Podcast 214. The Effects of AI in Real Estate with Tony Lopes

Average Joe Finences:
0:01

Hey, Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances podcast. I'm your host Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Tony Lopes. And I'm gonna say this right now. This is round two. We tried to do this before and we had some connectivity issues, but Tony, I really appreciate you taking the time, a second time to have this conversation with me. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you for coming on the show.

Tony Lopes:
0:22

Likewise. I appreciate you you taking the time with me. And for the folks at home listening or watching this, the issues were all on my end, not on Mike's. He is a true professional when it comes to this, and I'm so blessed to to know him and to be here with you guys today. So thank you, Mike.

Average Joe Finences:
0:38

You're too kind. It could have been on my end too, I don't know, but but hey, look. So let's get past all that. I'm excited to talk to you today'cause I know when we were talking last time, we had some pretty good stuff we were talking about. So I definitely wanna dive into that. But first, if you could share a little bit about yourself, share your story. Who is Tony Lopes?

Tony Lopes:
1:01

Thank you for the opportunity to, share my story here. I'm no different than a lot of your viewers, a lot of your listeners out there. I am the average Joe. There's nothing really I wasn't born with superpowers or anything like that. I'm actually the product of of immigrants. I. My parents came over here to this country on the boat literally on the boat back in the day from Portugal, and they were blue collar workers and so we grew up in apartment buildings. And so I was basically given the mantra from my parents who came from a country with little opportunity to this great country with a hell of a lot of opportunity for us. And they gave me the mantra of go to school, get a good education, you'll get a good job, and you'll be set for life. And that's what I was taught primarily from my parents. And so that's what I did. I went to school. I got a good education, I got a good job. And then I got laid off and I looked around and I said, wait a minute. This wasn't part of the plan. And I wasn't financially independent at that time Mike. So I had to quickly figure that out. I had to find another job. Took me about three months to find another job, and here I was. I had a engineering degree and I had an MBA and I was, I thought I was on top of the world. But getting laid off was really a kept things in check and ultimately made me think more about my freedoms. Which is a huge value to me. And being able to maintain those freedoms and what I needed to do personally and professionally to make the most out of those freedoms that this great country allows us. So once I got another job I started to plan for my my first real estate investment. And that came about two years after I started my job back up. I bought a quad a four unit building and. That ultimately allowed me to create some cash flow, which I then ultimately got into building single family homes. I built a couple of single family homes. The market was good. I took that profit and I reinvested it back into the multi-family space. I bought a triple deck decker. I bought a duplex. Just, again, just getting to that place where my cashflow from the real estate could replace. The the weekly paycheck from my job, right? So I was creating, had these two income streams, my job and my real estate. And so I eventually got to a place where, at the age of 44, I had enough real estate after doing all that to be able to retire for my corporate job which was great. I don't put that corporate job down and I don't put anybody down that has a W-2, I was there in that space. Yeah, I was able to retire at 44 and have been loving life ever since. So that's a little bit of my story.

Average Joe Finences:
3:59

No that's fantastic. Just to be able to get yourself to that point where you could say, Hey, at 44, I'm financially independent. A lot of people, their goal is to get there by 65. So either way, you're already ahead of that pack and winning.

Tony Lopes:
4:12

And again I'm not special. I want to, really drive that home. It took me this many fingers, five years to get through college. I am not a a special person or have any superpowers. So for me I just really encourage the average Joe out there, the average Joe and the average Jane. This is a very doable thing.

Average Joe Finences:
4:36

Yeah. No, and that's why I really appreciate a story like yours too, because it definitely hits home for a lot of people that listen to this podcast, the fact that we're all sold this, quote unquote American Dream, right? And that's to, you graduate high school, you go to college, you get yourself into something that's a marketable degree that you can go out and get a good, decent or high paying job. And then you put your money into your 401k and IRA and you retire at the ripe old age of 65 and whatever. The average lifespan right now for Americans is what? 73. So you get yourself. A good eight years of being able to be quote unquote independent. And during those eight years, you're a lot older now, so you know, you're not going out and surfing or anything like that, 'cause you can be like, oh my back. So there's all these things that, that, that push us to find another way. Because we have this one life and you wanna live and enjoy that life, and you need money to do that, right? Yeah. So then, I'm not saying that money buys happiness, but it can buy things that will bring you to happiness. So For sure, but I really appreciate your story, especially because you finished college, you got an engineering degree, you got a high paying job, things were looking perfect. And then what happened? You got laid off. Yeah. That's one of those things. You don't have security in a job unless you're like in the military, you have to get in trouble to get kicked out, but you don't have any type of job security no matter where you go. So it's a big deal that you can create different streams of income. To support your life and to be able to pay your bills then you don't have to worry about being laid off or having to search for another job in the future. Now, you started off buying that initial quadplex, right? And then you started building some single family rentals, right? Because I recall from the last conversation we had you had a developed a couple of these properties, right? On some land you bought the land and then had them built.

Tony Lopes:
6:32

Yeah. Yeah. They I had two new buildings built, two new homes, single family residents. But I didn't rent 'em. I actually sold them and I took that money that profit, and I reinvested it into Multifamilies.

Average Joe Finences:
6:45

So yeah, you bought a couple more duplexes, quadplexes, right?

Tony Lopes:
6:49

Yeah.

Average Joe Finences:
6:49

Now from there What was the next steps like after you bought a couple more duplexes and quadplexes? I know this probably wasn't a point at where you could say, okay, I have enough income to where I can walk away from my job at this point. I don't think you were there quite yet. So what was like the next step after you bought that last quadplex?

Tony Lopes:
7:09

For me, my, my goal was to get to two times my salary. That was my goal in terms of, say I was making a thousand bucks a month, I wanted to have rental income of $2,000 a month. Right? That's, that was my goal to be able to two, have two x my, my my corporate salary. And that was, That's what I was doing. I was buying duplexes. I was buying a triplex. I bought a five unit building and just just continued to buy the best building that I could, that had some value add associated with it. Now, I'll share with you along the way I didn't, so to speak. Do this all myself and I need folks to understand that. And it's not that anybody, so to speak helped me to any great extent. But what I share here is, I. Is a big thing about using people in your network, using people in your neighborhood. In that, we have local real estate investment groups, things like that. If you're new to real estate investing, go seek out those folks who have done what you're looking to do. And so that's what I did. I went out and I found those people who had multiple buildings who had grown. They helped me wrap my head around where do I come up with the down payment? How do I do that? How do I manage these buildings? All these how-tos I went to people who have already done it. And that was a huge factor in my success is is leveraging those people in my network. Now, if you don't have that network, you have to go create it. You have to go create that, and that takes a little bit of time, but that's not a heavy lift. That's something that's very doable for the average Joe and the average.

Average Joe Finences:
8:58

And I really like the fact that you're talking about, you realize that at some point you needed you can't do this on your own, right? You needed to team up and get with other people. And you started meeting people at networking events and things like that. Being able to pick the brain of somebody that might be, a few years ahead of you is literally a gold mine, right? Because it just provides so much value.'cause you're like, okay. This person did it and they did it this way only you know, two years ago if they were able to do this. I can do this, I just gotta follow the same steps. I, and then, and if you get really lucky, you'll find the person that's made all the big mistakes that will tell you, Hey, don't do this because it'll, you're gonna find out the hard way that it sucks.

Tony Lopes:
9:41

Yeah. And I wanna throw out a nugget relative to some really good learning that I had along the way. A lot of folks who go down and I don't, necessarily wanna make it a pure real estate conversation, but there are a lot of folks out there who are looking to get into real estate and. Who have heartburn over hard money lenders, right? We use hard money lenders occasionally to come up with that down payment. And that's okay. Hard money is just a term referring basically referring to you're getting money from an individual and it's actually the asset. The hard asset that you're buying is what? The collateral is for the money that you are receiving from this lender. So this hard money lender is actually sometimes one of the best places you can go to for your down payment because not only are you gonna do all the math and all the checks and the due diligence to make sure that property is gonna cashflow and be a good property for you. This hard money lender who's given you their money, they're gonna do the same thing. If you're just starting out and you don't have a lot of experience, how valuable is that to have a hard money lender who's actually gonna do that due diligence for you and with you, and you're gonna learn from that person, why did you run the numbers this way? Why did you do that type of due diligence? Why are you looking at the leases? All these different things that you most likely as a new investor, right? You haven't even thought of. That is valuable learning you are gonna get from a hard money lender. It's not just taking their money. There is a ton of learning you're gonna get from that individual.

Average Joe Finences:
11:26

Yeah, no, that, that is some very strong and valid points that re really good takeaways for those that are listening, it's, There's more than just the piece, where you're networking with other people. It's the other people that you bring in on your team, that are a part of this deal with you and whether or not you wanna think of a hard money lenders being somebody on your team. They are. Because they're part of this deal too. They have a vested interest that this deal works out. The last thing they wanna do is hunt you down because you're not able to pay them because you. Got into a crap deal.'cause now they put all that money that they gave you at risk. So yeah it's that's a huge thing. And I think it's, it all just goes around building relationships, right? Having good relationships with the people in your circle. Having good relationships with the people that you invest with, people on your team. I think that's all super important. Now, Tony, I wanna talk to you a little bit about, there were some topics that. You had mentioned to me earlier that you wanted to discuss and one of 'em is, AI and renter nation. So if you could, let's dive a little bit into that. If you could talk to me about, what your thoughts are on Renter Nation, and then also what your thoughts are on AI for the future of real estate investors.

Tony Lopes:
12:36

Sure. So I'll work to bubble this up. So there's so many factors that are driving us towards renter nation. There's political factors, there's economic factors, there's energy factors. There's. Societal factors. So maybe just a couple of points on that. We just got over this huge conversation within the political realm of our debt ceiling, right? We hit that debt ceiling and they just increased it again, and that's no surprise. And they will continue to increase that debt sailing. But what's that doing that's making our interest payments just. More and more into the future. So these interest payments n need to come from somewhere. They need to be paid, right? And the government will pay those. But what it potentially means is there's less funding available at the federal level to give to our states. Okay, so what does that mean? At the state level, if the state isn't getting federal money for bridges and roads and certain welfare type programs, the state needs to figure that out. They need to come up with that shortfall. And chances are it's gonna come from property taxes. Okay? Because the property owners are seen as like the rich people. And as those property taxes go up, Being able to afford buying a home is going to just get more and more difficult because that's, obviously that rolls into your monthly payment and it becomes can become really unaffordable. We're gonna see as a result of that one thing, there will be a certain amount of people that will not be able to afford because of the higher property taxes that will drive them towards a renter base. Okay, so that's one thing that's happening. Another thing that's happening, we have this energy crisis that's going on. It's actually we've, I think it was a year or two ago, we already hit peak energy production. So it's now taking more and more barrels of oil to pull, say a, a hundred barrels of oil out of the ground. What used to take one barrel of oil now takes, I don't know, I'm just gonna make it up. It takes 20 barrels of oil to pull a hundred out of the ground. It's just more and more expensive to get that oil out of the ground. What does that mean? It means the cost to, to produce goods for the manufacturer of a home. The asphalt for the driveway, the shingles for the roof, just being able, to have the equipment on site to be able to excavate and do foundations and bring all that in, the trucking of goods in all of that just gets more expensive. So over overall, over time, the value of the house, the cost of a house is just gonna increase and again, creates an affordability issue. Okay. So that's what's happening in politics with debt sailing. That's what's happening with energy making housing more affordable. We also have I'll share from a societal impact effect. We are just lazier these days as a society, right? We have all these great things like, Uber Eats and DoorDash and Amazon that delivers something next day. The overall mentality of things, and I'm not saying this is good or bad, it just is. So hopefully we don't get a lot of hate mail in the comments below. It just is. And so the the energy to say, okay let's go mow the lawn. It's just, it's not ingrained in us like it was, 20 or 50 years ago to work on our house. That's just not ingrained in us. There's other things pulling our time away if we don't wanna go get our own food and DoorDash, Instacart, things like that. Amazon. We don't want to even go to Walmart to pick up our goods. We have to order 'em off Amazon because it's easier and we don't have to leave the house. What are the chances somebody's gonna mow their lawn, fix their house, clean their gutters, all that sort of stuff. So the motivation to own a home just isn't there. They would rather, society overall is trending towards having somebody else take care of those tasks for them. Which trends more towards the renter nation. Of things. So ho hopefully that helps. And those are just three things and there's so many more that we could talk about and make this a two hour video. But you wanna do that?

Average Joe Finences:
17:04

No. So Tony, that, that is pretty significant information the way that you shared it, right? Because when I think about people wanting to, to rent, I think about it from an affordability perspective, right? Because of the way the economy's been going and. Just in general, for the most part it's cheaper. It costs less per month to rent. Versus owning a home right now with today's interest rates. Yeah. And it used to be the opposite. It used to be, Hey, you buy a home and your monthly cost is less than what you would pay for rent. It's oh, this is a no-brainer. But then you add in all the other things, like repairs and maintenance and other things that come up and you look at it and you're like, ah, it's probably closer to breaking even. But the way that you put it with the way how society is today it, we're very much I want it now. Society. If I can't get it now, then I don't want it at all. Yeah. That's the way that we're going. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It goes to show how far we've utilized technology and just different methods to make things quicker and more efficient. cause efficiency's huge, right? Yeah. We love efficiency, but at the same time, It's changing our chemistry as humans to, to what we think is important, what our work ethic is. And that's a great point because, I hear other people talk about this they're like I don't wanna mow my lawn because that takes up too much of my time and my time could be spent. Doing something, making me more money, so I'll pay somebody to mow my lawn. Now, if you're looking at it from that perspective, that's different. But if you're looking at it from a pure convenience and laziness perspective, which a lot of people do, they're like, I just don't wanna do it. I'd rather be playing video games or something else, yeah. And a lot of people in society are that way now. There are other people that, like I said, like real estate investors entrepreneurs that have that mindset that say I wanna do the higher dollar per hour task, right? So I'll hire this stuff out. I will outsource certain things, who not how, right? Yeah. So that's important. But at the same time, if you're not doing it for those reasons and you're doing it simply because of the fact that you don't want to do it because. You're lazy or you are you'd rather spend that time playing games or, going out and skateboarding or something, I don't know whatever it is that, that you enjoy doing in your free time that you would rather do instead of taking care of your own personal responsibilities. And yes, we, it might catch some flack for this one, it is what it is, right? Because this is what we're seeing today. And if we don't call it out and point it out to people, they. They might not even realize that they're doing it because we become we're very programmatic, right? Humans in general we and ourselves into a system. We get used to that system. Like I'll tell you right now, since I retired from the Navy and I've been home, I. It is very hard for me to find the motivation to go to the gym every day the way I used to when I was active duty in the military. And I was just talking to you about that offline, about this oh, you're like, oh what's next after this interview? And I was like, oh, I got another meeting. And you're like, oh yeah. And then the beach, right? Because you live in Hawaii. I'm like, no. After that I'm going to the gym because my fat ass has been putting it off too much. And I gotta take care of myself. Yeah. Things like that. You don't even realize that you get yourself into this system or into this cycle, and it's just so hard to break out of it. And, hopefully this can be an episode that somebody will come listen to and it'll open their eyes and they'll be like, huh, holy crap, I do need to mow my own lawn. I do need to go change my own light bulb, and things like that. Yeah. So I think that's significant. Tony.

Tony Lopes:
20:43

There's so much happening in society. And that's just one thing, a couple other quick things. Not to make this whole video about it, you look at what's happened just recently since 2000, or the 19, late 1990s, Kids who were living in a household when their parents went through the tech bubble and that burst and those parents struggled to pay their house or their houses were foreclosed on right during that tech bubble pop. Those kids. Are now adults. They witnessed that hardship and they are coming into this environment after seeing that saying, do I wanna go through that? My parents potentially went and they almost lost their home, or they did lose their home. That happened in the late nineties, right? 2000. Then we also had, j just in 2008, right? We all know the great financial crisis. A lot of people lost their home, a lot of foreclosures. Those kids back in 2008. Are now adults and they're asking themselves, do I want to own a home? That's another you talk about the pro the programming effects, how we're programmed, those are data points that you know, even though Nobody's actually, like the parent isn't turning to the child and saying, Hey, we're about to lose our home, or We're going through these financial troubles. The kid is being programmed, they're in that house. They feel that pain, they see those, those conversations going on. And so they are learning from that. The other thing that's going on is separately from that, There's no more loyalty in this country between companies and worker as well as worker and the companies. That loyalty that used to exist when my parents told me, go to school, get a good education, get a good job. You're set for life. That was 50 years ago. That doesn't exist to a large degree. I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, but we all know that loyalty is definitely much, much less today. So people are much more nomadic today. Yeah, if they lose their job because that loyalty isn't there. If they lose their job and they own a home, their world is this small, they have to find a job within that radius. But if they're a renter, they can go anywhere. They can move from Massachusetts to Colorado, to Florida, to Texas, wherever their jobs are as a renter, you're not tied down. So there's a lot of different, just to unpack a few more things there.

Average Joe Finences:
23:10

No and that's a great point, Tony, because you know what you bring up, for what parents passed down to their children, To do what they did. Again, I see this with my own parents. My wife's parents too they graduated high school and went to work, right? In like trades and everything. And they were able to, with just a high school diploma, buy a home, get a car, live the typical American dream. You can't do that today. You can't, it's just not possible. You have to go to college and get a degree and now it's not even a bachelor's degree is enough. You need to get a master's, you need to go get a PhD. Right. And even then you're doing that to go get a job that pays maybe $70,000 a year. Exactly. It's just not realistic for where society is today. So many things have changed. But. One thing that hasn't changed is the level of inflation that we've been experiencing, right? So it's not matching to what the income levels are compared to 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Right now, when. You triggered something into me when you were mentioning about, the kids growing up in the late nineties, early two thousands, and the kids that went through the stuff in 2008. Hey, yeah, I went through both of that. Yeah. I was graduating high school and I graduated high school in 2002, joined the Navy. I did that 'cause I wanted stability, right? I was gonna go to college, but my dad couldn't afford to pay for it. My family couldn't afford to pay for me to go to school. So I said how am I gonna do this? I joined the Navy, right? I said, I want to give myself something. I wanna go out and be on my own at 18 years old. And I did, and I've been on my own ever since. And, I took that and I took advantage of all the different programs that were put in front of me. And I worked hard. I busted my ass to get to where I am today. I. But at the same time, I look at my cohort, right? I look at my peers and I look at, some of them still complaining today on social media about, I can't afford a house because A, B, C, or D And I'm like, there's ways to get there. I was like, you're, you just, you're going off of that mentality that you were raised with, that you saw your parents go through, and you're thinking that it's not fair that you can't do it the way that they did it. Yes. I. It's not fair that you can't do it the way that they did it, but life's not fair, right? You have to figure out a way that works for you, for your family, right? We have to adapt and overcome. If we don't do that, you will be crushed, right? I don't wanna be crushed. So I adapted and I overcame and I keep moving forward. And then I have friends, in my friend group that. Look at me like, I think I'm, better than other people or anything. Like I was like, no, I'm not. Like I literally am an average Joe. I went, I did my nine to five, I worked in the Navy. Yeah. Worked really hard, promoted up through the ranks. I invested in real estate, I invested in the stock market. I put money in my thrift savings plan, all these different things to help build myself up and build my net worth so that I could, be financially independent at a younger age. And I worked really hard for that. There was no handouts or give me or pass me downs. I'm not a trust fund baby. That would've been great, but no, I'm not. I look at that. I look at their situations, I look at my situation and I look at the difference of where our mentalities are at because I did see my parents struggle and I did see a lot of that because I did grow up in a pretty. Rough area of New York where I lived at, and it wasn't it wasn't the best place to, to live on Long Island. And. Seeing the struggle that my family went through. I told myself, I don't wanna be there. I don't wanna put my family through that. So it shifted something in my mentality. There's other people though that have, they grew up and everything was all hunky dory, right? And they were able to go to school. They graduated high school, they were able to go to college and there was no worries. And their parents, everything was stable, everything was good. My dad was a business owner, so he owned his own business. Income fluctuated, things went well, or things didn't go well, but he did air freight at J F K. He had his own air freight company. Guess what happened September 11th? He had all of his eggs in one basket over there at J F K. Yeah. Most of those businesses shut down. Yeah. And they weren't doing deliveries anymore. And he lost, I think 75% of his business overnight. Yep. And then shortly after that, Lost his home. I joined the Navy. I come back one time, I'm visiting New York and my family's moving. So it's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. So all seeing it from that perspective, it just changed how I thought and how I looked at money,

Tony Lopes:
27:48

yeah. See so all those data points that You received growing up and seeing your family go through, it wasn't like a planned event. You were a sponge. You absorbed all that. Some good, some bad. And then you took action because you said, whoa, I don't want to experience that. I don't ever want to be in that situation. So you took action and you worked hard. And Yes. Where you got where I got it takes work. I'm not gonna lie to the viewers or the, the listeners. It does take work. But it is possible. To achieve financial independence that is possible. One of the things, you're, it's so funny as you were sharing your story, I'm thinking about, a conversation I just had this weekend with someone. And we've had for a very long period of time where each of the next generations had at least equal or a better than lifestyle. Than the previous generation. I know that's the case for me, my parents were immigrants. They didn't come with much. We lived in apartments and now here I am. I'm doing better than they were. And that's been the case for many generations. But we are now at a point where the next generation, and for folks who are my age, that probably have grandkids, right? Their kids and their grandkids, we are at this turning point I. Where those generations are gonna struggle to have it as good as we do for a lot of different reasons. There's societal, political, monetary. There's a lot of different reasons why they're gonna struggle and it's no longer acceptable, I guess I'll use that word to do the same. Things your parents did. You have to do different, right? You have to do more today. Otherwise you're not gonna have that standard of living that you grew up with your parents. That's just unfortunately, and again, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, but it's just gonna get harder and harder to have that standard of living going forward for the next generation and for the grandkids and that.

Average Joe Finences:
30:00

Yeah, Tony, that's a great point. And another thing that, another factor here, I think that. Millennials like me, right? And Gen Z. Another factor to think about is social media, right? They look at Instagram, they look at Twitter, they look at all these different social medias, and they look at all these influencers that are living the, these lavish lifestyles in their twenties, right? And, these fitness models, right? Showing their pictures and like, why can't I get my washboard abs? And they live this lie that, that, they think that everyone is ahead of them because of these few accounts that they follow. They're like this person doing it in their twenties, and now I'm 30 and I'm nowhere near that. Listen, comparison is the thief of joy, right? Yeah. Do not compare yourself to others. Focus on your mission. Focus on your dreams, your aspirations, and what you need to do. To get there, and I think as long as you do that, Put all that other stuff, a away don't follow. If you have trouble following these accounts and comparing yourself to them, then stop following them and stop exposing yourself to that stuff. Yeah. But anyway, I don't wanna beat the dead horse on this too much. I wanted to ask you a little bit more, 'cause it was a second piece of that question talking about ai. Yeah. And I wanted to, know what your thoughts are in the future of the real estate market with ai.

Tony Lopes:
31:22

Yeah. I'll transition to AI in this way. We just talked a little bit about doom and gloom, a little bit of stuff, right? And I don't really dwell on doom and gloom. For the listeners and for the viewers out there, if you're young and you're trying to get started in real estate or any sort of business, The message is you just have to do different today than maybe what your parents did. What your parents did may not be successful today. Enter artificial intelligence, right? They never had social media, they never had artificial intelligence. You now, if you ran a new business today without using social media, without using artificial intelligence, you probably would not be successful. If you ran it the way your parents did. To be successful today, you gotta do different so go out and find those smart people that are doing what you want to do and that are the rock stars and go follow them and go contact them. Learn from them. So with AI, man, we are We're in a very interesting place. There's good stuff and there's bad stuff, but, for the most part, I think there's gonna be a lot of good stuff coming out with ai. We use it quite a bit. We use it now to generate newsletters. We use it to when we do our podcasts to, to write up the description. We use that quite a bit. We use it to come up with titles for our part podcast. We do go back and we do edit those things, right? We read through it. It's not like we blindly go. Use ai. We do edit those things. But instead of taking 10 hours to create something, it now takes us two hours of a human being to actually do those things. That's, yeah. Which is huge, right? So today, if you're not using AI in your business to be more efficient time-wise as well as. Cost wise then you're taking a backseat to others who are using it.

Average Joe Finences:
33:24

And Tony, isn't it crazy too because the type of AI that you're talking about, these systems literally just came out not even six months ago, not even a year ago November. And it's yeah, I can't, yeah. You have to get on this stuff.

Tony Lopes:
33:36

Yeah, ChatGPT I believe came out in November of 2022. So yeah, you're right. It's, it hasn't been out very long, and so I was just having a conversation with somebody about AI and how it's so important for us to help the next generation and the generation after that use. Understand the importance. And so my original thought experiment started like this. I said, geez I think every and I think. Let me take a step back. I think all your viewers understand the term va, right? Virtual assistant. These are folks that help businesses and individuals, they could be located in the Philippines or Columbia. They don't have to be stateside. They can be any place. They get paid anywhere from five, $5 an hour up to maybe 10 or $12 an hour. I have a couple that I use that I pay $8 an hour, right?

Average Joe Finences:
34:30

Same here, I use VA`s a lot.

Tony Lopes:
34:32

Right? That I couldn't do my business without the help of a va. And so I had this thought experiment, I said, and so I'll share with you, I haven't shared it with anybody on a podcast yet. So you'll be my my Guinea pig, so to speak. Exclusive. Exclusive. This is an exclusive. That's right. So I said I think every teenager should have a VA and not interesting. Not for the VA to do their homework or to fill out their college educ, their college application. Not for that purpose, but for the parent. And this is where. Parenting is a participation sport. The parent needs to be engaged with that child to say, okay, you have a va. What are you gonna use that VA for? How do you use that VA to take some of the low level tasks off your plate? Again, this is conditioning the child. This is setting a mindset in a child and not getting this at school. It's conditioning the child to think different, to say, what lower level tasks am I doing that I should put off onto this va? And how do I pay for this va? Maybe you start a business what am I good at? What value do I bring to the world? That's a great conversation in and of itself. And say you get past that and you say, okay, you like podcasts? How about editing podcasts? Why don't you start a business around that? We'll find some VAs that can edit podcasts and create great descriptions and thumbnails and all that sort of stuff. Okay? So encourage a kid to think about using a VA to start a business. Very low cost associated with this. But the value, the learning is tremendous. And the reason why I'm going down in, in this Into this rat hole or rabbit hole with a VA is because as AI and machining machine learning develops very quickly over the next year and five years, I believe AI and machine learning, artificial machine learning, a m l is gonna take over to a large degree the role of a va. And so what does that mean? So for me, say as a young person coming outta school with a college degree, I'm only making so much money. I can't afford a house. I can't afford. I can't afford, I can't afford, everything's super expensive. Cars are expensive. Energy prices are going up. You need to have something else on the side. Enter a business to be able to help you. Create a second income stream. But running a business while you're running you have a W-2 job is it can be a very difficult thing. If you start that process as a teenager, create that mindset through a va, how do you use a va? How do you start a business? What kind of business? You start that learning as a young person and then as the technology with artificial intelligence comes online because it will, that artificial intelligence is gonna take a look at how that business was run in the past. And it's gonna say, how did you do that business over the last year? It's gonna learn. It's gonna learn how you did it and it's gonna apply that same belief system, that same learning going forward, and it's gonna run to a large degree. It's gonna run your business for you. There'll still be some interaction, but now you create, much like you and I have created a second income stream through real estate. When we first started out, we were working our job, you in the military, me doing the corporate gig, we had real estate on the side that we were building up. With the next generation, this is a very real possibility. This could be like their real estate, right? That they can start to create a second income stream to, to support themselves.

Average Joe Finences:
38:32

Yeah. Tony, that, that is significant. And I love the example you used too, because I do have a podcast editing business and we do use ai. And the thing is, it is. It's made it so that my editors can take on more projects at once because the stuff that they used to put so much time into, like figuring out the way to write the show notes properly, figuring out, what the episode title should be, all these different little things, finding the right quote or finding the right thing to put as the audiogram. Now we have AI do that for us and they could focus more on the actual editing, like the mixing and mastering the video editing. All of that so they can put more of their time into that. And then it's hey, I finished this project a lot faster. So where I had one editor that could maybe work on five projects total in a week. Now they could work on maybe seven to 10. So that is significant and one of the things that helps me as a business owner, it helps me save a lot more money too.'cause now I'm I limit how many v people I need the video editors and podcast and audio editors. It limits that. And then when I scale higher, I can hire more people but less people than I normally would have before ai. Yeah. So one of the things I wanna point out is that, There is some fear behind ai, right? That people are like pretty nervous about it and scared that they're all gonna lose their jobs. And I'm telling you, you're not gonna lose your job to ai. You're gonna lose your job or your position to someone using ai, right?'cause that's the skillset you need to learn now.'cause there needs to be that human touch AI's not perfect and hopefully it never gets perfect.'cause if it does, we're probably screwed at that point. But you need to have that human touch. You need to QA things, right? You need to make sure that it's good to go. So that's the piece, that's the skillset. I think is gonna be one of the most valuable skill sets people can have going into 2024, and that's to know how to properly use ai. Know these different scripted prompts and things you could put into ChatGPT to get the results that you want. Know how to interact with AI to change. Maybe something that you had to do. I've had AI write me a couple blog articles so far, and they've been phenomenal. I'll go in there and make my little changes and edits and stuff because, it misses a couple things. But for the most part, a very large majority of what I, the message I wanted to get out, it was like 80% done. That final 20% I had to put into it saved me a ton of time. So I think that's huge. Tony, now. We are come coming up on time. I'm glad we got to hit on the AI stuff as well. But now I wanna transition this into something I call the final round. It's where I'm gonna ask you the same four questions I ask everybody that comes on the show and it'll give us a better idea of how Tony is when he's put under a little bit of pressure. And I know you're gonna crush it. So if you're ready to go, we'll get this party started. Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. So Tony, first question of the final round is, what's the biggest mistake you when you've ever made, when it comes to your finances? Investing real estate or just business in general?

Tony Lopes:
41:37

So this one's real easy for me and I share it all the time with folks. It's, when I was getting started in real estate, I did way too many low level tasks. On my own. Instead of realizing the value I bought, I brought to real estate investing. My value was in doing the underwriting, looking at the deals, underwriting, making sure it was gonna ca cash flow the right way instead of doing that, which was super valuable and nobody else could do, I was actually. Changing toilets, replacing floors painting rooms, right? Those were all low level tasks. I should have hired out. I should never have been doing those things. And so that was my biggest learning that I had. Coming up to real estate, I did those low level tasks for far too long. And I would I would share that with folks is, don't do that, that, that work. It's valuable work, but hire it out. Don't do that yourself.

Average Joe Finences:
42:33

I absolutely love that. Like I mentioned earlier in the show the who not how, right? Yeah. Put the right person on the job so you can spend your time doing the tasks that are more meaningful to you and that are higher paying, right? Yeah. Don't do the $10 task, do the a hundred dollars task, do the thousand dollars task, right? That's right. So yeah that's huge. Definitely appreciate that. So this next question, Tony, ties into the last one, but what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Tony Lopes:
42:59

Oh. Again, something else I I share with folks time and time again is I wish I understood and had ingrained in me the concept of Groundhog Day. I lived my life in the corporate world doing Groundhog Day time and time again. And I think all the viewers and listeners know what that means. Once you learn how to do a task and you're very proficient at doing that task, move on. Learn something else. Don't spend the next 10 years of your life or even the next two years of your life, remastering that task that you learned in the first 30 days. Move on. Go learn something else. Go achieve some new form of greatness because at the end of 10 years, 20 years, all you're gonna be able to say is you. You did the same thing over and over again. And yeah, there's, yeah, groundhog Day. I, that's one of the biggest things I wish I'd learned sooner.

Average Joe Finences:
44:00

Tony I love that because it brings me back to being on a ship underway out to sea. That's literally what we called it was Groundhog Day. It was like, you're literally doing the same thing every single day, Monday through Sunday, doesn't matter. And,

Tony Lopes:
44:15

And again, to tie that back into to our previous conversation. Yeah. For our parents that worked. Groundhog Day was okay. They were able to survive doing Groundhog Day. That worked for them going forward for the next generation, the young millennials, the gen Z, and after that doesn't work anymore. You gotta figure that out early enough and start doing something different.

Average Joe Finences:
44:40

Yeah, no very great and valid points, Tony. Definitely appreciate that. The next question, again, also ties into this and it's do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out today?

Tony Lopes:
44:56

One of the big things I share with young, probably the younger folks that I come across is grow your network. Just grow your network far and deep and wide. Just grow your network like crazy. Social media makes it incredibly easy to do that. And not just social. There's so many different forms of social media out there, right? There's 5, 6, 7 different forms and I'm probably understating it, right? So grow your presence and your following and your connections across that, that is gonna serve you well again. This isn't your parents' economy anymore. Whether you're a business or whether you work a job, to be able to land a new job, you have to have a big network. If you ever get laid off in the future, you need a big network, right? To have a business, you need a big network to when, if you decide to become an author and write a book, you need a big network to be able to sell, thousands and thousands of copies, right? There's there's so much value in having a huge network. So just grow that following you just wide and deep. That's my biggest tip I can provide to, to really young people starting out. No, that's,

Average Joe Finences:
46:12

that's fantastic advice. Definitely appreciate that.'cause that's one of the things I like to focus on myself is building my network. And I know it's cheesy and cliche and you hear it all the time, but your network is your net worth. And the reason why it's so cheesy and cliche is because it's true. So again, surround yourself with the people that you wanna be like, and I think you're gonna find some great success in that. Okay, Tony, so the final question of the final round, and I will preface this with, besides your own, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast, or both?

Tony Lopes:
46:46

So yeah definitely. I like, and you actually mentioned it earlier and I actually have a, I'm gonna reach behind me. I actually have a copy of that who not how. I've read this book I've highlighted it. I have notes in the margins who, not how I spent too much of my life trying to figure out how to do things instead of leveraging the who's in my network to be able to, I. Do that work. That's probably one of my favorite books. However for folks who have businesses right now, entrepreneurs or business owners right now I'm reading a book called Primal Branding. And it's, I. I'm just getting so much knowledge outta that book on how to brand my business, how to grow my business, and so for folks, entrepreneurs out there and business owners, I would also highly recommend primal branding, now podcasts and YouTube channels, things like that. Right now I'm watching a lot of Alex Hermo. A lot of your viewers and listeners probably know Alex Hermo. Just fabulous guy. He gives away so much free, valuable content in his podcasts, in his in his on his YouTube channel. It's just amazing. So I'm following a lot of his stuff too. Awesome always be learning.

Average Joe Finences:
48:09

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. A b l definitely appreciate that. Okay, so Tony that is it for the final round, however, I do have one more question for you, and this is probably the most important question of all because people are sitting here listening to this and I feel like they, they really got their eyes opened on a couple different things here. Some may not have liked the wake up call. Some may really be embracing this and love it. But they're gonna wanna, they're gonna wanna know where they could find more information about you. So if you could, do you have a website you could share with us, any social media, anything like that. And then also where can people get your book and listen to your podcast?

Tony Lopes:
48:42

Oh, thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate you. So where they can find me, I do have a website called dirty Boots Capital. So Dirty boots capital.com. They can go there. My blog is there. All my crazy ramblings in my newsletter. My different thought experiments are there. We help people in a lot of different ways just achieve more in their life and that means a lot of different things. Health, wealth, freedom. Achieve more is huge in terms of my vocabulary and what I help people with. So they can go there dirty boots capital.com. They can also just email me Tony lopes@dirtybootscapital.com. I replied to all my emails, so feel free, anybody who wants to reach out to me, they can do that. They can find my book freedom at Risk. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to to share this freedom at risk. A lot of my thoughts are wrapped up in that book. They can find it on Amazon. Yeah, thank you for allowing me to share that.

Average Joe Finences:
49:37

Absolutely. Tony, again this was awesome. I'm gonna make sure I have all those links in the show notes to make it easy for people to just copy and paste or click away. Just disclaimer here, don't do it if you're driving, please. So Tony, again, thank you so much for taking your time out of the day today. I. For a second time to spend some time with me and share your story, and share your thoughts on the direction that we're heading in. cause I think it's definitely providing a lot of valuable information to my listeners, so I, I really appreciate it.

Tony Lopes:
50:04

Thanks for having me on, Mike. I truly appreciate you and having me here today. Thank you. Absolutely.

Average Joe Finences:
50:09

And hey, I also wanna thank all of my listeners for joining me and our special guest, Tony Lopes, on the average Joe Finances Podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Tony Aloha from Hawaii and have a great rest of your day.