Insider Secrets Podcast Episode #40

Featuring guest: Kam Zainabadi

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Guest Bio:

Episode 40 guest Kam Zainabadi

Kam Zainabadi’s interest in real estate started around 2008 when he finished his residency training and started working as a medical doctor.  This, as we all know, coincided with the financial crisis which lead to the housing crash.  Knowing that this is an opportunity of a lifetime, he started buying distressed single family properties and renting them. He soon learned about the tremendous power of leverage and how he can use it to secure large amounts of assets with small amounts of money down.  As the market recovered, he converted many of the single family holdings into multi family units throughout Southern California, via 1031 Exchange.  1031 Exchange was another tax protected modality that he used to increase his net assets held.  His interest in real estate also branched out into angel investing in tech startups.  He has invested in over 5 start ups.  At the same time, through his network of investors, he got introduced into real estate syndications.  He invested in several syndicated deals and has continued to look for more opportunities.  He also became interested in real estate crowdfunding which combined his interest in technology and real estate.  However, having invested in several crowdfunding platforms, he found many shortcomings in the structure of the deals.  This prompted him to bring a team together to create Park Place Investment. The mission of PPI is to democratize  real estate crowdfunding by removing barriers that traditional syndications have into entering real estate crowdfunding. 

Shownotes:

Standout Quotes: 

“What is your why?” – [Mike]

“When everybody’s selling, you need to buy” -[Kam]

“If a company usually outlasts its founders then you know there’s a legacy” – [Kam]

“That’s what leadership is right? it’s enlisting people for short term sacrifices for long term gains” – [Kam]

“A lot of times, improvement comes through doing things differently” – [Kam]

“You can’t win every deal” – [Kam]

“Your future is determined by the mindset that you have now,  and if this mindset is determined by your past failures, then you’re never going to succeed” – [Kam]

“Any entrepreneur has gone through multiple businesses until they get one right” – [Kam]

Key Takeaways:

  • Kam describes himself personally and professionally as a growth seeker.
  • Growing up, Kam had an interest in Real Estate, describing it as the greatest way to accumulate wealth.
  • Leadership is enlisting people for short term sacrifices, for long term gains.
  • Kam explains the entrepreneurial perspective into Multi-family operations describing it as a safe investment, that also provides value in terms of housing, and is very scalable.
  • Due to Covid-19, most of the deals available are multi-family and industrial deals, and it may not be the best time to invest in office and retail.
  • Making tough choices from an entrepreneurial standpoint: surround yourself with a group of people you truly trust and believe in their opinion, never be defensive, always have an open mind.
  • Anytime you start a business, you’re prone to having blind spots, and good advisers around you help you point out those blind spots, so you can change things and improve.
  • Kam shares one of his lessons learned over the years: “You can’t win every deal but if you get stuck on the bad decisions you’ve made, that’s going to put you in a downward spiral which is difficult to get out of.
  • Honesty about your mistakes to yourself and colleagues plays a vital role in relieving the pressure from failures.
  • Park Place Investment also offers an opportunity for multi-family operators to expand their investor pool.
  • Expounding on the role of efficient communication, Kam notes that looking back to when he started out, he would have improved on his communication skills.
  • Kam’s insider secret: Investors should go beyond their geographic location, and also be open to changing asset styles.

 

Episode Timeline:

[01:45] About today’s guest, ‘Kam Zainabadi’, with Park Place Investment, discussing the topics of  Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Resilience in Multi-family Investing.

[04:35] In one word describe who you are personally and professionally.

[05:40] Kam’s background and professional history.

[11:20] What is your true passion for Real Estate?

[14:58] An Entrepreneurial perspective to the multi-family operation side.

[17:31] About Park Place Investment.

[23:19] From an entrepreneurial standpoint, how do you go about making the tough decisions in your life?

[25:01] What are some of the lessons you’ve learned over the years, related to the best or worst deals that you’ve had?

[27:28] What should multi-family operators look to PPI for?

[30:44] What is one thing that you wish you knew way back when you started, that you know today?

[33:20] What should a multi-family investor be looking at being aware of, in the marketplace today?

[38:58] What’s the best book you’ve ever read?

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel García Márquez

‘Catch 22’ by Joseph Heller

[41:05] How to contact Park Place Investment.

Website: www.parkplaceinvestment.com

LinkedIn/Facebook: Park Place Investment

Transcript:

3[00:00:03]Mike: Hey everybody, good afternoon. It’s Mike with insider secrets. Today, I am joined by my friend Kam Zainabidi with Park Place Investment. Kam, why don’t you tell our listeners a couple of things that they’re going to hear on today’s show.

[00:00:17] Kam Zainabadi: Great Mike, thanks for having me on the show. Today, I want to cover the topics of entrepreneurship, leadership and resilience when it comes to multifamily.

[00:00:26] Mike: Man that’s going to be a great show. You’re going to have to listen in.

[00:00:29]Kristen: Welcome to this week’s edition of insider secrets. The show that turns multifamily investing into reality. Each show we interview guests who are seasoned professionals, actively closing and managing real estate deals. Your host, Mike Morawski has more than 30 years of multifamily, real estate investing and property management experience.

[00:00:51] Mike is the founder of my core intentions. And he’s been involved in over $285 million of transactions. Focuses on helping you create short term cashflow and long-term wealth. Here’s your host, Mike.

[00:01:07] Mike: Hey, good afternoon everybody. It’s Mike, your host of insider secrets and, insider secrets is brought to you by my core intentions. So what’s your why? Why are you doing what you’re actually doing? How’s your goal setting? Have you set some good goals for yourself for the upcoming year?

[00:01:22] You know at MCI we invest in our client’s future, through an educational platform, teaching you and helping you to create short-term, long-term goals, like creating short-term wealth. And long-term wealth and short-term cashflow for yourself. Insider secrets brings you top notch talent from around the globe to help you understand strategies and possibilities that exist in the real estate space.

[00:01:47]It’s our simple goal to help empower you to execute sound real estate principles and property management principles while helping you live a well-balanced lifestyle. If you’re looking for some direction, if you’re looking for some accountability, give us a call today, let us see how we can help you.

[00:02:05] But I’m excited about our guest today. Our guest Kam Zainabadi, who offers a perspective from an entrepreneurial mindset. Kam, you want to say hi to everybody real quick?

[00:02:17] Kam Zainabadi: Yes. Thank you, Mike, for having me on your show on your podcast. I’m glad to be here and like to contribute any information that’s your viewers and your listeners want to hear.

[00:02:31] Mike: Thanks, Kam, I’m glad that you’re here. And let me tell the listeners a little bit about you, but Kam has an interesting bio, and I really find it in depth. So I encourage you to listen to this, but Kam’s interest in real estate started just, not many years ago, 2008, when he finished his residency training and started working as a medical doctor. This is, we all know coincide with the financial crisis, which led to the housing crash.

[00:02:58] Realizing this was going to be an opportunity of a lifetime. You started buying distressed single family properties and renting them out. Kam soon learned about the tremendous power of leverage and how we can use it to secure large amounts of assets with small amounts of money down. As the market recovered, he converted many of those single family holdings into multifamily. Throughout the Southern California via 10 31 tax exchange. What’s interesting, this is all stuff that we talk about, and I talk to my listeners about all the time. But then Kam’s interest in real estate, soon branched into angel investing tech startups.

[00:03:40] He started investing in about five different startups at the same time through his network of investors. He got involved in real estate syndications, passive investing, right? He invested in several syndicated deals and continues to look for opportunities today. Now this is where it gets interesting.

[00:03:59] Now this is where Kam started to invest in real estate, in crowdfunding, which combined his interest in technology and real estate. However, having invested in several crowd funded platforms, he found many shortcomings in the structure of those deals. This prompted him to put together a team and create Park Place Investments.

[00:04:22] The mission of Park Place Investments is to democratize real estate crowdfunding, by removing the barriers that traditional syndications have in entering the real estate crowdfunding space. Kam, that’s a lot. And the last time I talked to you, I was like, gosh, I can’t believe he’s done all this, and in a short period of time. So here’s what I always ask people though. And I ask everybody who’s on my show in one word Kam, describe to us who you are personally and professionally, in one word.

[00:04:57] Kam Zainabadi: Yeah I’m a growth seeker. I could tell you that I always liked to grow. I think we should never be still in our lives. Always educate yourself, schooling our personal education doesn’t end with school. If you want to get a fancy word, I would call it autodidact maybe.

[00:05:14]Mike: Okay No, we try not to do too much fancy stuff. Hey, listen, fill in some of the blanks on your story for us though, you have a fascinating story. And that’s why when we talked the first time, I said, gosh, I want you on my show because you know what, here’s what I tend to do.

[00:05:32] And I like to do when my training is, I like to expand people’s minds. And I think that you’re in a place where you can expand people’s minds by making people think differently about different situations. So talk about that a little bit.

[00:05:44]Kam Zainabadi: I will tell you why. I’m an immigrant. When you’re an immigrant, you have your own, everybody has their own stories. But there are certain common themes in the immigrant story. Correct?

[00:05:53] Number one is really importance of education because when you specially come from a country or countries that have been war ravaged, or gone through revolution or anything catastrophic, and as a result, you’ve come to the United States. You really appreciate, and you have a perspective of the amazing place that we live in, honestly.

[00:06:13]You have really good a perspective. Now, if someone that’s born here, it’s a little bit more different perspective, when you actually come from somewhere that’s and you see the difference, and I think that’s why, the emphasis has always been on going into a profession, really educate yourself because when you have a degree, especially from the United States, that’s valued.

[00:06:33] Much like gold is, right? That’s the best education in the world. So that’s the route I took and I really have enjoyed my professional life as a physician. And I love my work and I’ve been doing it for a long time now. But at the same time, one interesting thing is when I reflect back on my life and how my parents invested, in a different country. Real estate, it was always centerpiece in any portfolio. And it’s interesting because if you invest in real estate anywhere, and even in a country that was war torn or in a revolution, it still has gone up in value.

[00:07:08] So talk about a safe asset, right? Let alone investing. United States is the greatest country, right? Then you know, that it’s almost the safest thing you could do. And that’s really my interest in real estate. It was really ingrained in me as even a child.

[00:07:22] When I found that out quite early and that’s why when I started making money as a professional, I started investing in real estate because I thought it was the greatest way to accumulate wealth.

[00:07:34] Mike: I think it’s interesting and I commend you. We are in the richest country in the world, and when you look around and even at our poverty level here is still much more than so many people around the world have. And, you can only be grateful for that.

[00:07:49] Kam Zainabadi: Yeah.

[00:07:50] Mike: Cause you have opportunity and look what you seized right, by coming here. The thing that’s interesting is you saw that opportunity in 2008. You saw where the world was going to crash, and it was the worst disaster we’ve seen in years. But yet there was a redistribution of wealth and a redistribution of assets around the country around people. And you took part in that opportunity. Talk about that a little bit. How you first saw that and what made you realize that and how you got involved?

[00:08:20] Kam Zainabadi: Sure. And the mentality back then was let’s set the stage was the fact that the world was going to end as we know it, that when the market started crashing, not only the real estate market, but the stock market that followed. They were talking about the great depression, and that mentality is very difficult to overcome, right? When you start hearing experts talk about, the great depression as an average guy, you’re just making a living and it’s scary. But at the same time, when you listen to some smart people, they always say, this is the greatest time to invest. Because when everybody’s selling, you need to buy. So to me, I fell back on just as we talked about that mentality I had in my head that, if one investment should succeed in any environment eventually as time would tell is real estate. So that’s how I got into kind of investing real estate because you could use leverage.

[00:09:14] I knew it’s going to come back. Some people need a place to rent. And some of these houses were going 60, 70% in discount. Yeah, you could listen to these naysayers and be careful. When you have a five, 10, 20 year horizon of investment, asset classes will recover. Because you believe in the United States, when you believe in America, then you know that no matter what happens, it’s going to come back. So I think that’s what kinda got me into investing in real estate.

[00:09:42]Mike: It’s like resilience, right? America’s a very resilient country. But I think a lot of that equates to individual resilience.

[00:09:49]How many people got affected by that stuff in 2008. Got crushed and we’re resilient enough to come back. How many people didn’t come back. It’s interesting. That’s where that redistribution of wealth and that comes in, but here’s, what’s interesting, or what I hear in you and my conversations with you are that I don’t necessarily know that your big passion is money, but I think it’s something else. And talk about that. What is your true, real passion about real estate and about what you’re doing?

[00:10:22] Kam Zainabadi: Going back, I’m going to answer that the money question money is a way to keep score, right? It’s a kind of a measurement of success. When you play video game as a kid, you keep score, the number goes up, and there’s a way, that you’re winning right? And money at the end of the day. If you do anything for money’s sake, I don’t think that’s really a good attitude to have. So I think to begin with you’re right.

[00:10:42] Your analysis is right. Money is just the way. It’s a company that’s successful. By that nature they’re going to be financially successful as well. It’s almost like a law of business. Now, as far as what drives me, I think there’s several, one is we talked about just always educating myself, learning new skills.

[00:11:02]The passion of somewhat, I think starting your own business, it gives you a level of independence that, you have your own way of dealing with problems and that’s important. It’s gives a freedom of expression almost. It’s almost like an artistic, right? If you’re a part of a startup, you’re part of people that you could on the fly change things based on your ideas, based on your analysis, you don’t have to go through the stodginess of it. Of a large corporation to make things happen through the corporate bureaucracy, right?

[00:11:31] That’s the beauty of startup, which is amazing. And that’s one of the amazing things about United States is that those small businesses and startups are what really is the heart of the country, like the economic part of the country, honestly.

[00:11:44]So as far as freedom, creativity making something that’s bigger than yourself. So if a company usually outlast its founders,  there’s a legacy. Also the fact that you could give back when you create a sense of wealth and you have more money than you need to make a living, you have abilities to donate and make a difference.

[00:12:03] I think those are all valid. To me that those are things that drive me. Also leadership, when you’re starting a company and there’s inherently, there’s going to people that believe in your vision, right? A company can’t be a one person project. It’s very difficult to do that.

[00:12:18] So you’re going to enlist other people and they have to believe in a person. I believe you have your idea and come along for the ride and there’s sacrifices that everybody makes. But that’s what leadership is. It’s enlisting people for short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.

[00:12:36] Mike: Yeah, you said a lot there. And obviously you come with this entrepreneurial mindset and, what’s funny is in our society today, it’s chic to be an entrepreneur today where, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 23 years old.

[00:12:54] And back then it was like, you’re a, what. So people questioned it back then, you’re never going to succeed like that. And today it’s a cool thing to be an entrepreneur, but you really bring a entrepreneurial perspective to the multifamily operation side.

[00:13:09]And I think that’s key in driving your operations. Talk about that a little bit. How you feel the sense of that entrepreneurial-ism in what you’re doing really plays a part?

[00:13:23] Kam Zainabadi: And so far as Park Place is concerned. Is that what?

[00:13:25] Mike: Yeah. That, and your multifamily operations, your holdings.

[00:13:29] Kam Zainabadi: Oh sure. Multifamily is housing. I’ve tended to invest in multi-family because a), it brings value, it’s a safe investment. That’s number one from a personal perspective. Because multifamily is, you’re not relying on a few tenants for example, retail space or office space, you’re actually dividing the risk among the number of units you have.

[00:13:49] So certainly from a personal perspective as a business when I put my business hat on, it’s the safest to me. Now everybody could disagree with that, but that’s my perspective. You mitigating most, a lot of risks with vacancy. Number two is the fact that from a value standpoint, you providing housing for people, right? You make sure that, people have a places to live and you provide that for them. So certainly, it’s an individual one-to-one relationship. A lot of times that you actually dealing with individuals as opposed to large corporations. For example, if you have a large office spaces and you really it’s a different relationship you have.

[00:14:26] And number three is it’s very scalable. It’s very relatable. There’s  probably the multifamily side of the real estate is a community from what I’ve seen and through my experience. And it’s almost like a family, right? Everybody’s doing their own thing, talking about it.

[00:14:42]Putting it on LinkedIn, before all this COVID, meetings and seminars. And that was very interesting to me. And that’s what I could say.

[00:14:49] Mike: Yeah. Talk about park place a little bit. Tell us what that’s about and how that came about?

[00:14:55] Kam Zainabadi: Sure. So park place, really the idea was rattling in my head for a couple years now. The fact that because from personal perspective, when I invested in syndications, there’s not that many options. You could hear it, by friends and family investing and they tell you about it and you invest. From a tech perspective, there’s opportunities out there like angel list and these companies that bring all these different startups under one roof. From the real estate side, the only thing that’s comparable to is these larger crowdfunding sites, which think they’re really adding a lot of value to investors that actually want to go beyond.

[00:15:32] The model of, hearing about these syndication deals done through family and friends and actually expanding their horizon to maybe investing at places that they normally wouldn’t. And I think that kind of got me started to think about how are we going to even make this better. Because crowdfunding sites usually only put a few deals on their platform. I wanted to create like an MLS. If you think about LoopNet, how LoopNet operates is it doesn’t limit to a few deals. It puts almost every deal that’s out there on their platform. And then at the end of the day, the investor or the buyer contacts, the broker themselves, and that kind of inspired me that kind of platform to create a similar platform for syndicated deals. From an investor’s perspective, you could go on it and look at not only five or six deals, but tens or even hundreds of deals out there. And our goal is eventually is to list almost every deal out there.

[00:16:27] That’s as long as it’s general solicitation, five or 60, it’s a little bit of a terminology that we use for how you could list a deal and advertise it. But anyways, that’s what inspired me. And that’s what ParkPlace is all about. Now, the way the park place was created as this thought in my head with the coming of COVID, it was now we were limited to any of these interactions we had with friends, colleagues, other professionals that we normally do on these kind of mentions of these deals would come about with those interactions.

[00:16:58] So we really didn’t have that many opportunities and how to invest and find new investments. So that kind of prompted me to bring this up to our meetings that we have with our group of investors that we talk about different ideas both in technology and real estate. And this is an idea that I brought up that this is a need that we need.

[00:17:18]And then they thought it was a good idea too. So I knew at that point, it’s not a crazy idea because every time you have an idea, anybody has in their head. They think is this really just a crazy idea or not? So that’s why you talk to people about it. And that point, when I knew that this is actually may have be on solid footing.

[00:17:34]Then we went on and said, how are we going to do this? So we created a minimal viable product, which is in tech mean create a software that people could actually use. And not just hear what you’re saying about your idea, but actually have it in paper.

[00:17:48]You could write it down or have it on a platform and see what people think. And that’s how it started. And from the first week that I showed this to few syndications that I knew about, and also expanded that to other networks and they love the idea. And that’s how we started everything.

[00:18:05]And then from there it’s got a lot of traction and we’re a true startup. We started beginning of October. We have nine deals on our side already. It went from an idea that I thought it was a crazy idea, maybe in my head to actually going through the process and steps into really a full business at this point.

[00:18:22] Mike: Yeah. So are the deals that you’re putting out there? Are they all multifamily syndication deals or is there a variety?

[00:18:31] Kam Zainabadi: By the nature of what is happening this year with COVID. Multi-family is the hardest thing now. Office and retail is really not a good time to invest. So a lot of the syndications are concentrating on multifamily. So by that nature, most of the deals are multi-family. Although we do have funds also. For example, we have opportunity zone funds. And a multi asset, like both retail multi-family on the fonts on it.

[00:18:56]And we also have a fund that has mobile home parks in addition to multifamily in there. So it’s a mix, I think by nature, probably changes, waxes and wanes, the type of deals we have on it, based on just what  market wants. It’s depends on what the investor’s appetite is.

[00:19:11] And right now it’s really multi-family and industrial. So that’s the other one, that’s the main one.

[00:19:16] Mike: That’s interesting. Okay. From an entrepreneurial standpoint, and I think that everybody in their life gets faced with decisions that they need to make. How do you go about making the tough choices, the tough decisions in your life.

[00:19:31] Kam Zainabadi: You definitely want to surround yourself with a group of people you truly trust and you believe in their opinion. You not only take the good opinions and advices, but also the advices that tell you to maybe you should do things differently. You should never be defensive and always have an open ear and open mind.

[00:19:53]Because a lot of times improvement comes through doing things differently than you could be. You had a blind spot, right? Anytime you start a business or a new venture, because of you’re emotionally attached to that. There’s a by nature, you have a lot of blind spots.

[00:20:07]And it’s I could say the job of good advisors and friends and loved ones around you as not to put your business down, but find out what those blind spots are and point them to you. And then it’s your job to actually have your ears open and take their advice and pivot and change things and to improve.

[00:20:26] Mike: Well-spoken, in a lot of what you just talked about was really what you said early on about being a good leader and having some really good leadership skills, the listening piece and the accountability piece, those are great leadership skills, being in an entrepreneurial position.

[00:20:41] So what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned, over the years, some related to maybe some of the best or worst deals or jobs that you’ve had?

[00:20:52]Kam Zainabadi: I think one lesson is, just looking at it from you can win every deal you can. I think, as they say in baseball, if you’re batting 300 you’re a great hitter, right?

[00:21:04]It’s the same thing you can’t win every deal. And if you get stuck on kind of the bad decisions you’ve made and be timid, then that’s gonna really put you in a downward spiral that’s very hard to get out of. Because the mindset you have right now, and your future is determined by your mindset that you have now.

[00:21:24] And if this mindset is determined by your past failures, then you never gonna succeed. So I think it’s important to understand we know you could have made a catastrophic mistake. But that’s okay. As long as you learn from it, as long as it’s not career ending, you learn from it.

[00:21:41] And you move on and you move forward. And that’s something I learned in my own profession. Because anytime you start something through apprenticeship training, they tell you it’s okay to make mistakes. And those mistakes have implications. But, as long as you’re honest about your mistakes to others and to yourself, and that’s where it starts honestly, you have the honest conversation with yourself and others about your mistakes, and then that kind of release thing. It’s that kind of stress-relief right? It’s like a stress valve that you open it and things that you steam blows out. And then, it’s not good to keep it inside.

[00:22:15]So when you are honest with yourself, then you’re okay. You’re going to talk to others people honestly you’re not hiding your mistakes, which kind of could create this pressure inside you almost like in a metaphoric sense. That’s one of the things that you’re going to fail.

[00:22:28] That’s okay. You take yourself up, you learn and then you move on to the next thing, they say that any entrepreneur has gone through multiple businesses until they get one. And that’s the one you remember, that’s the one you remember.

[00:22:41] Mike: Yeah. Isn’t that true? That’s funny. You said a lot of good things there. That’s for sure. What should multifamily operators look to you for today? Look to PPI for today. What should they be aware of? What part do you play in the multifamily operators world today that they need to be aware of?

[00:23:01]Kam Zainabadi: If they want to, open up their investor pool to a larger group, besides what they’re doing already, I think park place has a lot of value for them.

[00:23:10] We’re growing our credit investor list ourselves organically and through advertisement and marketing. At the same time we developed a lot of relationships already within the short span of time. We’ve been in existence as a company with marketing firms that hold, for example, one has over 45,000 accredited investors on their database.

[00:23:30]We have a marketing company that we’re partnering up with that has multiple family or hundreds of family offices. And lastly, I think the important thing to understand is multifamily and I think this is going to be even holding more true in the future is using technology to their advantage. Which I think there are a lot of them already. But at the same time, understanding that expanding your natural accredit investors is very important, especially with the way STC is changing certain regulations. For example, with crowdfunding exemption, where you increasing to 5 million, for example. And the tech industry with this CF exemptions, that’s where this funding portals and these crowdfunding really started was through tech.

[00:24:14]And that’s going to be definitely play a bigger part and we’re going to be playing a bigger part in that also at the end. Lastly is, expand the way you’re marketing, not only to marketing firms that do solely real estate, but actually marketing firms that are also market to accredit investors for tech startups or any kind of startups.

[00:24:35]Cause sometimes  those marketers have thousands of accredit investors under their books that they would like to invest in real estate. So never go to the same pool of investors that have invested in real estate only. There’s a huge number of investors that are out there and appetite to have the appetite to invest.

[00:24:54] However, they mostly invest is for example, in Silicon Valley startups. And that’s a really an opportunity to find those marketers that have those investors on board as well, and reach out to them.

[00:25:05] Mike: Interesting. Boy, that’s an interesting thought. And I hope people who are doing syndications, whether they’re new or been doing it for a while, listen to what you said there, they should go back and replay this a couple of times. Kam you and I both we’ve made mistakes, had some successes, done things over the years.

[00:25:23] What is one thing that you wish you knew way back when you started than today?

[00:25:28]Kam Zainabadi: I think there’s a lot, I think, one thing is improving my communication skills that’s really important. Especially like the way I know myself now is I have a lot of thoughts in my head, that filter of able to process those thoughts and bringing it out into kind of a cohesive, simple way that others could understand. And that’s part of leadership, right? I’m improving on it, but I wish I started that maybe taking speech classes, they had speech classes in high school and debate classes and I never took them. I was a little bit of a kind of afraid of talking in public and I think, it’s just been even more important now.

[00:26:04]Public speaking, not like in a huge crowd of people maybe, but which is important. But I’m talking about through communicating through, with your group through zoom or even through your company personnel is very important, right? If you can’t, you can have a lot of thoughts in your head, but if you just comes out as incomprehensible, then nobody can understand it. And I’m bringing it down to a level that, people that are more lay people could understand that. And your vision, the way you’re putting things together. And as a CEO is a very important communication because you’re handling different aspects, right?

[00:26:38]Let’s say it’s a larger company. You have different divisions of that company. Those divisions do their own thing, right? An engineering division has no idea what the marketing division does or the sales division does. And as a CEO you’re bringing everybody together.

[00:26:50] And you have to be able to communicate to each depart at each division based on how their mindset is, and then being able to bring them together for a final product. I think, some of these amazing tech founders had that ability, right? It’s multiple different areas that you have to understand, learn, and then be able to communicate to each other and also what your vision is.

[00:27:14] Mike: Yeah, spoken that’s for sure. So this shows insider secrets and you’ve got some multifamily history. What should a multi-family investor be looking for today or looking at being aware of, or looking for opportunity in the marketplace today?

[00:27:32] Kam Zainabadi: I think one thing is to look at, go beyond your geographic location. Because a lot of real estate investors tend to just the nature of real estate. They say it’s local. So you learn your market and you invest and within a certain radius of your market and you vary. That’s how traditional real estate has been. But I think, at this point for example, if you live in LA or it’s facility or New York city, for example.

[00:27:54]If you always invest in those areas. Right now, it’s not really a good time to invest in those primary markets. You should open up your mind to investing in secondary tertiary markets. And for example, the other thing is if you’ve always been investing in retail multi-family, change your asset type.

[00:28:10]You always have to be agile and change things. And I think that’s the beauty of syndications, they really give that opportunity to an average investor that, let’s say you’re afraid of managing a multi-family. A hundred unit property, somewhere that’s, thousands of miles away.

[00:28:25]That’s, what’s indications do, right? You participate as an investor and a company owner and LP, but you don’t have to worry about all the headaches that come with it. So I think having an open mindset, explore markets beyond what your own local market is, and also asset classes that perhaps you were investing before that are not so hot right now.

[00:28:45] And you can always go back to those classes later. That’s not classic, but yeah asset classes later, but for now I think, multi-family is really the place to be.

[00:28:54] Mike: Yeah, I would agree. And I think it is caught on, and it’s one of the hottest things over the last few years, it seems like the space has gotten real crowded, but it’s good because it’s competition.

[00:29:04]I think the one thing that’s happened that, and I think a lot of people would agree on this is cap rates have gotten so compressed that’s really priced things high. That’s good on one side bad on the other side, we’ll still see opportunity. Here’s what I know. And I’m sure you’ll agree with this too, that it doesn’t matter who the president is.

[00:29:22] You can make money. It doesn’t matter what the market is, whether it’s up or down, you can make money. It doesn’t matter what the weather is. You can still make money. It’s that entrepreneurial mindset and how we take a look at things and focus on things.

[00:29:35]Kam Zainabadi:  Yeah, absolutely. I want to say for example, talking about different, as you said different parties coming to power. But, if you look at it from a democratic side, the crowdfunding was started by the financial crisis that the Obama administration decided that there’s gotta be a better way for businesses to raise money or than traditional ways.

[00:29:51]So they brought those ideas and the Republicans bring some other ideas, as you said. So you just have to be agile as a business owner. Especially in real estate, find out what the rules or regulations are. And unfortunately, I think the beauty of technology is, the communities, you could take advantage of LinkedIn and social media to really create this community that you could learn from somebody out in the East coast and you’re in the West coast.

[00:30:15]And that information percolates, as long as you have your ears open and you are willing to educate yourself. Not only through books, but also individuals and people that are doing it are in the thick of things. Then you always educated and you’re ahead of most other people because most people, I don’t think they always educate themselves. And that’s why policies are always taken advantage by people that are always ahead of it by reading and educating and listening and attending meetings, and things like that.

[00:30:45] Mike: Change is good. But we resist it so much and sometimes people are afraid of it but it’s good, it helps. All right, let’s talk about some lighter things a little bit. You’re in Southern California, right?

[00:31:00] Kam Zainabadi: Yes.

[00:31:01] Mike: So what’s your favorite tourist attraction there?

[00:31:04]Kam Zainabadi: My favorite is, general favorite is Disneyland, probably here. But over here, I enjoy next to the Harbor. I have a little Duffy that, we take the family out huntington beach Harbor. Which is a lovely place to be. You’re overlooking an amazing scenery and that’s my favorite thing. I like to go paddle boarding and things like that. As far as I think Huntington beach is an amazing city, has a lot to offer. I’m not the mayor or anything, but, but it has the little bit for everybody.

[00:31:32] And I love it. It is an attraction because I think we’re all known for a surf city. So that’s what I would say. Like there’s a lot to offer here. Southern California is amazing place to be.

[00:31:40] Mike: Yeah. I love Huntington beach. A lot of great experiences there on that boardwalk between Huntington and Newport down into belts.

[00:31:49] Kam Zainabadi: Oh Yeah.

[00:31:50] Mike: And how about the best book you’ve ever read Kam?

[00:31:52]Kam Zainabadi: Oh man. That’s again, if you go fiction, I love the hundred years of solitude, which was Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

[00:31:59] He won a Nobel prize for it. It’s a magical realism book. I love that kind of element. Anyways, that’s my favorite book. The one book that I read in school that I really love was catch 22. Because Catcho 22 has a sense of humor that’s very smart. And Joseph Heller was, I think just a genius. But he married humor with war and discuss some of  like one of the ways we deal with stressful situations through humor.

[00:32:25] And he was so amazing at capturing that kind of senselessness of the war through humor, and this captures so much of different just mentalities of the time. Catch 22 has become a common word now. But I thought that was one of my favorite.

[00:32:41]I’ve read so many books. I can’t honestly tell you one particular book that really stands out.

[00:32:45] Mike: I know there’s a lot. Isn’t there? How about favorite restaurant?

[00:32:48]Kam Zainabadi: I like Mastros, laughing.

[00:32:50] Mike: I’m going to have to come to Huntington.

[00:32:52] Kam Zainabadi: Mellow butter and steak is, Oh my God. It’s great. Not too bad, everything. My wife and I, before they closed, that was the last restaurant we went to. So they shut down again. But we always go there. It’s a great place.

[00:33:05] Mike: I’ll have to come to Huntington. We’ll have to go to Mastros when all this opens again. Huh?

[00:33:10] Kam Zainabadi: Sure.

[00:33:10] Mike: Hey, listen, I’m glad you’re here. If people want to know more about park place, they want to know more about you. How do they reach out and get ahold of you?

[00:33:19] Kam Zainabadi: Yeah so our website is www.parkplaceinvestment no S .com. We have a strong LinkedIn presence. So if they type in park place investment, they’ll see it.

[00:33:30] It’s the little red house or logo. And on Facebook we have, the contents are cross between Facebook and LinkedIn. They’re pretty much the same, but the same, if they type in parklets investment, they’ll find on Facebook as well. And those are the platforms we’re at right now.

[00:33:44] Mike: Okay, great. Great. Kam, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve learned a lot more about you and from you today, and I know that my listeners have as well. Anything else you want to add? Any last thoughts or comments?

[00:33:56] Kam Zainabadi: No, Mike, I really appreciate the offer to be on your podcast on your show. I really appreciate it.

[00:34:02]I’ve always like in our last few conversations, I’ve always learned a lot from you and enjoy and our conversations. I hope to continue it because I really value it so.

[00:34:11] Mike: Yeah, me too. And I enjoyed that myself. Okay, everybody. It’s been another great show with Kam and talking about park place.

[00:34:20] Make sure that you check out his website and please go to YouTube and go to Apple and Spotify, like us. Love us. Subscribe to us. Do all those crazy things, help our rankings grow. We’ll look forward to seeing everybody next Tuesday and you all have a great week. Bye Kam.

[00:34:40] Kam Zainabadi: Bye. Thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate it.

[00:34:42] Kristen: Thank you, Mike, and thank you for joining us for another great episode of insider secrets. As always insider secrets is brought to you by My Core Intensions. Join us on social media and visit my core intentions.com where you can get expert coaching on all things, multifamily investing and property management.

[00:35:00] We’re looking forward to having you back again next week for more insider secrets.