Today, my guest is Ken Van Liew. He's a real estate investor and his career has taken him through flipping houses new construction and development and assisted living. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Ken about real estate development in investing.

 J Darrin Gross

I'd like to ask you, Ken Van Liew, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

Ken Van Liew  

Yeah, I, you know, I think, you know, you can look at risk in a couple of different contexts, you know, you know, one, you obviously want to look at the risk, you know, of your personal life, and I've been in situations where I've done big projects where, you know, where I've, you know, placed all my assets in a trust and, you know, things work to go array, you know, in the sense of building projects, you know, and a lot of cases I used to have to put up performance bonds, you know, so, you know, it was a large sense of, you know, similar it's like a personal guarantee, you know, and when the bonding company steps in which you're you know, being insurance must be very familiar, you know, we used to get into, you know, sub guard policies and, you know, because you know, bonding was very expensive. The construction in the high rise we talked about before, the construction portion of it was always the highest risk, right. Some of those contractor contracts are in the neighborhood of $50 million, you're buying, you know, curtain walls from all different parts of the world, you know, I was traveling to Italy and Canada and, you know, making sure things are getting on the boat and time and, you know, all these little things, everything had to work like clockwork. And, you know, in that world, it was, it was extremely risky. And what we used to do is, you know, we would bond every single trade, if we had to, or if I couldn't bond the trades, I would have to sub guard the entire project, in order to satisfy the bank, you know, in case something happened on this, this, this mechanism was in place to save the day. You know, and, and I guess, you know, if you're just looking at an investment, you know, there's risk with that, you know, you want to make sure, you know, you're buying an asset, you know, there's not going to be this huge capital expenditure, you know, my, my expertise in building buildings, you know, I can go in and, you know, jump in an elevator shaft and tell you, you know, when the things going to, you know, you know, kind of die, you know, I can go and look at Central HVAC plants from building data centers, and, you know, what's know what's going to happen. So, you know, I think the biggest risk with with people buying existing assets, is not knowing what they're looking at, you know, and then all of a sudden, you're like, you know, shoot, I gotta, you know, upgrade the electrical service to 400 amps to get the tenant upstairs. And that means digging the road. And I had these two dentists that had the building in White Plains, they wanted to convert it, the residential, but we needed to upgrade the gas service in the water service, and they waited too long. And then they started building 400 unit next door, and I'm like, Guys, you got to pull the trigger. Now, you know, so those are the kind of risks, you know, not knowing what you don't know, or not, like we said before, recognizing what you don't know, and, and, you know, getting out of your own way, you know, because our egos, you know, I think, you know, sometimes on a personal level, so, so there's all different kinds of levels, I think all different kinds of contexts. You know, so, you know, I talked about personal existing assets, how the development is viewed and how, you know, I think that insurance aspect comes into play. You know, you know, in that in that case,

J Darrin Gross

I'd like to ask you, Kim Daly, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

Kim Daly 

So I help people take one of the BIGGEST RISK with most of their life savings for most of them that they will ever take, saying yes to their dreams to own a business. And I do this every single day. So I am very acquainted with the conversation about risk. I think the biggest risk is regret. I think that if you have the dream in your heart to do something that is out of the box that is unordinary that is extra ordinary, and you don't take the risk, you will regret it more than if you do do it. Even if it doesn't work out. The BIGGEST RISK has to be regret.

J Darrin Gross:

I'd like to ask you Houman Mahboubi, what is the biggest risk?

Houman Mahboubi  

I think that BIGGEST, BIGGEST RISK is to take on more than you think you can handle? You know, because you don't want to put self inflicted pressure on yourself. There already is daily pressure on the work that you do. I call it good cholesterol versus bad cholesterol, right? So stick to the good cholesterol take on as much as you can handle. Understand, what is the worst case scenario? If your business does fail, you know, are you going to be homeless? Are you going to be fractured and level that you can't function anymore. So as much as it's important to be all in and take every effort or measure to be successful in your endeavor, just make sure that if for whatever reason, like the pandemic Thomas, we think we can troll so much. But on a, you know, molecular level, we're all the same, and we're all equal. And when it comes to things like that we're all you know, one, believe it or not, just know that any endeavor you pursue makes, make sure that if it doesn't go well, you'll still be okay, you know that it's not going to any way change your life for the worse. So don't take on more than you can handle and try to be a hero or let your ego get in the way to say I'm here to do what I meant to do whatever my capacity is, and I will let the universe guide me in that unfolding and for me to do what I need to do. But that's a very good question. Because the risk factor, you don't want it to completely turn your life around where you can function anymore. And I think that goes for investments as well, you know, don't be over leveraged, how much debt are you taking on? You know, what if the picture looks incredibly clear, and there's no way there's maybe one in a million chance that, you know, this thing's gonna fail, but that one in a million, it's one of the decks in the card, one of the cards in the deck that can account make it happen like someone winning a lottery. So don't ever be overleveraged don't ever be a pessimist be an optimist, but just know that if all else fails, are you going to be okay, tomorrow? Are things going to be fine? And if the answer is an implicit Yes, then you know you're on the right track. If it isn't, and you are going to cause damage to yourself and the loved ones, then most definitely, it's not a smart risk to take on.

J Darrin Gross

I'd like to ask you, John Mitchell, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

John Mitchell  

You know, I think the biggest risk is, is not taking control of your life and letting life go wherever is gonna go rather than you directing your life. And, and I see that when I turned 50. And of course, is that pressure and what was going on with my mom, I realized, man, I got to step up and make this thing when I'm want it to be, I can't say yeah, I was too often in my 30s and 40s, I would push off well, you know, I'm, I'm gonna be really successful, just down the road a little bit. And, and when down the road, a little bit never came. I'm like, Whoa, I gotta I gotta step up here. And so I think that, that the risk is, is that you end up taking this precious life and not making the most out of it.

Today, my guest is Steffany Boldrini. Steffany is originally from Brazil, and moved to Silicon Valley 20 years ago. After a successful career in tech sales, she decided to focus on commercial real estate investing, where she has achieved over a 36% cash on cash returns. She is also the host of the Commercial Real Estate Investing from A to Z Podcast. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Stephanie about how to manage your assets remotely.

J Darrin Gross

I'd like to ask you, Stephanie Boldrini what is the biggest risk

Steffany Boldrini  

For myself personally that I am in right now would probably be cryptocurrency. I avoided it for a decade that I know it, unfortunately. And finally decided to put some money there. I think that is my biggest risk today. I put a little bit of money there. But you know, I had a very shortly epiphany right now talking to you that, you know, when the government printing so much money, there's also $200 billion, that crypto crypto mining that was created out of thin air right. So is the government really interested in in making them illegal? I don't know. Maybe not. Because that is keeping the economy going. Right? There's $200 billion more out there, that people are spending or trading and it's that the government did not even have to print themselves. So will they really make it illegal? Which is what I thought for the last decades? Maybe not?