Paul Neal  0:00  

There are a very few lenders in the country that are what’s called PLP SBA lenders and and so PLP means they they don’t have to get the SBA to sign off on the loan, they make the decision right there and they find it. So what happens is if you go to your local bank and they say we’re going to do an SBA loan, and this is why SBA has gotten such a bad rap over the years, the bank will underwrite the loan, but once the bank has you jumped through all the hoops, then they have to send the loan to the SBA and it’s gonna sit on some government bureaucrats desk for some time, they’re going to evaluate it separately and then they’re going to make their own independent decision. So they could come back with additional conditions or they could just you know, deep six at right there. So, so it makes a difference on who you work with. So certain of these preferred lenders can make the decision right there so you know, there’s one less hurdle major hurdle to jump.

Announcer  0:49  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant we are here to learn from the experts.

J Darrin Gross  1:08  

Welcome to commercial real estate pro networks, CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is the podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly, we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. Today’s interview is sponsored by building insurance and risk. When you invest in real estate, you need to protect your investment. The experts had building insurance and risk provide you with multiple offers and a side by side coverage comparison. To learn more, go to building insurance and risk.com. 

Today, my guest is Paul Neal. Paul is the founder and Principal Funding Strategist. At Vantage Point Commercial Capital. A firm that focuses on helping entrepreneurs and real estate investors win by funding their growth in dreams in non traditional ways. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with Paul about how and why to own the building your business friends, and for less than you think. 

But first, a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE PN Radio, there are a couple things you can do to help us out. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment. We’d love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see our handsome our guest arm, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. And you can find us on YouTube at commercial real estate pro network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that, I want to welcome my guest, Paul Neil, welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Paul Neal  2:53  

Hey, Darrin, thanks for having me on. I’m excited about having a conversation today.

J Darrin Gross  2:58  

I’m looking forward to myself. Before we get started, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Paul Neal  3:06  

Yeah, sure. Sure, absolutely. So I’m, I’m a serial entrepreneur by nature. I started my first business while I was in college in 1988. And I’m now on my seventh seventh business. And I’ve had a had a pretty good run of it, I’ve had some really great successes had some failures. And so I’ve sort of lived the entrepreneurial life. And, and so I’m I, I’ve always had a sort of a vision and a dream to, you know, live the life that I’ve sort of carved out. And I know a lot of real estate investors and business owners, we’re all sort of cut from that same mold. And you know, we fly, you know, to the sound of a different drum, a drum beat. And so I’ve always endeavored to do that. And it’s been a great ride. And I’ve learned a lot.

J Darrin Gross  4:01  

That’s great. That’s a lot of different entrepreneurial ventures or seven, seven ventures and, and like you said, if it’s in you, it’s in you. And so keep keep going there. So let’s talk about our topic today, essentially owning versus renting for business owners. And I guess the first question I would ask is why business owners should own the property they they operate from as opposed to rent?

Paul Neal  4:41  

Yeah, that’s a great question, Darrin, the short answer is that they shouldn’t all necessarily do that. I mean, it depends on the situation circumstances. So you know, the world has changed a lot, particularly in the last couple of years. And so some businesses are always going to be sort of in a In a market a community, they’re going to have a community presence. And it’s going to require a physical presence, right. So that could be your dentist, your veterinarian, could be your HVAC company, your plumbing company, there’s a litany of companies that are local and require, you know, maybe its manufacturing, something like that requires a physical presence. And then there are litany today that don’t require that with the technology we have today, we can have a distributed workforce and you know, a lot of flexibility there. So it’s really very interesting time. And there’s great opportunity, I say, if you if you fall into the category one business where you have a physical presence, and you and you are in a community, and your intent is to be there for the long run, and you’ve had a pretty good track record, I mean, you’ve got a business that’s, that’s doing well, you don’t, you know, it’s not falling apart, you know, it’s growing, it’s stable, then then owning the owning the business, the building makes total sense. And, you know, a lot of people sort of pushback because business owners, they don’t, they don’t realize they can do it, the barrier to entry is generally are higher. But if you frame it in the context of like, the residential space, most people own their own home, you have to live somewhere. So you’re going to pay, you’re going to either pay rent, or you’re going to you’re going to pay a mortgage. And there are certain benefits, obviously, most people choose to buy the home that they live in, for a lot of reasons. And a lot of the same reasons apply to the commercial space, and we can get into the you know what those are. But if it makes sense, then again, a lot of people just sort of pass it off, because the the barrier to entry seems high. And in some cases it is but in many cases, it’s not nearly as big as most people think.

J Darrin Gross  6:49  

Yeah, I get it. And I’ve always been kind of curious, why so many larger companies, excuse me, look to lease space, you know, you find all the time, opportunities to buy Walgreens, physical location and lease to them. And so I, I would love to hear more about kind of why, you know, why you think it’s? Or why it’s a good idea. I mean, to me, it always makes sense. But I’m kind of curious, maybe even more why some of the larger companies look to lease space.

Paul Neal  7:30  

Yeah, you know, that’s a good question on that. And I’m not sure I’ll have a definitive answer on the on the Walgreens of the world, I actually have some clients that do what you’re talking about they they buy, build, and buy the building, and then lease it out to Walgreens as a, you know, single tenant or whatnot, have done well, there. I’m not sure if that’s, you know, the capital requirements or, you know, you know, why they’re making those decisions. But, you know, I do deal mainly with the, you know, the smaller midsize company that, you know, is owner occupied there, you know, in the, in the one to $30 million range in terms of revenue. And these are locally present businesses that, you know, again, there are a litany of reasons why you’d want to do it, I’ll give you a few. So what we see, I’ll give you some examples. So the first one is control. You know, you look at the economy that we’ve been in, you know, we’re now in an inflationary environment, you know, rents are going up across the board. landlords have control there. And, and so I had a, I had a client who owns a couple of pizza businesses, restaurants, and he rented, he’s renting the spaces. And one day earlier this year, the the owner came to him and said, Hey, we’re going to sell the building. And so he spent eight, nine years building this location put, I think, 60 70,000 into the kitchen to get it just the way he wants to build it. It’s a locally clientele business. I mean, you’re not, if he moves four miles down the road, you know, I’m not sure how much of his clientele he’s going to lose but but a pretty good amount. And so there’s no guarantee that the new owner was gonna allow him to stay it wasn’t going to repurpose it for something else. And so and so we worked with him to buy that building. So now he has control, he makes the decisions on you know, whether he you know, moves or doesn’t move or whatnot. So that’s that’s one great reason. In addition, that flexibility you can do with the property more what you want, you can build it out the way you want, utilize it. You know, another great reason is, is the their great tax advantages to it, right? So owning that business, most of our clients will buy, you know, they’ll set up a separate company to buy the real estate and then their their business will basically lease from that company. And so they get the advantage of the depreciation in the in the commercial space to help offset some of that, and I’m not going to get a lot of that detail because I’m not a CPA, but there are tremendous tax advantages there. Another option or another benefit potentially is the rental income option. You know, we see it on residential a lot, you see it in commercial, larger buildings, but a lot of our clients are buying building spaces that are larger than their needs. And so they’re bringing to bring in tenants and to help pay the freight on that mortgage. So their net cash flow out is much less than they would have pay and just straight up rent situation. We just did a refinance on our local warehouse where it was a roofing company, that a 10,000 square foot warehouse, they ran about 5500 feet. And they had leased out the other space, they subdivided it, I think into four, four bays, and the tenants are completely paying the mortgage. So you have other people paying, you know, the mortgage on this commercial building, which is also appreciating over time. So he bought the building originally, about 10 years ago, I think it was 700,000. We just had it appraised for 1.21 point 3 million, and other people were paying for it. So not unlike your your residential home over time generally will appreciate not necessarily year to year, right. But over time. And and so that’s that’s another reason. How about this one? The ability to leverage your business, if you’re looking for other financing, if you have real estate or real estate component in your business, as a lender, we look at that differently than just a, an operating company with rent, it’s more like a blue sky company is a lot of goodwill versus tangible real estate. Another reason how about a retirement income stream, we have a client, she’s an OB GYN nearing retirement, she’s about four years out, she just sold her business to a medical group that is sort of, you know, buying up little independent operators, with the intent of hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be retiring, I’m gonna turn this over. But the great thing about it is she bought the building that they that they operate her business in 15 years ago, the building is paid off, the new company that bought her practice not only paid her a nice sum for that pays her to stay on as a physician, but also as paying a nice five figure rent to her and her family for the building because they don’t want to move the practice. So a great retirement stream that you’re developing at the same time. So there’s, there’s a number of benefits there to actually, you know, owning the building, I would say if your business is, you know, again, in a risky situation, and it’s you know, your future is uncertain, probably not a good time to buy your own building, but but there are a lot of businesses out that are very stable, very solid, that that really, really could benefit by owning the real estate.

J Darrin Gross  12:47  

No, I like all of those. And, you know, little foresight and a little planning, you can you can set yourself up well for for retirement or beyond one of the ask you a little bit about the challenges that business owners face when borrowing money. I know I’ve got multiple clients and in this has been a conversation, not a deep dive conversation. But I just know that a lot of times the banks look at them differently. Kind of like as you alluded to whether or not you have real estate on on the books, or what are some of the challenges that that a business owner faces when when borrowing to buy a property for their business?

Paul Neal  13:37  

Well, I mean, the three things that most banks will look at, you know, I call it the three C’s of lending or collateral cashflow, and credit. So if you go to the typical bank, then you have to be strong in all three areas. So your business has to has to cashflow Well, thus, it has to have a history of cash flowing well, your credit has to be in pretty good shape. Most banks, you know, everyone has a different guideline. But but it you know, it has to be in pretty good shape. And then the collateral issue, most banks hedge their risk, I know we’re gonna get into risk a little bit later by by limiting, you know, the amount of money they’re going to loan against the property’s value. So we call that loan to value. Typically a bank is going to want 20 to 25% down have your own money. So they’re going to loan 75 Maybe 80% of the value of the property. So that’s generally the biggest barrier to entry that we see. Because if you if you take, let’s say a million dollar building, which is a pretty small, you know, office building today probably we probably just started to, well, hey, you know, 20% of that is $200,000 And you might have that in your operating account a lot of business owners do but to take off pull that money out of your operating account and put it in real estate where it’s now not liquid at all right, you know that you’re not gonna have access to that for a long time is a is a tough nut to crack, so to speak. I mean, you know, you got to think long and hard about wanting to do that. So those are typically or maybe they had a bad year during COVID cashflow wise, and they’re coming back to this year, you know, and so the cashflow is not you know, where it needs to be. So those are those are the the biggest barriers that entrepreneurs face when they go to a bank. Now, you know, there, there are programs out there like the SBA, most people are familiar with them, they they have more, say more relaxed guidelines in some of those areas, like they’ll generally go to a 90% loan to value or a 10% down. Their amortization terms are a little bit longer to help on the cash flow. They still have serious credit and cash flow requirements. But but the thing is to that, you know, a lot of people, every bank in America will say they say they do SBA loans. But the reality is, they don’t really they might do once every blue moon and the SBA is an awesome program, but you really have to know how to navigate the waters. There are a very few lenders in the country that are what’s called PLP SBA lenders. And and so PLP means they, they don’t have to get the SBA to sign off on the loan, they make the decision right there and they find it. So what happens is if you go to your local bank, and they say we’re going to do an SBA loan, and this is why SBA has gotten such a bad rap over the years, the bank will underwrite the loan, but once the bank has you jumped through all the hoops, then they have to send the loan to the SBA, and it’s gonna sit on some government bureaucrats desk for some time, they’re going to evaluate it separately, and then they’re gonna make their own independent decision. So they could come back with additional conditions, or they could just, you know, deep six, that right there. So, so it makes a difference on who you work with. So certain of these preferred lenders can make the decision right there. So you know, there’s one less hurdle major hurdle to jump. Banks also have their own, they have their own sort of overlays and requirements. So even if they say they’ll do an SBA loan on a lower loan to value, they, they may have requirements on the cash flow of the business or the credit score, because the banks really, you know, you’re not their customer, the it’s the it’s the regulator’s the bank, the Board of Directors, those are the people the masters that they have to serve. And they have portfolios that they, you know, a certain portfolio that they want to, they want to fit certain loans into that mix. And so they’ve got their boxes, you have to check, and whatnot. So it depends on where you go, but then, you know, and then there are even some SBA lenders that, that will create a hybrid loan where there’s a 0% down requirement, you know, based on the credit and the cash flow, the business, there’s some some opportunity there. So they’re, so they’re not all created equal. And what I find Darren is, most entrepreneurs and business owners, when they’re looking for a loan, they think, hey, maybe I’ll buy the building or whatever, they talk to the banker, that they that they have their deposit set, right, because we’re all taught to make, you know, build a relationship with your banker. And, you know, in he’s gonna say, Well, no, you need 20% down or 25% down, or we might to do an SBA loan or whatever. But they, they don’t really know the market, they only know their little experience in the market, because they’re busy running the business, right? I mean, you gotta I mean, if you’re an entrepreneur, you somebody’s got to run the shop, right? Or make sure that your your people are running the shop. And so they have a very sort of myopic view of what’s available to them. And so then they shut the door and move on. Like, I don’t want to take the 200,000 I’m offering account, you know, I had a cash flow issue last year or whatever, it’s just not worth going into it. So or maybe they get an offer, but maybe it’s not the best terms. Like for instance, maybe the bank says we’ll do it but but we want your deposits we want we’re gonna have some covenants, so we’re going to review them every year, we can call the loan if we want to. Most SBA lenders, even though even the preferred ones are variable rate lenders. So you’re I think the average is a prime plus two and a half loan. So if you didn’t get a good SBA loan a year ago, and your prime plus two and a half, your rate last year was five and a half. Now, when the Fed finishes the rate hikes in the next two months, they’re gonna come up another 75 basis points in November and probably another 75. And at the December meeting, the prime is going to be at 7.75. So these loans are gonna go from, you know, mid fives to you know, nine and a half to 10% overnight and that’s a cash crunch. But there are a few SBA lenders out there that will do a 25 year fixed rate. So, we had a we had a warehouse. A friend of mine actually is a client as well as a small trucking company and he wanted to buy a warehouse down here by the port, because he had all kinds of customers that wanted to store I mean, he Add a great a great business case for it. Long story short, he was able to secure he went to his local bank. And then we talked and we got him a 25 year fixed rate, I think it was like 4.95. So and that was just earlier this year, so, so if he would have taken the loan at the bank, he’d be sitting at 10%. But now he’s sitting at 4.95 for, you know, 25 years. So it all makes a difference on you know, where you go, who you work with. And you know, and again, banks can be good. We do work with some banks, and we love community banks, but it doesn’t always work. So those are some of the barriers, I think some of the reasons why business owners say no, or they don’t want to pursue it or, you know, or maybe they maybe they’re concerned about the future rates. And like, gosh, I don’t want to be in a position where my my payment could double and, you know, in a year, and so they don’t, they don’t do it, and they just continue to pay rent. And the rent goes up every year and you know, 10 years go by they’ve paid rent, they’ve locked into leases for two terms, and they’ve got nothing to show for it.

J Darrin Gross  21:03  

Now, the list of, you know, upside, and then kind of like you said, all the banking challenges. You know, it’s gonna take a little bit effort for anybody who wants to do this. But, you know, I’m curious. So are is a vantage point? Are you guys a broker, a lender? Or what’s your, how are you guys set up?

Paul Neal  21:27  

Yeah, so we, we do a little bit of both. I mean, I really consider us concierge, lenders, we develop a relationship. So we have a, we have a four step process for their clients, we really, we want to source the market, but we want to be your partner, we want to, we want to relationship with you there and over the long run. Because if you’re a business owner, you always have needs for capital, right? Not just today, similar to your insurance business, you want a long term relationship, because the business’s needs for insurance change year to year, right. Maybe you maybe you’re looking for real estate this year, maybe two years from now you want acquire another location, maybe buy out a competitor, maybe you’re looking for growth capital. So you know, what we do is we get to know you, we learn about you develop a relationship, and then we source the market. Sometimes we use some of our own money, sometimes, but we use we use banks, we have life insurance funds, venture capital, we have family funds is a lot of options out there that we can draw from based upon the situation and the situation is very fluid, right? I mean, look at what’s happened in the last, you know, this year to to the whole financial world. And then we but we’re in a unique position where we then can sell you to the money sources, because we’re on your side, we’re not beholden to any one particular board of directors or any one particular source of money. Our goal is to is to provide the best cap capital options for you. And then our third step in the process is to lay it out to educate you say, you know, here’s three or four different ways you could go about this, you know, have you considered these and have a conversation and dialogue. And then if one of them makes sense for you, then then we go into funding. So and you know, our thing is, again, we’re a long term player, we don’t want we’re not about a transaction. So we don’t even charge anything unless unless we can actually provide the capital the table and the deal closes. And you know, you get what you need. And so that’s the way we you know, so we’re not going to waste your time, we’re not going to waste our time, but we’re also going to try to do the best we can. And we’re going to work really hard to make sure that that we get your you know, your loan funded at the end of the day, if it makes sense for you. And if it doesn’t make sense for you, we’ll tell you I mean, you know, sometimes there are options, like maybe you don’t, maybe you have no, you can’t show any cash flow, well, there are options there. And we can do some asset based lending. And that might make sense. But it might not make sense for your situation. Or maybe your business is a little you know, teetering a little bit right now. Or maybe your market is changing a lot. We might say, Yeah, you know, let’s talk about this. Maybe you should delay a year and see if the if the stabilizes, because you don’t want to lock into a long term commitment if your business is a little bit, you know, unsteady or uncertain. But yeah, so that’s how we partner so you could consider us, I guess, a broker in a sense with some lending capability, but really, it’s more about a partnership.

J Darrin Gross  24:22  

Got it. And you mentioned some of the different sources. Are you guys an SBA lender, or do you do you find the SBA lender that fits the client’s needs are?

Paul Neal  24:32  

Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got great SBA lender partners. Yeah, we don’t do those ourselves. But we have, like I said, based on the situation and what they’re trying to accomplish, because they’re, you know, even the ones we work with, there’s no one great SBA lender. It depends on the industry. It depends on what you’re trying to do. It depends on your history depends on you know, how much leverage you’re trying to seek. A lot, a lot of factors so we have we have a portfolio of them we have great relationships with and we always brought Always talking to new sources to try to understand, you know, who who is doing something new and unique and different in the marketplace?

J Darrin Gross  25:10  

And you mentioned, some of you guys lent some of your own capital. Do you do ever raise capital from investors looking to lend for return or

Paul Neal  25:20  

so in a loose manner? Yeah, we haven’t formally done that. But once in a while, we’ll have an opportunity. And we’ll kind of float it out there to some of our clients, because a lot of our clients have some free cash. And we can put things together, but we’re not we’re not in a formal, you know, capital raising business. We don’t have any SEC filings or anything like that.

J Darrin Gross  25:42  

And kind of in what’s the, the territory of your operation? Do you stay local? Or do you? Do you have any limits?

Paul Neal  25:51  

Now we’re national, in some cases International, but mostly here here in the US. We some of the state of New York is a little kludgy sometimes for us, you know, there are a few states that are a little we got to we got to pause before we make a decision, but but for the most part, just about anywhere in the US.

J Darrin Gross  26:11  

And, you know, you mentioned kind of the interest rates are cooking up. Are you seeing that kind of narrow the opportunities for for buyers right now? Or sellers? justing, their sales price? I mean, cuz I’m assuming, you know, it’s always about a payment, at the end of the day is if you’re borrowing money, the bank, the lender wants you to pay back the loan, once to make sure you can you can afford the payment. You know, in the situations where interest rates are going from, you know, low blow for fours to Denine, based on what the Feds doing, how are you seeing that change the dynamics of the marketplace?

Paul Neal  26:57  

Yeah. So putting a caveat on that, that’s, you know, that in the nines is that is that prime plus, you know, SBA, but we still see, we still see some money in the, in the mid fives to sixes. And in the sevens just based upon the type of product in the in the in the building. So it’s not, it’s not the end of the world, but there is some tempering for sure an expectation on, you know, the money’s no longer free, right. And so, I mean, the Fed funds rate was, you know, gosh, what 1%, you know, a year ago, or the 10, year treasury was 1%, you know, a year ago. So now we’re right at 4%. So it’s not free, but the long end, the yield curve is still holding in a pretty good, pretty good place. I mean, it is going to be interesting to see what happens moving into the first and second quarter of next year, I mean, you know, the economy is slowing. And the inflation numbers that we see which are driving the interest rates, that’s why the Feds been so aggressive to push up the short term rates try to get a handle on inflation, we’re going to see the November reports come out. And they’re going to start to show some moderation in the right direction, because that those reports are based on year over year numbers. And if you look at the last summer, not this past summer, but a year ago summer, the inflation numbers were still pretty low. And so when you compare this summer to last summer, the inflation numbers are really hot, all the way through September. Now, once we get an October of 2021, those inflation numbers are already starting to show pretty good number. So the delta is going to be smaller. And so we’re going to start seeing that that number come down in a measured way. Now we still have inflation. But that’s going to eat some of the concern in terms of the Fed pushing the you know, pushing the prime rate up. And if you look at the long end of the yield curve, again, those rates are still in the, you know, in the threes. And so the long term expectation from sort of the global money world thinks that inflation is going to come in check, and that growth is going to slow down a little bit. And so how does that affect real estate? I think I think there are going to be some great opportunities, I think some sellers are going to want to get out. And I mean, we’re starting to hear a little bit of it. I mean, I don’t have any great stories right now saying hey, they’re slashing their, you know, their price by 30% or whatever. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Interestingly, what we see on the residential side is there’s there’s there’s great supply issues as well I mean, there’s there’s very little supply. And so those prices are expected to remain stable even even grow except for and a couple of markets, like your crazy markets, your Phoenix markets and you know, all the ones that always go, you know, way up and way down, right, and the cyclical markets boom and bust, boom and bust boomers. But what’s interesting, like in the business side, we do a lot of business acquisition funding to there are a lot because the economy is slowing and you know, we’ve seen the inflation And, and people’s like perspective is shifting, we see the, you know, the silver wave, the the, the older entrepreneurs and business owners that have sort of weathered recessions before have done well, the last 15 years have been pretty good, particularly last five or 10. And they’re now wanting to sell, you know, the one two punch out. And so that that also goes with the real estate, they’re like, Okay, we had a good ride, we’re gonna go, you know, we’re gonna take our chips off the table and move on. So I think there’s actually going to be great opportunity there from a buyer standpoint that we haven’t seen in a while. Because, you know, that’s when people, you know, what is it? Warren Buffett said, you know, be fearful when others are greedy and greedy, when others are fearful. And so as the pendulum has swung, I think it’s going to create opportunity. I mean, you have to be smart about it, right? And you have to be measured and not move on emotion. But I think we’re gonna see that.

J Darrin Gross  31:02  

A, Paul, if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. Yeah, by day, I’m an insurance broker, and work with my clients to assess risk and determine what to deal with risk. And there’s three strategies we typically consider, we first look to see if we can avoid the risk. And that’s not an option, we look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And when we cannot avoid nor minimize the risk. And we look to see if we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is its risk transfer vehicle. And as such, I like to ask my guests, if they can look at their own situation, could be your clients, investors, tenants, the market, political interest rates fed, you know, however, you want to identify what you consider to be the biggest risk. And again, for clarification, while I am an insurance broker, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. And so if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Paul Neal, what is the biggest risk?

Paul Neal  32:08  

Well, I think the biggest risk that business owners and entrepreneurs face today and into the foreseeable future, is what I call big, big government, big technology, big media, even big banks. We’ve seen it over COVID, it’s been in our face, that there’s a there’s a, there’s a movement to sort of aggregate the power up into the hands of the few again, whether it’s a government media, big business is, you know, is a threat to small business and entrepreneurs. Because, you know, we’re, we’re free agents, we’re out there on the street, we’re the ones that are building the community, we’re hiring employees, we’re caring about our customers caring about her families, giving back to the community, we’re the ones that want to be able to exercise, you know, free and independent thought. And we have these forces that are aligned against us. And again, you COVID You know, who did they shut down? Well, they didn’t shut down Amazon, they didn’t shut down Walmart, but they shut down the, you know, the mom and pop that at a coffee shop, they shut down the church, they shut down, you know, anything they that didn’t sort of fall into this, this large monolithic group that that could be controlled. And and I’m not saying there’s any sort of force behind it, other than the fact that it’s just natural, right, that, that, that, that we’re sort of in a battle here that we all want control. And it’s easier to control, the smaller the smaller number of levers that control, you know, sort of larger, larger economies, and without getting really deep and off of that, and I just think that we’re in a fight, and I think as entrepreneurs, that for us to be to survive into the future that we need to stick together and realize that, you know, I don’t I don’t think our issues are, you know, most business owners that I know, regardless of the color, their background, their creed, whatever, they just, they just want to work with customers and serve people. And they want to do the best they can. They want to work in excellence, and we just have to stick together. And so we can all win together. Because I think when we win as entrepreneurs and business owners, our families when our communities win, and ultimately, society wins.

J Darrin Gross  34:40  

I love the we message I feel like so much what we hear is the me message and definitely there there’s a there’s a bigger, bigger issue there. It’s the Wii and if we you know, look up for the Wii. I think we’ve got a chance. Appreciate that. Hey, Paul, where can the listeners go? If they’d like to learn more connect with you.

Paul Neal  35:03  

Yeah, awesome. Darrin, well, I’ve got a website, and I actually have created a little resource for your listeners that they can grab for free. I call it the key questions that you must ask an answer before seeking funding. And it’s just a tool to kind of think through the process. Again, because you don’t jump right into funding. Hopefully you don’t, don’t don’t don’t go with the online guy that’s going to fund you in five minutes, because it’s a bad decision. Think through the process. So that’s going to live at our website and our website is V PC. Victor Paul, Charlie dot capital. There’s no.com. It’s V PC dot capital slash, podcast. And then a little dash or hyphen, c r e p n for your show the c r e p n.

J Darrin Gross  35:56  

Great. Well, Paul, I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I’ve enjoyed it. Learn a lot, and I look forward to doing it again soon.

Paul Neal  36:07  

Hey, Darren, it’s been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on the show. All right.

J Darrin Gross  36:11  

For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow? That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks. CRE PN Radio.

Announcer  36:30  

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