Chapter I: “The Events that Shape a Character” with Fuquan Bilal

00:00:02
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of from From Adversity to Abundance Podcast to Abundance Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Bateman, and I'm really excited. Today we have a special guest, Fuquan Bilal of NNG Capital Fund. Fuquan, how are you doing today? I'm doing great.

00:00:19
Today is the best day of my life. That's awesome. Talk about an abundance mindset that. There you go. Yeah, I know you had some exciting things we were talking about right before we hit record, so it sounds like you got a lot of exciting things in the works.

00:00:35
And I'd like to start off. Obviously, this podcast is about overcoming From Adversity to Abundance Podcast and going through From Adversity to Abundance Podcast and getting to abundance. And that can take on many different forms. And I know a lot of our audience is familiar with you. We had you on the Good Deeds podcast.

00:00:56
Chris and I interviewed you a while back, and I know you have a lot of experience in note investing and real estate and residential commercial first seconds, all kinds of things. So what I'd like to do is to start off, just give our audience a quick context of what's going on today for you as far as your business, what you're working on, what maybe your portfolio looks like, or kind of what you're doing right now. Then we'll back up and get into your backstory. Sure. So now, as you just mentioned, energy capital Fund is the company, and our goal is basically we aim to provide financial solutions and quality housing to distressed environments.

00:01:39
I come from north New Jersey, a lot of blighted properties, a lot of burnouts, drug infested area. When I grew up in the, for me, we were sheltered from that area because my mom raised us in an islamic community. So we had a lot of discipline, and we were sheltered from away from that, which kind of gave us a different mindset and fast forward. When I learned the skill set of real estate, I wanted to go back to that community, add value, put those dilapidated properties back on a tax row, give the residents a better place to live. And that's what we do today.

00:02:13
That's our purpose statement, is basically having community mindedness, financial viability, and providing win win solutions. And that's what we do for the township and also for the residents. So we run a fund, we raise capital to go into these areas and add value, and we do some fix and flip stuff in high end areas, and we do rentals as well. So it's a hybrid model, and that's what we raise capital for today. There's a lot of people that's in a space that especially with the affordable housing crisis.

00:02:50
That's really not focusing on what's happening, and that's what we focus on.

00:02:58
We'll get into your background, but slightly more on your current situation.

00:03:05
Again, you've done notes, all kinds of different things. It sounds like right now you're more focused on rehabs and less so on notes. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I mean, a load business is quite litigious.

00:03:18
I played in a niche market. I played in second space. When I got into the note business, I went heavy in seconds. To me, it was a way to have an option on a property. I didn't want the property, I wanted the payment, and I wanted to give the homeowner reprieve and add value there.

00:03:33
That was a great opportunity for me to learn that from 2011, laptop, cell phone business, you didn't have to deal with tenants, hallish triage termites. And then 2015, I started pivoting back into real estate and created a hybrid model where I was doing both. We still do notes, but not as much volume because of what just happened with COVID and moratorium and everything else. So we started pivoting to what we know. We can have a better exit strategy and keep liquidity.

00:04:01
Plus, pricing is crazy right now. Yeah. We didn't want to just be in a box. Sure. I'm a note investor.

00:04:09
I'm a real estate investor. So wherever I could deploy the capital to mitigate risk and make a profit is what we're going to do. So we still own notes. We still own a large portfolio of notes that we're working through. But in new acquisitions, we're strictly focusing on big multifamily as a hedge against inflation and to really supercharge that cash flow.

00:04:32
No, that makes a lot of sense. I know on our good deeds episode, you mentioned Dave Van Horn was a mentor of yours, and I think I had brought him up on that episode because of this point. It's like he's just done so many different things and he's got so many tools that he can rely on. So when the market conditions change, like you just spoke about, inflation increasing note prices going through the roof, well, now you can do this because you know how to do. You've got so much experience that just gives you that versatility from a strategy standpoint.

00:05:07
So I love it. So, for our audience who's unfamiliar with your background, which I'm guessing a lot of people know, kind of what you're doing now, I see a lot of on LinkedIn and your videos and stuff, which are awesome. And you're obviously adding a ton of value there. But I think a lot of our audience may not be as familiar with your background. I think you maybe touched on some of that.

00:05:31
And I read your one book. I think you talked about your background some in that book, and you feel free to mention your books or whatever. But if you could walk us through kind of wherever you want to start, whether it's childhood or whatever, it doesn't have to be your birth, but walk us through kind of your background and we'll hit on some of the From Adversity to Abundance Podcast you experienced as you grew up. Yes, I was born in 1942. I'm just kidding.

00:06:02
This is really great for me because the book you probably referencing is passion for real estate investments. That's the last book that I wrote, and I kind of did go back and tell my origin story of how I became a salesman. And I like to start with that. So my mom, actually single parent, raised us in north New Jersey, and she used to take us to the flea market on the weekends. And basically that's where I became a salesman.

00:06:29
She would go to Chinatown and buy wholesale material. Gloves, scarves, the oils that you see, the Muslims sell, incense. And we would have a booth that she would pay $50 for the whole day for a six foot table. And then we, myself and my younger brother would sell these incense, gloves, and a variety of stuff that she had, and we would make $25 off every $100. So for me, that was my first opportunity in sales, and I loved it.

00:06:59
I couldn't wait till Saturday to go to this place and make money, right? Especially to help my mom, who was struggling, help her get rid of all of the merchandise she had. Me and my younger brother became the best salesman we can be. We would literally go across the street from the lot and cut people off before they came to the lot to make sure we got that cell before they saw other merchandise other vendors had. So that was my first foray into sales, and I just was addicted by it.

00:07:28
And that led into other things. Me getting sell jobs, later becoming a telemarketer. I actually got a job in corporate, running sales in California. I was the director of sales for a telecommunication company. I did that for a number of years, then moved back for that same company, did customer service, and then around 97, somewhere around there, when websites were new, we created a website division.

00:07:54
I started doing some of that and fast forward actually went to work for a computer company, became their division of salesperson. And my role there was really just going to the security and exchange site for the public companies that were reporting their information on how much they were making, if they were real estate they own, and seeing where their balance sheet was, if they were doing bad. And my job was to convince them to sell the real estate and outsource all of their computer repair to us, and that will increase their profits because we did computer repair on the through level, full replaceable unit level. And from there, actually, I started to shadow a cousin of mine who did real estate. And after shadowing him for a few months, he literally just made half my salary at the time.

00:08:46
And that was a wake up call for me. And I sort of writing on the wall, and in 99, early 99, I put my two week notice in, and a few months later, I made half my salary and started my real estate career from there. 99. So that was pretty exciting times. And I had an incident that happened to me probably about a year and a half of being in a real estate business from going to the community where I was from.

00:09:14
As I mentioned, I got value out of going back and repairing those properties and putting them back on a tax row, especially where I was from. I got the chance to stick my chest out and said, I'm back. I'm adding value. I'm not tearing down the community. So the circle of people that we are around.

00:09:32
I was set up in a botch robbery because we used to pay people cash. Was a great learning experience for me. I was shot five times, nearly lost my life, made it through that. And when I look back on that, I always say that that's the best thing that ever happened to me. Because people usually look at certain adversities or different iterations of their life where they got divorced or they had certain things, and they.

00:09:56
Why me? And pity. Pity, pity party. Instead of looking at that as something that created a new path for you, right? So when I looked at that and looked at it that way and used that to get to the next level, right, that kind of helped me.

00:10:16
And then I started to. With every From Adversity to Abundance Podcast I had, look at it as if it was a teachable moment, and how can I take this? That pushed me to another path, whether it was 911, whether it was 2008 when I lost money in real estate, whether it was my divorce. So these different things that I went through that helped build and shape and mold my character to make me who I am today. So I am grateful for the past that I went through.

00:10:43
So on the shooting, I mean, that's crazy. Certainly not something I've dealt with. So how old were you at that point, can you give a little more context? I was young. This was March 30, 2001, maybe 24, 25.

00:11:06
Okay, got you. And it was a bus robbery. We don't have to relive the whole. Detail, but I'm just curious, to me, I just posted something on social media. I actually went to the location where it was at and kind of filmed.

00:11:20
Hey, guys, this is where it went down. I was standing here. It's so fulfilling to do that because it's such a release when I share it, because for the longest, I never told anybody this story what happened to me until I think it was maybe 2018. I was at a no expo event. Eddie Speed and those guys give note Expo, and I was one of the speakers, and I had something that I was going to talk about.

00:11:42
I had just launched a book back then called Tire Kicker. It's a pamphlet, actually. It's like 50 something pages. And it's a motivational book about getting through From Adversity to Abundance Podcast and not beating around the bush and making it happen. And my talk was about the book.

00:11:58
And I just had this idea that came to me was like this share. You're a real vulnerable experience. And I did that, and it was such a release. So every time I get the opportunity to talk about it, it just helps me really appreciate where I am today. And for that to happen, it kind of put me on a path where I'm at now.

00:12:15
But, yeah, we used to pay in cash every week. Two of the local guys who didn't have bank accounts, these are guys from the street. We will hire them, help them out, give them money. We're doing demolition jobs. This particular day was my cousin's birthday, so we were leaving the office early.

00:12:32
Well, he was leaving the office early. So we went around the sites and paid everybody, and I guess they didn't get the memo. So I was in the office by myself, and the guy came in and we were closed, and I ran up on him, like, who are you looking for? And he was startled. And through that process, I got shot five times.

00:12:49
And that was that. But, yeah, I get excited every time I talk about it, because when most people will have ptsd when they think about it, to me, it made me the man who I am today. So I'm grateful for that moment, because. I reached out to you to try to get you on this show, as I'm kind of still launching it. And then I saw that you posted that story after we connected, and I was like, actually just telling my wife.

00:13:20
I'm like, I think he said he got shot five times. I'm like, this is wild. It's very real. I'm not trying to make light of it, but I didn't even know that was. I knew you'd been through From Adversity to Abundance Podcast, but I actually didn't know about any of that story.

00:13:35
That is wild. On one hand, it's nice to say that you look at it as a blessing or something, and I'm not saying you don't, but in the moment, how much time does that take you, either with that incident or some other From Adversity to Abundance Podcast, to look at that as a teachable moment or learning lesson? I imagine in the moment it's not enjoyable and you're not appreciating it, per se. I could be wrong, but how's that process work mentally? Yeah.

00:14:13
Where I grew up at, this was the normal, right? You hear that this person got shot or this person got killed. It was just when is my number, right, being in this area? So it was the normal. The people who got shot and made it through, they were gangster, whatever that is, right.

00:14:31
I already respected the shooter. I never respect the person who got shot. But for me, it was like, oh, wow. I was just grateful that I was still there, right? So it was shock, and then I felt like it was a set up.

00:14:50
A lot of stiffer things were going through my mind, so I was able to remove myself from that element for a long period of time. And I went through a healing process. Right. I went through trust issues. I went through a whole bunch of stuff.

00:15:05
And it really took, I would say, probably about two years for me really to understand what happened and how did it help me, because it turned me into obese, really with the real estate, because now that next six months after I got shot, I was working from home. 911 happened that same year. That September, I got shot in March. That September 911, it was all these different things that happened that just made me stronger, made me more focused, made me more grateful. I would walk around and say, this person is probably not even grateful that they can tie their shoes, they can bend over and tie their shoes.

00:15:43
I have staples in my stomach, or this person is not even grateful that they get to use the bathroom. This small stuff, it really made me become grateful for the little things and appreciate everything. And I was just like, wow, I never really appreciated this smaller things so much, really put things into perspective. So that's when I became grateful for the situation and started to use that energy to kind of drive me through it. Same thing, 2008 came.

00:16:13
And what happened in 2000? Well, those $2 million in my own money, and basically had to press the reset button, because after that, then I got divorced. And that was the best thing that happened to me as well, because, again, the circle of people that I was around was around me for the things that I had, not because of who I was. So that was a materialistic phase of my life that I went through, coming from where I was at, didn't have anything then getting into real estate, getting everything, feeling like God, being materialistic, having the wrong people around you, right, where if you're the smartest one in the room, then that's the problem. So that happened where that kind of shifted, where I was able to, again, get out of that circle I was in and then go deeper within myself.

00:17:10
So from that part losing money, getting divorced, getting custody of my boys, trying to get rid of whatever real estate I had to survive, and everything else going within myself, that helped me a great deal because I started getting into meditation, I started getting into a deli ritual and doing things to build up myself right. And that really was a game changer for me, also. So those two situations really built the foundation for who I am today. So, another situation I was grateful for, even though I lost a bunch of money, really, it was really showing me that it was more than the money, because I was a slave of money. I was chasing money when my former wife would say, hey, let's push the stroller and walk kid through the park.

00:18:03
I'm not doing that. That's your job. I got to go deal with these clothes, and I got to do this and do that. I'm getting this money. I'm paying the bills.

00:18:08
You do that when the reality is, as we know now, family is first. Right? Your kids grow up really fast, and you only have 18 summers with them. So every moment you get with them, from the time they born till they become teenagers and start hanging with their friends, you want to really value those moments. Going to the basketball games.

00:18:32
My daughter is almost 15. I'm like, what just happened? Whoa. Yeah. Things change at that point.

00:18:40
And they get around eight friends, different influences. So it's hard to kind of still keep that bond because you want them to become independent and go, you don't want to smother them. But sure, looking back on that, I say that was the best thing that happened to me because it kind of forced me to get custody of my boys at two and five, two and seven, five years apart, and really become a better man, become a father, and that's the best thing ever. Where you can actually go and play foursquare with your son or kickball or do certain things or stay after school. Right?

00:19:17
When most parents, when they go to pick up their kids from school, they're ready to grab their kids, get them in the car and run. It gave me the ability to go to school, pick them up, and he go, dad, I want to play with my friends four square. Can we stay for another 30 minutes? I'm like, sure. And I get a book and sit on the bench and let him do what he got to do.

00:19:32
And all you see out there is the moms with the kids, the strollers, no dads are there. So when I started to recognize that, I was like, wow, this is really good, because now I see the only guy here who has making the time to drive the kid to school and pick them up. My son is 14 years old now, and my youngest son is 14, and we still have the morning walks to school and everything else. So picking them up, dropping them off, is important at times. So that was the best thing that happened to me because it allowed me to go deeper within myself, deeper with them, family.

00:20:11
Yeah, it really does boil down to priorities, right? And I'm speaking to myself as much as anybody else. I'm not lecturing anybody here, but we all have the same amount of time, right? And so, like you said, you made time for these things because your priorities shifted mentally because of what you'd been through. So since some of our audience, they are investors, real estate investors, note investors.

00:20:38
Just quickly, what happened in 2008, from a tactical standpoint, obviously the world, all kinds of financial industry crashed. But in your situation, what led to that loss of $2 million, if you don't mind touching on that? Oh, yeah. I mean, basically, the way I had lending structured back then was the lender would give me 80% of the money, and this was heart money, 14% and two points. So this was back then.

00:21:10
And they would give me 80% of the money and I would put up 20% in renovation. So when the market crashed, values went, which was enough just to cover the lenders, if that. And a lot of them I had to do fire sales, meaning get rid of them more than one property at a time, because things were selling $0.50 in a dollar. So what I had to do was become creative, just get rid of the debt instead of hanging on, hoping and praying. So these were, I didn't do any rentals then.

00:21:40
I was just all fix and flips, and I knew nothing about being a landlord. I heard scary stories about tenants. So I didn't want to deal with the tenants. I was buying the properties and fixing them and selling them. That was great.

00:21:52
And I didn't have any idea because I wasn't tapped into a real estate market. What was happening, it was just got in the news one day. The banks, you started hearing of buzzes, deals falling apart. You start calling attorneys, they saying that something in Wall street, you turn to the news, you see people jumping off of buildings, you're like, what the hell is going on? Deals you had lined up to be closed are all falling apart.

00:22:17
And my private investors, hard money lenders, started to take meetings with me and what are we going to do? And please don't file bankruptcy. Let's try to sell this, let's work this out. So we were able to devise a plan and they worked with me to help me liquidate the entire portfolio. And obviously they were all rehab.

00:22:38
And some of them I did rent out, kept a few of them, but by the time it does settle, I was 2 million in a hole, lost all of the money that I put in for renovation. But I still have some of those lenders today. Okay. Because they saw the character I'm guessing that you had. And I didn't know how that would help me back then because I was young and my accountant and everybody was in my ear.

00:23:05
File bankruptcy. Why would you pay them? Just file bankruptcy and rent the properties and collect the rent and milk them. And that became the norm during that period. People just didn't pay the bank, they took the loan, got the money, bought a boat house, whatever.

00:23:20
And then when the thing went into foreclosure, they knew it was just some melees and they just rent a stuck attendant in there, collect rent, didn't pay and short sell it and all the slick stuff. We basically created a strategy where I made them whole and I lost and I'm way beyond where I was then. Where you would have been. I'm way beyond that now. So I'm just grateful that that happened because that taught me a lot in that process.

00:23:52
Sorry, go ahead. How to really structure situations, how to really structure deals in that situation, you had to become very creative. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to touch on. What have you changed tactically in your approach now because of that time? I mean, do you take on less risky investments or you don't take on hard money or what have you changed besides your mindset and everything?

00:24:17
But in your actual investment strategy, what have you changed since 2008? Oh yeah. So different. More average in the quiver. I think that's the saying.

00:24:27
So just different tactics and strategies. So one of them immediately was, I learned a note business, right? And I learned how to go above and beyond the reo guy and buy the paper at a discount, where I can have a lower discount and have an option. So that's why I started to buy seconds, because now I can buy a second mortgage on a high value property and have an option in the first, so I can foreclose, take the property subject to. I knew about subject to already because that's how I got rid of some of the deals that I had.

00:25:00
I would sell to investors and go, hey, you can buy this subject to the first. We can work something out. So I structured a lot of my deals on an exit that way, got the okay from the lender to transfer the mortgage over to them. So when I got into seconds, it was a no brainer for me to understand how the subject to work. And I still use that strategy today on acquisitions and then tax liens, learning about how to buy tax liens and foreclose from that point, because that's the highest priority lien in the chain.

00:25:31
So I'm now having that fix and flip knowledge, knowing construction, how to do that, having a paper knowledge, knowing how to backdoor the bank and get it at a discount, knowing how to play the tax lien business on getting it, and foreclosing and creating a hybrid model of diversity of these different acquisition points kind of helped me create or mitigate risk more. Sure. Now when I'm looking at a deal, I'm going, okay, let me underwrite this from a risk adjusted perspective. Instead of just saying, oh, Max, LTV, 75%, and certain ways that I do my calculations now, and you never know. Nobody knew COVID was going to come.

00:26:14
Sure. So what helped me there was the hybrid model. So, my fund has notes in real estate. So when the tenants stopped paying, I had tenants, some of the tenants paying because we had section eight. Majority of our portfolio was section eight.

00:26:32
So me learning how to navigate through city programs, my portfolio, 85% of it, was filled with that. So when COVID came, we collected rent because we had section eight coming in, right. When we had performing notes, we jumped ahead of it. We used a lot of the strategies that the auto loan industry was using, got some of their content repurposed. It dealt with our servicers, created a program to have them reach out when they started seeing delinquencies, to reach out to the borrower and put that 60 day on the back and bring them current, you fell behind, no problem.

00:27:08
We understand one month, two months, we can put that on the back. If you continue to pay, we can adjust the payments. We can be flexible utilizing all those strategies to keep that cash flow coming in. That's the answer to your question. So the things I learned over the years kind of helped me.

00:27:23
So, diversification, having multiple strategies, multiple options for each asset. And yeah, it sounds like because of 2008, you started to intentionally acquire knowledge about different real estate and note strategies, and therefore, you're probably better off than you would have been had you not learned all those things over the years, you would not have probably been in such a good position. Now, through navigating the COVID crisis, like you said, no one could see that coming, but you were able to weather the storm, it sounds like, partially because of the From Adversity to Abundance Podcast you'd been through previously. Sounds like. Is that in the connections?

00:28:11
Back then, I wasn't attending real estate events. I wasn't in masterminds. I was the smartest person in the room, so there was no growth. Now I attend masterminds where I'm not the smartest person in the room, where there's people that's way above and beyond and have way more experience that I can tap into. And that's really all I surround myself with, are top notch real estate investors.

00:28:38
Whether it's working on leadership skills, whether it's how to become a better CEO, different masterminds that I'm a part of, that kind of help me become more than I am. And I think that's really something important that people don't want to invest in. I spend over $100,000 a year in masterminds. I look at it like, most people invest in school, right? They want to go and spend six years in school and get degrees to make more money, right, or to have a career.

00:29:09
But the synergy that you get from people in these masterminds are great, and these are, like, high level masterminds. Do you mind naming them? Yeah, one of them is collective genius. That's great. I've heard of that mastermind.

00:29:26
The top notch real estate investors in the US are there probably, like, 240 guys now, all different states, and it's from multifamily, short sales, wholesaling systems, process, you name it. That's kind of really the best in the US that I'm aware of as far as how it's structured and the content that you get there and the support you get there from each other, right? So you're paying for speed, basically, so you spend 30 grand a year or whatever, and you can tap into these resources and connections.

00:30:03
There's plenty of masterminds out there. I'm pretty sure if someone is listening to this, they probably had the idea of doing it five years ago. I wasn't even thinking about doing that because I didn't want to spend the money. I was like, I'll just go and. Buy the books and do it myself.

00:30:20
I don't want to invest in that. But if I'm honest, it's kind of where I am right now. Yeah, I know. I should do it. Okay.

00:30:27
Big mistake. Big mistake. Because most people look at it, right? Black and white. If I spend 20, 30,000, how much am I going to make out of it?

00:30:37
Instead of who am I going to become? What relationships am I going to create? Everybody look at it from the money point. What's going to be my roi, dollar wise, if I invest this instead of my Roi internally, the relationships that I'm going to create, the people who I'm going to be around. Right.

00:30:55
No, I appreciate that. Don't you look at that from that perspective. It's completely different. It's a game changer. Well, this episode was supposed to be for the listeners, but it may have been for me.

00:31:07
No, I'm kidding. But I appreciate speaking truth because it's one of those, I know I should do it, but I just haven't pulled the trigger. But as we start to wrap up here, I'll just fire off a few questions at you, and then we'll close out. What is a challenge that you're facing in your business right now that you're addressing? There's always three things.

00:31:30
It's people, processes, and systems. I don't think balance is 50 50. It could be 70 30, 60 40. And to be quite frank with you, I look forward to the challenges because that's what help us grow. Right?

00:31:45
Who doesn't not want to have challenges? How did you get to who you are now without those challenges? Right. Every From Adversity to Abundance Podcast brings growth, so I embrace them like I'm the guy when a building is burning down, running towards the building, not away from it. Love it.

00:32:01
Yeah, sure. Okay. We've already touched on this, but in your opinion, what are a couple of important personality traits that are required to be successful in business or real estate investing? Those are my core values. Performance, accountability, transparency.

00:32:21
That's my company core values. And I think you have those three. You're good to go. I love it. All right, how about a book?

00:32:28
You'd recommend for my audience besides one of yours? Absolutely. There's a great book, I tell you, the author now I'm like probably halfway through this, I'm on page 121. It's called the obstacle is the way. This yet I've heard of it.

00:32:46
Ryan Holiday is a really great book. A lot of quotes from Marcus Aurelius in know. It's really good. I've read. The ego is the think.

00:32:59
Yes, I read that also. That's a good. Sometimes you overcome obstacles by not attacking them, but by withdrawing and letting them attack you. You can use the actions of others against themselves instead of acting yourself. So there's a lot of good things in this book that is helping me really understand how to make those adversities work.

00:33:22
Looking at that obstacle as this is something that's going to afford a new path. So that's the book I'm reading. I definitely will recommend. Love it. I appreciate that.

00:33:31
How about any podcasts you'd recommend? Are you still doing your podcast? Yeah. So what I'm doing now is repurposing a podcast. We actually have one we are trying to launch probably this quarter, the intelligent, accredited investor podcast.

00:33:45
Okay. We also have the passion for real estate investment podcast. So we did over 100 episodes. Now we're just chopping the value up out of it and repurposing that. Just taking a break from it.

00:33:56
Podcasts, as you know you do one, is a bit overwhelming. It's a lot of work when you. Have a lot of stuff done. So we used to batch them and do them. I love them, though, because I learned so much for them.

00:34:07
But it seems like everyone wants to do them between the nine to five hour. And that's challenging for me, running teams, running operations. So when we do relaunch the interviews to go again, it's going to be weird times that people with true freedom can do it. So I get people have family and everything else, but I want to make it a time where we're not rushing and the podcasts are back to back. And I got a meeting, so I got to rush this person off the podcast.

00:34:32
So, yeah, we have so much content out there. We're content rich. So we're just looking at what we have and saying, you know what, let's repurpose a lot of stuff. I don't think people got it the first time. It kind of glazed over them.

00:34:43
So let's take that 30 Minutes podcast and just get the five minute nuggets. We got five minute nuggets in there. Let's repurpose that maybe they go watch the episode. So that's kind of what we're doing now. Building up our YouTube channel and different platforms by repurposing the small nuggets to gain interest so they can watch it.

00:35:01
Well, that's a good segue into really, my final question is, where can the listeners find you online? Oh, just go to Google and type in every platform, even TikTok by. It's. It's. It's not difficult to find you online.

00:35:18
Yeah, I'm an open book. I'm an open book. Fully transparent. My core value. Love it.

00:35:23
All right, well, I did say that was my final question, but I'll throw one more. And is there anything that I haven't asked you that you wish I had or anything else you'd like to share? That sound like an investor question?

00:35:36
That's the question. The last question I get from an investor. Yeah. For me, I think that what I would leave to the listeners, and thank you for asking that, what I would leave from the listeners is people focus so much on goals. Goals, goals, goals, goals.

00:35:59
Right. It's so much more than that. Success is a daily optimized experience. Right. If you can create every single day that's sustainable over time, that success, an optimized daily experience.

00:36:12
So really go deeper within. Create rituals in the morning. Make sure you do your exercise, your journaling, meditation. Do what's right to set your foundation first, and that lines your whole day up. Right.

00:36:27
Love it. If it requires you to get up early, then do it. That's for you. Right. Miracle morning.

00:36:31
If you guys read that book, that's a great book. Also, if you can get that extra 2 hours in the morning to yourself, it's just a whole game changer. Right. So that's what I can leave with the people that's helped me grow. So, yeah, I appreciate that.

00:36:47
That's really so. All right, well, thanks so much, Faquan. This has been really good. I think I'm going to have to listen to this a couple of times. You've dropped a few truth bombs.

00:36:58
And I think personally, I need to seriously look at joining a mastermind or some kind of community where I'm definitely not the smartest guy in the room. Something that will push me personally to kind of go to the next level. Not necessarily from a goals standpoint, but just from a human development and growth standpoint. So that's my takeaway for me personally. But I do appreciate you spending the time because like I said, I know you're a busy guy, so thanks for joining us.

00:37:32
You're welcome. And to the listeners out there, also appreciate you all listening because your time is your most valuable asset. So we appreciate it. And if you could please give us a rating and review and subscribe on all the stations. Thanks, everyone.

00:37:47
Take care.