Did you get into this business when you're overseas? What did your starting point look like?

so uh that's a good question so um you know i'm born and raised in germany like some of the folks listening to this i figured that where is this accent from it's from germany and um i'm around as an entrepreneur 16 17 years now i'm 40 i turned 40 a couple of weeks ago so um i was around for a while and you know like i was young and wild and founded a shitload of businesses in the same time i think i had 15 different companies at a certain point like 10 years 12 years ago Then closed some, sold some, and was focusing on my construction company over there.

Had a terrible burnout in 2018 where it was like half a year out of life.

and decided after that you need to do things differently in life and sold my construction company i had at that point which was my main gig and um which i which i liked and hated at the same time like i had like a lot of people running around there and uh when you have like over 100 people working for you especially in construction you have roughly every day 500 people problems alone plus all the construction problems that come up right so i sold it um got involved into real estate investing so changed sides um started flipping houses with my was my partner good business partner learned a lot about him from from the investing side we flipped in our second year almost 300 houses and um i was like almost burned out the second time in my life went two months to australia came back said i'm out like i was just kite surfing every day i'm on the beach and i had like this aha moment and i always tell that because it's important i think for how i think about business today is I was on the beach every day kite surfing.

And there were those dudes, right? Like this Australian dudes, Western Australian guys, right? They all tackle rattlesnakes and saltwater crocodiles and all that thing every day.

So they're like, I was like, guys, how do you do that? You're here every day.

So I went back to Germany, told my partner I'm out.

Talk about that a little bit, how people are kind of just like, how specific do they need their business to be to be successful today? And you saw that 2024 shift you said turning into a business where you do need to like come in with a clear business plan like any other business in the world.

yeah

That was March 2020.

What happened a month later? So we engaged in coaching and set up the companies and then like COVID hit, right? And bro, it was rough because you sit down there, we couldn't even fly here, open bank accounts, like, you know, like really the basic stuff was not possible.

There was an event scheduled for software intake and meet other people and like to live and breathe that, right? Because So, man, the first year was really tough because what I needed to learn was business culture, right? And what I always tell all my American friends is, like, everybody's complaining about regulations and this and this.

I said, dude, like, you have never done a deal in Europe, right? Like, we're talking about a closing before that, right? Like, there was a closing you had and then they work soon.

Bro, our closings are sometimes six to eight months.

closing procedure is so complicated and hard and you know it's the german engineer that let me let me let me keep it there so um um know what happened you know we started doing this we then needed a year to do our first deal i made zero dollars in profit because i didn't know when you have three adjacent lots that you don't write three contracts with your seller and don't write three contracts with your buyer you know you just do one so i paid six times closing costs in california which can pretty much hurt right like because they're expensive over there and yeah from there we took it man um i pretty much early started uh specializing in buying portfolios because i didn't like the acquisitions game too much about this whole wholesale world right it was like wholesaling that we were taught there so we started buying all packages um i bought my first one was 144 lots in 24 counties in florida it was the first time i got in touch with this concept of private money where i was like literally fascinated by because in europe you go to a bank when you need money you don't go to people you don't go to your friends or family or you can do that here that was like for me like the holy grail wow suddenly it's like you can do unlimited things right you and you know like when i did that deal i was like man like you're really the right on the right path because it's not only private money it's not only the deals it's also you can structure everything in any way you want if everybody agrees on that like there is almost no regulations on that And today in 2025, it's almost 1,300 deals later with around $12 million in capital raised.

Like, what does that do for you, I would assume? But what are the fundamental, like, entry-level thoughts you want to go through the first three questions does it have this does it have this does it have that great now we at least know there's something here