Ep57: How to Build a Debt-Free Real Estate Portfolio with Joel Friedland, SIOR

Explore the world of industrial real estate with Joel Friedland, SIOR as he unveils his unique, debt-free approach to property investment. Learn about the strategic moves that have fueled his success and discover how you can apply these insights to your own investment endeavors. Tune in now to unlock the secrets of building a recession-proof portfolio!

Key takeaways to listen for

• Tips on acquiring industrial properties with high returns and minimal risk
• Game-changing direct negotiation tactics for sealing lucrative deals
• Why do you need to adopt a debt-free investment philosophy?
• Benefits of long-term property investment
• The value of mentorship and fostering the next generation of investors

Resources mentioned in this episode

• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz | Kindle, Hardcover, and Paperback

About Joel Friedland, SIOR
Joel has a 42-year track record in industrial real estate. As an industrial real estate broker and owner, Joel has secured over 2,000 industrial property leases and sales, totaling over $2 billion in transactions. His greatest accomplishment is maintaining valued relationships with brokers, tenants, and investors spanning five decades.

He does fully syndicated deals with 0% debt, an unheard-of approach in real estate that caters to his wealthy investor base, primarily concerned with conserving principal. His experiences during the Great Recession in 2008 have informed his investment approach, which is hyper-conservative while still allowing an ~8% cash return, plus upside, for his investors.

Connect with Joel

• Website: Brit Properties
• LinkedIn: Joel Friedland, SIOR

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Transcript

[00:00:00]
In three years, if you can sell it for a lot of money and have a lot of leverage, you can make a 20 percent IRR. But what are you going to do with the money? You get the money back. Now you got to invest it. Now you got to go find another great property, which is really hard to do. Finding deals is hard. If I find a great deal, the money's attracted to it. 

[00:00:17] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to Retire Wealthy and Happy. Let's dive in. 

[00:00:40] Roger Jacobsen
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. I'm Roger Jacobsen. Today, we have the pleasure of Joel Friedland on our show. Joel is a investor syndicator in the Chicago area. He invests in industrial property and has a unique strategy and a bunch of fun stories. Welcome to the show, Joel. Roger. It's great to see you. Awesome. We've got a bunch of stuff to go over and you've got a lot of interesting stories. Why don't you give us a little background on your personal history and what led you to where you are now? 

[00:01:13] Joel Friedland
Sure. Well, I grew up in a suburb of Chicago called Highland Park, and I live now in the next suburb over called Deerfield. And in the 43 years since I started my real estate career, which was 1981, when interest rates were 17%, uh, since then I have been an industrial real estate broker locally, and I've been an acquisition finder and investor with a group of syndicated investors Since 1989, we've bought about 100 properties and we do them individually one by one and boy, I've got some horror stories and I've got some crazy successes, you know, it's all mixed in together. It's not just one thing. It's a chain of many, many. Stories and situations and right now, I wanted to tell you what's happening today. Today. I hired my 10th summer intern. My summer interns are going door to door to industrial buildings. We buy industrial properties. Door to door in the industrial parts of Chicago, where there are 15, 000 industrial buildings and their job is to go door to door with an offer in hand that we create in the back office to buy each of these buildings. And we're making approximately 150 offers a week. Wow. That's awesome. Right now. 

[00:02:40] Roger Jacobsen
Do you have anybody else besides the summer interns that are knocking? 

[00:02:44] Joel Friedland
Yes, I do myself. I show them how to do it. So yesterday I took three of them out, and then last week I took four of them out. And my partner Eric Schneider, he's out today doing it with a group of them. And my son Sam is doing it with a group of them. And we have role playing all the time in the office with other people who are experienced just so they can learn things that maybe they don't see every day on the street. It's been the most incredibly fun project we've made so far. Since hiring all these people, we've made over a thousand offers. And we've stopped in literally at several thousand buildings. If we don't see the owner of the building or the owner of the company that occupies the building right away, we drop off our offer. We go to the next one. So it takes exactly two minutes to get thrown out.

[00:03:42] Roger Jacobsen
You've got an interesting story about being thrown out where you're talking to a receptionist. Which one? And to the owners in the other room, do you want to tell us about that one? 

[00:03:54] Joel Friedland
Yeah. Yeah. So I was teaching one of our young guys, I've trained about 70 brokers and acquisition experts in industrial, many of whom. Became my partners over the years in our business. And some of whom went off and did their own businesses. I had this young kid and we love the town of Elmhurst, Illinois. It's where we have bought seven buildings. And I took this young guy to a building on industrial drive, 717 industrial. It was a 12,000-square-foot building. We love that size. And it was occupied by a company that was a manufacturer. I walked in the door with this kid and I said, we're going to talk to the owner if it kills us. So we walk in and there's a receptionist at a reception desk. And I didn't know the name of the owner. I said, hi, is the owner of the company here? And she said, who's asking? I said, I'm Joel. This is Gary. He's the intern. He's the new guy. And we own some buildings in the neighborhood and we're looking to buy another building, we'd like to buy your building, can I talk to the owner about whether he might sell? She said, we're not selling. I said, how do you know?

[00:05:07]
 We're not selling. I said, how do you know? She says, well, I live about six blocks away. And if we sold and moved somewhere else, I'd have to drive a longer distance to get to work. And I'm thinking she doesn't know what she's talking about. She's not making the decision. She doesn't really have any authority But behind her I saw an open door where a guy was sitting at a desk in a fancy office I said loudly so I guess you don't want to sell this building at any price, huh? And she said no So I said come on gary So gary and I walked out the door and we didn't even get halfway down the sidewalk to my car ride parked Before this guy, Chuck, who I now know came running after me and said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, don't, don't go. We just sold our business. This is very confidential. We sold the business to a much larger company and they don't want our building. And we own the one next door also. And we do want to sell. I said, Oh. Well, I'm glad I kind of shouted when I was talking to your receptionist. I said, well, I'd love to buy both of your buildings. I said, how about a cup of coffee right now at Denny's down the street?

[00:06:21]
 He said, let's go. We went to Denny's. I made him an offer. We offered a million and a half dollars for the two buildings combined. We agreed on a deal. We shook hands and about 45 days later, we own those buildings. 

[00:06:32] Roger Jacobsen
That's funny. 

[00:06:33] Joel Friedland
I got thrown out by the receptionist. It happens all the time. 

[00:06:36] Roger Jacobsen
The process of getting past the gatekeepers is a tough one. And that was a great way to handle it. 

[00:06:43] Joel Friedland
Yeah, I've got another one. Sometimes the way to get around the receptionist is to go to the back door of the company to go where the warehouse is. And so yesterday we couldn't get in the front. So I took the young guys and I said, we're going to go to the back door. We went to the back door. We literally, the door was unlocked, opened the door, walked in, people were working at machines, just looking at us like, okay, whoever you are, you probably belong here. And we made our way to the office from the warehouse with nobody stopping us. And we went into the office. I always go to the corner. That's where the president he's got windows, or she's got windows on both sides of her office, you know, right in the corner. So I figured out let's make a right turn and go to the corner. And there's a guy sitting in a desk. And I said, hi, I'm Joel. These are the new interns. I don't mean to scare you, but we walked in thinking maybe we could meet the owner, you, the owner of the building and the company says, yes, I am.

[00:07:40]
 I said, would you consider selling this building? And we lease it back to you, or you can move out or whatever you want. And he said, I'm not selling. I have no interest in selling. I said, okay, well, I'm sorry that we bothered you. I didn't want to be a pest, but can I ask you a couple of questions? No, you can leave. So I said, I have to ask you something. These interns, they will always remember this. They're going to remember who you are and how you acted toward them. That was my approach. He said, Oh, what do you need to know? I said, could you give us a tour of the building and show the interns what you do for a business? He said, I can take five minutes. And by the time we were done, we were friends. Now I might have not ever buy that building, but I now know his name. I now have his business card. I have his email. I have his phone number. I've been in the building. It goes into my CRM. We now own one more piece of information that we didn't have before. Maybe next year we'll buy the building. 

[00:08:38] Roger Jacobsen
That's awesome. I had one recently that was a person that went into, I'll say an affiliate. So I'll keep it slightly ambiguous. Somebody that we use and a month ago begged for them to buy this property. That's a house that we could potentially flip. So I went over there to go and knock on the door and see if I could meet the owner and I got chased off by, I'll say it because it is ambiguous, let's just say kind of a gangbanger looking guy on a dirt bike with tattoos and everything. And I tried to build rapport with them as carefully and as well as I could. And as soon as he met me, he's like, are you the new owner? And I'm like, no, but I'd like to be and then he started chasing me off with, you have to leave. And I was like, hold on. Let's talk. This is my neighborhood. I grew up within a mile and a half of this place.

[00:09:30]
 This is something that I'm trying to help the owner. That's desperate to sell and then he chased me off. I'm like, well, where'd you go to high school? Cause you would have been in my same area. And he's like, well, I went to the community high school for criminals. And I was like, okay, you know, I'm not here trying to like, be rude or anything else, but I'm an end buyer and I could take over and help out extremely quickly. And it was, you gotta leave. And so I got kind of ran out of there. You have a similar story with cops being called. Why don't you tell us about that story? 

[00:10:03] Joel Friedland
Yeah. So I was also at one point I was in the town of Morton Grove, Illinois, which is a suburb near Chicago. And I had a young guy with me. His name was Mark. And I said, let's go door to door canvassing and we'll see if we can find something. So we walked in the door of this place and the owner happened to be standing near the vestibule in the front. And I said, are you the owner of the company? He said, I am. What do you want? I said, well, we're here to see if you might consider selling the building. This is my intern and I'm Joel. And he said, I've been told, I got a letter from the police department of Morton Grove saying that there were people who were unauthorized solicitors and that they could be dangerous and not to let them in and to call the police, if there was any problem, I said. Well, I'm not an unauthorized solicitor.

[00:10:58]
 I'm an owner of properties in the neighborhood. I'm a neighbor of yours. I own buildings here and I'm just looking to see if you want to sell. He said, I'm calling the cops. I said, okay, why don't you do that? I'll wait. He said, what do you mean you'll wait? I said, I'd like to say hello to whoever the police officer is. We own properties in the community and it's nice to meet the police who keep our community safe. He said, really? I said, yeah, really. He said, I'm still calling the cops. I said, can we wait in your conference room? He said, yeah, come in. So, Mark and I went in and we're sitting in the conference room and the guy comes back into the conference room. He says, the police will be here at any moment. So, the officer shows up and you hear like the squawking going on on his walkie talkie thing on his waist. And he's wearing his gun and he's got his uniform and he comes in and he says to this guy, so tell me what the problem is, sir. He says, well, I got a letter saying that dangerous people were canvassing and that I should call the police.

[00:11:57]
 If I had any concerns, he said, so sir, do you have a concern? Yeah. These people came in here and I'm concerned. So the officer walks into the conference room. He says, are you a dangerous criminal? I said, no, I'm a neighbor. I own some buildings down the street and I want to thank you for keeping our community safe. And he looked at me, he said, you're welcome. He looked at the guy and he said, the owner of the building and the company. And he said, sir, I don't see a problem here. And the man said, well, I see a problem. He shouldn't be here. And the officer said, well, you can either ask him to leave or you can talk to him, but what he's doing is perfectly fine. He's a neighbor. I serve the community. I don't think he's hurting the community. And the guy said, okay, well, that's disappointing. What do you want me to get arrested? So I shook hands with the officer, but I didn't shake hands with the business owner. And I left and I said to him, by the way, I don't often do this.

[00:12:53]
 I said, are you like mentally unstable? Like I was like, Larry David, are you mentally unstable? Because why would you call the police on me knowing that I'm a neighbor that owns buildings? Come on. He said, get out. And so I questioned his mental stability, it probably hit him in a place where he lived because chances are it acts like that is mentally unstable.

[00:13:17] Roger Jacobsen
That's crazy. You have a pretty, uh, tight style, buy a box, everything like that. Tell us about your typical property industrial, but is it single tenant? 

[00:13:31] Joel Friedland
Yeah, it's single tenant. We buy single tenant buildings between 10, 000 square feet and 30, 000 square feet. We buy them all cash, no mortgage. I was. Badly hurt in 2008. I've bought a hundred buildings. I've sold 80. I've lost money on 10. The money losing deals were all during that period of the global financial crisis And what they all had in common was one thing So I figured out that at my age, which is 65 and my partners and my investors Who are generally wealthy people who don't want to lose money. I figured out that we can do deals all cash and just syndicate the whole thing and tranches like 25, 50, 000, a hundred thousand dollars per investor, and just fill the whole thing up with nothing but equity and not have a loan. And we get a good return and unlevered return. We try to get seven or 8 percent over, let's say a five year period.

[00:14:28]
 And that's my buy box. These are all manufacturing and distribution buildings with loading docks and offices in the front. Ideally high ceilings, uh, good parking where the parking is located is even important. I like it on the side and in the front, not in the back because we're in Chicago and in the winter and in the summer, even when it rains hard, if you have to park in the back of a building and then walk around to the front office. It's a minute of walking. And you know when you go to the grocery store, you always pick the closest space to the front door? Well, if you buy a building where there are no spaces close to the front door, it's a big knock on the building. So, we really watch the specs very carefully. We are that tuned in to what we believe tenants and buyers want. So they want the high ceiling so they can stack their products up and racks and use the cubic footage as opposed to a low ceiling where they can't go very high. And generally today, they don't want much office because a lot of people that work for them work from home hybrid. Ideally, the perfect building for us has the office in the front.

[00:15:34]
 The front door near the parking. We have a building in a town called Gurney. It's my ideal building. I built it I decided to build the perfect building as a model to show my employees and my Investors what I would buy if I could buy exactly this So we put 15 parking spaces in the front two loading docks a drive in door office in the front Beautiful exterior, great curb appeal, great landscaping. And every time it comes available, we lease it quickly because it's the perfect building and that's the kind of building we like to buy. 

[00:16:12] Roger Jacobsen
That's awesome. Your knowledge of 42 years in the industry gives you a big head start on what a value is, what to look for and what'll work for the seller and your investors right off of the bat. We had a conversation between 1 of my business partners yesterday. That was that exact thing. And, you know, looking at self storage and businesses and, you know, ways to. Keep the building close to the street, have a good access. Parking the front was something we talked about just yesterday. So I really love that.

[00:16:47] Joel Friedland
Yeah, it's really important to know your details, to know what it is that people like, you know, there was this guy, Charles Revson, who started Revlon, the company that makes the makeup for, I guess, millions and millions of people around the world, including nail polish and things like that. And he himself. Used the nail polish that R and D people came up with on his own nails, just so that he could understand the colors, the durability and all that at the time, no men wore colored nail polish people. Are you wearing red nail polish? You'd say I'm wearing red on this finger. I've got pink on this finger. I've got clear on this finger. And the reason is because I'm doing product testing. I want to know my product that I'm selling to people better than they know it. So I know the right one. And he built this giant business that Ron Perlman now owns, I believe, and became what would today be a multi billionaire because he knew his business. He knew his product. And our job is to know our product inside out backwards and forwards and our product. Our small industrial buildings occupied by companies that make stuff and that distribute stuff. 

[00:18:02] Roger Jacobsen
That's a cool story. 

[00:18:03] Joel Friedland
Yeah. 

[00:18:04] Roger Jacobsen
You've got about 70 million in assets under management. Is that still true?

[00:18:09] Joel Friedland
Yeah. We've got 20 buildings right now. 

[00:18:11] Roger Jacobsen
That number seems lower to a lot of the people that syndicate, but the difference is, is you've really got a super high amount of equity in those low debt to income ratios, and it makes it much more like. 350 or 700 million in assets under management because of that.

[00:18:31] Joel Friedland
We figured that if we were normal borrowers, we borrowed 70%. The portfolio would probably be worth about 200 million today. And our overall prior deals, if we loaded them up with that, the other 80 deals, probably about about half a billion dollars worth altogether. Past and present. I'm not trying to build and gather the biggest portfolio. I'm trying to create a portfolio of the best buildings, the safest investments. And something that is durable for a long term hold. Our people don't want to get out of our deals. You know, a lot of people do these two, three, four, five year turnarounds. It's like, how long are you going to have these properties that I'm investing in? And a lot of the syndicators say, well, it's a three year deal in three years. If you can. Sell it for a lot of money and have a lot of leverage. You can make a 20 percent IRR, but what are you going to do with the money? You get the money back. Now you got to invest it. If that was a great property, now you got to go find another great property, which is really hard to do.

[00:19:37]
 Finding deals is hard, not raising the money, finding them as hard. If I find a great deal, the money's attracted to it. And so why do they sell three years or five years down the road? Instead of keeping long term, there's two answers. One is that the syndicator himself or herself makes a lot more if they can get a big multiple because they get a promote or a carried interest. And as time goes by, the carry interest usually shrinks. You can make a big carried interest. If you flip, if you flip in the first year or in the first six months, We're currently selling a building that I didn't mean to sell another cold call family office that invest with us came to see three buildings and we were syndicating three buildings across the street and the grandson and I went and cold called the building across the street.

[00:20:27]
 We walked in and open overhead door and we found out the owner was looking to sell and that they lived in Greece. So we bought the building, put it on the market for lease, and we were approached by a buyer who said, I'll give you a 400, 000 profit on this million dollar deal if you will sell it to me. So we had to make a decision, so we decided to sell it. Our promote on a quick flip like that is high because we make, say, 20 or 30 percent of the profit. If the profit all takes place in the first year, we make a hundred thousand dollars on 400,000 for just finding the deal. The investors do very well. They make 300,000. We make a hundred. They make 300, but they make 300,000 on a million dollar deal, so it's a 30% return in less than a year. So that's why. A lot of syndicators have a short term hold period because they make a lot more money that way and they can churn it if we keep it and just collect rent for 25 years. It's not that exciting, but it's really nice to get an ever hopefully increasing level of income every year. 

[00:21:32] Roger Jacobsen
Awesome. Are all of your leases triple net? 

[00:21:35] Joel Friedland
No, they're somewhat double net. Or single net. We take responsibility as the owner for the roof, sometimes the HVAC system. Other than that, the tenants pay taxes, insurance, and maintenance.

[00:21:48] Roger Jacobsen
So do you have a typical dollar amount that you do over or under? Or is it just those two things? 

[00:21:53] Joel Friedland
Every case is different. I can go through cases with you. Every case is different. We just strongly prefer to keep buildings and I'll give you an example. In Elmhurst, we bought a particular building for 900, 000. We've been collecting rent since we bought it, and it's today worth probably 2, 000, 001. So, we haven't harvested the profit. We haven't taken our promote fee. We're not in a rush to do it. It's a great building. How do you replace it? In fact, we bought the building next door to it. We liked it so much. We bought another building across the street from it. So that's an area why sell for sure.

[00:22:28] Roger Jacobsen
Don't wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. 

[00:22:34] Joel Friedland
Yes. I love that. I've never heard that. You just made my day. You gave me a slogan. 

[00:22:40] Roger Jacobsen
It's a great one. And we do that a lot here in Utah. We have a. Great market that has had huge amount of appreciation recently, the dollar amount that you buy stuff for is not a good ratio to the rent, but the appreciation, I mean, it was, I think, 20, 20 was 27%. And so even if you were flipping a house and say, it took you 16 or 6 months. Yeah, and that 27 percent you could buy stupid and just your appreciation would turn you like a 13 percent return so you could buy at a point where you would just break even and make again another 100, 000 per house just because you owned it during that period 

[00:23:28] Joel Friedland
Remember you and I have discussed this in the past. I am against gambling and real estate for me. Other people can do it. You can do it. People I think are doing a lot more gambling when they're looking to get in and out and flip. And when they use debt, if they do both of those things that are really gambling, because if the market turns against you, You can lose a lot of money. It's a lot like going to the casino. The way we do it is we buy for the longterm. If we flip a building, it's not because we bought it to flip it. It's because we received an offer that we couldn't refuse, even though it wasn't our business plan, and we have to think hard about it and decide whether we're going to sell it. But we keep these things. I have a building that I built in 1989 and we still own it. And I try to shake loose investors to see if they want to get out and sell their holdings to other investors. Nobody wants to leave the deal. It just keeps generating cashflow distributions. 

[00:24:26] Roger Jacobsen
So. Why sell it? That's awesome. The ability to keep investors for that long is huge. 

[00:24:32] Joel Friedland
They've become close family friends and I'm still partners with my first five investors that ever invested with me from 1989. 

[00:24:40] Roger Jacobsen
That's awesome. It's so long ago. I was in my sophomore year of high school back then. I've watched the real estate market here in Utah and in the past, like it was typically doubling every. 13 years or so starting in 1991 when I graduated from high school and just that alone is huge. 

[00:25:04] Joel Friedland
It is huge. I love appreciation and value. That's why we buy buildings in good locations. Buildings in bad locations don't appreciate. They actually go down in value very often. 

[00:25:14] Roger Jacobsen
Love it. The ability to buy and hold in great markets and get the return and just the low risk, high ultra-conservative would be so valuable to so many people right now.

[00:25:28] Joel Friedland
Yeah, I went through what a lot of people are going through now and. I feel terrible for them because I know what it was like, but I'm just not going to make that mistake again in terms of my philosophy for me and for my group. I'm not going to do it. And people think I'm a moron for not borrowing money because you, real estate theoretically is a leveraged business and most people do that. I don't have to do what other people do. I do what's best for me. My personal mental well-being and my investors financial and mental well-being, which means really being able to sleep at night without having to take pills. I'm not against pills. I'm not against sleeping pills either. I'm not against that. I don't go to sleep ruminating about all the trouble I'm in like I did in 2009. 

[00:26:24] Roger Jacobsen
Yeah, I'm a realtor here locally, and I have a broker that has approximately 120 agents. And I look at his job where you were formerly a broker and a lot of those realtors are hard to manage. Realtors in general are just a lot of work and a lot of teaching and a lot of like. 

[00:26:47] Joel Friedland
You ever hear the term, prima Donna? 

[00:26:50] Roger Jacobsen
Prima Donna's without a lot of knowledge.

[00:26:52] Joel Friedland
They most of them think. That everything that happens that's good in the world was caused by them. And anything bad is someone else's fault. 

[00:27:01] Roger Jacobsen
The point that I have is to be a happy person, you're streamlined your life to get away from being a broker, to be an investor, which I really appreciate my broker. And I try to make my stuff less of a, you have to hurt a cat, even though I oftentimes have stuff that pushes the edges. I've had the division of real estate look into what I've done multiple times, even though I'm pretty dang smart. 

[00:27:30] Joel Friedland
Yeah, I believe that brokers are great. I love being a broker and I made a good living as a broker, but brokerage to me, especially commercial and industrial. It's a young person's business. You gotta be out there, be aggressive at my stage in the game, being an investor and an owner is more aligned with my lifestyle and what I need to be doing now. And I have young people in the office who do brokerage, not a lot, but you know, selectively, and it's great. It's great for them. They can do very well, but I don't want to do that much of it except for it. Extremely close clients that I have known for years where I can help them. 

[00:28:10] Roger Jacobsen
That's awesome. I want to be respective of your time, and I'm afraid that we may or may not get all these recordings. So is there anything else you want to mention before we jump into the final four?

[00:28:20] Joel Friedland
Let's do the final four. 

[00:28:22] Roger Jacobsen
All right. The final four, top four questions that we ask everybody to get a view of what they do and know in real estate and a little bit about them. The first question is Joel, what is your favorite business book? 

[00:28:34] Joel Friedland
Well, it's a book. That's not really about business. It's about how to think and how to act. It's called the four agreements by Ruiz. And it's a short book. It only takes about an hour and a half to read, but it's got these four pieces of advice that Mr. Ruiz gives about how to live a life of satisfaction and happiness. And I agree with all four of them, especially don't make assumptions. Don't take things personally. And be impeccable with your word. Those are the three of the four that I think are just really important. So I love the book. 

[00:29:14] Roger Jacobsen
I love that. You cannot stress how important it is to be a person of your word when contracts are often violated and sued on. And if you can actually follow up and be a good person of your word, it gets you so much further in this business, especially in the US. We like to joke that Salt Lake City is Small Lake City because if you screw over somebody Everybody knows about it for sure It's true here too.

[00:29:41] Joel Friedland
Everyone in industrial real estate in Chicago knows me. It's not whether they know me, it's how long we've known each other. We had a dinner called the old farts dinner last week with about 30 of the guys who've been around for 40 years and longer. We're all friends. Everybody knows everything about everybody. 

[00:30:00] Roger Jacobsen
That's 1200 years of experience. Question number two, what brings you happiness? 

[00:30:07] Joel Friedland
Well, about five things. Number one, family stuff. I've got three kids, two married daughters. The two married daughters have, one has son and one has two daughters. So I've got three grandkids. We spend a lot of time with them and with extended family. The other thing is I love gardening. We have a big yard out there and I like planting and digging. I like being out in the yard. So, those are the two things that bring me the most happiness. And as far as business, I love doing projects. I love a project like putting together a private placement memorandum is a project. It takes weeks and weeks. I love writing it. I like editing it. I like putting the pictures in. So I like creative projects and business. 

[00:30:56] Roger Jacobsen
Love it. Question number three, what is your favorite way to give back?

[00:30:58] Joel Friedland
I mentor. I mentor every day I mentor, at least, believe it or not, this is gonna sound crazy. 40 people today. Not everybody, not every day, but on a given day, I probably talk to at least three to five of my mentees. Some of them are highly successful millionaires that. Just call me because they have a question. They used to work for me before we sold our company in 2014 and they still call and say, Hey, I've got a situation. Can I run it by you? You have all these interns that my company is training and working with right now, as I told you about, so love mentoring. That's the way that I'd love to get back. 

[00:31:37] Roger Jacobsen
I love it too. And that's really one of our goals of our podcast is getting information out to multiple people so that we're not individually asking questions and answering questions. Giving people a good basis for information. It's one of my favorites. Yeah question number four. What does your future retirement look like? 

[00:32:00] Joel Friedland
There is no retirement I don't know if you've heard of Sam's Bell But Sam Zell before he passed away last year did a few interviews and people asked him what's your retirement looking like? When are you gonna retire? He was in his early 80s, and he said retire from what? This is what I like to do. Why would I retire? I feel the same way. I don't see a retirement happening. Although, I'm already working less than I used to, which means instead of 60 hours a week, I'm only working 50 hours a week. So, now it's a part-time job, but I really love what I do, and In real estate, if you're a real estate investor, you know, most people who get rich and sell their businesses go into real estate. So people do in retirement what I'm already doing. So there's no reason to retire. I can go play golf or go on a trip. My wife's taking me to Africa for two weeks next Friday. I can go away. I can go to Florida in the wintertime for a few months. There is no reason to retire. I love the challenge of having things to work on and problems to solve. 

[00:33:05] Roger Jacobsen
Love it. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us with Joel Friedland on the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. We really appreciate you listening in the show is intended for educational purposes and not investment advice. Thank you for being on the show, Joel. Thank you, Roger. It was fun and I'm glad we got to know each other better. I love it. I hope to connect with you again. And we have multiple things that people can find you and follow you that will be included in our show notes, several podcasts that you've been on that will be listed there that we can listen in and find out more, including emails, websites, Instagram, YouTube, and everything else. So thanks for being on and we'll see everybody on the next show. Thanks, Roger. Have a good one.

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