Real Estate Investing: How to Build Wealth & Generate Cash Flow with NFL Vet Devon Kennard

Hey, I am Ryan Naylor, the host of a podcast all aimed at helping small business owners. In fact, I just got this cool cut. The Build to Grow podcast mug. Finally got it, ordered it like three months ago.

We'll have to give you one, Devin. But we've got some awesome guests. We've we've been talking a lot about. We've had a couple NFL athletes on recently talking about kind of the transition from kind of playing the grind of football, but how it's really cultivated and helped people with work ethic leadership and transitioning to be an entrepreneur.

And excited to have Devin Kennard on here again. Talk to us about kind of his experience. Nine years in the NFL, is that right? Yep, nine years.

Alright, well, I'm gonna hit you with a hard question up front if that's all right. Go for it. Reflecting on those years, gosh, I you you had from the Giants to the Lions, the Cardinals, a little bit in Baltimore. You played with some iconic individuals.

You yourself iconic, but let's think about who is one person that demonstrated the best leadership skills for you. For me, I'll probably have to go Matthew Stafford. He became a pretty good friend of mine when I played in Detroit. But just seeing the level of humility, but how he approached work every day, that was pretty awesome.

And being that high caliber of a player, and he's a guy you'd love to like grab a beer with and just hang out. So um he really cultivated the locker room in a positive way by just being one of the guys. What was it someone like he did that others didn't? What was that gap?

Like what that he kind of was able to rise above where I wouldn't even say like you're in the NFL, I wouldn't even say mediocre players, but like they used to call this the greatness gap. What what is it that created that gap? I think it goes back to he just really kind of felt like one of the guys, you know, like the superstar player, they kind of can isolate themselves intentionally or unintentionally, but I just felt like Matthew never really did that, and even to this day, I don't think he carries himself that way.

You know, I tell all my buddies I grew up with here in Phoenix, like it's like he's a guy that could be sitting right here next to us, just kicking it, watching Sunday football if he wasn't playing, obviously. Very relatable, but also you know, he gets on that field and he's an ultimate competitor. He can talk a little crap with the best of them, and I feel like just a guy's guy that you could really relate to. Oh, it's amazing.

That goes so far with anyone, right? Just being humble, just being approachable, just being one of the guys. There's a lot of leadership lessons learned in there, too. As a CEO or a business leader, how often we forget to just be one of the guys and kind of be able to talk to people at their level, meet them where they are, right?

I think that's so true. I mean, that's how obviously to my own scale. I was never Matthew Stafford, but I feel like that's how I approach my life, that's how I approach my business. Not afraid to get your hands dirty, not afraid to talk and interact and deal with people.

You know, don't try to carry yourself higher than not, higher than anyone else. Being the guy that talks to the top guy all the way down to the janitor walking through, those kind of principles and concepts go a long way and transition well into, you know, business world for sure. Yeah, I love that. Well, let's talk about that transition into the business world just a little bit.

So you're in nine, 10 years, the NFL, obviously, great career at USC. But tell me a little bit, like, when did it click football wasn't the ultimate plan? When was that realization? What point of your career were you like, uh, there's gotta be something more here?

For me, I feel like it was always kind of ingrained in me for two reasons. One, my dad played in the NFL as well. He played 13 years, and I got to see him mostly post-career. So I got a really good insight of like, even if football goes as well as you can ask it, my dad played 13 years, he won a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys, all this thing.

There's still so much life after. So I always had that concept of like, I gotta make sure I put myself in position to where I have a good life once I'm done. And it kind of really slapped me in the face my senior year of high school and most of my collegiate career because I was a top recruit. I was number one recruit in the nation coming out of high school, and then tore my ACL, and then I'm in college and I faced a ton of adversity, coaching changes, position changes, injuries, being a five-star recruit, number one guy out of the state of Arizona, top guy in the entire nation, to not looking like I'm gonna make it to the NFL at all.

It made me ask myself hard questions. And the biggest one was do I want to be successful because of football or do I want to be successful? Period. And I kind of really asked myself that question, and I came to the realization I have a vision of success and what I want my life to look like.

And I always saw myself getting it through the game of football. But if I wasn't going to get it through football, I still wanted it regardless. And once I made that decision, it's like, okay, I have to figure out what life looks like for me off the field. And I really kind of dove into networking and figuring out what I wanted to do.

And I gravitated towards first real estate very niche, and then now real estate's still my specialty, but I really kind of understood now that like real estate is just a form of business, and it's like, you know, a balance sheet is a balance sheet, a PL is a PL, and so on. So understanding where real estate fits within the business world, and now I consider myself, you know, a business person, not a real estate guy necessarily because I can geek out over CAC and LTV and monthly growth and net profit margins and all those things, but it doesn't matter whether it's you know a real estate property or or an operating business, that you know, all those things still apply.

Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. There's some stats floating around. I don't I don't know how true they are. Maybe you know, something to the effect of north of 70% of most professional athletes are broke within just a few years after they retire.

What did you see up close and personal in your experience with these athletes? And why do you think so many NFL players do go broke? I wish they would rerun those numbers because I wonder what it is now. Those projections were years ago, and I think it is true, and I think it's prevalent now too, but I don't know if those exact numbers are well.

What I saw throughout my career and towards the end, and then still being connected with a lot of guys still playing, guys are starting to invest more now than ever before. When I first got in the league, it was just like stock market and stuff. What concerns me is guys don't know how to underwrite and assess risk and understand business, and they have a lot of money and they're getting pitched business opportunities, but don't understand asset allocation and a balanced portfolio, and it's easy to get caught up in things that I'm gonna invest in this venture capital deal that's supposed to 100x, but not understanding that that money's locked up for five, 10 years and there's no consistent income from that.

So while it's sexy and hopefully it does 100x, it might not, and even if it does, there's a long time period where it's illiquid and not giving you any kind of return. So I'm very passionate and I speak to a lot of NFL players, the NFL, the NFL PAs hired me on to talk about that specifically because I don't think players put enough respect on the idea of a balanced portfolio and really having a portion of their capital really allocated towards revenue generating businesses or investments.

And it's hard because while you're playing, you're making so much money. So you're not thinking of more income. Right. Like you're thinking of investments that are gonna grow.

But the problem is you retire and that faucet turns completely off. And even if you made a large sum of money, you're churning that money every month, you're spending 50 grand, 100 grand, and you have no consistent income, and you get put in a position where you're just waiting for the next investment to pay off. And that's a trap that you don't want to be into. Like you're you're calling your financial advisor, you're calling the operator.

Hey, this was supposed to be a five-year hold, and I'm not getting my money back. What's going on? You don't want to be chasing when deals are coming back, but I see that often now because so many guys invest that way. You become an accredited investor only by basically having money, which blows my mind that there's not anything beyond do you have a net worth over a certain dollar amount?

But the understanding of liquid versus non-liquid investments, especially if your career just cut a little short, right? I mean, anything can happen anytime, and we're not even just talking about injury, but just talking about from the position to be taken because you got the next Heisman that got drafted in your spot, and now you're on the bench, and now you're on practice squad, and before you know it, your contract's gone. And and so anyway, it's it's fascinating to hear that.

But Devin, reflect for me for just a little bit. Your first paycheck, what'd you do with it? You got your first big paycheck. Do you remember what you spent it on?

For me, I saved it. Okay. Kind of give you context on my background. So I saved it.

There's even a CNBC article where that goes into how you know I drove my high school car in the NFL for the first few years of playing, and that actually segueed into me getting a free car for a little while. But I drove my 2005 Kia Sorrento that I used to drive here in Alatuke. I brought that to New York. I was playing for the New York Giants rolling in in a 05 Kia Sorento, and I'm seeing Rolls Royce's and Mercedes, and I had a good, good idea of the concept of delayed gratification.

So it's not that I didn't want nicer things, but I got a reality early on of how football can be taken away from me. So it was like I'm gonna save as much of this money and give myself a head start on life afterball. And, you know, so my first few years, I really didn't spend any money. I didn't buy my first car or do anything crazy until I got my second contract.

The one thing I did do, which was kind of crazy, is my first offseason. I we had rookie dinner, so I ended up spending way more money because all the vets made me spend money there. And then I took some of my buddies to Miami after my rookie season and got a tough reality of um you go to Miami with a bunch of people and you're the only one with money, it gets expensive really quick. So uh I would say those are my big splurges of rookie dinner, and then but I I don't regret any either of them, but it was just one of those things you gotta do what you gotta do.

I love that. Good for you on having your head on straight. Kind of uh people get a little taste of money and they go a little crazy on depreciating assets, right? And I think that's probably an important thing.

In fact, you see that a lot even in the small business community. You see a small business owner get out there, win a big contract, start start getting a little bit of success, and next thing you know, they're at the credit union signing a long-term loan on a vehicle that's depreciating faster than their payments, and after a few years and they want to do a trade in a little upgrade, and they're shocked that they now owe more money to get rid of it. I think the conversation around that needs to be different though, because a lot of people, there's people who just want those nicer things.

Um and that's okay. How you get them and when you get them matter though. So I think the conversation of like, oh, you should live frugal and all this, I think it cuts a lot of people off because you're a business owner and you come into a good amount of money or you're killing it, and you know, you just crossed your first million dollar year or month or whatever, and the financial gurus are telling you, save all your money, don't spend like it's like, bro, I feel like it's unrealistic.

And I've seen that in the sports world. So, you know, I think the conversation around that needs to change. I always say pick one or two vices that you have. What are the things that you like to spend money on?

We talked a little off camera, you like to travel with your family. Yeah, that's great. You just don't want to be the guy who likes to travel with his family, who wants a crazy house, multiple cars, or you like to go out and party. Like it gets dangerous when you're adding vice after vice after vice.

But if you have one thing that you like to splurge on that you like to spend money on, you know, you can do that one thing. But the issue is when you're trying to do all of these things all at once, you're breaking the rule of compounding. And I always say, like, earn, invest, and then spend the excess capital from there. You know, for all those people listening, I in fact, this show gets listened to by quite a few high school kids.

And I want to go back to the old high school days of debt and the glory days in high school. I don't talk about that in a minute, but for that individual that's coming out of high school, college, business school, they get their first $10,000 pop, they got a little extra cash in the checking account. What do they do with it? How do they invest it?

Where should they put their money? Do you have some insights, some thoughts around the best way to make that $10,000 turn into $15,000 or $20,000? I would say if they're that young, the best way to spend your money is on your own education. Yeah.

Taking a course to learn something you're interested about, going to some kind of mastermind, obviously got to be careful. Some of them are crappy out there, but like, you know, do your best to try to pick a good one. But investing in yourself, especially when you're young, is the best investment. I mean, putting $10,000 into anything isn't necessarily going to change your life anytime soon.

But putting $10,000 into your own education, into a skill that can add value, that can really contribute to you, I think that's the best investment you can make. So I think the younger you are, the more you need to be investing in yourself first. And I think that trickles down all the way to when you get older. Even now, you need to be investing in yourself, whether it's money or time, you know, what have you.

But, you know, young people always always ask, I mean, if you got $5,000, sure, I could say put it in the stock market or this and that. But like, I think the best investment you can make is like, what can I buy that's gonna teach me a skill that I need to learn? Can I learn sales? Can I learn how to integrate AI into companies?

Can I learn a certain skill that's gonna add value that increases my earning potential? So I spend this $5,000 here, but it puts me in a position where I can earn $100,000 six months from now or a year from now. That was spot on, dude. That was absolute bullseye advice because you know I've asked this question a handful of times.

And you're right. I my big personal philosophy is the power of compound. And you can't compound that $10,000 as fast as you can compound your own personal contribution factor, meaning what can I learn to contribute more to generate more value for someone else? And that's where you really get the compound effect is when you can continue to get more education, more value, niche down, have a skill set worth paying for.

And sometimes you gotta invest into that. So I love that answer. That's fantastic. Let's stay down that path here.

I got a couple questions for you specifically about kind of any financial advice. Maybe in the NFL or even post-NFL, were there any kind of money beliefs that you had to unlearn before you actually saw yourself being successful? The best way to invest is having a financial advisor and giving your money to somebody to help you. Not that you can't or shouldn't ever have a financial advisor.

You know, I'm not saying that. There's some great ones out there, but you need to control your own money and understand everything that you're investing in. There's nobody who cares about your money more than you. And I would say early on, I felt like I don't know anything about this.

I'm just gonna find a financial advisor, hire them, and let them do their thing. They don't care about your money like you do, they don't understand your goals. And I started to see that because I started to build my own thesis that I'm very cash flow forward. So many people focus on appreciation and growth and in stuff.

And for long term and having that retirement type of money, that's great. But you need a certain level of cash flow to sustain your life, to make sure you can reinvest. And I'm like, if I focus on the cash flow, now I have enough money to spend, but I also have enough money to find new things to invest. But you run out of capital eventually, even if you make a ton, like you come into $10 million, and all you invest is in things that don't cash flow, you run out of money eventually, even with $10 million.

And I started to see with financial advisors, they didn't really have a solution for that. You know, and I'm like, I started to see, I get into my NFL career and I'm like, I see the writing on the wall. I'm probably gonna be retiring in a couple of years. I want to make sure I have enough income coming in to offset my life expenses and to make sure I'm able to continue to make new investments with new money coming in.

Otherwise, I'm just gonna be able to invest the money that I have, and then I gotta wait. As I was talking to more and more different financial advisors, it's more like stock market, private equity, this or that, which are all good vehicles. But I'm like, what's gonna help me generate income? And a lot of them didn't have solutions for that.

And and that was where I kind of went down the rabbit hole of like understanding your own investment thesis and gener and creating that for yourself and making sure your financial plan aligns with that and with those goals. And even if you do have a financial advisor, they're a piece in helping that come into creation, but you are the controller of it all. I can hear the passion here. I love it so much because your passion around uh wealth, not just creation, but wealth stability, right?

People have their honey pot and don't draw from the honeypot, let the honeypot generate good wealth, distributions, annuities that can then pay for your lifestyle without tapping the principal. And I think that's a concept a lot of people don't understand is the power of retaining that and leverage. How do you leverage that to generate more wealth on the backside that you live you live within those guardrails, right? Absolutely.

Let's talk a little bit about kind of what you're doing today. Maybe for those that have never heard about private money or hard money lending, can you explain explain it to me like I'm brand new? I guess I'll start with a kind of my background. So, first I started buying single-family properties.

I purchased up to 50 properties on my own. A lot of them I paid cash. I was buying in the Midwest. Uh hindsight, I wish I kind of started buying in Arizona instead at the time, but it was expensive.

And I was early in my career in the NFL and figuring it out. So I was buying in the Midwest, buying around $100,000, and I was charging like $1,300,000, $1,400 in rent. So if you're in that world, that's you know, the 1% rule, it was exceeding that really well. It was cash flowing great.

I was doing that for a long while, a long time. And then I started investing in syndications and funds, mostly real estate backs, which so it's a large apartment building. They're raising money from high, high net worth individuals like myself while I was playing to do the project. And I invested in a ton of those.

I ended up having over 50 investments in syndication deals, apartments. I tried to diversify throughout the country, all of that. And through that experience of owning a bunch of real estate, I had stock market investments. I was investing in a lot of syndications and funds, and I started to see like none of them were accomplishing everything that I wanted towards the end of my career.

I wrote a couple of books for any of the audience out there that's familiar with like bigger pockets. They've published my books. I'm a contributor there. And I started to build a network, and a couple of people started asking, like, you know, I know you have some capital, would you lend to me on a project?

And I was like, oh, you know what? I'll give this a try. I had no idea what I was doing from the start. So they're buying a property for cheap, renovating it, selling it for way more.

And there's essentially people who provide them money for doing that. They don't like going to banks because banks move too slow and are way too um and are way too rigorous. So they pay a premium to someone like myself who can give them money quickly, allow them to do the project, get out of it, and they're willing to pay a premium on the on the interest rate because it's short term and their plan is to exit and sell for a significant profit. So I did that a couple of times, just kind of not fully understanding what I was doing, but kind of hand-holding my my way through.

But my where I had an advantage is I already understood real estate and I understood how to underwrite a borrower and to underwrite a deal. Like, okay, this makes sense. I was playing for the Cardinals, and I'm like, all right, I know I'm probably going to be retiring in the next year or two. I started looking at the stock market, my portfolio there, my residential real estate um portfolio, all my syndications and funds, and then these couple of deals I did, and I was like, on a cash flow basis, there's nothing that's generating me this kind of cash flow, and the turnover is so quick.

So, you know, it's a year. All my loans are a year, but okay, like right now, the average loan that I fund lasts about seven and a half months. Okay. So why that's advantageous for me from a business perspective is I call it churn rate.

You know, my churn rate is high, so I'm able to fund like 1.6 deals per year, 1.6 to 1.8 deals per year, and there's fees every time I fund a deal.

So not only am I charging interest, which is what's annualized, but if I'm funding two deals every year on that same dollars, I'm able to charge fees twice on that first time I funded and the second time, which compound my return. So once I started to see that, because I was I've invested in a couple of debt funds, but the problem there is I only invest my money. So I have $100,000, I put it in a debt fund, they pay me 9%. Running my own business doing it.

Now I get to use my own money, I get to use line of credits on that real estate portfolio I told you about. So you know, I bought mostly cash, have line of credits on it, take a line of credit, I'm paying the bank 7%, but I'm charging 12%, I get to make the spread. So, you know, arbitraging, you know, my line of credits. And then that brings in investor capital.

Oh, I can pay somebody else nine or 10%. And, you know, they're happy because they're getting a consistent return. Other players who don't have a cash flow bucket, I've talked a lot about cash flow. Hey, I can pay you 10% annualized.

You know, I started to piece this together and just really. Um built it out. And you know, uh, as of today, I fund I funded over $32 million in loans, and that's all with private capital. Um, and I'm just growing the business.

How do you look at risk on something like this? How do you protect yourself from the fallout of someone not being able to repay you? The project went south. How do how do you protect yourself?

So the number one is Arizona's a non-judicial foreclosure state. So almost all of my business is here. But what that means with doing non-judicial foreclosure in a non-judicial foreclosure state is that means if a borrower doesn't pay back, I don't have to go through the judicial process, go to court, and all this. I can take over a property in 90 days or less.

So the quickness of that is a huge advantage because I I pull payments from borrowers on the first of every month. They don't make the payment on the first. You know, I'm reaching out to them. Hey, you're at risk of default, you need to make sure you get this payment in, what have you.

I can start to foreclose that same month. And so within 90 days, I can take over the property and now I own it. So that's one huge advantage is like it's not a strenuous property that's a process to take over the property. Number two is I'm lending up to 70% of the ARV and I'm making them put skin in the game, and they're making payments along the way.

So all of these factors, it's like, okay, if they ended up, they're buying a property for $500,000 in Mesa, and at closing, they put almost $80,000 to $100,000 in. Are they really walking away day one? Is it possible? Sure, most likely not.

Because why would you close? You got almost $100,000 in this deal and you're just walking away, you're not going to make payments. I'm taking it over. It's just unless a crazy event happens in their life, it's just not really happening.

So then it's like, okay, the project comes along, I know whether they're performing or not because I have rehab draws, they're sending me pictures and updates, and they're making payments. So I'm able to monitor. And if if they're not being communitive, if they're not making payments, if there's not progress with the project, then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, that's a red flag. What's going on there?

So I'm able to kind of every step of the way have a really good idea of what's going on with the project and whether it's performing or not, which is a huge risk mitigation tool. So the combination of all that, I feel like makes it makes it safer, uh, safer to do these type of loans and really understand what's going on. Those that don't understand this, I think this is fascinating. That one of the key metrics in these investment portfolios is your IRR, your internal rate of return.

So for for every $1 that you're spending over one year, how much is that one dollar groan? Can you talk a little bit, Devin, on what your IRR typically is lending as opposed to renting? Because I love that you've got experience in both, because there's a lot of real estate gurus out there talking about, you know, go buy and flip a house. Then there's the gurus that are like, go buy a bunch of rental units to put people in, then you got the Airbnb guys.

And I think a lot of it comes down to understanding is risk and IRR. And a lot of times that return on your investment capital, you know, may look really sexy with an Airbnb, but all of a sudden you have a little bit of a tourism drought or cost of gas goes up like it has been, and all of a sudden those destinational communities that otherwise once were really busy, now they're budget constrained and they're not as your vacancy goes up. Tell us a little bit about kind of what you look for from an IRR perspective.

So let's talk about the three main ways that there's business professionals in real estate. So there's building a real estate portfolio of properties, there's fixing flipping, and then I'll compare it to lending. Building a real estate portfolio, especially, let's just talk Arizona. You know, we're both in Arizona.

Building a real estate portfolio in Arizona, the cash on cash return and total IRR is not very good. The IRR can be good because of appreciation. I don't think it's gonna be good these next few years because I feel like it's gonna be pretty stable. So you can't count on great appreciation in the in the Arizona.

You can't control it, right? Yes, it's very outside your your. So when you're looking at IRR, you're basically to juice your IR with a real estate portfolio, you have to add in great appreciation from the growth of the property's values. That and forced appreciation.

So you're buying really cheap and then you renovate it nice and you force appreciation. So if you're forcing appreciation, that's one way to do it. If you're looking for natural appreciation, it's not really there. The big sticking point in Arizona is on a cash flow basis, it's very minimal because you buy a $500,000 house in Mesa, the most you're probably getting rent for is maybe three grand.

So the math isn't great. So all of your IRR and your return is really based on what you're able to force in appreciation by maybe buying it cheap and renovating it, and what you're able to naturally get from appreciation. So that's the issue in a market like Arizona. If you want to just buy a real estate portfolio, it's not gonna cash flow very well in the short or midterm at all, and you're betting on appreciation, which you're gonna have to hold for you know a long time.

So that's that's the issue there. Now, fix and flipping. I love it. I lend to fix and flippers, but that it is a cash restraint business in the sense of they buy a property and they have no cash flow till they sell, and it's big pops.

So it's higher risk, higher reward. You know, if they execute well, if they buy right, like that's where I was talking to earlier about like having a um understanding the difference between real estate and business. Being a flipper, you're running your own flipping business. That is a business in itself, but the business doesn't have any residual income.

So you have to front all of this money and carry the cost for the projected big return in the end. Now the debt, yeah, accrue the debt, the risk, handle payments to someone like me, manage construction crews, do all of this. I'm not knocking the business at all because the return on the back end can be really high, but it's capital intensive and there's a lot of risk in it. So now you compare that.

So that the IRRs there can be 20% plus, but you have to be able to carry that for the life of that project, and there's a chance that the market turns a little and you're losing money. And if you do enough flips, you're gonna lose money on some, or you're gonna not make as much. So you have to balance that out across all of the projects you did. So high risk, high reward.

Now, comparing those two to lending, IRR, you ask. So when unlevered, I can make between a 14 to 15% IRR on my capital. But what makes it very impactful to me is its cash IRR. That's money that's actually hitting the account annually, which means I'm able to compound it.

You mentioned compound. So understanding the difference, not all things are true. So let's assume the long-term rental can do a 15% IRR too, but most of that is from appreciation, as opposed to I can hit 15% IRR unlevered, but it's cash flow monthly. Do you look at those the same?

Yes or no? That's to me, I'm like, I value a business that's generating a 15% IRR based on cash flow, cash flow coming in, and I'm able to reinvest those dollars to get a very similar return. You know, I get a 15% IRR, and that let's say that nets me half a million dollars, I'm able to reinvest that half a million dollars and make a 15% IRR on that as well. Now in my business, you can talk about levered.

So now if I go and raise money, if I go and use my line of credit, so you know, I track that as well. So I'm levered 14 to 15% IR, levered 22 to 27% is where I'm gonna land this year, for instance. When I stack on just my dollars, what I'm making, versus what I can do with investor capital, with the line of credits I'm using, the overall portfolio compared to the dollars that I have in the business, I can generate a mid-25, you know, so let's call it 25% return on that capital.

So that's what I think is interesting in that. But the downside is there's no appreciation in that, and there's more of a tax hit for me. So it's give give or give and take. So there's tax benefits in holding the residential, so that's why people are willing to do that.

There's big upside in flips, and then in lending, the cash is great, but I don't have any tax benefits. So there's pros and cons in all of them, and you got to just decide your game. I think it's fascinating. Have you ever done a modified hard money where you're taking a percentage of the pop at the end as well?

I haven't yet, but I'm going to grow into that for sure. Because, you know, it's the same underwriting, is what I'm saying. So I can I can do preferred equity on some deals, uh, on bigger deals, because like, for instance, I can't fund everything in Paradise Valley, for instance. Those loans are way too large.

But I can come in as a preferred equity position and it have it structured kind of like debt, to where it's like, hey, a preferred return of 12%, and I get an equity kicker on the back end of 10% of the profits, you know. So I haven't done any of that yet, but that's just gonna juice my returns long term because I'm like, it's the same borrower type of people, it's the same, same borrowers, but a different model. So, you know, I'm I'm interested in that in the future as well.

That's awesome. Do you have your own team or do you do it yourself? How do you do all the underwriting and sourcing deals? So I have a software system that helps me manage the deal from start to finish.

And then I have a servicing manager, a bookkeeper, and a processor. So they're helping me with the whole loan process. And then my wife is a local agent here for Compass, so we handle internal valuations where we're going out to the properties, we're evaluating what we believe the as is versus after repair value is. And I feel like the combination of all those things is what makes us a unique lender in the marketplace because you know, have that combination of things.

So it's fun. I would say it's a small team, you know, we're able to do a lot of volume, but leveraging software, and then I'm pretty much an admin staff. And then I felt that up to this point I'm best suited with final underwriting decisions. So they kind of prepare everything and then I review and then marketing up front.

So bringing in borrowers, leveraging my name, my reputation, going to events, etc. You know, investor relations and capital sources, building banking relationships, etc. So those are the things that I'm focused on day to day is you know, originating and and marketing, underwriting, and then capital source. That's fantastic.

I love how smart you're thinking about this. You're definitely not a one-stop shop. You got you got your hands in a lot of different things, which is phenomenal. Can you tell me about maybe if you're reflecting what's one that got away?

What's one deal, one investment that you're like looking back, I should have should have pulled the trigger. The one thing I'm regretting is I have a lot of money locked up in syndications and funds that I can't touch. And I will do that very little going forward. Not that I won't ever do it again, because there's some great operators that's giving me amazing returns and have been awesome.

But there's something to be said about having absolutely no control and you're just waiting. And, you know, some of the multifamily stuff, I don't know how familiar you are, but like interest rates, so deals are just sitting and they're refunding, like, and just have to sit and wait and like, oh, am I getting any of my money back? Am I getting it all back? Okay, I'm gonna make a good return on this, but when?

So I would say my biggest going hindsight, I like I don't regret it because all that I've learned and all that, but like I think about the money that I have in syndications and funds today and what I can do if I were to just take all that money today and bring it into my lending operation. And the fact that I have to like wait over the next two to four years for these things to you know go full cycle and recapitalize and get it all back, versus if I just took it today. So, you know, again, I don't regret it because of overall the portfolio has performed really well of all my syndication funds, but I can't refinance when I want to.

I can't take line of credit, like even my residential real estate portfolio, the ones that don't make sense, I'm able to sell, I'm able to refinance, I got line of credits, like I have optionality of like, all right, how do I want to you know play this portfolio? With the syndication stuff, I just gotta wait, you know, get updates and wait. So I would say my biggest all I got away is just like, I wish I could have all that money back today. You like control, you want to hold that money and do it.

And and yeah, so I think that's the for me, somebody who's completely passive, they won't feel the way that I do. But I I'm looking at, you know, I just said I can make at least a 14% return on a dollar and levered 22 to 26. So it's like the average syndication is around 15% IRR, but it's once again factoring in all the appreciation and all that. So I'm like, I can generate that myself on cash flow.

So that's kind of now that I know that, that I would say that's my biggest regret. All right, I'm gonna change gears just a little bit, and I'm gonna selfishly talk about your high school life. So I know it's always uncomfortable to go back to those glory days sometimes, but Devin, you were a five-star athlete. You were got recruited by, in my opinion, one of the greatest college football programs in the country at the time at USC, and you had your own setbacks.

But can you tell me just a little bit about going back to the sophomore junior year version of Devin? What were you doing to prepare yourself mentally to become an elite athlete? So, not I'm not talking like just the financial side of it and the career man that you are today, but think about it just becoming a character athlete at the time. What the grind was, what did you have to do to become that five-star athlete?

I would say the two things that stood out to me when I was that age was one, my dad and my brother used to always tell me, if you want different results, you can't do what everybody else is doing. You gotta go above and beyond. So it's like, all right, you're playing football, for instance, and you do the team workouts and the team lifts. If your goals are different, you can't just stop there.

That's what everybody on your team is doing. You gotta be putting in extra, extra work. You know, you gotta be running extra hills, doing extra sprint work, doing extra position drills. So now I didn't articulate it that way there, um, that way at that time.

So that's how it was worded is like I can't do what everybody else is doing. I have to do above. That's kind of how I conceptualized it at the time. How I would now is there's a difference between what's mandatory and what's necessary.

Everybody does what's mandatory. Very few people decide to do what's necessary. And what I mean by that is like if you own a company or if you're an employee or whatever, you're a student, you said there's some younger people who listen to this podcast, everyone's gonna go to school and do pretty well in school so they can go to college and like, you know, it's just kind of like you float. Like, all right, I'm gonna do what I need to do to kind of get through life.

And then there's people who do what's necessary to reach the goals that they have. Are you willing to do what's necessary to reach the goals that you have in your life? And if you're gonna do what's necessary, you got to go above and beyond what's mandatory. Mandatory is status quo, necessary is above and beyond.

And that's how I would describe what I was kind of instilled in me from my parents and my brother. I have a brother who was like my coach growing up, and was the biggest difference maker for me in my life early on for sure. You come from an incredible pedigree. I you're you're born with gifts that a lot of us aren't.

But it that's just not enough in today's day and age either. You mentally had to be tougher. Was there any other ways that you would think about it to become mentally tough, to kind of fight through those obstacles, to be able to temptations are tough too in high school days, right? There's parties on Friday nights or your Thursday nights, and you gotta be prepared for game nights.

How did you mentally get tough and stay grounded? I was lucky enough again to have parents and a brother that forced it in me to where, like my early years before high school, you know, my my older brother would say I was soft at times. Like I was I was too soft. I needed to toughen up.

And he made sure I did get tougher. He would make me wake up early and run sprints. If my dad or my or my brother saw me talking back crazy to like my mom or something, they'd kind of um, you know, make sure, make sure I didn't do that again. Like, so they kind of kept me in line in that in that regard.

And like whatever softness I had in me, they kind of like worked out of me, which I hated at the time and in moments, but I'm very appreciative of it now because it prepared me for life. I guess my challenge to parents out there is like, don't be too soft on your kids. Um, obviously there's there's lines, I'm not saying do anything crazy, but like, you know, it you gotta instill a level of toughness, a level of adversity, a level of a standard, and nothing else is going to be accepted.

You know, and I feel like that was ingrained in me, you know, little things and I connected life to sport so much, I still do, to where it's like little things like running through the line when you're running sprints. Like, you know, my brother was my football coach at Desert Vista, and if we didn't run through the line, like he would make everybody go back. One guy didn't. Everyone's going back.

We're all accountable for each other. Like those are like like important lessons that how many people in business now don't run through the line? Right. Great.

And so so many. And then it also goes back to that comment I made about delay, delayed gratification and what's meant, oh, doing what's necessary, not mandatory. Is like I was in high school and there's people drinking and smoking and partying, but again, I had to make sacrifices. I have different goals in them.

I can't do everything that everyone else is doing. But with that, that doesn't mean I can't have a good time. So don't get me wrong. Like, you know, I had fun with my friends, I went to some of the school parties and dances, but I've always felt better about getting my work done first and then really enjoying myself.

What's wrong with society today, but especially the young, is like they're willing to have fun without handling their business first. I can't wrap my head around that. Like, I've always been the type of person that's like, it's so much more enjoyable to let loose and have a drink with your friends and have a good when it's like I finished that paper, I did all my homework, I handled my business, I got my extra workout in. I'm gonna have a freaking good time this Saturday night.

As opposed to like, I know I got a test on Monday, but I hadn't studied, and it's Saturday night, and I got one more night after this, and I don't feel good in that circumstance. So I think more people should have that in them, and I don't think enough people don't. So my challenge to anyone in youth is like not to not have fun, but like handle your business, do what's necessary first, and then be a kid from there. You handled your business.

Look at you now. I love it. Good work. Well, Devin, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to talk to me. And I I guarantee anyone listening to this has learned an immense amount of just being smart with your money and being intentional. And uh, you had some incredible gold nuggets in there. Real quick, how can people follow along and kind of kind of follow your journey?

Anybody's interested in you know connecting with me and stuff, you can find me all over social media at Devon Connard, Instagram, LinkedIn, all of that. And then my personal website is just my name, DevonConnard.com. And if there's any fix and flippers and people in the real estate industry, go to weare42 solutions.

com. Awesome. Thank you, Devon. Pleasure to have you on.

Thanks so much. Thanks, thanks for having me.