Rocket Your Dollar Ep. 30: Educated Commercial Real Estate Investing

The investment space is always shifting. Now, in 2020, there are countless options for investors. There's new tools, new processes, new technology. So what's stopping people from utilizing these and reaching higher-quality financing? Well, some don't know how and others don't know they exist. That's why Blake Janover, Founder & CEO of Janover Ventures, provides the education the market lacks, making information and financial instruments accessible to everyone. He shares the importance of education in businesses as it creates market share.

Transcription:

Thomas Young: Hi, everyone. Today we have Blake Janover, who is the founder and CEO of Janover Ventures, a technology-enabled commercial and multifamily mortgage brokerage firm. Blake has nearly two decades of experience in commercial real estate capital markets and has underwritten and closed billions of dollars of transactions throughout his career. His company currently focuses on small balance non-recourse mortgage financing between $1 million and $20 million, and he is a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council and a Forbes contributor. Blake, thank you so much for being here today.

Blake Janover: I'm excited to be here.

Thomas Young: I really appreciate you taking the time. Blake, I've been through your website, and you guys have a lot. At a high level, what do you guys do at Janover Ventures, and why do you guys do what you do?

Blake Janover: Okay, those are two big questions. What we do, I think we can say, is technology-enabled commercial real estate finance and education. One part of our platform is we're online, sharing free educational content on all of the multifamily and commercial real estate financing resources that are out there. There's a totally asymmetric allocation of information among commercial property investors. Small investors, I own a $2 million apartment building in Huntsville, Alabama, just don't know nor do they have access to the same kind of fancy financial instruments that the CEO of a REIT based out of Brooklyn might have. The first thing we're doing is we're educating, and the second thing that we're doing is we're enabling folks to get their hands on that higher-quality financing.

The way a sales cycle might work is Thomas, you own a small apartment building in, I don't know, Kansas City, Missouri, and your bank gave you a quote. You're like, "This just doesn't feel right. What else is out there?" You go online. You come to one of our sites. You're intrigued. You apply for financing through us, which isn't required, right? But you choose to do that. Then somebody on our team walks you through the process from beginning to end and helps you get that loan. I think some of the processes of what we do speaks to why we do it. We have the same inspiration or similar inspirations, I think, that Rocket Dollar has in that we want to democratize capital markets. We want to flatten access to information and financial instruments. That's kind of the mission. I hope I answered both of your questions.

Thomas Young: No, you totally did. I really like the way you guys approach what you do because I feel like today, in the financial markets, there's a lot of, "Well, you should be doing this," or, "You should be doing this," or, "Real estate is great," or blah blah blah. There's a lot of, quote-unquote, thought leaders that that are just spouting what you should do, but what I love about the way you guys do it is not only do you provide that education, in the way you said it, democratizing the space, but you actually provide this service on the backend. It's not just telling people what they need to do but then not giving them the resources to do it. You guys actually have both sides, and I think that's similar to the way we do it at Rocket Dollar. There's a lot of people that say, "You should be investing," but they don't tell you through what vehicle, if you will.

Blake Janover: That's well-stated, and I thank you for that. I think that when I think of a market that's ripe for disruption or shift or change, it's one in which everybody just kind of does what they always did because that's what they always did, and there's not a good reason about it or for it. Right? I go to the First National City Bank of my town and my banker because that's just what I've done for the last 30 years. These are the kinds of loans I've taken. This is how I integrate a property. The reason why is because that's how I learned to do it 30 years ago.

Well, there's new tools, new resources, and I'm a big believer in, "Folks should know their options, and then they can make better decisions." The fact that we have the opportunity to reap economic benefits from that is awesome. Not to stroke Rocket Dollar, but the initial way we actually came in touch with each other is because I was looking for a better self-directed SEP-IRA and a better option out there for Solo 401ks both for myself and for borrowers. Rocket Dollar was it, kind of reducing frictions in this highly feed, highly frictioned, fractured space. We're out here doing the same stuff.

Thomas Young: Yeah. There's a couple of points that you said that I found fascinating that I think are totally true. If you have a mentor when you're young, say 20, 30 years ago, and they teach you sort of the ways of real estate investing because there is such a lack of education in many different parts of the space, you tend to go back to what you were taught the first time you were taught it because that's the way it's always been done. As you said, it's not always the best way to do it. We're in 2020 now. The process has changed. The tools have changed. The access has changed. I think that there's just a lag in the way that people do things. Education is really the only way to get new processes in—and it's sort of the same thing with the self-directed space. If your father or your mother or your aunt and uncle, whomever had a self-directed account with one of the quote-unquote, legacy providers, you might go to them and have a painful experience when there is something better. The only thing that's standing between you and better is education. Right?

Blake Janover: It will be a recurring theme I suppose in this conversation and in other conversations I have, but you know what education does? It makes sense for a business. Education creates market share, whereas there's a lot of companies out there that are shifting market share among each other, buying producers and books of business. But there's a huge amount of market to be created by educating people. When I think about self-directed IRAs, most people don't have or don't know that IRAs can be self-directed, most, the vast majority. This is a huge market that can grow. I would imagine, and this is totally anecdotally, but I would imagine that the vast majority of humans that have IRAs have mutual funds, and those that are like equities, right? Mutual funds based on US-based equities. Then some of the folks that kind of understand technology and where we've gotten better or who are more cognizant of fees, maybe they're in... This is becoming a pitch for Rocket Dollar, but maybe they're in low-cost ETF that aren't correlated. Maybe they're using something cool like Wealthfront or Betterment.

But then there's this opportunity to really invest in non-correlated assets and to control your IRA's checkbook, and people don't even know about it. Then once they find out about it, it's a real pain in the butt to get started. I really admire what you guys are doing. From my end, the education makes a big difference. Most of the small-balance transactions, these loans between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000 happen with small banks, credit unions, regional banks, and people are eating shorter terms, higher rates, shorter amortizations, worst cashflow, higher liability. Right? Everybody's signing personal guarantees and giving recourse when, in many cases, it's just totally not necessary if you know your options.

Thomas Young: Right. What you said about education growing market share, the way I see it is you can split a pie into a million different pieces, and the pie is a fixed size, but education is really what grows the pie. Right? So you-

Blake Janover: -make a bigger pie.

Thomas Young: Right. It's also a "rising tide lifts all boats" sort of thing where Rocket Dollar has competitors, and I'm sure your competitors are these regional and local banks, but if there's more activity and if more people are entering the space, it sort accelerates. It becomes a flywheel of people talking about it, people doing it, people getting excited about it. The process is easier, and it just accelerates the space, which is good for everybody, right? It's good for you and your business. It's good for us and our business. It's good for the individual because the transparency and the access to information make people secure that they're getting a good deal and they're not getting gouged at a small bank where they don't know any better. Right?

Blake Janover: Two things. Number one, I appreciate the Jim Collins plug on the flywheel, so high five on that. Let me correct myself and say that in many cases, people are going to their small bank because it's the only option. A small bank, a credit union, a regional bank is a viable option, a great option, depending on the situation, but they're just an option. We closed a $28 million loan this month for the regional bank, and we'll close a $27 million loan in February with another regional bank. There are really good reasons for that. Again, it boils down to education. Nobody should feel bad about not being educated on all this stuff, right? I talk to folks that are super experienced multifamily or commercial real estate developers, operators, they've got huge portfolios, and they didn't know perhaps that they could get 85% LTC with an FHA-insured multifamily loan, non-recourse, fixed, and fully amortizing for 40 years on a market-rate product. They didn't know. They didn't know. They'd been doing it one way for so long.

If you've got a self-directed SEP or IRA or what have you, you may not want to put all the money in real estate for that IRA. You've got options. You can invest in... there's this really cool company Masterworks that's out there slicing up pieces of Monets. It's super cool. Folks just need to know their options. In my space, big lenders aren't incentivized to even provide that data because the way many of them look at it is you've got an originator that works at a big bank who's Wells Fargo. We'll use Wells Fargo since they're always under fire. I might as well fire on them too. You've got a big originator that works at the CMBS desk on Wells Fargo, and he's got X-amount of hours during his day, his week, his month, his year. He can do a $50 million loan or a $1 million loan. It takes the same amount of time. What's he going to do? He's going to do $50 million loans. Nobody's incentivized meaningfully to move down the market. Well, I suppose I went on a bit of a rant there, but yeah, education's important.

Thomas Young: No. I agree. You mentioned Masterworks, and others do these... Rally road, for example, you can invest in classic cars and just a quick side... You can't do either of those within a Rocket Dollar account because they fall under collectibles for anybody listening. They're great options to do with cash. You can't do it with a Rocket Dollar account.

Blake Janover: My bad.

Thomas Young: No worries. No, but there's this explosion of ideas, and there's a company out of Chicago that we went through sort of an accelerator with called Hurry Home. It's very similar to what you mentioned about going down the market. You get someone at Wells Fargo, they can write a $50 million loan, hit their quota, and go home, or they can write small loans. They're going to take the big one. It's the same with mortgages for homes. Banks are not writing mortgages for $80,000 to $100,000 homes. They're just not. It's the same process, that they'd rather write a loan for a half a million-dollar home, where they can pack it in and go home.

Blake Janover: Right. That's right.

Thomas Young: What they're doing is they sort of flip the model where they're selling the home to an investor. Say I, Thomas Young, go to Hurry Home, and I buy an $80,000 house or a $100,000 house with my IRA. I then lease it back to the family living there. It's sort of a lease-to-own agreement, and it gets the bank out of the way. It gets the mortgage out of the way. It's a great way for people to purchase homes that wouldn't have otherwise had access to $80,000 to $100,000 upfront and the ability to get a mortgage. There's this explosion of things, and it's really not... I'll just continue my rant for a second, is that I...

Blake Janover: Go on.

Thomas Young: ... don't see the... The education is not the responsibility of the individual. It is our responsibility to reach people to educate them. When you say someone's not educated, it's not their fault. It's our responsibility because it's our business. It's our responsibility to go educate them.

Blake Janover: It's also our responsibility as new companies entering into a market to operate more efficiently, leaner, rely more heavily on technology, automations, processes, create tools to improve processes so that we can make economic sense out of delivering more information and education to the world.

Thomas Young: Right.

Blake Janover: There are inherent inefficiencies in these conglomerates, which are among the root causes of their inability to do this. There's the, "I don't want to because I'm not economically incentivized to," and there's, "I can't because I can't make economic sense out of it because we're not efficient enough because there are 43 people in this hierarchy that have to be involved in every decision and because we still print information out from our hand printers and keep things on Excel spreadsheets instead of CRMs." To speak to what you're talking about, there are so many cool things out there. There's Masterworks. There's Royalty Exchange. That's super cool, buying music royalties, but I feel like there's an opportunity for a shameless plug here. Am I allowed to do that on this? I feel like I have a plug opportunity right now.

Thomas Young: Go for it.

Blake Janover: I just want to say if somebody in their SEP or their Solo, in their self-directed account, if they're directly buying multifamily real estate or commercial real estate, which is a great investment, it shouldn't be your only investment. Investments are derivative of what you're paying for it, where the sub-market is, who's managing it. You got to be really careful, but let's say you find a great multifamily deal. If you're in a self-directed retirement account, it's got to be non-recourse. I'm not sure what all the rules are. Anyway, you know the rules, but you want to be non-recourse anyway. You don't have to come to me or us. Go anywhere. Look online. Google. There's really good 80% leverage 30-year fixed rate non-recourse multifamily debt for loans, say, a million and up. I can look on my computer right now. We just quoted I think a $3 million 30-year fixed Fannie Mae loan probably at 4.39% at 80% LTV. There are great non-recourse products out there. That's one of the things we're delivering. I just felt like there was this synergistic opportunity there for me to point out.

Thomas Young: No, it's absolutely true. I'll note that the self-directed accounts can absolutely do that. The non-recourse aspect of a lot of these loans, you are correct, it does have to be a non-recourse loan for borrowing within a retirement account. The only thing I'll note is that this is where the Solo 401k is powerful because it's not subject to UBIT on these loans, and the IRAs are subject to UBIT. It's just something to keep in mind for people listening if they're considering non-recourse lending or taking a non-recourse loan within their account, but it's totally doable. The fact that you guys do these longterm loans makes so much sense, and it is not an easy thing to find a lot of times, or it's a very expensive thing to find a lot of times, which is why... It's why we're talking, and it's why you're on the podcast because it does align so well.

Blake Janover: Yeah. We're on the same page here. The only thing is that you know a lot more about self-directed IRAs and 401ks than I do. Any expertise on that, I would defer to you. But I think in general, with or without your self-directed retirement account, if people are borrowing money, they need to be targeting non-recourse debt. Generally, small banks, credit unions, local banks don't provide that.

Thomas Young: Right. Well, I want to get more into what you guys are doing on the financing side. What have you seen in the last 10 years? You've been doing this a long time through the recession and everything. What are you seeing in the multifamily and the investment space? Is real estate just exploding, or am I in a bubble and I just hear about it a lot because of the space I'm in?

Blake Janover: Well, you and I definitely live in echo chambers, so I feel like that goes without saying. Is real estate exploding? Yeah. First, you have to segment it, right? Because there's a difference between a single-family home in Miami and a condo in Las Vegas and a 30-unit market-rate multifamily property in Lubbock, Texas. Right? These are all different things. You have to segment by asset class, property type, location, sub-market, so on and so forth. But if we're speaking super macro-economically, I think any asset that kicks off yield or any cash flowing asset has gone up in value and down on return, down on cap rate over the last several years as there's been a hunt for yield. Rates come down, treasuries come down, and cap rates come down, and prices and valuations go up. Look, there's a story to be told that markets are overheated, and there's also a story to be told that rates are going to stay low and homeownership is no longer the American dream and apartment buildings are going to continue to fill.

I spent probably two or three years super bearish on where we were going to end up on all of these multifamily developments and what have you, and I've come to realize, like Warren Buffet, I can't time markets, or he probably can, but he'll certainly suggest that you don't. He's humble. He'll say that he can't, but I can't. I don't know where rates are going when they're getting there. I think there's a really great article, a memo by Howard Marks from Oaktree Capital Management. He did one recently speaking to dummies like me out there about monetary policy and about what zero interest rates mean across the world and where we're going. But I think you'll see there's just a very, very tight correlation between treasury yields and cash flowing assets and a fairly decent correlation as well with even some of this non-cash flowing stuff like the art and what have you because there's a lot of dry powder, there's a lot of cash on hand, there's a lot of money to allocate, and now there are all these new creative ways to hedge inflation. I don't know where we're going. But yeah, things seem hot.

Thomas Young: Well, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said nobody knows where things are going. But at the same time, you can be in non-correlated assets. You can take the steps now while things are still hot to make sure that you're prepared for any scenario and have the ability to sort of weather the storm should there be a storm either in the next year or five years. Nobody knows when it's going to happen.

Blake Janover: A great way to look at that is not... Just because you're eligible for 80% leverage on your apartment building doesn't mean you should necessarily take it. You can create some buffers there. But like you said, markets are cyclical. We just don't know how it's going to turn out. This is totally different than the universe we were in the last cycle because there were bogus leverage and ridiculous products, and everybody was misbehaving and playing dumb, from the rating agencies to the insurance companies. We're in a different universe right now with much less leverage and much more for cash on hand and lower interest rates. Like you said, yeah, it's always good to prepare. It's always good to invest in non-correlated asset classes to flatten out risk in returns over the long haul. You want it to move up and to the right, but not like a roller coaster.

Thomas Young: Right, absolutely. Ideally, not like a roller coaster at all. Speaking of where we are today versus where we were the last recession, and I read an interesting article, it might've been on Bloomberg or someplace like that, that we don't know what niche of the financial industry will trigger the next recession. I've read a lot about the fact that people are so underwater on car loans or student loans or credit card debt. All these different things could trigger it, and we don't know what it is, and so-

Blake Janover: National debt.

Thomas Young: The national debt, right.

Blake Janover: I have no idea what's going to happen with that, with all the printing and the growing economic burden on the nation. Nobody does, but I wonder what could happen with that.

Thomas Young: Well, and like we've been saying, all you can do is sort of prepare yourself because nobody knows. If we knew, we would have already gotten past it. But when it comes down to your situation as an investor, as an individual, as a business, all you can do is be ready and take the time to think about what you're doing and make sure you're not over-leveraging or being too invested in any one thing and sort of just take care of your situation. That comes with education like we've been saying the whole time, and with actually being involved in what you're doing, which a lot of people with retirement accounts... We'll focus on retirement. A lot of people don't check them. They're good at one thing, core expertise, and they're good at making money, but a lot of times, they don't spend a lot of time thinking about their situation. That's problematic.

Blake Janover: Agreed. Agreed. I don't have something to build on that, but I feel like you made a really good point with which I agree.

Thomas Young: We'll move on. We'll edit that part out.

Blake Janover: Well, don't edit your part out. Your part was great. My part sucked. I was just like, "Yeah, what you said."

Thomas Young: No worries. Jumping back in, so if someone's sort of on the sidelines right now, and they're thinking about real estate, they decide that it's an asset class that they want to participate in, what advice do you have for someone that's sort of standing on the, and they're looking at a multifamily... Let's take the example they're looking at a fourplex down the street from them, and they're sort of on the... They've decided that it's what they want to do, but they don't know much else. What advice would you have for someone in that situation?

Blake Janover: Multifamily as a commercial real estate product is five units and up. If you're looking at a four-unit, I'd say that's a more conservative investment and a good first place to start if you've never done it before. Regardless of how many units you're looking at, if this is your first foray into multifamily investing, then I would advise getting a partner that's got the experience and doing the first deal with a partner, even if they have a very small interest. It's a business, and a nuanced one, and there's a lot to learn. A lot of the learning kind of comes as you go. You can read all you want, but the surprises that happen once you own a property are almost unpredictable. I would advise having a good partner. If you don't have a good partner, I would advise having a great property manager and having the first property local or close to home. If you're interested in investing in multifamily or commercial real estate, and you don't have a lot of money, I'd advise something like Fundrise. They've got some really nifty products. I'm just answering questions that you haven't even asked.

Thomas Young: No, no. Please. Please keep going.

Blake Janover: If you're an experienced investor, then you should really consider using some agency, Fannie, Freddie-type multifamily product. It's not like the residential Fannie, Freddie, but there are a multifamily, Fannie and Freddie, or FHA or even CMBS small balance sheet products. There's a lot of stuff out there that offer 75% to 85% leverage up to 35 years fixed and fully amortizing non-recourse debt. All that stuff's kind of available from a million to $2 million and up. If you're a small investor, and you're looking at something small, start small. Start close to home. Start with a partner that's done it before. The only way to kind of gain experience is by sticking your toe in, but I'll tell you what I see too much of. I see too much of, "I'm doing my first deal. I live in San Diego, and I'm buying a 15 cap in Memphis."

Let me tell you something. If you found a 15 cap in Memphis, these returns are risk-adjusted, and there's a reason that you've got a 4% cap rate or a 3% cap rate in San Diego and a 15% in Memphis. You may need to wear a Teflon vest out to this property. There may not be a foundation. There are things wrong that you don't know. Nobody's giving anything away. What did my mom say? It was something like, "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is." Take those 15 caps with a grain of salt. Stay close to home to start. You don't have to get rich on your first deal. It's about doing many over a long period.

Thomas Young: Right. I think that's great advice. I see a lot of people and I hear a lot of people, that they just want to jump in day one and go bananas and get the 15 cap rate. It's just insane. Then I have a friend, for example, that his first thing was he and his wife bought a fourplex that was not in great shape, but it was in their budget, and they just moved into one of the units. They just lived next to their tenants and started learning and started learning...

Blake Janover: That's great.

Thomas Young: ... and build from there. That's a lot of sacrifices because they're both high earners. They could live in a great downtown apartment in Austin and not worry about it, but they went and they lived in their unit. It was rough, let me tell you. I'd go visit them and go hang out with them. Man, they really paid the price, but now they've got 16 units, and I'm not saying they can dial it in, but they're rarely surprised anymore.

Blake Janover: Yeah.

Thomas Young: You know?

Blake Janover: Yeah. That's a great way to go about it. I have a client who has a similar story who started in L.A. with a fourplex, and now I think he owns 80 units or something. He's a brilliant aerospace engineer working for one of those big shops, and he started with a grind. But his goal was that he wants to be able to retire with strong cash flow and lots of equity in the future, and he's okay with putting in the work. It's like any other business. It's like any other business. You're not going to be... Who is that nutty, famous investor? He was in [inaudible 00:28:19]... Sam Zell. You're not going to be Sam Zell. Google him for anybody who doesn't know, but overnight. It takes time, sacrifice, experience. Nothing seems to be too easy these days besides love. Love is easy.

Thomas Young: I like that. No, and it's like anything. It's like going to the gym. It's like running a marathon. It's like starting a business. It takes repetition. Sometimes it's going to really suck, and then it gets better. But you're not going to get rich off the first one. You're not going to not mess up. It's a process. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. You just need to know what you're getting yourself into. If you're not-

Blake Janover: Do it.

Thomas Young: Yeah.

Blake Janover: Do it. Yeah. Do it. Just do it thoughtfully.

Thomas Young: Right.

Blake Janover: Right.

Thomas Young: If you're not willing to put in the work, there's another more passive type of investment that you can make. Just because it requires a ton of work, there are other options. You mentioned Fundrise, and I want to get your opinion on those services because they're the new way to invest in real estate. Obviously, you give something up, right? You give up yield, and you give up control, but you get back time. I'm curious to know what you think of... We can pick on Fundrise specifically.

Blake Janover: Yeah, let's pick on them. There's a lot of guys out there, right?

Thomas Young: Right.

Blake Janover: But you said it yourself, your two primary sacrifices are yield and control. For me, these are super important things. Control's probably too important to me, but yield's pretty important. You have to vet the platform carefully. I've kind of looked at all of them. I would say that the one that I'm most impressed with for small, passive investors would be Fundrise, but you're putting a lot of trust in their hands. They're underwriting the deals. They're underwriting the opportunities. They're not doing this for free. You're in a very limited partner position with most of these platforms. There are some interesting platforms out there where you could be senior debt. Patch of Land comes to mind. I don't know if they're still doing debt crowdfunding. We can really talk all day about all the alternative asset classes. I would say that if I was a small, passive investor or somebody that didn't really want to do all of the hard work associated with owning and operating, raising money, and whatever else, I would probably be in Fundrise. If I had a little more money, I'd probably be looking at some of the deals on Cadre.

I think they're at a $25,000 minimum investment. I might be wrong. Maybe it's 5,000. I'm not sure what it is, but they're really good about picking and underwriting an individual asset really transparently and picking really good operating partners. I think Fundrise if you want to be small, super diversified in real estate, and you're not ready to go all the way in. I think after you've done some research and understood real estate a little better, I think Cadre is the step up from Fundrise. No disrespect to Fundrise if any of them are listening. Everybody's got a great product. We're talking about incremental differences in wonderful digital wreaths.

Thomas Young: Right. No, I think that that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the feedback. I personally am on Fundrise. I think I did their minimum thing. I just wanted to play with their product, and it's pretty astounding. It's pretty easy. There are these platforms like we mentioned earlier, Masterworks and Rally Road and all these other things, that... It exists in real estate, and it just depends on what you want, what your situation is, and sort of going from there. But Blake, to wrap up, I want to know what sort of you're excited about as we enter into a new decade, the '20s. It's a good time to ask this question. What are you excited for in the coming years? What's getting you out of bed? What are you looking forward to?

Blake Janover: Well, this isn't the direction that you're going, but the big thing that I'm looking forward to is we just had a baby girl, and I've got this little one and a half-month-old, burping, crying monster in my house. I'm totally in love with her, so I'm-

Thomas Young: That's fantastic. Congratulations.

Blake Janover: Thank you. I'm looking forward to that this decade. I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out and maybe being well-hedged so that my outcome is positive as in... Because in the last economic cycle, my outcome, at least my economic outcome, was quite negative. I look forward to being positioned to benefit from wherever the markets go. I think it's really exciting, watching capital markets just flatten. I am so curious to find and see all the new, cool investment opportunities out there. I think at heart, I'm a total geek for economics and investing. All this stuff gets me pumped up. What you guys are doing on Republic, I've followed Republic since 2016. We never mentioned that as a place that people can invest, but if anybody's listening, Rocket Dollar's raising some money on Republic at republic.co. Check that out.

I'm excited about all that stuff, and I'm excited about what we're doing. I think that in the next five years, we're going to get to $3 billion a year in originations. We're going to crack 100 million this quarter. I'm excited about everything. I'm pumped. That's all.

Thomas Young: No, and you nailed it. It's going to be exciting simply to watch and see what happens. You're like most people at... or I would say all people at Rocket Dollar, that we're all sort of investment and personal finance nerds, geeks, whatever you want to call us because this is what we talk about every day. We get so excited about it, sometimes too excited, to the point where people that are not in our space, just... My friends look at me and just start shaking their heads, but I don't care. You know?

Blake Janover: Yeah. But no, it's going to be exciting, and it's going to be fun. Education, as we mentioned at the beginning of the show, is going to be at the forefront. It's thanks to folks like you guys that are providing that education that a lot of people can benefit from. Thank you, guys. Thank you for being on the show.

Thomas Young: Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I hope we can do it again some time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Rocket Your Dollar. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share the podcast with your friends. To learn more about self-directed investing or to get started with your account, please visit us at RocketDollar.com. See you next week.