Podcast 80. The Cashflow Portal with Perry Zheng

Average Joe Finances:
0:00

Hey, how's it going everybody? So today's guest is Perry Zheng, and Perry is the founder and CEO of cashflow portal. It's a real estate syndication software. He currently lives in Seattle where he owned six, six single family properties. Perry started a real estate syndication three years ago. Today. He has more than 1,500 units and raised over $16 as a lead syndicator on two deals, totaling 580 units. His goal was to help other syndicators succeed and overcome common challenges like raising capital and finding deals even while having a full-time job speaking of full-time jobs. Perry just left his full-time job at Lyft as the engineering manager to go full-time with cashflow portal. Previous to that, he worked at Twitter and Amazon. So Perry, what an amazing background. I'm super excited to have you on the show. Thanks for joining me.

Perry Zheng:
0:51

Thanks Mike for having me. I'm super excited to be here as well.

Average Joe Finances:
0:56

Awesome. The way I'd like to start this off as the way I start every episode off, and, I talked a little bit about your background and that's all like wave top stuff and you're doing like some amazing things. So I want to try to get into some more detail about that. So if you could share your story with us and go into some detail about how this all started with.

Perry Zheng:
1:14

Yeah. I started investing in rental properties about six or seven years ago when I bought my first condo in San Francisco. It's a condo with three bedrooms. I live in one of the bedrooms and I rent out the other two. So I started with house hockey. It's very expensive to buy there and I don't believe that was exactly a investment. I just got lucky and buying by buying at the right time. Then I saw. Reading rich dad, poor dad, and listening to the bigger pockets podcast. So I caught the bug of wanting to buy an actual investment property and we. Looked around San Francisco and the bay area. And that's how I met my business partner at west settler. I moved back to Seattle, to BARR to buy another house hockey property. It's a five bedroom. I live in one of the bedrooms and rent out the other four. Purchase price is around $415,000. And the monthly rents for each of the rooms is about $700. So I'm going to do the math. I was basically living there for the most, a hundred bucks per month without counting for the appreciation as well as the tax benefits of the single family. So I saw that's not hard and I don't mind living with housemates. And so I bought one again. I bought one again every nine to 12 months after that after a certain point, I realized that. The bank stone will not lend me any more money if I keep buying single families or these traditional banks. So I started looking into real estate, syndication and multifamily spend about year learning multifamily by joining a mentorship group. It does take a year and yeah, no. If you asked me five, six years ago, wise reassess indication, I probably wouldn't know either. It's a very young few and it's very it's very exciting. That's funny, a lot of upfront costs.

Average Joe Finances:
3:04

That's fantastic. So you started off house hacking before you even knew what that was, and then, you read rich dad, poor dad, the purple Bible that that most of us have read and started listening to bigger pockets, which is absolutely one of my favorite podcasts as well. So going from there, you decided it was time to scale up and buy some more rental properties to, to make a profit here. So you moved back to Seattle, right? From San Francisco to house hack again. Now that first property, the way you were describing it, I wasn't sure was that cash flowing or after all the rent came in, you were still paying about a hundred bucks.

Perry Zheng:
3:38

Good question. I, that case I was still paying about a hundred dollars a month, but it did not include the FA at the end of the year. I can, I is my primary residence and the portion that I was living in the house could be my primary residence and the T the interest that I was paid in that portion is texts, deductible. So if you do the math, I was, I pay right. And second. Once I move out of that house, that room will rent. I live in a master room. That room will rent for eight 50. So I will be casually about 700 bucks. So yes, I was paying a hundred, but I think that might be a lesson to some of the listeners that just because you're paying a hundred, doesn't mean it's a bad house hack. You don't have to make every single house such that you pay nothing.

Average Joe Finances:
4:25

You're sitting here, you're living in. Not a very cheap cost of living area and you're living in a 400, said it was 450,000, $450,000 home for a hundred bucks. That's a pretty good deal. If you asked me and then, you, you started going out there every nine months or so, and doing it over and over again. So that first one now, and now it becomes a cash flowing asset because now you rent out that fifth room and you're collecting at least 700 bucks a month. Fantastic. And then on top of that, let's not even get in like get into the weeds here, but like, the appreciation and everything else and the depreciation that you were able to claim especially while filing your taxes, then also the interest and all that. I would say that paying a hundred bucks a month while you were living in that property was a pretty good deal. Yeah, absolutely. And then moving on from there, you decided you wanted to scale even ha. And start looking at real estate syndications, right? And that's one of the fastest way ways to scale both the amount of units and also your monthly cashflow is to start looking into multifamily. I've had multiple guests on that talk about that, how they go from, single family or they have small, multi-family like duplex triplex quadplexes and then they decide it's time to get into something bigger. And that's when they start looking at real estate syndications. Now you said you, you actually sat here and research this for a year. Before you finally pulled the trigger and got into your first indication. So you said you did a, was it a coaching program or what was it that,

Perry Zheng:
5:55

yeah. So a little bit about the background. We syndicate we did a JV on a seven unit in Tacoma. Before I went full-steam into the coaching program and the story there is we bought a seven unit. It's a 540 K in Tacoma. We're putting 150 K in renovations, so about, It's about 700 K total and we sold the about 18 months later for 900 K about while that's going on. We tried to buy another multi-family in the Seattle area. And that one, we got a bit we did not win the deal. It's a 3.2 million. Do you for 20 units, it's very expensive in Seattle. We didn't win that deal. We will have one at, if I pay say 3.25 by paying 50 K more for that. And that's when I realized I want to be in a program where. The name speaks for itself that people at the brokers take us took us seriously if they saw okay. You're part of the XYZ program. Okay. And so that's when I went to data's and my business partner is awesome. He moved to Dallas after we joined the program to be full-time asset managers slash boots on the ground. So super blessed with the right team. So he's there in Dallas. Underwriting looking at properties every day, looking at the brokers do box I'm in Seattle, also underwriting talking to brokers, lenders as well as just thinking about, what's the next step. And then we can get into that whole equity basic prosper, but from the moment that we joined the program to the moment that we have a deal under contract it took about it took us about seven months and that's seven months. To me. It was very long, seven to nine months. We finally close it in about a year after we joined the program. Took us about three months to close. Yep.

Average Joe Finances:
7:49

Wow. So that was the first deal that you guys did together as a partner.

Perry Zheng:
7:53

Yeah. As a syndicator.

Average Joe Finances:
7:54

Yeah. Okay. Now that's not the seven unit, right? This is something else Dallas.

Perry Zheng:
8:00

So the seven unit in Tacoma was also and then I would get that together and that the first two syndication, it's 172 unit. We were also the syndicators on that one. Every few I have done is I'm the least indicator. I try not to do co-sponsorship or like just helping raise equity and doing a little bit prop asset management. That's because I believe that if the dude didn't do well, that there's no next team there's, that's it. That is my belief.

Average Joe Finances:
8:30

That's fantastic. So you take a lot of a sense of ownership when you go into this. And so now that first one that's seven units, that was just basically a JV between you and your partner. The two of you came up with the money took this took this down. And from there, you said you sold it for 900 K 18 months later. That's. Pretty good turn and just a year and a half. Well done, you got your money back and then some gave you a lot of equity to play with there to start looking at something else. What made you guys decide to look at in the Dallas and DFW area?

Perry Zheng:
8:59

Yeah. Good question. So one of the common questions that people ask when they got know into syndication is what area do I focus on? And my answer to that is it depends on what you want. There are people who want a little bit of every market and there are people like me who wants everything of a market. What I mean by that is we looked at Cincinnati, look at Lexington, Kentucky, and look at the Midwest and the Southeast. And it felt like south east is too far from Seattle. The Midwest. Is dominated by institutional investors of people who have been indicated for a long time. So things were so privately under market off market, sorry. And then where our status is like the best in terms of transparency, as well as the deal flow. Every day you see a deal come online. Whereas this is data you for wait for week before you see any deal that's like on the market. So that's a big part of it. And the fact that. Coaching program is Dallas helps that that every vendor that we need is in Dallas. And so as air was there for some time, you start building up that relationship with every vendor, right? Is Dallas the best market? It is probably one of the most competitive market for multi-family, but is that the market that we have the most competitive advantage in terms of whom we know what we know as well as the neighborhoods? Yes. So my goal is to build up more than a thousand units in Dallas. So I can, have leverage to either create my own property management company or leverage someone so that we can JV on a, probably mentioned a company. Because. The most important part of multifamily is creating is controlling for the quality of the assets.

Average Joe Finances:
10:45

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. That's a great point. And you're a little more than halfway there. You got a 580 units now you're getting close. So

Perry Zheng:
10:52

we, yeah that, thank you for saying that. I'm happy to report that since the last time we w I fell off that form. We actually at 800 units, 840 units. That's great. But we are selling the first property, so we backed down to 500 plus units.

Average Joe Finances:
11:09

That's not a bad thing, though. That's not a bad thing. That one's coming full circle. Awesome. All so now I have to ask you this, because a lot of people that listened to this show, they, they're, full-time working professionals and they're, on their journey to getting out of debt and they want to invest in, and a lot of them are looking at real estate now as an option right now, you did this while you were working full time, right? So you were at Twitter and then Amazon and most recently at Lyft until not too long ago, how did you Get yourself to a point where you were able to have the free time to put into this, especially going in as a lead syndicator. So like right now, for me personally, like being full time I just got to my first indication recently and it's as a limited partner. Cause I don't feel like I have the time to try to put into that. So how did you piece this together while being a full-time employee?

Perry Zheng:
12:00

Yeah. Great question. I don't really have a perfect answer in my opinion. I think it's a combination of who you are as a person, your personality, your grit. I know when I was growing up, I don't really need to listen to, like motivational speeches in a way, because I'm very internally driven. And so that could, you could argue that could be, Innate. So I have that and that might be the result of a lot of micro, positive reinforcements. When I was a kid, when I was growing up, I was usually the top of my class. So on to, I got into college and then I realized I was not the in high school already realized I was not one of the smartest people. So there's that. And then when I was doing well at live I think my mentors and my managers really thought that I was good and that really helped me believe in something or they believe in me believe before I believe in myself in a way. So that helped. So going back to your question, how do I allocate or divide my time? I don't really think of it like that. I felt like if you passionate about real estate, you subconsciously unconsciously think about it. You think about when you drive it. A classic example was people were asking me how much they They will be getting back on their property texts or their interest rate tax rebate. And I did the math, you should put on 20%, so that, that coverage is 80%. And you're say you're high income earners is 30%, 33%, tax rate. So 30% times 80% it's about 24, 20 5%. So by telling you how much a purchase. In my mind, I can do the math and tell you how much money you should get back in terms of tax rebate. And whenever people heard that, they're like, oh my God, how do you notice? I'm like, yeah, I think about that while I'm driving. And that cert does not take you to divide out the time to do X, Y, Z. You just think about it. Okay. So that's why, it's just like, if you obsess about something, you think about it every day or every like parts of the day. And second. It will be a really bad idea in my opinion, that people quit their w two job to focus on real estate full-time before they're seeing that momentum. Because number one, if you're not passionate about it in two, to do it while having a w two job, then you probably not passionate about enough and you are not going to find something fulfilling and rewarding. By using it as a escape from something you don't like, that's my opinion. So let's also there's that so show that you're good at it. Get at least one rental or a couple of duplexes or whatnot, and then say, okay, I have proven that I can do this. And now if I do more of it, this is going to eventually replace my W2 income. That's real estate and kind of the same thing with my startup. No, I think in your case, there is a point in which physically you just do not have enough time for the last year and a half. I was basically doing three jobs. I was an engineering manager. I live, I was doing two syndications while having a full-time job. And then I have my startup. I could say. You can do real estate syndication while having a full-time job. But I was burning out doing a startup while having a full-time job and this indication. And so I think it's 10 times harder. And so I didn't need to quit at some point yeah. I don't know. I'm happy to answer them.

Average Joe Finances:
15:33

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. All great points too, cause it was something that one of the things I wrote down here, the most recent one is how you subconsciously would think about real estate. And even to the point where you can do this napkin math in your head, that, They've got questions about going in on a deal with you. And you're just like, Hey, give me a second. Let me put it into the calculator here. Yeah. You're going to get this much back for your tax return, all that. That's amazing. And like, and that just, that's a Testament of the hard work and effort that you've put into it. That you're at the point where you can just spit this stuff out. That's amazing. But I want to point some things out that really stick out to me and I think is absolutely awesome where you're talking about how even since your childhood, there's something that you mentioned, it was micro, positive reinforcements as a child, that got you to this point where, it always helped you give you that inner motivation in that post. To keep doing that. You were inspired as a kid. And I think that's important for anybody that's listening. Who's a parent right now that, instill that mindset into your children, instill that motivation lift them up and be positive because. What Perry's doing here is a perfect example of being raised in a positive household where he was able to get this subconscious subconsciously just in the back of his head, this motivation, this innate motivation that's always there. So that's really wonderful to hear. I had to write that down. I had to write that down because, I have two young daughters and that's one of the things that, that I try to focus on with them is just their whole thought process when it comes to money, what to do with money, how to invest and financial education, I think is something that's we really lack in the public education system. Being that, we homeschool our kids. That's part of the curriculum is financial education. I think that's fantastic. I, and I really loved hearing that part of your story. That's absolutely amazing. Now you mentioned this your startup and I want to talk about your startup, right? There. So you started this startup, it's called the cashflow portal right now, besides that. Cause I know you're like a tech junkie and this is one of the things I'm excited to talk to you about now, the cashflow portal. What exactly is the cashflow portal? Can you describe it and how would somebody who's an investor or has a real estate business? How would they benefit from checking out the cashflow?

Perry Zheng:
17:52

Good question. So cash flow portal is a real estate syndication software that helps streamline equity raising helps syndicators reach out to investors as well as given a source of truth of a system of record for all the passive investors. So if you are a passive investor, traditionally, you will get a DocuSign to sign all your documents in an email. And then once you sign the, you will receive monthly emails from your syndicator, the performance of that deal or of that fund. And then you will ask your syndicator once in a while on how the property is doing. Say you invest 50,000, how much is that really?$50,000 worth. And then when it comes to tax returns, You your syndicator, my QBO I'll call to write down your social security number so that they can file the K1s on your behalf. And I give you a piece of K1 and they'll send it to you. That whole logistics seems very scattered, fragmented, and a little bit kind of mom and pop, not professional. That's not how you do it. When you invest 50 K in the stock market. Now the value for the syndicator is I am trying to raise $4 million from say 70 investors. I need to send out 70 DocuSigns that I get back the DocuSign. Countersign it. Put the name on my spreadsheet. Didn't know how much they invested every three months I write down how much each person has gotten distributions. And then I send out the emails through MailChimp. And then and then at the end of the year, I need to report everyone's bank statements. So I know their ACH as well as their social security to file the taxas. That also seems a little bit unprofessional and that also takes a lot of time. So the idea is okay. A having a centralized source of truth helps the syndicators become more efficient with their time. Can do more, do use, raise more money as well as become professional in front of the investors.

Average Joe Finances:
19:52

Right on. There, there was one word you said, though, that you said it was unprofessional. I would say it's more like outdated, right? With the way current technology is just the way that you could do things to automate certain things. I would say that it's more outdated and. One of the things that you're bringing to the table is like that refresh that tech refresh that upgrade, that's going to benefit those general partners that are doing these deals. And the whole time I'm sitting here in my head thinking like, as you're describing the process and the going back and forth with DocuSign and, and I realized this from the most recent syndication that I got myself involved in to just going back to. And now the general partner that's sitting here, like as the operations officer that's sitting here and crunching the numbers and sending out the monthly updates and saying, okay, this is how much, this is how well it's performed. This is how much, you're getting on your return this month and blah, blah, blah. Doing that for 70 other people. You probably just gave everybody listening to this show. That's a GP, some type of like PTSD just now they're sitting there like, oh my God, No, that's awesome. So this alleviates a lot of that, a lot of that pain that th that these lead syndicators are going through. So it's definitely something that they might want to check out now being a tech junkie as yourself besides the cashflow portal, what other like real estate apps or websites do you like, or that you currently use yourself while scoping out different?

Perry Zheng:
21:16

Yeah. Good question. So I will tell you that we do not pay for. Okay. Yeah. Asana is something we use to work with the property management company to keep track of the tasks they do, although we don't follow their religiously, every single one of our meetings with our weekly probably mentioned company. We use Google doc to keep track of our notes. So we are religiously taking notes. I really liked this habit of yourself taking notes as well. And a Google sheet to keep track of a KPIs key performance indicators. So those will be what's the occupancy, economic occupancy. How many work orders do we still have? How many users we have term and so on and so forth. And that we right now, we do it in the KPI. Then Every deal. We use a spreadsheet to underwrite. There's some, a back of the napkin underwriting, and they're just a football underwriting. And so obviously there have been many tools that come up to replace that spreadsheet with a software. There's a saying that if something is in a spreadsheet, there's probably, a business for it. I agree with that statement except. So far, I have seen a software that's as flexible as a spreadsheet per se. And now I use cash flow portal myself every single day to keep track of my who, which one of my investors has has seen their K ones or their distributions, and be able to email them and send them a monthly newsletter while we're coasting on this deal or not. And yeah from a journal purpose perspective. Okay. So going back to the underwriting people can use. But if people want to know what is the market rent? There are many ways of doing it. One is to go out and do competitor surveys yourself. Second, you do the hard work of going on. Crixus type in the zip code, put a one mile radius, put the view into map instead of list. So you can find locally. The location of your property, and then look at what everyone else around the area is charging. That's work, there's nothing to automate it. You just have to open a criticism and look at it. If you're doing Airbnb, I will go on Airbnb and look up how much a one night will charge for this neighborhood. And so I use all these little websites to gain information about this area or this deal.

Average Joe Finances:
23:47

Yeah, that's great. Like, writing down the stuff that you're talking about. So I've heard of many syndicators that use a sauna as it's a good, it's a good website for teams and everything. But Googled Google notes for. Oh, Google docs for notes. That's awesome. As well as Google sheets for tracking your KPIs. Absolutely awesome. It's kinda like, back to the basics, but the basics that are so good and you can continue using it no matter what. And then, even going as far as to go to Craigslist and yeah, you've got to do a little bit of the work yourself, but you're getting probably a little bit more of a accurate data picture versus using something else, like another website that, that will go out and automate it for you. You're going to get something like a more accurate picture, so you can actually be a little more conservative with how you're, how you're coming up with your deals, Like under promise, but over deliver type deal, instead of like saying, Hey, this is what we're going to get. And then you get exactly just that where you can come in and be like, Hey, based off the surveys, we're going to say that we can get around here. And then when you come in and do something better, now you over-delivered and makes your investors happier to move on with you to the next deal, like you said, right? Cause if a deal, your mindset is if the deal doesn't go well, there is no next deal. So that's, I think that carries into the work that you put into it. I'm pretty sure you just prove that by stating how you go about. And do your things right. Even with either to competitor survey, or even just like niching down on Craigslist, down to that particular area and just targeting the area and great point that you made to for those that are like doing like a Airbnb or and stuff like that, to go in there and see what the competitors are doing, like what that market looks like and build your own, priceless based off of that. Because then you can have a good idea. Of what you could charge for rent and will that work for the price of property that you're going to purchase. All that stuff is definitely fantastic advice. Okay. Now since you are like the tech guy right now, I know you're like you're huge into the digital world. What do you think the digital future for real estate is?

Perry Zheng:
25:51

Yeah. Good question. One thing is people are really excited about syndication. But what people don't realize is that it's a very green field. It's only being a most. Nine years, I think it was 2012 when the law was passed and it takes about two years for it to even like, to people even hear about it. And then it's only not until 2018 or 19, they start really getting traction. So I think it's still a second Emmy on all the real specification. If you're looking at. 10 31 exchange, it's been here for more than 50 years. By second, any, I think there are still 40 more years to go after the first decade. Okay. And there are many more, and it might be common sense after a few decades that, oh yeah, this is what we do. And so what that means is you have this huge growth of real estate syndicators. You get into serious dislocation. Someone else is getting into reassess indication and guess what? It's not just multifamily. Real estate syndication is just a generic term of putting money to buy something larger than one can buy. Period that that happened to involve the logistics of sending of signing PPS so that you grow you agree contractually and legally to a binding agreement to share the profit. And and it could be actually buying a. A amazing Airbnb down in Maui or Hawaii that you are the operator of the Airbnb and you syndicate it. It could be self storage, it could be residential, it could be a portfolio of residential. So because of the high growth of syndicators I should have answered your question directly is that as a passive investor coming into real estate syndication, they have no idea. Who's good. And who's not. They can look at people's websites and get an idea, but there's no way to say so-and-so is good as or they're just a good sales person, without sitting down and talking to them. So I think that digital future is moving towards information sharing and the equivalent of a IMTP of reassessed syndicators in the world. That's why I think it's going. Plays where you can see the track record and the reviews of reassess indicators. Now that may not be a reality by do believe that's better for the world to have it than not have it.

Average Joe Finances:
28:21

Yeah, I was actually just going to comment on that too. Cause when you mentioned it's like a becoming like the CMDB of real estate syndicators, right? So it's just, now you want to see the track records of people. As it's growing there, there's a lot of people now like getting into syndications, like starting off fresh and brand new. And you don't know who they are. They could be. Like up and coming and be the best, but you don't know who they are. I think, the route you went when you started and got yourself involved in a bigger name, by going through that, that coaching program, you were able to, add a little more merit to your background, right? Be more of a known force in, in the syndication space, right? So something like, that's very important. Like if I was to say, Hey, I want to be a GP and do my first indication and I'm going to start it like next week. What the heck do you know about this stuff, Mike? But the thing is, the background that you get as you're doing these. So by myself, right now, going in as a limited partner, I'm going to be going into multiple deals. And, getting this experience and learning from like successful GPS maybe in the future, who knows, maybe I get into some type of coaching program, similar to what you did. And then if I decide in the future to start my own. Syndication as a general partner, that is something that, I've got a good background and a good resume to support me starting up. It's important to, especially for somebody who's going in as a limited partner, I can tell you from experience as a limited partner that you really want to be. The team that you're going in with, you want to know that you're not putting your money into something that's going to fail. And a lot of times if the numbers work syndications, that it's pretty hard for them to fail. They're pretty they're pretty resistant to, outside influences, but there is things that can affect them, right? Especially if there's like a lack of experience for the operators that are going in there and finding these deals. So that's super important that you. That the team that you're working with is, has the right knowledge, has the right skillset and will be a good steward of your money because ultimately that's what they are. They're a stewards of your money. So yeah, a very great point. And so I want to talk a little bit more about you personally, right? So now I know, you were working in. I guess like the tech space, right? When you worked for Twitter and Amazon and Lyft now going full-time into real estate as a syndicator. Sure. I want to know because what we talk about on this podcast is his personal finances all around, not just real estate. So is there any other asset classes that. Personally yourself invest in besides real estate.

Perry Zheng:
31:05

Yeah. Yeah, people ask me about my allocation of my wealth. It is probably 7% in real estate and then 30%. Losing my job definitely takes the big hits into my income is called a golden handcuff for people who are in tech. You, yeah, it's a golden handcuff. My time going forward is actually cannot be 90% in my startup where I will be growing it. And it's a scalable. There's definitely product market fit. It's growing 80 to a hundred percent week over week at this point. And so it's actually really fun and we really busy and that's exciting.

Average Joe Finances:
31:46

That's really exciting.

Perry Zheng:
31:48

Hypergrowth. That kind of feeling is it's like it's startup is definitely the most fun thing I have ever thought. It's also the hardest thing I have done. Tokyo. I took it from someone that if I'm not willing to grind my startup, which is a very high risk business while having a W2 job for at least a few months, then I probably not passionate about the idea of the startup at all. I grinded. A year and a half at this point. So I think I pay my dues. So it's time. It's time to go audit. In terms of my asset classes going forward my income I want to have that much to come because to start off, I put, be putting all the profit back into the startup and we'll be it's gonna be a. Venture backed or inchoate back startup in just a few months. Then then I continued to do one syndication every nine months to a year. So I don't think I will be a full-time syndicator ever. Just because I don't believe that I want to be a full-time asset manager in a way. I think. Not ambassador Decatur. But I also know that there are way better syndicators out there that I am just from a mindset and just from a like passion perspective my passion lies in technology and building a ecosystem and a marketplace so that the best indicators don't have to look for equity ever again. If they are the best indicators by definition. The money should go to them. And they're not the greatest indicator. So the goose indicators goose indicators, it's capability passion and integrity. Those three things define how a deal is going to work. And if they have all of those, they shouldn't worry about money. If they don't have them, then maybe they should be knowing.

Average Joe Finances:
33:39

Yeah, Perry that's all great points. And one of the things I wrote down here because this kind of stands out to me is how you're talking about, you enjoy the syndications, right? But you're not entirely sure that this is what you want to keep doing, because you don't want to be an asset manager, for the rest of your life. But at the same time, the way I'm looking at it from that statement is pretty much like it's a means to an end. For you to push your startup even further. So you've got this experience you've learned and what those pain points are for those that are in the syndications. And you're providing a solution to a problem. And that's what every good business does. There's a problem. Somebody comes in with a solution and that becomes the business, which is exactly what you're doing right now. So that's fantastic. So you take, the headaches that, all these main syndicators and general partners are having, and you alleviate that, and this becomes your bread and butter moving into the future. And this hyper-growth that you're experiencing is absolutely amazing. And I think it also goes into the, to, to the point of what you were talking about before is how. There's more and more people now coming in and doing syndication deals. So the need now is growing to, to have some type of system in place that could, that can help some of these folks out. I know I have a lot of people that listen to my podcasts that are general partners. So if you listen to this, you probably definitely want to check out what Perry's working on here. It's a, it sounds pretty amazing. All I gotta ask you though, for now with your experience over the past however, W when did you start? When did you start your first indication

Perry Zheng:
35:11

about a syndication it's only three years ago, first property, only 2015, so 674.

Average Joe Finances:
35:18

Wow. So what what a great experience in the last, five to six years that you've had and explosive growth. So for somebody that is a full-time working professional and they're ready to get started, we already know they need that motivation. We talked about that. But do you have any other like last tips or tricks that you think would benefit somebody who says, okay, today's the day I've made the decision. I want to go invest in real estate, whether it's single family or they want to go straight into multi-family what would you say to somebody like that?

Perry Zheng:
35:51

Yeah, I will say if you have a W2 job, focus on getting your primary residence, that you can house hack. If you have a family and you don't want to house hack steal by your primary residence, perhaps I do, plus that you rent out the other part. If you cannot do that, do then buy your first rental property. It could be a single family and that's totally. Okay. I believe that they should at least be a landlord or try to be a landlord to see how bad it is and then decide if they want to invest this indication because it allows you to appreciate the syndication path. Okay. To appreciate being a passive investor. I do nothing about I, I gave a, I gave this talk as well. I live in 200 plus people show up to my bronc back. And one of the questions is if you're a W2 employee and you wonder if this is the right time to buy real estate, that may not be the question to ask. Almost every time is a good time to buy real estate focus. And the crap, but not where in the market cycle we are. If you're one of the best investors and you doing things 80 cents on a totter, because you have relationships to general contractors and so on. Even if there is a down term you cannot be fine because you did everything conservatively. Don't focus on, try to see if we are the right time or not. You will not know, but what you can know is get indicators and be better. If you're one of the best, like your job, your military attack, if one of the best engineers working at Google. I don't think you'll worry about there is a tech downturn because the Google engineer will have a much easier time finding a new job than some of who working at a non, second or third tier tech company.

Average Joe Finances:
37:44

Yeah, right on that's fantastic. And great advice, right? So if this is something that you're looking to get into, go feel that pain of that first rental property and, learn to appreciate all the joys that come with that. And the three o'clock in the morning phone calls and things like that okay. Hey, fantastic Perry. I love that. That's that's awesome. Now this is the important question. The most important question that we ask on this podcast, because. People that are listening to this right now. They're like, Hey man this guy is doing some great stuff. I really like, you know what Perry is doing. And I want to learn more about him and maybe even check out his startup that he's doing right now. So if you could can you share your website with us or any social medias that you're comfortable sharing with with our listeners?

Perry Zheng:
38:27

Yeah. Just go to cash flow portal.com. And you can click on the about page against cashflow portal.com. You can email me@perryatcashflowportal.com. Or you can just add me on LinkedIn or Facebook. My name is Perry Zane. I think there should be one or two parasites out there. So yeah. I'm happy to check with. Upcoming, future real estate, syndicators, or current estate indicators about anything. And if you have pain points with your, as an LP, as a GP with your software or with the whole, what you can do better just let me know. I'm very curious to know how we can do things better.

Average Joe Finances:
39:09

That's fantastic. And being able to accept that feedback. Only going to make things better for what you know, with what you're doing with the cashflow portal. And just, and for those that are benefiting from the service that you provide. Perry, that is fantastic. We'll make sure we have. All of those in the show notes, we'll have links to your website as well as your social media to make it easier for those that are listening. And if you're driving, don't sit here and try to do it on your phone, pull over or wait until another time and make a mental note. But either way, it's going to be in the show notes and you can copy and paste it from there. Make it easy for you. So Perry, this has been an amazing conversation. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed picking your brain, especially with the tech side of this. I think that was particularly very fun. Thanks again for joining me today. Thank you. All right on. We're out of here.