Marry Money and Opportunity with Real Estate

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:47 — 139.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More

Mike Zlotnik – Tempo Funding

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 “Triple Net Leasing Explained”
03:50 “Predictable Returns in CRE Investments”
08:17 “Long-Term Commercial Lease Structures”
10:46 Ground Leases and Property Ownership
13:36 Real Estate Tax Implications Simplified
19:31 Deploying Capital for Investments
21:29 Quarterly Distribution Expectations Explained
26:18 “Low Rates, Inflation, and Stimulus”
27:41 “Understanding Capitalization Rates”
32:22 Moore’s Law and AI Progress
35:29 Interest Rates and Real Estate Trends
37:13 Industrial Investment: Focus on Longevity
40:49 “Branch Closures and Lease Management”
44:39 “From Tech Exec to Real Estate”
49:21 “Real Estate Value Through Leasing”
50:00 “Value-Add Real Estate Strategies”
54:07 “Strategic Capital for Specialists”

Sponsors:

Live Video chat with our customers here with LiveSwitch: https://join.liveswitch.com/gfj3m6hnmguz

Some videos have been recorded with Riverside: https://www.riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=campaign_5&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=rewardful&via=james-kademan

Podcast Transcription:

Mike Zlotnik [00:00:00]:
I had a successful career, had some exits. I was doing well, but I was a little burned out. I spent almost 15 years in technology. I had great friends. I liked it. Technology. Felt like I wanted something that I really didn’t have to work all the time, something that I can make investment decisions and the money could work for me. So I discovered real estate passively in year 2000, buying my first apartment in Brooklyn.

Mike Zlotnik [00:00:25]:
And then I continued to buy more and passively.

James Kademan [00:00:33]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in podcast link found at https//:drawincustomers.com We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service as well as the Bold Business Book. And today we’re welcoming Slash, preparing to learn from Mike Zlotnick of Temple Funding. That’s TF Management Group. Is that safe to say, Mike?

Mike Zlotnik [00:01:01]:
Yeah, yeah, but the easier way, people call me Big Mike. I am six four. So Big Mike.

James Kademan [00:01:05]:
Well, you can’t tell on the screen, so. All right, that is a. That’s a Big Mike. Big Mike, indeed. So, Big Mike, what is Tempo funding?

Mike Zlotnik [00:01:15]:
We are the best way to describe Tempo funding. We marry money and opportunity. We are a platform for folks with capital to invest, typically in real estate, kind of. I don’t want to call myself exactly one trick pony, but I am mostly one trick pony. It’s real estate. We have a team, we have organization that focuses real estate projects, industrial, open air shopping, multifamily, et cetera.

James Kademan [00:01:42]:
Okay.

Mike Zlotnik [00:01:42]:
And then we have folks with capital who sold businesses, they’ve sold highly appreciated stock, they sold bitcoin, whatever, they made their money and then now they’re looking for steady, predictable income. And that’s what we try to bring them. That’s kind of what we do for many, many years.

James Kademan [00:02:01]:
You mentioned steady predictable income. And can you elaborate on that? Because sometimes in the real estate world that’s not always the case.

Mike Zlotnik [00:02:08]:
Yeah, so today the world’s changed quite a bit and we really gravitated towards predictability. I literally have an article that I wrote and a video comparing high IRRs versus predictability. Wide majority of people, especially with monetary event where they’ve got significant lump sum, they’re looking for predictability. So what is predictability? So normally it means the assets themselves have a great engine, how they generate predictable income. Take an example, triple net industrial. This is just a simple way to explain. It’s right before the call we were talking about made in China versus made in America. Well, there’s a renaissance now to build in America.

Mike Zlotnik [00:02:50]:
Made in America and industrial production in America is welcome. So quite often there are companies that manufacture here and the real estate underneath it gets sold by the owner of the business. They sell the real estate, lease back and stay in that property. So where does predictability come from? Well, that business has been there for 60 years. They sell real estate, they use capital for further investment or to pay their parent company and then it’s a mission critical property. And to make long story short, they’re there, they have a 20, 25 year lease and it’s triple net, meaning that all the expenses, taxes, insurance, everything else is covered by the tenant. So as a landlord you collect rent and every year it goes up between 2 to 3%. So you have high predictability of outcome simply because it’s contractually guaranteed with a credit quality tenant with long term lease, with rent escalation clauses, with triple net structure.

Mike Zlotnik [00:03:50]:
So you’re collecting this, you’re an equity investor, but you’re collecting it like a bond. You get your coupon today, this year. So what does that coupon look like? For example, year one you could start with 7%, maybe even higher. And year two goes up, and year three, it goes up. So it begins to look like a predictable investment because it’s so contractually built to be predictable. So you know, initial cash flow, you know, year two cash flow, year three, year four, year five. And then that increased NOI drives forced appreciation. Because in commercial real estate, the price of the asset is a function of net operating income.

Mike Zlotnik [00:04:24]:
You hear these fancy terms, cap rates. All the cap rates describe is what do you pay per dollar of income. The lower the cap rate, the higher the price per dollar of income. So as interest rates obviously impact cap rates, but in general, the structure itself grows. Niy, if interest rates don’t do anything, they stay flat. You’re still growing the value of the asset because the NOI is growing. That’s a predictable structure. You see these structures in real estate quite a bit.

Mike Zlotnik [00:04:50]:
And I’ll shut up for a second, let you chime in more questions because I can talk on this probably for hours.

James Kademan [00:04:55]:
No, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. It’s interesting you mentioned real estate that’s essentially large scale commercial. It sounds like you’re talking manufacturing. Yes, this isn’t just the small mom.

Mike Zlotnik [00:05:06]:
And pop house, it is a manufacturing facility quite often gets bought for $25 million. There are of course bigger projects, but the sweet spot is anywhere from, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, $30 million small manufacturing. I’m not talking about AI data centers that are getting built for a billion dollars, not, not for that.

James Kademan [00:05:29]:
Okay. I guess, I think as you’re talking here, I’m thinking south of me on the north way north of Chicago is Belvedere, Illinois, which has a car manufacturing plant that I think since I’ve been driving to and from Chicago every once in a while, I want to say that thing has changed hands four or five times. And that thing, that property, I don’t know if it’s necessarily one building, but that complex, it’s probably the size of a small city. Sorry, it sounds like you’re getting into stuff that big.

Mike Zlotnik [00:06:04]:
Not that big, but an example, we do have an asset in New Castle, Indiana, again, Midwest. And it’s a, you know, it’s called $25 million asset. It is a multi acre property and it produces stainless steel and it’s been in that business and that location over 60 years. So that kind of a facility. All right, not a small city, but for that local town, it’s a significant manufacturer and industrial facility.

James Kademan [00:06:32]:
Oh, I bet it’s huge. And for something like that. Do you. I mentioned the equipment goes with the building. Just because it took so much to get that equipment in there, it’s like an old pool table. To get it out is a big deal.

Mike Zlotnik [00:06:45]:
They end not moving so effectively you own real estate as an investor, but they’ve made so many tenant improvements themselves over the years for their own business, plus all the equipment, everything else. They’re going to stay there, they’re going to continue to. It’s a mission critical manufacturing. That’s the best way to describe it. All right.

James Kademan [00:07:02]:
And is the idea that they’re getting out and renting it out as a means of growing cash so that they can use that cash to expand the business in other ways?

Mike Zlotnik [00:07:11]:
Yeah, so this is pretty well known in industrial. It’s called sale leaseback. So it’s when a private equity or a buyer buys a property or set of properties and they are in the, in the business of manufacturing. They love the business. Their return on capital is better in the business than return on real estate. So what they want to do is they want to monetize real estate. They’ll sell real estate to investors and immediately lease back. So they’re not moving anywhere.

Mike Zlotnik [00:07:39]:
Nothing is changing. All it is, they get the cash. They can take the cash to pay down debt of the company, they can take the cash, invest into further development of the company, they can Take cash and potentially pay their owners. So depending on the set of circumstances, these type of transactions make sense. The reason it makes sense to investors is because it’s a highly predictable type of an investment. So when I talk about predictability, there are in commercial real estate four primary, what I call them asset classes. Triple net industrial is probably the longest leases. You see there are some examples of a little bit longer, but you’re talking about 20, 25 year lease.

Mike Zlotnik [00:08:17]:
They’re long maturity leases, sometimes a little bit less 15, but it’s a long term lease. Then you go into typically other commercial leases like open air shopping. You may have Starbucks with a 15 year lease. We love those two. Call them open air shopping. Not the old malls, but the typically newer open air shopping type of setups, especially gross or anchor. And the reason they’re very similar because you don’t have one tenant, you may have 15 tenants on a shopping plaza and they are most of them long term leases. So you have predictability of a very similar structure like a triple net with a multiple tenants instead of one, right? Then you go to multifamily assets, multifamily assets, typically one year lease.

Mike Zlotnik [00:09:02]:
Your predictability now goes to a much more operating business. You gotta be able to run a property, be able to lease up, obviously renovate apartments. And then you go to the sort of the shortest maturity of all these leases are self storage. It’s a one month lease, right. And you can do really well in self storage and multifamily during certain parts of the market cycle. But those fluctuate with market cycle. For example, storage and multifamily has been overbuilt significantly from the new development in years 21 and 22. Now the rents are under negative growth conditions in some markets.

Mike Zlotnik [00:09:39]:
Not all markets. Some markets you go to open air shopping. In industrial, they’ve seen very little new supply. So they’ve done much more steady eddy, long term, very predictable play. So this is just an example of drawincustomerscom. Now the way to look at this interesting.

James Kademan [00:09:55]:
I used to work with a company that their job was leasing property. And I want to say they had a contract with Walgreens and I had heard it was they were doing hundred year leases on these properties. And I was thinking what is a country a couple hundred years old? Like 100 years, who knows what’s going to happen.

Mike Zlotnik [00:10:16]:
But long lists exist. I’ll give you example, a live example. We have a deal in San Diego, it’s a ground lease. So we don’t own the land, but we are leasing from the port an open air shopping center called the Headquarters of Seaport. We got it in August of 2025 and it’s a long term ground lease. So these ground leases could be a hundred years. In that case, we’re trying to get the lease extended. Current lease is 27 years, we’re trying to extend it to 60.

Mike Zlotnik [00:10:46]:
So it’s normal and typical to be able to extend lease in some scenarios. In New York City, where it used to be twin towers, well, it’s a World Financial center, it’s Freedom Tower. Now that land is owned by the callsoncallcom and it’s on 100 year ground lease. It happens. You could trade ground lease, you could sell a building on a ground lease. You own the building, but the land is owned by the typically some kind of government entity like in New York City Sport Authority. In San Diego, it’s the Port Authority of San Diego. So these type of leases do exist and they are very similar to almost permanent ownership.

Mike Zlotnik [00:11:24]:
They just such long duration and with rights to extend. But for some reason the port wants to own their land as an example.

James Kademan [00:11:32]:
So in the case of New York with Port Authority, since Port Authority is essentially a government entity, right.

Mike Zlotnik [00:11:41]:
Port Authority owns the majority of the bridges and then they collect the tolls and they’re responsible for their maintenance. They own land, some, some, some land in New York City and then they just ground, ground, lease land to developers who build those buildings and, and that’s their business. I don’t know how it came to be historically, but that, that’s what it.

James Kademan [00:12:07]:
Is today, I guess I’m asking, is Port Authority a government entity or do they just have a name that kind of.

Mike Zlotnik [00:12:13]:
It is a form of a government entity. I don’t know exactly. I think it’s considered to be a form of a government entity or nonprofit. I’m not sure for sure. But you know, they have their own police, they have their own. It’s an authority, it’s gotta be a government. Right? They have their own police. So my assumption is it’s a form of government.

James Kademan [00:12:35]:
Huh. Interesting. So is the idea that, that keeps taxes down because they’re making all this money from the other stuff.

Mike Zlotnik [00:12:42]:
Well, it’s a monopoly. I don’t want to call it a mafia, but it’s on the border of mafia. In New York City they raise toll prices on bridges and tunnels that they own all the time. They just decide, hey, we need some more money. There’s a board, they go to the board, the board says yes, and before you know, your toll just went up another two or three dollars for every time you go through.

James Kademan [00:13:02]:
All right. Not unlike Illinois.

Mike Zlotnik [00:13:04]:
Yeah, that’s fair. Don’t call it a tax, it’s a fee. Yeah. Tell me a story about the tax implications on both the landowner who sold to private equity as well as the investors in, I guess, investors in that fund. I suppose it would be.

James Kademan [00:13:19]:
Yeah, that’s fair. Don’t call it a tax, it’s a fee. Yeah. Tell me a story about the tax implications on both the landowner who sold to private equity as well as the investors in, I guess, investors in that fund. I suppose it would be.

Mike Zlotnik [00:13:36]:
Well, so the tax implication when you sell real estate, I mean, I don’t know how they bought it. Like, I don’t, I don’t know that tax position. I just know as we bought, you know, we actually, this deal is closing a little bit later this month. So we are actually investing in the deal. But from a point of view, as far as tax implication, typically if you own real estate for long, long term, you pay long term capital gains on sale. Many investors, some of them run through 1031. They sell one asset, they roll the money into the next one. You could also now with, with bonus depreciation being back, you could sell an appreciated asset, get capital gains, which is a form of passive gain, and you can invest that money into a new investment and run a cost segregation.

Mike Zlotnik [00:14:20]:
And we’re going to run a cost segregation on this property. The cost segregation creates new passive losses and you can use them to offset previous passive gains. It’s called pseudo 1031 or passive loss harvesting. It’s a term for it. But conceptually it’s, it’s, you could sell one, roll the money in the next through 1031. You can cross seg. Use the losses to help you offset the gains. And I don’t know what the sellers are doing.

Mike Zlotnik [00:14:42]:
As far as, you know, they take the capital out of this transaction. It’s their business. Normally you don’t have that exposure to what sellers are going to do with the money.

James Kademan [00:14:51]:
Yeah, I guess that’s more the seller’s getting a bag of money so they’re going to be taxed on the worst.

Mike Zlotnik [00:14:57]:
Case, they pay capital gains. Right. It’s the worst case. It’s actually not a bad thing because, you know, capital gains are pretty, you know, it’s an advantage trade. So it’s not a bad setup at the end of the day.

James Kademan [00:15:05]:
So the investors in the fund, are they getting the same tax Benefit, essentially the cost segregation benefit, or how does that trickle down through the fund itself?

Mike Zlotnik [00:15:17]:
Sure. So in this particular example, the two things I mentioned, the open air shopping and then the industrial property. So we have a syndication comparison, syndication to a fund. Syndication is a single asset and the fund, you have multiple assets, so you have many investors typically in each deal. But you have a single asset syndication, you have many investments in a fund. So what happens is investors benefit from the tax efficiency of the deal. In both cases, a cost segregation is run in the year of acquisition. So this is this year.

Mike Zlotnik [00:15:59]:
The one big beautiful bill that was passed this summer received 100% bonus depreciation back. So we can run a COASEC and every part of the property that is less than, well, 15 years or less. So what it means if you take a property and you have H VAC systems, you have doors, you have windows, you have anything that is not like foundation and walls, you can typically bonus depreciate in one year. So you can get a significant tax deduction in one year as a passive loss through bonus depreciation. And then it gets passed through to the investors in the deal. So what they see is, they see cash flow, but it’s all shielded for many years. Because let me give you an example. So on industrial deal, this is nothing. And then it gets passed through to the investors in the deal. So what they see is, they see cash flow, but it’s all shielded for many years. Because let me give you an example. So on industrial deal, this is nothing.

Mike Zlotnik [00:16:50]:
It’s actually very conservative leverage, 65% mortgage leverage. Mortgage leverage does matter because the higher the leverage, typically the more tax benefits you get per dollar investment. But you can take on more risk. So if you take conservative leverage, you’re not taking excessive risk. And your tax benefits, in this example, let’s call it 40%, so you put in $100,000 check and you get $40,000 first year loss. What do you do with that? Well, if you can offset other income, that’s wonderful. You talk to your cpa. If you cannot, you will offset the cash flow you will generate this year and then it’ll carry forward for many years to come.

Mike Zlotnik [00:17:27]:
And let’s just say this deal generates 8% per year average cash flow for five years. Eight times five is 40. Right. So you have 40% loss upfront that you can shield. Five years of 8% depreciation, 8% income. Does that make sense? So effectively you’re paying no taxes even though you’re getting the cash flow.

James Kademan [00:17:45]:
Gotcha. All right, so the form that the investors get, is it as if they had rental property? Is it callsoncallcom maybe?

Mike Zlotnik [00:17:56]:
Yeah, Schedule E is different from this. So typically they invest in a partnership. When you invest in real estate, the most typical form how partnerships are taxed. It’s a partnership form and what they get is a form called K1.

James Kademan [00:18:10]:
Okay, so it is a. So is that considered passive income or is that.

Mike Zlotnik [00:18:15]:
It’s passive real estate income. It is not any different that you own a property outright. Whether you own with partners or not. The income is still is a passive real estate income. It’s the same treatment as if you, you know, owned 100% of the whole property where you owned with partners.

James Kademan [00:18:30]:
Gotcha. All right. Interesting. This is, it’s so interesting because I’ve had other real estate investment people on the show, but I’ve never had someone investing in this scale, I guess as far as that goes. So that’s very interesting. Especially with commercial. I don’t know why we had many people in the commercial real estate world here.

Mike Zlotnik [00:18:48]:
You talk about evolution. I’ve been through evolution. We’ve spent many years in residential and I still do residential investing. And there’s nothing wrong with residential. You just don’t have economy of scale. The reason people go into commercial is because you could do larger type of deals. Also there’s more predictability when you’re dealing. I self manage some of my individual tenants and projects and you know, it’s more management when you are active and you have your own apartments or you have your own houses.

Mike Zlotnik [00:19:16]:
You could self manage all day long if you want to be more passive. Then you go into more commercial and you have more options and more kind of opportunities and scale. You could put a lot more money to work way faster.

James Kademan [00:19:28]:
Okay, tell me more about that.

Mike Zlotnik [00:19:31]:
So let’s just say you sell unappreciated anything. Bitcoin, you sell Magnificent Seven stock, you sell business. You know, you were an accountant, you were successful. Anything a doctor practice, you got to deploy a lot more capital. You want cash flow. You could go buy a bunch of houses, call them rental houses, right? And you can, you could even have a manager manage all these houses that are known as a turnkey properties, right? You need a lot of houses to be able to deploy. If you are trying to deploy $20 million, right, in commercial, you could, you could deploy the money, you know, in three, four, $2 million chunks among a few investments with much more capital being deployed in a single transaction. Of course, you want to maintain healthy diversification, right? But at least you have the ability to deploy a lot more capital because these deals to transact need a lot more capital.

Mike Zlotnik [00:20:27]:
This industrial deal, it’s about $25 million acquisition, it’s a conservative leverage deal. It needs about $9.6 million of equity. So if somebody needs to deploy a couple million dollars, there’s space to write a bigger check into a deal.

James Kademan [00:20:43]:
Interesting. So the, I guess when somebody invests $20 million or something like that, when are they expected or when should they expect to get a return and what kind of return? Because I imagine that’s just not the next month or something like that. Like there’s time that has to go by for the return to start racking up. Is that correct?

Mike Zlotnik [00:21:06]:
Yeah. It’s not any different from you buying real estate directly yourself. Think of it this way. Right? So if you invest in a open air shopping or industrial property, typically the project needs to close and then it needs to collect rent. And then most of these deals run on a quarterly closing basis. So financials get closed on a quarterly basis. Monthly is too hard. You don’t get.

Mike Zlotnik [00:21:29]:
People have asked us, we’ve run funds and syndications. People ask why don’t I get my distributions every month? I said, whether I send you a check once a month or once a quarter, it’s going to be same amount and it’s triple the work for us. So the general expectation is once a quarter. So after the quarter is closed. So for example, this deal will close late December. Its full quarter of operation will be Q1, 2026. Right. At the end of Q1, March 31, it’ll start closing its financials typically takes 30, 45 days to close financials.

Mike Zlotnik [00:22:03]:
So the first check really will happen approximately three months later, plus another, you know, 3045 days when the, all the accounting is done. We use third party fund administrators. They will run, they use professional software, they run all these distributions will get processed. So let’s call it. The first check will happen in 75 days. Right, sorry, not 75. 90 plus 90 plus 45. Right.

Mike Zlotnik [00:22:30]:
So it’s like 135. So it’s a quarter and a half, right. After that, every 90 days, roughly.

James Kademan [00:22:37]:
Gotcha. Interesting.

Mike Zlotnik [00:22:39]:
And the same is true, by the way, for most of the commercial real estate. Most people run on a 90 day cycle. The only exceptions I’ve seen, if they are like lending funds and they run monthly books and they can distribute the income they collected every month. It’s possible to do, it’s just more work. That’s the bottom one.

James Kademan [00:22:58]:
All right, so syndications and investment funds like this been around forever or is this a fairly new way to move property around?

Mike Zlotnik [00:23:08]:
No, it’s been around for a long, long time. Right. So syndications and the offerings themselves are done through the it’s through what are known as. So at least the way we do it is through private securities. They’re not public securities. Right. You could have publicly traded securities, which I normally read, real estate investment trusts and you can buy them on exchanges. The private securities they offer through private placement memorandums.

Mike Zlotnik [00:23:32]:
Ppms, that’s the formal term and they are offered to accredited investors only. So it’s not generally offered to, you know, to our general public. The law, it’s been, boy, I mean 1933, that’s the regional law.

James Kademan [00:23:48]:
Been a while.

Mike Zlotnik [00:23:48]:
Okay, yeah. The major change happened. I’m just going by memory here, forgive me if I’m a little wrong. With a year, I want to say 2013, there was like a jobs and something act and it allowed. It broadened the horizons for public marketing. So it used to be 506B, regulation D. 506B was the. We have to have prioritist in relationship.

Mike Zlotnik [00:24:16]:
The regulation C said no, you can market the general public, but you have to make sure that investors are accredited investors and you have to verify accreditation either through a CPA letter or an attorney letter or similar process to be able to accept that capital. That’s the major change that took place. It may be 2017 or 2013. For some reason that year sticks in my head. I just don’t remember which one.

James Kademan [00:24:39]:
Gotcha. Okay. I knew there was something that was relatively recent that it changed because I.

Mike Zlotnik [00:24:45]:
Feel like solicit, the solicitation is the most recent thing. It’s where they allow to solicit, but you have to take only a credit and invest the capital.

James Kademan [00:24:54]:
Gotcha. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Tell me a story about interest rates because those are top of mind, especially today, I guess, and it’s been somewhat of a roller coaster. So tell me how that affects the investments that you’re working with. Because I guess from my point of view, when it’s a 25 or 30 year lease, over the course of time you can expect interest rates to be up and down. So how does that affect or from your perspective.

Mike Zlotnik [00:25:20]:
Sure. So just give you general education. So interest rates, when interest rates fall in general, that tailwind for real estate, when they go up, it’s headwind. It’s as simple as this. Especially in commercial real estate. Uh, it’s a, it’s, it’s. It’s essentially cost of money problem. Right.

Mike Zlotnik [00:25:38]:
Most of these deals are bought on leverage, even conservative leverage. 60%, 65%. You’re still paying the cost of capital. So your cash flow depends on the cost of money interest rate. So as interest rates fall you’re willing to pay more for the same amount of income because your, your net cash flow are still better with low interest rates. Right, That’s a general directional thing. Where we are today we’ve seen a cycle, I’m going to go Back to the GFC Great Financial Crisis 2008 the Market Reset and we have seen cocaine from the government called zirp. The government gave us essentially a drug called zero interest rate policy.

Mike Zlotnik [00:26:18]:
For a long time we’ve seen federal funds rate at that level. It’s not effectively zero, but it’s a zero to a quarter that they held their target for many, many, many years. And you can go back to Ellen Greenspan, you can go to Bernanke, you can go through the Fed chairs. The bottom line is these low interest rates somehow didn’t cause a lot of inflation. They were kept as a stimulus to everything to keep the employment full, to help keep the country churning. And so long story short, we saw a little bit of a spike of interest rates in pre Covid few years before I think it started 2017, 18 the interest rates climbed from zero to about two and a half and we had Covid Covid hit. They cut the interest rates to zero again made liquidity broadly available. But at the same time the government printed insane amount of money, insane amount in very short amount of time.

Mike Zlotnik [00:27:14]:
So they flooded the economy with dollars like we’ve never seen before. Not just never to an, to an unprecedented proportion. Probably 2 or 3 trillion would have been enough. They, they did like 7 or 8, right, if you count all that. So and then you had a supply chain problems to trigger inflation. Obviously interest rates were elevated by the Fed had they had no choice. Inflation was out of control for some amount of time. So they pushed the rates up fast and furious.

Mike Zlotnik [00:27:41]:
And that obviously reset some level of commercial property. So multifamily, storage, and a number of other deals has seen an impact. Interestingly enough, open air shopping and industrial have seen a lot less of it. What we have seen is in general as interest rates increase capitalization rates. So what is a capitalization rate? It’s a term used but let me explain it in layman terms. Capitalization rate or cap rate in commercial real estate is simply unleveraged return on the equity invested. So if you buy a property for $10 million, just as an example and that property generates you $800,000 of unlevered net operating income revenues minus expenses, you take $800,000, you divide by 10 million, that’s 8%. That is a capitalization rate.

Mike Zlotnik [00:28:35]:
So as interest rates, when they were very low, the capitalization rates were lower. As interest rates rose because of cost of money rose, the capitalization rates rose. So all that means is the prices fell for the same level of income. So we saw market reset in valuations for some properties, but lot less industrial and lots less open air shopping. But very significant for multifamily and shopping and self storage as an example, after 2022, interest rate hikes, because the Fed hiked, if you remember, they went from zero to five and a half in a matter of 15 months. Very, very fast. So now we find ourselves in a uneasing cycle again. Right.

Mike Zlotnik [00:29:18]:
So that was a very fast, what is known as a tightening cycle where they pushed interest rates. Now they are gradually easing rates. We saw three cuts last year, half a percent in September last year and two more cuts. So we are talking about 1% was reduced, was cut in 24, now 25, we are likely going to see three cuts over a quarter. Right. So all that is generally pretty positive for commercial real estate. Lower cost of capital is improving returns on, on, on equity. So as a result valuations improve, cash flows improve.

Mike Zlotnik [00:29:55]:
So where are we going from here? Forward direction. Right. Crystal ball. I used to have one that broke and find another one for sale. But you don’t need to have a crystal ball. You know what’s going on, right? Trump is harping very hard on Powell, right. He wants Powell to cut rates. Powell is walking the tightrope and he’s, you know what’s going on.

Mike Zlotnik [00:30:18]:
He doesn’t want to be pushed around. Powell’s term matures May of 2026. The new Fed chair is going to be Trump appointed. A dove. That’s what they call it. A hawk happens when the interest rates rise and a dove when interest rates fall. So we get the new Fed chair. I would expect meaningful further cuts.

Mike Zlotnik [00:30:47]:
Now of course inflation is the real driver, but you have AI kind of impact. What we have seen is massive investment in AI which has actually propelled the economy to be where it is. And the investments are so staggering that without the AI investment we would have effectively be probably in a recession already. AI is actually highly deflationary in nature on a long term basis. Short term it’s. Let me explain, deflationary.

James Kademan [00:31:20]:
Do we know that? Because AI is relatively new, I guess on this scale anyways.

Mike Zlotnik [00:31:26]:
So I’m going to be bold enough to make that statement. Maybe I’m wrong.

James Kademan [00:31:31]:
Yeah, yeah, this is the place to do it.

Mike Zlotnik [00:31:34]:
The reason is deflationary Nature is technology, right? I’ve been in technology before I went to real estate. I spent 15 years in the technology world. Technology is generally deflationary in nature. So as technology improves, the cost for the same level of technology falls rapidly. I mean a computer used to cost $4,000 a year. Later it could cost for the same chip and the same memory and everything else. It cost half of it, right?

James Kademan [00:32:00]:
Yeah. I was just watching a documentary on the history of Steve Jobs and NeXT and all that kind of stuff and Apple and OS X and all that kind of stuff. And the prices that they showed in the ads for a typical Mac computer in the late 90s, I was thinking, oh my gosh, compared to what we’re paying now, it was like buying a house. It was crazy.

Mike Zlotnik [00:32:22]:
Yeah. There’s a Moore’s law. Founder of Intel Moore came up with a law that every 18 months the price of chips huffs and the computing capacity doubles. Now with AI chips, it’s even faster than that. So to make long story short, we are seeing very significant technology driven, you know, deflation in the cost of these things. But on the productivity side, see what AI is doing, just the basic tools we’re using, right. I’m writing, I’m writing a book right now and I’m using Claude AI and I don’t need a professional editor. A lot of this stuff AR as a first time editor does phenomenal job, right.

Mike Zlotnik [00:33:01]:
You’re talking about legal documents, you’re talking about accounting traits. There’s so many customer support. These AI agents, they can take quarters, the chatbots. There’s so many things that they can do that people used to do. So in general service, the cost of delivery of that service is coming down rapidly. You put in one of these AI agents as a sales executive to take orders. They’ll do it with a wonderful voice. It’s unbelievable how much the technology is already there and it’s improving rapidly.

Mike Zlotnik [00:33:36]:
So at the end of the day, certain trades, certain, you know, the cost of those services is, is it’s falling rapidly. That’s deflation. Like you want to talk to customer support, go talk to, to a AI agent before you got to pay that, that, that support wrap 20 bucks an hour here you have to pay nothing. You know, you, you. Well it’s not nothing, but you know what I mean.

James Kademan [00:33:57]:
The, as a guy that’s involved in the callsoncallcom world, it’s not quite that cut and dry, but I understand what you’re saying.

Mike Zlotnik [00:34:05]:
So directional. This is what’s happening. We don’t know everything. The AI companies, they’re projecting rapid robotics and other things that are going to happen. And however fast it goes, it’s generally speaking it’s deflationary in nature for the same services and products because technology improves them so much, then the cost of delivery or the cost of production is going to come down. Right. So what I believe at least my view is that we’re actually going to see lower level of interest rates as a result of that technology rapid improvement. Now the initial investment is you know, they’re building these data centers, they’re building chips capacity.

Mike Zlotnik [00:34:48]:
It’s kind of the, it’s an investment today that’s creating jobs and boosting the economy. Once that build out doesn’t need to take place the same way, we’re going to see some level of slowdown and maybe there will be a bunch of new jobs created. No argument on that front. But net net it feels like we’re going to see less inflationary environment in the long run. Now can the government can still print a lot of money and deal with all those issues? They could. So we don’t know for sure. And that’s the interesting piece. We don’t know where the direction of long term interest rates going to go.

Mike Zlotnik [00:35:29]:
I feel they’re going to come down, but they’re probably not going to go down to the same zero interest rate type of environment. The rates are at the elevated level today relative to where we’ve seen them for the last 20 years. And those people who say well the interest rates used to be even higher many years ago. It was a different world. So we’ll see where we need to be on a long term basis. But in general, real estate on a long term basis is a good hedge against inflation. On a short term basis there may be a little bit of up and down volatility related to the interest rates. So I would say if you have a time horizon, if you’re not in a kind of in a rapid.

Mike Zlotnik [00:36:13]:
I got to make a return in a year. By the way, real estate is not a good investment for a year. You have to have a five year time horizon. If you’re writing a check in real estate and those people who are writing a check in real estate and they want to get out in a year or two, you could do that. But you know, do it through reit, buy some publicly traded security. Don’t go into private real estate. A matter of speaking fair.

James Kademan [00:36:34]:
Totally fair. Yeah, you covered a lot of ground there. So let me try to pick and choose here what to chat about. One of the things I guess going back to the long term leases on the commercial stuff, I would be concerned if I was an investor and you tell me if this is crazy or not, if let’s just say something happens with government regulation or something where all of a sudden a manufacturer of some kind has to close up shop or minimize what they’re doing or they’re making typewriters and typewriters aren’t a thing anymore. Now you got this 100,000 square foot facility that’s empty and you guys are holding the bag on that. What do you do?

Mike Zlotnik [00:37:13]:
Well, you obviously have to have some forward outlook into what you are investing in, right? Industrial production, steel, stainless steel, I think it’s going to be around for a long time. We’re going to continue to build things. Now if you’re going to invest in a facility that makes, you know, I would call it tech heavy type of product, I mean I remember years ago I went to school in Binghamton, New York, substate New York and it was Endicott, IBM and they had you know, a lot of these plants and a lot of computers and then somehow IBM compatibles came into play and you know, there was a lot of deflationary pressure and they couldn’t compete and a bunch of those facilities closed. Right. So I don’t like in general high tech. Even though it may be very lucrative initially by high tech production, if that thing somehow slows down or competition is severe, you could lose a market share. The good old production industrial or open air shopping, where people need to shop, mission critical type of assets, they should still do well in the long run. And if you don’t know, diversify.

Mike Zlotnik [00:38:29]:
At the end of the day the best risk mitigation strategy is prudent diversification. So if you want to do some things in real estate, don’t put all your eggs in industrial basket. Do some open air shopping, some industrial, maybe go into some multifamily, maybe go into some storage. But understand where they are in the market cycle and if you’re getting the right value. So at the end of the day it’s not about a single asset, meaning you can go into a fund, the fund will diversify for you. So it’s kind of an approach where you try to do the best you can, understanding who is the tenant and what is their long term prospects. There’s another concept in industrial called flex industrial. So flex industrial means you have a 100,000 square foot property and it’s broken into 33,000 square feet type of properties, mechanics, garage, some other oil Change or some other car wash.

Mike Zlotnik [00:39:25]:
So what you get out of that is you have a mix of tenants. You have diversification of many smaller tenants. Now you’re managing that as a portfolio. So all you need is 90% occupancy. You expect 10% to be vacant. You can do it that way. So it doesn’t have to be single tenant risk, but a single tenant could be a beauty or a curse. Of course, if you lose it, beauty, if, if you’ve got a great underwriting and they’re going to be there for a long time, then you don’t need to worry about tenants leaving, new tenants getting in.

Mike Zlotnik [00:39:55]:
So there’s pros and cons to everything.

James Kademan [00:39:58]:
That’s fair. When I guess I mentioned that Walgreens 100 year lease thing and Walgreens, I just, I don’t know if it was a month ago or two or months ago, they’re starting to shut down some of their locations. And then I think who’s going to replace those buildings or what’s going to go in there Instead of a Walgreens, it’s just going to be a Dollar General or whatever all over the country. It’s interesting when you look at stuff like that.

Mike Zlotnik [00:40:23]:
Well then the question becomes location. Real estate, it’s one of the most important characteristics. Where is it located and who else can go into that location? Right? So I mean, New York City, you got some, you know, Walgreens and other ones who depart. I mean you see other people taking the space. If it’s in a good location, you don’t see a problem. But yes, it will take some for the capital to do tenant improvements. You’re gonna have to find a tenant. It’s, I mean, we’ve seen this.

Mike Zlotnik [00:40:49]:
It’s kind of even interesting. Even incredibly solid companies sometimes decide to close a branch. Chase Bank, Chase used to be everywhere. They had branches, every freaking corner. And they said we don’t need so many branches. So they start exiting some branches and then you see, I don’t think they’re breaking leases. If you have a great credit quality tenant, they pay the lease for the whole duration. So from that perspective, you have predictable situation where you could market while the property is empty, find a new tenant and then allow the old tenant to break lease because you have a new tenant in a matter of speaking.

James Kademan [00:41:29]:
Got it. All right, interesting. Tell me, let’s go back to your story. How did you get involved in all this? If you were in the technology side before, now you’re in real estate investing. What made the shift on Your end?

Mike Zlotnik [00:41:43]:
Sure. So like many of us, we go through kind of phases in life cycles, whatever you want to call them. So I had a successful career, had some exits. I was doing well, but I was a little burned out. I spent almost 15 years in technology. I had great friends. I liked it. But technology felt like, you know, my last gig.

Mike Zlotnik [00:42:03]:
I had five departments to run. I had a lot of people reporting to me nearshore, offshore. We had people, you know, in Canada, customer support centers, sales centers. Nova Scotia had a very interesting. It was. I liked it and I hated it because you could get, you know, middle of a night phone calls you had to be on all the time. It was a little too much. I wanted something that I really didn’t have to work all the time, something that I can make investment decisions and the money could work for me.

Mike Zlotnik [00:42:36]:
So I discovered real estate passively in year 2000, buying my first apartment in Brooklyn. And then I continued to buy more in passively. And I just found that, listen, it works. It’s just you passively, you get some cash flow, you get appreciation. New York City is very light cash flow, more appreciation. But other markets, you get a lot more cash flow and less appreciation. So you could do this passively or you could do this actively. And I found I like this was my passion.

Mike Zlotnik [00:43:06]:
I really enjoyed it. So 2009, I went full time because I was down with real estate, was done with it. I was just a little bit burned out. I said, I had enough of that. Not that I don’t like it. I still like it, but there are days when I hate it. And I had ability, I had some capital and all that fun stuff that I had to do. The switch was almost natural.

Mike Zlotnik [00:43:30]:
And I never looked back because I found this is my passion. I like it, I really enjoy it. I like underwriting deals. I’m a mathematician by education. I’m a chess master by. By, you know, by bringing up. I grew up playing chess from the age, you know, my father was a chess master, I became a chess master. So logical thinking and underwriting deals and negotiating was just natural to me.

Mike Zlotnik [00:43:56]:
So I really found real estate to be a very, very good area. Kind of my genius zone. I use this term for those who don’t know. Genius zone is a combination of three things, typically something you’re good at, something you really like, and something that makes you money. So if you find something like that, it’s not work anymore. It’s just you’re having fun and you’re good at this, and the journey continues.

James Kademan [00:44:20]:
That’s awesome. So you getting out of tech, did that coincide with the dot com crash intentionally?

Mike Zlotnik [00:44:30]:
Remember, dot com crash was 2000. Yeah, right, 2001. Whatever it was, it was already you.

James Kademan [00:44:36]:
Mentioned you got your first property in 2000, so I just wondered if that.

Mike Zlotnik [00:44:39]:
Yeah, yeah, I had nothing to do. I just bought my properties passively. So what I was doing is I was making money in technology and I was buying real estate early. So what, what the journey was is let me start writing some initial checks to buy some apartments passively and be basically a part time landlord and a full time technology executive. And then over time it became pretty clear that I wanted to do a lot more of passive real estate investing. We turned into an active kind of business for me. But again, active in real estate is not the same active as in. Active means your own.

Mike Zlotnik [00:45:20]:
You’re on. You have systems, technologies, customers, deployments. Middle of the night. We have to deploy software in the middle of the night. Like literally middle of the night. And with real estate, you work normal hours, you look for deals, you negotiate. Yes, sometimes I’ll take phone calls on weekends, sometimes I’ll respond for sure. But it’s because I want to do it, not because I have to do it.

Mike Zlotnik [00:45:43]:
So it’s very different. Things don’t need your attention all the time. You own a building, right? And rarely ever you have like an emergency, you have triple net industrial. There’s nothing to do that. It’s purely like asset management, not even property management. If you own multifamily property people, you have professional property management at scale, right. They take the phone calls. You’re not dealing with tenants or toilets.

Mike Zlotnik [00:46:11]:
My toilet clogged up. Okay, Call the property manager. Your phone number is not even available. So in general it’s a very. It’s mostly passive. I mean you could be as active as you want, but you can be completely passive, write a check and just enjoy the benefits. Nice.

James Kademan [00:46:28]:
Let’s talk about really quick. The returns on investment with real estate that you’ve seen and what you can expect people to see. And if it’s different between residential and commercial.

Mike Zlotnik [00:46:40]:
Yeah, it’s different. And a full disclaimer, right? People looking at the deal, they should read formal offering documents. There’s always risks. There’s nothing risk free. And you know, for the record, markets reset when the interest rates spiked. Some property values fell and as a result, losses did take place in business. And this is not a surprise. So people who wrote a check in multifamily in 21 and 22, number of these assets are Sitting underwater today because the market resets so much so.

Mike Zlotnik [00:47:11]:
But today it’s a very different market conditions because I believe the interest rate cycle, we are on a down trend. Plus you’re getting into better deals, more predictable deals, in a manner of speaking. So returns vary, of course. So I’m going to mention there’s different strategies and the different return profiles. You could be a lender in real estate too. You could invest in private credit, you can invest in hard money lending funds. So those funds generate typically, you know, 9 to 11% annual return for fix and flip project, residential projects, et cetera. Now if you go into commercial, it depends.

Mike Zlotnik [00:47:47]:
So it depends on the type of deal and depends on type of return profile. But industrial, in my view is just giving you an example. It’s a pretty conservative strategy because it is so predictable. It typically is financed with conservative leverage, fixed rate debt. You have also most of the deals that we invest in today, at least in our world, these properties are acquired with a positive spread, significant positive spread between the cap rate and the interest rate. One thing that I haven’t talked about, I’m going to mention it now, is for example, this industrial deal is acquired at about 8.6% capitalization rate. So if it was no mortgage, the cash on cash would be 8.6% as an example, and its finance was 6.3. Right.

Mike Zlotnik [00:48:35]:
So you have a positive spread, which is a margin of safety it creates, it can magnify cash flow. And you know, even if you have some challenges, you have more cash flow than you need to cover your mortgage significantly. So industrial real estate, typically the returns are in the meetings, let’s call it 15% and higher. And your cash flow from the start, it starts, let’s just call it 7, 8%. Sometimes you can get a little more, depending on the type of asset that’s industrial, you go to open air shopping. It depends. Some assets are very, very stabilized and very predictable. And you’re looking at a very similar return like triple net industrial or some projects, they have some value add.

Mike Zlotnik [00:49:21]:
So example, the open air shopping that we did over the summer, the one I mentioned to you in San Diego, it was acquired with only 84% occupancy at a capitalization rate of nine and a quarter. It was bought really, really well. So it’s target return. Because when you buy something well in real estate, you make the money on the buy. This is an expression, you can make the money on the buy because you buy so well, but then you still have a value at work. So value at work is to lease up remaining 16% of the property. And if you lease up a portion of it, you increase the noi further and you can increase value. And there are other ways to increase value of the property.

Mike Zlotnik [00:50:00]:
In that particular example, it’s a property in San Diego, beautiful weather, perfect. It’s got a beautiful courtyard. And one of the investments is to enhance number of events that are running at that open air shop in Plaza. So they’re trying to do more events, attracts a lot more traffic, it helps the tenants and it builds the value across the entire ecosystem. So you could do value add initiatives like open air shopping. You can do a value add, you can sell out parcel, you could develop out parcel and you can sell it and you can sell a piece of the property, but you get a much better price per dollar of income because out parcel people just want to own it as a standalone asset. So there’s ways to enhance it multifamily. Value adds, you know, renovate apartments and lease up as long as the market supports higher rents.

Mike Zlotnik [00:50:54]:
So again, return profiles for industrial, that said, mid teens went up open air shopping, at least we’ve seen value add projects. You get into high teens will multifamily today for us to look at a project and again, it’s specific to us. It’s different for different strokes for different folks. We are looking if we want to look, get involved multifamily. I want to see target returns in the twenties at minimum. Why? Because I want to buy deep. There’s distress in the market if I don’t buy deep enough. It’s okay, we could pass on the deal.

Mike Zlotnik [00:51:25]:
So the return targets vary by different investments. Some people want to do volume, we don’t want to do volume. We want to do precision. So for us, return requirements may be a little higher than for some other folks. But we don’t want to transact until we see a good deal today. And today is very different than a few years ago because the market conditions are actually better for buyers because the interest rates are higher. So if you can find a motivated situation, you can get better returns. So in general, commercial real estate returns go from, let’s call it very low teens in debt.

Mike Zlotnik [00:52:01]:
You are high single digits, low double digits. Then you go into low teens, into mid teens, into high teens. And as the value add component of the project increases, then you wind up in the 20s plus. And we don’t do anything in ground up or heavy redevelopment. But if I were to get involved with the develop and redevelop. Sorry, I am lying. I’m openly saying, well not today, we’re not doing anything today we have a redevelopment of a 20 apartment building in Manhattan about a block away from Central park into single family townhome. It’s a unique one off asset.

Mike Zlotnik [00:52:37]:
Not like we don’t do this in value. It’s a unique property. So on that property the return target is 25% higher and it’s redevelopment of a historic building to a single family townhouse, townhome, that’s going to be 17,000 square feet a block away from Central Park. It’s a unique asset. Right. This the reason we’re doing this because there’s no supply, right. Manhattan, you just don’t have properties like this. So that’s why.

Mike Zlotnik [00:53:07]:
So the more you go into these development, redevelopment, your turn, target has to go higher and higher and higher because the risk is going to, risk is increasing. That’s why the higher you go on the risk scale, you have to have higher potential return targets because it can take longer, it costs more to do, et cetera.

James Kademan [00:53:29]:
Got it. Tell me a story really quick, Mike, about your team. How are you finding these properties and getting the deals done and doing all the paperwork and all that Jazz? Because I imagine that’s not just you.

Mike Zlotnik [00:53:41]:
That’s right. So we are uniquely different from many other folks that we play the role, what I call capital partner. So investor. We marry money and opportunity. Let’s start at the beginning. So we are not an active hustler out there who’s looking for deals marketing. We find the people who are actively a specialist in their strategies. So the folks we investing with, we’re writing a very big check to them.

Mike Zlotnik [00:54:07]:
We come to them and say, hey, you don’t have to go raise a bunch of small checks. We bring you a lot of capital and as a result we’re going to step on your toes. We’re going to negotiate better terms for our investors. So because we are a big check writer, we’re acting like a, we’re not an institutional player, not a million pound gorilla, but we are on a smaller scale acting like one. So our job is to have folks with capital and then on the other side we have operators. All they do is triple net industrial or all they do is open air shopping. So they’re specialists, deep specialists in their strategies. And then they come to us and literally I had a call as an example with an open air shopping.

Mike Zlotnik [00:54:48]:
This is how aids deal with them, that San Diego property. And my conversation with him is like, what do you get? Coming up, he says, I’m bidding on so many properties, this is what’s happening. I see the forward outlook of what’s happening. And he says, the moment I think I’m going to win a bid, I’m going to call you. And I do get these phone calls. I had a phone call that I got from him about a month ago. He had a phenomenal deal on a relatively new construction with a motivated seller, multifamily with a 9% cap rate, capitalization rate of 9% is very, very. It’s a low price, high cap rate.

Mike Zlotnik [00:55:23]:
For multifamily, it’s too high. And I said for a new property or old property, says it’s relatively new couple of year construction, the seller is motivated. So long story short, he didn’t win the deal. So he called me in advance, he said, hey, I might get it, would you be interested? And I said, yeah. And then he didn’t get it. It’s okay. So that’s what we do. We basically build relationships.

Mike Zlotnik [00:55:46]:
We talk with these folks all the time. What do they have coming up? So when they have a deal, it’s not a volume operation, it’s a deal. They might have looked through 100 deals, bid on 100 deals. One, one. And we get the phone call. So our team, yeah, we have an internal underwriting team. We outsource a lot of our fund administration, we outsource software, we outsource CPA work, tax work, audits, all this gets outsourced. So we have an in house team, but we use a lot of relationships to build the ecosystem.

Mike Zlotnik [00:56:16]:
Does that make sense?

James Kademan [00:56:17]:
It does, yeah. Yeah. Very cool. I love it, Mike. Where can people find you?

Mike Zlotnik [00:56:24]:
Well, it’s back to Big Mike, right? It’s going to get easy and cheesy. So Big Mike Fund, right? I’m a fund manager and the best way people can find, I have a corporate website, but people go to bigmikefund.com and if you misspell it, you forget the D at the end. You go to bigmikefun.com I promise it’s not a kinky site.

James Kademan [00:56:48]:
I love it, I love it.

Mike Zlotnik [00:56:49]:
And by the way, just like you are running a podcast, I run a podcast too, with a cheesy name, Big Mike Fund Podcast. So when you go to that page, it’ll pretty obvious you could actually tune in to podcast episodes. And I tell people when you’re bored, you got nothing else to listen to.

James Kademan [00:57:06]:
You know, if they have fun and it happens to help them make a couple bucks. Doesn’t sound terrible, right?

Mike Zlotnik [00:57:13]:
Just like you, I’M doing this is because I love doing. It’s actually fun and I love to educate. I love to spend time chatting with great people. So that whole podcast thing is purely for the benefit of folks. They can learn something. And from time to time, we have great guests to the point where we have some folks who know, like Jay Powell, they know some of these. So some guests are really. They’ll talk about monetary policy, they’ll talk about interest rates.

Mike Zlotnik [00:57:40]:
They’ll talk about some advanced topics. And then we’ll have some active operators. Hey, all they do is this strategy. And from time to time, we’ll have investors. So the podcast is just a little bit more. It’s broader and more educational for no other reason.

James Kademan [00:57:54]:
Did you say you had Jerome Powell on your podcast?

Mike Zlotnik [00:57:56]:
I didn’t have Jerome Powell on a podcast. What I did have is a. She’s a good friend. She’s a frequent guest with, like, Maria Bertiromo. In other words, she’s been on multiple, you know, Fox Business, a number of other business news podcasts, and she knows Jay Powell. That’s what.

James Kademan [00:58:17]:
Yeah, gotcha. Okay, so a couple degrees there, but okay. Yeah, I mean, I was like, whoa, I’m outgunned here.

Mike Zlotnik [00:58:25]:
Yeah, I’m a small Paul and I don’t hang out with Jay Powell.

James Kademan [00:58:28]:
All right, well, I mean, you could always invite him. Maybe he’s got some time and maybe.

Mike Zlotnik [00:58:33]:
When he retires, he kind of is done with the, with his fair share job and yeah, if he’s got nothing else to do, maybe.

James Kademan [00:58:41]:
I imagine he’s got some stories that he would love to share but just can’t right now.

Mike Zlotnik [00:58:45]:
Oh, he’s going to be restricted. He’s going to have to be. He’s either going to retire or he’s going to have speaking gigs and he’s going to be very controlled what information he shares because, you know, I don’t, I don’t think it’s a gag order. It’s more of a. It’s some things they’re going to keep private for a long time. Right, Right.

James Kademan [00:59:03]:
Interesting world we’re in. Mike, I appreciate you being on the show.

Mike Zlotnik [00:59:07]:
Thank you, James. I appreciate being here.

James Kademan [00:59:10]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggles, stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kiedeman and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web https://callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. We also are sponsored by Live Switch, offering live video for all your clients and customers so they can show you what’s going on and what the problem is. If you’re listening to this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give it a big old thumbs up, subscribe and of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends and those friends that you may have that are interested in investing in real estate, learning about real estate, investing in a fund with real estate. Am I missing anything there, Mike?

Mike Zlotnik [01:00:03]:
No, that’s about it.

James Kademan [01:00:04]:
That’s about it. Thank you for our wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Mike Zlotnik. Mike, can you tell us that website one more time?

Mike Zlotnik [01:00:13]:
BigMikeFund.com Awesome.

James Kademan [01:00:16]:
And then the podcast, one more time.

Mike Zlotnik [01:00:18]:
Big Mike Fund Podcast.

James Kademan [01:00:21]:
It doesn’t get easier than that. Past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the Podcast link found at drawincustomers.com thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.