So what you're trying to buy is time and freedom. And if you're investing in it yourself, potentially you can make more money. But the problem is it's a hole in the business and you don't have that expertise. We have a team of experts that do this full time. We invest in our own deals. My whole team invests in the deals. And so you get that, you get also economies of scale. So we're able to leverage teams and resources because we have such a huge pool of money to buy these bigger properties, which are actually easier to manage versus a smaller property. So if someone is considering investing into a fund or into a syndication deal, what's a ballpark that they should be considering to look for? Is it 8%? Is it 12%? 10%? 15? Like what should they be considering? Like what is a good deal? Yeah, every deal you see on paper looks fantastic. And so you really got to do your own due diligence on the team that you're going to invest in. But I think a reasonable deal, typically what we're shooting for is like a 15% IRR. What's IRR? So it takes into account time value of money, internal rate of return, where you also might hear AAR, which is annual average return, which will be slightly higher, but it doesn't take in when you're getting the money. So if you get all your money at the end of the deal, it's not nearly as good as if you're getting it along the way. But if a deal is promising 25, 30, 40, if it sounds too good, it usually is. So go with an experienced operator that can will under promise and over perform and will know how to navigate through rough times because like any business, there's ups and downs cycles. And so you need to make sure the person that you're investing with knows how to make a bad deal good or a good deal great. So let's say I'm an LP and I say, OK, break of day capital. Here's $10,000, $50,000. How long am I locked up? Or what is like just give us the main idea of what the process looks like if I want to wire the money. Yeah. So typically, you're going to be invested in a deal three to five years, but it's not liquid. So you've got a factor that it's going to be in there for five years. So you know, over estimate, because if you need that money and it's in something that's not really liquid, you're not going to be able to get that money out. Now, certainly there are mechanisms that they're creating these days to do that, but it's still not a very fine-tuned system yet to like to trade like shares of real estate like that. But so you have factor in five year whole time, typically. And in the investment summary, it'll tell you because some deals might go seven years, even 10 years, particularly if it's an auspend, an opportunity zone. So let's say I have the same $20,000, but I want to go do it myself. Yeah. How do I start? What do I research? What do I figure out to go try and take my own shot of glory? Yeah. And there's plenty of people doing it. A lot of people start with like Airbnb's or stuff like that, or maybe some fix and flips. There's a ton of free education out there. I actually have a podcast, Real Estate Investor podcast, where I have a lot of people on. But there's some great books out there. Actually, I wrote Best in Class, which is a bestselling book on asset management and invest smart, spawning red flags in real estate syndication. So they'll teach you how to invest that money. But Bigger Pockets is another great site that you can go on and get advice from. But definitely get into a mentorship group too, because being around like-minded individuals really creates momentum in your business. And you could share struggles, share needs and really kind of rocket fuel your growth. How do people find deals? And they're just going on Zillow? Are they just looking it up? Are they going to groups, going to events, talking to friends? Like, where does the deal come from? Yeah. So it all depends what scale you're at. So we're buying large, multifamily, 150 units or more. So it's all broker deals. Whether it's on market, off market, that's another story. But if it's a single family home, maybe it is Zillow. Definitely broker relationships or real estate agents developing those relationships. So they know your criteria and when they have a deal that might fit it, they'll reach out to you, which is a great way. And then there's also people that if they're doing it on a pretty decent scale, but smaller properties, they'll do direct to seller deals. So maybe they're sending out yellow letters or they're calling. They have a team that calls people. So depending upon where you're at, there's lots of different ways to get deals. So that depends on what type of asset you're looking for and the size of it. So let's just use an example of 150 unit multifamily. And let's say you're buying it for $30 million, for example. Is that a syndication for one deal or do people invest into the phone and that's that 150 units is part of the fund? Yeah. So we do it in both ways. So someone can invest in just a single asset or they can invest in a fund where they get diversification because it's over multiple deals. And so the diversification, I think, is a better way to go because if for one reason, one deal doesn't perform as well, your risk is spread out. A lot of investors, at least a lot of investors that want to invest in a single asset, a lot of investors that we encounter really prefer that single asset. They feel like they could pick a winner. So I don't know. Every deal that we do, we feel like it's going to be a winner. It's really hard. It's like your babies. Yeah, you don't have one deal that you think is going to do better than the other until you actually sell it. So we give a lot of different options for our investors based on what they're looking for, what their criteria is, what their need is. Are they looking for more cash flow? Are they looking for more appreciation, tax benefits? So we give a lot of optionality. All right, so let's walk through a 150 unit complex. $30 million is the example number. I'm the investor. I'm going to put in $250,000 out of your raise for that group, for that 150 units. What does that look like? Like walk me through the main concept of that in a syndication deal of one deal. Yeah, so once we take over a property, we're going to improve operations. So we're going to we're going to try to lower expenses if it makes sense. Certainly try to increase income by raising rents, fixing it up. So we'll update the landscaping, maybe paint, maybe at a dog park, add some amenities and also maybe add some income streams that they might have. So maybe preferred parking by their by their apartment. And maybe we're only getting $25. But when you multiply that over 25 units over 12 months, it increases it or or privacy patio walls, like little things to like add it. An apartment we bought at the end of 2023, we added a water conservation plan. We changed out the toilets that were using 3.5 gallons per flush. Now they're using 0.8 gallons and we changed out the shower heads and the faucets. We're saving over $150,000 per year because of that because it's a it's a big property. And so when you divide it by the cap rate, we create $3 million of value for that. Wow. Yeah. And so our investors are going to get cash flow throughout the deal. Probably starts around the sixth or seventh month. So as we start doing the renovations and increasing the the NOI, they'll get cash flow. They'll get tax benefits because they'll see that on their on their K1. They get they own a piece of that property. So so let's say they they invest 100,000 right now. Depreciation is back up to 100 percent. So they might get anywhere from 80 to $100,000 loss on their K1 that they can use against passive gains. And if they can't use it now, then they can carry it forward to another year where whether we sell the property or they have gains from stocks or whatever it may be. And we give them monthly updates because we want to keep the investor informed on how we're performing to what we projected. We have semi annual calls and then ultimately when we find the right time in the market cycle to sell, then we sell and our investors get 100 percent back of their money first. They get a preff. So typically it's like a 7 percent preff on a yearly basis. And then then we do a waterfall split after that. So 150 units, $30 million, five to seven years has gone by. And now the place is worth 40 million. No. How do you know when to sell or hold on to it or just make this one of your properties and just keep forever? Yeah, we we like the time value of money. So the longer we hold the property, we're not creating much value because like once we've maxed it out, then it's kind of, you know, skimming along. So we do like to sell our properties. And so we're looking at the market where the cap rate is. So if we bought it these days in our market, it might be a six cap, but we know a couple of years ago, it was a four or a sub four. So when that starts getting to that market, you know, to that cap rate, we know times are pretty frothing. And so it might be time to sell because how much lower is it really going to get? And so we're looking to see the market dynamics, we're understanding market cycles. And that that's really important because we certainly know a lot of people that didn't sell 2021, 2022 and held on. And now that property lost a ton of value. So selling at the right time is super important. And we've sold deals within two years because we just took advantage of the market and we weren't going to get greedy. So you said something six cap. What is a six cap? Yeah, so that's based on your income. So let's say you had a million dollars of income and the cap rate is 6%. So you divide the million by 6%. And that's the value of your property. So whereas a single family home, it's based on what someone is kind of willing to pay. And for commercial real estate, it's based on your NOI, what someone is willing to pay. All right. So from you on a personal perspective, you've got all this real estate action going on. Are there other things that you like? Do you ever invest in the stock market? Do you ever angel invest? Do you like Bitcoin or other things you consider about investing in or you're so passionate about real estate that you just keep doubling, tripling, quadrupling down? Almost all my money is in real estate and we've kind of done posts on it as well because I'm investing in my own deals. But I do have a very small piece of Bitcoin as like, you know, who knows where it's going to go. So let me I want a piece of that action. A good friend of mine who is super sharp. I invested in his marijuana company as well. And I have a couple of little things, some stuff that are just super, super stable because I need to have a certain amount of liquidity. But I wanted to make earn some money from it because on all the on the loans and everything I'm signed on, they need to make sure that I have a certain amount of liquidity because if things go get tougher, that I could help cover some of that. All right. So what about on the charity side of life? Why do you think it's important for there to be a charity component in your household as a family? Oh, absolutely. We have to be giving back. Actually, this past weekend, my two daughters and I with 15 other people went down to Mexico and built a home for a young woman and her two kids. It was a great experience. And it was what was so cool about it was I got to do it with my daughters and have an adventure with them and really teach them about philanthropy as well. And my previous business, you know, working with 9000 at risk youth, we started a nonprofit as well, probably over 20 years ago. It's since now defund because we were we were kind of operating that sub one hundred thousand dollar budget, which was really hard to do. But we, you know, we got grants from State Farm, the Lakers, a lot of local organizations. But, you know, I've done very well and want to give back. And, you know, that that's super important to to me and my family. So let's say someone's considering what to bring to their household. You know, like, I want to show my family a charity. Or do I ask them, what do they care about? I ask the kids, they like animal conservation, or do they care about water or homelessness or breast cancer? Like, what are your thoughts about how to figure out what charities to support? Yeah, you know, certainly I've supported some of my friends, charities as well. But it's important for you to have your own thing as well. And and and discussing with your kids and letting them and powering them is is pretty awesome. During the holidays, my brother and his kids, they all come up with their individual charities, and we make a donation to them instead of giving them a gift because they get plenty of gifts. You know, so yeah, it's any time you can get your kids involved and really teach them about giving back at a young age is is awesome. So there's only one question I ask on every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer. So you came late billions of dollars of real estate over the rest of your lifetime. But sadly, at some point, you pass away. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to those children? Yeah, it would be very little. It's I want them to have a home to cover their medical and for them to have money to explore entrepreneurship, you know, for them to start a business. But it's not going to be where they have your 80 million dollars. Yeah, it just never works because that money over generation to generation dissolves so fast, it's it's the statistics are insane how quickly the money goes away. And and not only that, they're typically less inspired, not happy, looking for ways to fulfill themselves and struggling. And so giving so much money to your to your children is is proven to be very unsuccessful by getting them teaching about them about money at a very early age allows them prepares them for that ultimate when they're getting that money. So if you're not doing it now and all of a sudden they get a ton of money, they're just not going to be prepared. So you've really got to start them at a young age. So talk to everyone about your books and your podcasts. Walk us through the actual names of they want to go research it. Yeah, obviously, go to our website, break of day capital dot com. You'll find my two books Invest Smart and Best in Class. You can get to our podcast there. You can get on our email list and our social media. So that's the best way to go break of day capital dot com. Can they find you anywhere on social media? Yeah, find me everywhere. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook. You could look for my name, Gary Lipsky or my company, Break of Day Capital. All right, guys, I'm actually going to have Gary on multiple times throughout the year because I like the very, very detailed answers. A lot of times people do like esoteric answers or they take 19 minutes to try to answer the question. He gets very straightforward to the point to it. And since we live nearby, I'm going to have him back here. But the point of this is you've got to understand for yourself. You might be earning capital in your core business. Again, you could be a doctor, lawyer, maybe you're already a real estate agent or accountant, whatever, personal trainer or chef. As your accumulating income, you've got to start to consider what to invest into. You guys have heard my theory about 40, 40, 20. 40% low risk, 40% medium risk, 20% high risk. In that middle category, when I talk about that medium, is where you're trying to make between 10 and 30% for the year. I talk about real estate mostly. Real estate is the way. And I try to bring people like this that can actually explain it in detail. So do a lot of research, check on things that you are interested in. As you're making money from your core job, if you can take some of that money, 10 grand, 20 grand, 50 grand, 100 grand and even bigger, God willing, fantastic. Start to look at things that you could be investing into, but learn from experts. There's a lot of people that just talk on social media. A lot of people that just talk on podcasts and YouTube. You've got to find people like Gary, that actually deployed a lot of capital, actually own a ton of units, actually been through the game and been through the evolution of time. Because there's a lot of change that happened in this game. And you've got to listen to people that really know what they're doing like Gary. So I appreciate you guys. Make sure to have a discussion with your friends, family and followers about money. We'll see you guys next Monday on moneymondays.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the money Monday's podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money and invest money, how to give away the charity. This gentleman has done all of those things and a cherry on top. So what I want to talk to him about is these core topics, but also why he's doing his tech company that is enabling a lot of powerful companies and a lot of marketers out there and a lot of course creators, people that are in different industries to get better leads through his company called LeadFi. I will have him explain all the details and the general concept about that company, but also he's lived multiple lives. He's been in multiple different industries. He's built up wealth. He's built up a family. So we're going to talk through all different aspects of those things. Now, this is important. Each time I bring guests to you, sometimes it might be in real estate. They might own nightclubs. It might be a celebrity or an athlete or everyone in between. The topics aren't always just for you. It might be people in your life from your past, present and future. You might be able to tell some little tidbits of things that you hear on episodes like today. So as you're listening, keep in mind for yourself, it might not just be for you. It might be for someone in your past, present and future. So without further ado, Mr. Douglas James, give it a quick two minute bio. So get straight to the money. Yeah, brother. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah. So I started off, you know, from New Orleans, Louisiana, joined the Navy when I was 19 years old. I basically got in the military because back home, it was like be homeless, go to college or join the military. That was like my three options. And I graduated. How dare you is. I graduated with like a 1.3 GPA, right? So I was not a good student at all. I could not sit in class and take instruction again. We're entrepreneurs, business owners. We want to be in control, right? So and I didn't want to be homeless and disown my family. And, you know, I was, you know, kind of like a, I had a really rough upbringing. You know, I grew up in a home where there was emotional, physical, verbal abuse. My dad, you know, abused drugs, alcohol. I see it and had to endure things a lot. You know, kids should never endure. And and, you know, got to the point where my family came to me. It's like you got to join the military. This is like your only option. So I ended up joining the military, became a hospital corpsman, went off to do amazing things, travel all over the world, built schools for kids and realized I didn't want to be, you know, in the military for 20, 30 years. Actually, I made E6 in five years. So E6 is like a high-level supervisory position, active duty. It takes average person 12 years to hit that. I did it in five years. And it got to the point where like, I wasn't really being challenged in the military. You know, everything to me is like a video game. When I was a kid, I could play any video game at the most difficult level. I could play Halo Legendary and beat it. Right. So I know how to gamify and look at everything, including business like games. So if there's a result you're trying to get, you just reverse engineer with how to get there and you can figure out how to do it. So I got bored with the military. You know, I could have been an officer, but that point I decided to prove, you know, pursue entrepreneurial endeavors. So I found digital marketing. I started a local lead generation agency. So we helped over 50 different types of small businesses generate leads through Facebook ads. And within six months, I was making my annual salary in the military on the monthly basis. And I was still serving active duty and I had my agency for four years. And then naturally you make money. People are like, how are you making money? Veterans active duty were coming to me. I remember a master chief, he was in for 25 years. He's like, bro, I've been in for 25 years. I'm getting out next month. And I'm 45 years old. I don't want to sit in a classroom full of 19 year olds. So he's like, will you teach me what you do? I said, sure. So I went home, created the worst video course you've probably ever seen, uploaded a Dropbox. He gave me 900 bucks for it. The next weekend he landed a client paying him a thousand bucks a month. And that was my first realization. Wow, people are willing to pay you for what you know. Right. So got into coaching, consulting, helped over 15,000 veterans transition from active duty to entrepreneurship. We did over nine figures in revenue. I spent 30 million on ads to scale that business over about a seven or eight year period, started off slow and then scaled up. We had our biggest years, 2020 through 2024. And then kind of, you know, if you're spending any amount of money on ads, you want to be profitable, right? Obviously spend $1. You're trying to make two, three, four or five bucks out. So I was getting to the point where I was like, I was probably losing about a million a month for six or seven months straight, about a year and a half ago. And a lot of the issues we were facing with our paid traffic was, you know, leads aren't qualified. People lie on applications. Sales team says the leads are broke, but the marketing team always says, Hey, the leads are qualified. They put that they make this on their application. So I couldn't just, I basically went through every endeavor you can possibly think of to get the job done. And I couldn't find it. And it wasn't until a year and a half ago, I, and me and my wife were going through some challenges and everything in our marriage. And I was just really deep in trying to fix the business. I was on the hook for payroll. There was months, there was a couple of months I couldn't make payroll. And, you know, people in an organization, I had over a hundred employees and, you know, they sign up and if they're not bought in a company, they're not going to be able to make a living. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know. And, you know, they sign up and if they're not bought into the vision, it's really hard to articulate. They don't understand the ups and downs in business, right? And the way I look at businesses, there's green candles and red candles. Like if you invest in stocks or crypto, right? You can't have green candles all the time. There's going to be red candle time. Same thing with your relationships and your marriage. There's going to be times of low and business is no same. And I was going through that and I remember not being able to make payroll and it was really tough. I look at it like I have a hundred employees in my company, but it's not a hundred people. It's a hundred families. So if I don't feed them or pay them, they can't feed their families. So it was like a really tough time. And so I just remember like literally we're getting into a story a little bit. And, you know, I'll wrap up here a second and get back to you. But like I just remember I was literally rock bottom. You know, I had lost eight figures in my marketing. I was partnered with the wrong salespeople at the time. And then, you know, me and my wife were going through some very big challenges as well. I wasn't seeing my kids often and I just remember being in my office and I literally just fell to my knees, threw my hands up and gave my life to Christ. And ever since that minute, man, I got to tell you everything 180. The very next day, one of my good friends introduced me to my now business partner, which we now have lead by together for about 14, 15 months. And marriage is great. Everything's on the up and up. So I owe everything to Christ and my friend's family for getting me through that time. So short bio about me. So what is lead by? So lead by is a technology platform that we developed. And basically what happens is, you know, if you send traffic to a website or a funnel, right, you're collecting name email phone number, right, generally. And we're actually able to take that name email phone and return through API crucial financial data to your CRM about that contact. Say it's John Smith. He just signed up for your webinar. He's interested in your product or service. We're able to basically do a full credit report pull with Experian Equifax TransUnion just from name email phone. Now, that sounds crazy, right? Because if anyone, if you're in mortgage or real estate or if you, you know, underwrite, you know, you need address, date of birth, social security. We don't need any of that data because we created patent technology that's able to take the name email phone, identify exactly who that individual is, acquire the sensitive data. Then we have a 15 year relationship with the bureaus. And then we just directly solve pull real time and then we get a full credit report. Now, from there, we're not able to, we can deliver the full credit report to our clients, but since we're doing it for pre-screening purposes, it's what banks do to send us pre-approved credit cards in the mail all the time. I got one just earlier this week when I checked the mail. It doesn't require a checkbox consent. So we get the name email phone, we pulled information, and then we deliver the exact credit score, how much money they can spend on the credit cards right now in their wallet, their debt to income ratio, their annual income, and then we have underwriting. So for people, if you're trying to figure out, you know, how much money can you raise for this individual, we can actually deliver a pre-approval for additional business funding as well through the API. And then we just basically take the data, deliver it to you, and now you can optimize your sales process, your sales team, and your supercharger targeting on Met and Google if you want to get in front of high credit score individuals. So who is your client? Like who is LeadFi for? LeadFi is for anyone that sells really high ticket online. That's who we worked really well with or really any business that generates traffic. So I mean, we're in the social media game, right? Like if you're not on your phone, you know, 90% of all sales start with a video. So you got to know, you got to understand that all the traffic is coming through your phone. Right. So we work with business owners that typically sell high ticket products and services. They could be coaches, info products. We work with stem cell clinics, dental clinics, people that offer funding. We're in the mortgage space as well. So right now we have over 200 brands that are all from either, you know, the low six figures all the way up to nine figures. Some clients are, you know, generating maybe a few hundred leads a month to a few thousand leads a day. So and they do the credit checks instantly and they're able to identify like who's financially fit right out the gate. All right. So on the investing side of your world, how do you decide what to invest into when you have so much access to real estate, stock market, cryptocurrency, angel investing? There's you have access to so many humans, especially because you have got hundreds of clients. How do you pick and choose what you invest your own capital into? Yeah, just by partner and people that are a lot smarter than me, right? The easy answer. I really love disruptive technology and stuff that's super innovative, that's going to take over and take off in the next five or 10 plus years. Right. So I remember reading a book called Diffusion of Innovation. If you want something, you want to read something before you go to bed and get like just put to sleep, read that book because the language is super heavy. But the Diffusion of Innovation talks about how every time there's a new technology, it's going to become massively adopted and it goes through the phases of early investors to early majority, late majority laggards. Right. So I always remember that book and whenever I see technology and I go back to like the Internet, right, when the Internet came out in 99, there was newspaper clipping saying that the Internet was a fad. You never, you know, order groceries, date people. I mean, look at us now, you're going to put this video up and it's going to stream on the Internet. Right. So so you look at things like the Internet and people if you bought like dot com sites in the early 2000s, late 90s, I mean, high likelihood if you stayed in that game, you'd be very wealthy today. Right. So we look at things today like crypto, AI, right. Those are very intriguing technologies to me. I've been in crypto since 2016 and an AI and blockchain are also technologies that I'm also invested in. So anything that is early where there's not many people talking about it and is good for me because I know if a lot of people are talking about it, the general public, that's not that means it's already diffused amongst the general population. Right. So for me right now, the biggest things that I'm invested in, obviously, I'm holding big cap cryptos, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, those kinds of things. But let's talk about crypto for a second because I think that's very interesting. Right. So you got these big cap tokens right now. They're starting to take off. Right. Daily, they're going up maybe 5%, 6%. Right. Which is great. We're in a bull market. Everyone sees XRP taking off. They see Ethereum taking off. But guess what? They don't see. They don't see the ecosystems underneath those coins that are still at rock bottom prices. Right. And once that liquidity fills up those big caps, guess where it's going to flow? It's going to flow right down to the small caps that support those projects. So right now I'm scooping up as much of XLM I can, Elrond. I'm a huge XRP believer that always do your own research, don't take my financial advice. Right. But this is how you need to be thinking. You don't want to look where everyone's looking. You want to look where no one's looking. Right. But understand how these things work. AI. So I found I'm also an LP in another company with a gentleman named Howard Getzend. So you know Howard. He spoke at Garrett White's mansion. So Howard has been the CEO of AI company for 33 years. And we have a team of 20 PhDs. And what we do is we AI enable businesses. We take old school businesses that might be doing low eight figures and we help them get to a nine or even 10 figure exit. And we come in and like this is not chat, GBT, Zapier, integrations. This is like real stuff. So like one of the highlight products that we've developed is a trading algorithm that trades commodity futures. And it's literally thousands of AIs that talk to each other to figure out the next best trade. And we actually create in a patent. So if you're a trader, if you're familiar with trading, let's say you trade gold. Right. And you make, I don't know, 100 bucks by long by shorting gold. Well, you would take that money. A human has to take that money and put it into another trade. Right. We created a patent called real time curve hopping, where the AI takes the investment and puts it right into the next investment without a human involved. We own that patent. So our trading algorithm is able to get 33% a year conservatively with a half percent drawdown. So you never experienced 10, 20, 30% drawdowns like you would in S&P or even, you know, volatile crypto markets. So those are the things that I'm super interested in that I'm investing in today. I also hold some real estate. There's some, some guys I know that, you know, have big real estate syndications and funds that, you know, have a good chunk of cash in that when they appreciate, I'll get my money back 20% and 20% plus one or 2% ownership of the fund as well. So what about investing into yourself? Coaches, courses, masterminds, mentors, walk us through why some people out there should be investing more to themselves. 100%. And that's actually probably the most important one. You know, if I could go back, I spent at least six figures a year just investing in myself, masterminds, hosting dinners, bringing people together that are smarter than me so I can learn from them and make deals happen. Right. So it, you know, obviously, if there's somewhere you want to be, you have to go to places that where people are doing it, right? And get around smarter individuals. Like we, I spoke at, thank you so much last night. You had elevator nights and I spoke there and, you know, my ever since I met you, I've just kind of modeled your, kind of like your strategy on how you bring people together, you hosted dinners. You always have a reason to, when you go to a new city, you have your group chat and you know who's there. You're like, bro, I'm, you know, hey, we're having a dinner, right? So I'm actually doing the same thing. Thanks to you. And my strategy is like, just follow you all over the country. You're bringing amazing people, right? So you have to have mentors. You have to have people that you look up to that are where you want to be, right? And I think that it's really important too, that you always have to keep it, what's in mind for other people, right? My, one of my good friends, Joe Polish, I think, you know, right? He wrote a book called, what's in it for them? And the whole premise of the book is giving value before receiving. It's like, you have to treat people like ATM machines, right? You can't make a withdrawal before you without making a deposit. So I kind of look at the same thing as relationships as well. And so investing into yourself through your personal education. And I'm not talking about you 100%. If you want to, you know, go to college, get a degree, be a nurse, be a pilot, be a doctor, we need those things. But in our, our savvy, progressive world with social media and internet marketing and, and this cre, creator economy, there's so many ways that you can learn from home and, you know, on YouTube and find people like yourself or other people that are movers and shakers that are bringing people together that are doing big things to learn from. So that's, that's why I really like what you do here. The panel you bring everyone together and able to share strategically in 60 seconds. So, yeah. So on the charity side, why do you think it's important for people to have some type of charity that they do with their household, whether there's their kids, family, friends, et cetera. That's, it's so important. So I'll tell you the here's part of my story of why I got into business. Um, I did want to have a family, right? I wanted to live life eventually on my own terms, right? But, um, it was, it was back in early 2015. I went on a deployment to pop in your guinea fiji in the Philippines. And we were literally building schools for kids. And it was some of the most like amazing work even to this day that I've personally ever done. And I just remember on our last day in the Philippines, we had just built these, you know, uh, four, um, wall structures with a roof. I mean, they had, they were, they were like in little tiki huts and like, it was just completely third world. And we built them basketball courts, um, uh, soccer fields, like the whole nine. And I just remember on the last day, um, I was walking there with the CBS and I'm a corpsman, right? So I'm supporting the CBS. So if they put a thumb, you know, a nail through the thumb, I'm the guy that helped them, right? But I just remember walking up there with boxes of literature, crayons and all the stuff. And we had to walk up this like steep, steep hill. So you don't see the site until you get up there. Right. So I just remember going up there right when I get to the top, man, we see literally like hundreds of kids, hundreds of kids. And they just came running up to us and just saying, thank you, thank you. USA, USA. Grabbing my leg, dude. It was like, I get goosebumps thinking about it because it was like, Oh my gosh, the impact we're making for these kids. Right. So it was at that moment I, and I had just put on E six. Like I said, I made it in five years. It takes the average person 12 years. And I'm like, I think I did all I could do in the military. And I want to figure out a way to make money so that I can not only give what my time, because I'm limited to my time, but if I had more money, I can create, create bigger impact. Right. So a couple of organizations that I'm a part of today, which I believe you know of at least one of them is pencils of promise who built schools and kids from Mexico, one school is like 25 K. I think we built nine schools so far. I continuously give a percentage of my, my revenue to that organization since, since Cole, Cole Hatter was the one I went to Thrive, make money matter in 2016 in San Diego. That's when I first learned about the pencil. So, and then RIP medical, who they help military veterans eradicate military medical debt. So I'm a huge believer in that because I served in the military. I've deployed and I saw the hidden wounds of from combat PTSD and all the things. And these guys, you know, they get out the military and they don't have the medical care and they don't know how to get rated properly. When you, when you're going and getting out the military, you have to go see multiple doctors and let them scan you and analyze. And you have to ask certain questions. You have to complain about certain things. And if you don't, you won't get the rating and the money and the, the medical that you're, you know, that you should be getting for serving your country. Right. So a lot of them get out the military and they're having to get seen for all these wounds and there's no financial support. So, you know, RIP medical, every one dollar we raise eradicates like $10 in debt for them. So, you know, and just overall, you know, seeing this work that I do through these charities and we do plan on having our own foundation that we're actually working on right now. I just started a 501 C three. I always get the number messed up nonprofit. But yeah, it's, it's, it's actually a Christian based here in California. And we're working with a lot of Christian entrepreneurs, military veterans as well. We're just starting, but there's a lot of great work that we're going to be doing with that as well. And that's going to be really the legacy I want to leave for my kids, the story that they're going to tell about me when I'm gone, the things that I did here. So, so there's only one question that I ask on every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer in over two years. Douglas James, you build up lead fight to become a billion dollar company. You invest in other deals and all of a sudden you've got billions of dollars not worth it. But unfortunately at some point you pass away. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to those children? The children that I hope your children to my children or other people's children. That's a good question. So I ask every single time. God dang. You know, I guess I have to walk myself through this thought because I want my kids to know the value of money. I want them to know how hard it is and the work and the commitment and the blood, sweat and tears that goes into creating like something like that. At the peak of my coaching consulting company, it was like the highest of the high, but it was also the highest stress environment I've ever been in my life. Military being deployed, right? And I, that's a good question. You know, and I would definitely leave them something. I would definitely leave them something, but I feel like a majority of that money would need to go to some type of goodwill to support the organization's charities and the things that I've been a part of that I was building. So I probably wouldn't even leave it to them in their personal name. I would probably keep it in a trust and to a nonprofit that they would eventually become the secretary or president of, right? Strategically for tax reasons. That would be a great way, right? But I would want that money to continue to support the mission and the vision that I had left when I was gone. And my goal is for our kids to be a part of that as well. So that's my answer. So where can people find you on social media? Where can they check out and need find the things that you're working on? Yeah, go to Instagram, just type in Douglas James. I should be the first one with the blue check. You know, I think the I think the handle is the underscore Douglas James. And then the website to lead fi is a lead fi dot AI. Go check it out. Schedule a call. We'd love to help you out to make sense. All right, as you were listening to the Money Mondays, where we cover those three core topics, but it's very important for you to have discussions with your friends, family and followers about money. We grew up taking into root to talk about money. I think that's absurd. It's ridiculous. We have to have discussion about money. Money is not the root of all evil. Money can help you with your family, your friends, your bills, travel, medical and all the things that take to run your household, your life and people in your circle and beyond. You can do a lot of great things with money when you have the open discussion about it and you don't want to have people go get the wrong salary or take the wrong loan or get the wrong debt or get the wrong this, this and this, because you just didn't talk about it. So learn about it. Thank you for listening to Money Mondays where you can learn bits and pieces week after week in these 30 to 40 minute episodes or research the things that you care about and get as well knowledge you can about money. We'll see you guys next Monday on moneymondays.com.