WS1240: Moving From Latin America to U.S. Real Estate with Bernard Pierson

EPISODE 1240

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0

Bernard Pierson (BP): I had been doing syndications as a limited partner, just as an investor, as I was developing (in Latin America). And, I started seeing how I was doing better in my multifamily in the U.S. than on my developments in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. So, that’s put even more interest to me towards the industry.

0:00:22

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host to Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Bernard Pierson. Bernard has more than 10 years of experience in real estate in both the United States and Latin America. He brings to the table valuable and diverse experience in multiple areas of the business, including acquisition management and ground-up development. He is recently focused on multifamily investing, it is involved in general partnerships totaling over 350 units. He’s also participated and it has investment interests in 1,500 plus units across 20 properties. He is currently managing partner and founder of Equity Partners LLC, a multifamily investment company headquartered in Miami, Florida.

Bernard and I have an interesting conversation. I don’t think I’ve been in anybody on the show who’s done developments in Latin America. He has some ties there, and so he’s more capable of doing that that most of us would be. But it’s very interesting to think about trying to do a development deal in Latin America. But then also why he’s not doing that now, and why he’s doing it in the states, now are working in the States. So he transitioned from real estate in Latin America to real estate in the US, and he’s gonna go through some reasons. And even research that he did, he did a lot of research and he shares quite a bit of that during the show today.

I know you’re gonna learn a lot and it’s gonna be a very interesting conversation for you talking about Latin America to the United States. 

[INTERVIEW]

0:01:45

WS: Again, here at GoBundance. I’m thankful to be able to be here and interview in person, which is rare. It’s so much more energizing though, I think being in-person and seeing face-to-face. I have a great guest for you today. It’s incredible to be able to meet somebody like Bernard in person. Bernard, welcome to the show. 

0:02:02

BP: Thank you, Whitney. Thanks for having me here. I’m very excited to be here.

0:02:05

WS: Honored to have you, just reading about your bio and a little more about you, just impressive background. I know the listeners are gonna learn a lot from you today. There’s not many, actually, maybe any guests, even after about 1,300 interviews now, nearly, that I know that I’ve done some of the things you have done, and so I’m looking forward to it. 

Give the listeners a little more about your background, ’cause I know we’re gonna jump into it, ’cause they’re gonna learn a lot from it, and just who Bernard is and just some of your real estate journey to where you’re at now.

0:02:31.2 

BP: I live in Miami and South Florida right now, which is where I was born. I grew up in Nicaragua, I move to Nicaragua when I was about six years old. I grew up there when I was 18, I moved to the US, went to school here, and all that. And when I was maybe 25 or so, which was it, about 12 years ago, I’m 37 now, I started doing business in Nicaragua. I was doing a lot of food trading. I would trade coffee, I would hear sugar, I would trade seafood, beef, and I started finding I was very transactional, it was good money, but it was transactions. That’s how I got into real estate. 

How do I find something that gives me a sustainable income, I found real estate, and that’s how I ended up doing real estate.

0:03:08.4 

WS: You built a business, but you wanted something that wasn’t so transactional, something that would provide more passive income or things like that. What was that like?

0:03:16.3 

BP: Exactly, exactly. The business is very transactional, what I was doing. It was a deal-by-deal and whatnot, and that’s how I started listening about real estate, reading about real estate, listening to the different podcasts out there, and educating myself.

I got into real estate. My first real estate venture was real estate development, which was about 10 years ago when I started. And this was in Latin America, we started building single-family home communities and condos in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and we did that for many years and well, for about six, seven years. And about five years ago, we started transitioning here, I started transitioning more towards the multifamily acquisitions syndication side of things. I had been doing syndication as a limited partner, just as an investor, I was developing, and I started seeing how I was doing better on my multifamily in the US, than on my development in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. So that’s through, even more interest to me towards the industry.

0:04:17.8 

WS: How did you feel confident tackling development? Very few people are doing development, I think on their first project, but much less in another country. Of course, you have more experience there than most of us would probably, but tell us about that. How did you have the confidence to move forward with development on your first project? 

0:04:33.5 

BP: So what happened with me was, before I got to development, I already had that real estate bug, the interest to get into real estate and whatnot. And I met these guys that from Columbia and their headquarters are in Costa Ric, and they develop here in the State to this day. They still work, great guys, we’re still good friends, we’re still even partners to a certain degree. And they wanted to grow in Nicaragua and I grew up there. It was a small country where everyone knows each other, so it was the local. I did not live there at the time, but I was the local guy, so we started talking. At the time I would travel to Costa Rica for my other business all the time, so I met them there, we would have lunch, and that turns into a partnership where we became partners and started our development projects. 

0:05:16.6 

WS: Nice. Okay, so partnerships, right? Relationships, so crucial, listeners here we talk about the so often it doesn’t matter if you’re finding deals or whether you’re wanting to do the development or wants, partnerships or relationships, and finding those people are so crucial. Tell us, and we’ll move to though, you started doing those deals, and maybe what were some challenges to doing those projects in Latin America that maybe we wouldn’t think about here in the US?

0:05:38.7 

BP: Many. Specifically for me, there was one big challenge, which was I was still living in the US at the time, so I would travel every week, Monday through Friday to Nicaragua on most occasions ’cause that’s where I was doing most of the work. I would travel to Costa Rica occasionally as well. But this was every week. 

My wife had a flexible at her wor, so she would sometimes come with me and sometimes we stay the weekend or something, but there was a lot of travel involved. Doing business in Latin America, in general, is very different than doing business in the US. There are hurdles that you have to go through. I’m not saying it’s easy here to develop real estate here, but over there, there’s everything you have to go through with the government, everything you have to go through with like what the issues we’re having now with the supply chain, well, that’s constant over there. We think everything is more affordable, it’s not. Materials are more expensive, maybe labor is more affordable, it’s not as efficient. That’s just a field of challenges, but I can name hundreds. I can be here all day naming challenges.

0:06:38.1 

WS: So let’s move to why did you start in Latin America? So you were living in the US. Why did you start there?

0:06:43.6 

BP: Two reasons, one, I’m from there, I feel comfortable, it was kind of my go-to on my talent, so I kinda knew my country very well, I know my country very well. And I always wanted to start real estate with someone who had done it before with someone who had experience and I had that opportunity to do it there, right, so that was the reason – the partnership.

0:07:03.6 

WS: Nice, but then you soon started doing real estate in the US. Tell us a little bit about that transition, and let’s talk about maybe the reasons why you had a lot of research. Let’s go into that.

0:07:14.0 

BP: So what started happening was, at the same time I was doing a lot of LP investing, I was a passive investor in multifamily syndication, it is not just multifamily with different asset classes real estate. And I started seeing how well they were doing and to a certain degree, they were doing better than what my projects were doing in Latin America. The market down there is very liquid, it takes time just to sell, not as obvious, but it takes a lot of time to sell. 

So one important thing is that the multifamily or commercial real estate concept doesn’t really exist down there. We don’t value property based on cap rate, that does not exist, so it’s not like you can go build the multifamily building and then sell it based on the NOI.

0:07:54.0

WS: What do they value or base the value on?

0:07:55.0

BP: You’re not gonna see comparables typically, you’re not gonna see many multifamily buildings. Most of them are gonna be condos and just single-family homes and stuff like that, and the office space, they’re gonna be condos, like a fractured office where they do a condo for the office building. Even for retail centers, the same thing. It’s very rare that you see, you may see a little bit more malls and retail centers that we have a little bit of that, but you’re not gonna see multifamily being valued by cap rate. Just doesn’t exist. The concept does not exist.

You’re starting to see some of that in countries such as Mexico and Chile, not as much, but you see a little bit more of that, they’re a little bit more, I guess too sophisticated in that sense, just trying to get to that level where they see it as an asset class, as a business.

0:08:40.1 

WS: Okay, so you started in research, you started learning really to be a passive investor, I started seeing what was happening, you were making more money as an LP than you were making doing the real estate in Latin America, and what happened then?

0:08:51.3 

BP: Right, so when I was doing my research, I started reading up, I don’t know if you’re listeners to know this or if you know this, but the GDP of Latin America is about $5 trillion. The GDP of the US is about $20 trillion, about four times as much. The population of the US is about 30 million. The population of that in America is about twice that. So just think about that for a little bit.

0:09:14.3 

WS: Wow, I would not have known that the population is twice that.

0:09:20.3 

BP: To put things into perspective, the GDP of Nicaragua is, I wanna say $15 billion, Costa Rca, $50 billion. That’s the size of the economy, roughly. Costa Rica maybe a little bit more, $70 maybe billion. Just Miami, about $150 billion for just that city is more than these two countries combined. Alright, so think about that, right? It’s a different ball game. And then, okay, the side of the economy, but many people don’t think, okay, well, then that means it’s an opportunity, there are limited resources too. 

So we’re not gonna have the liquidity you have here, you’re not gonna have from a lending perspective. Interest rates in Nicaragua are gonna be a conventional mortgage to buy a house is to be 10% interest rate, if you can get it. In Costa Rica, you may get 8, 8 and a half. Seventh is low on. So I start looking at all these numbers and I’m like, “Okay, so let’s take a step back and analyze the continent as a whole.” And first of all, there’s not much data, so it’s hard, and what I look into were Mexico and Chile, are probably the have the most data, ’cause they’re the most sophisticated or the most institutionalized, and that they’re kind of more a public market kind of level thing.

So I looked at the time, this must have been 2018, 2019, as I was transitioning, I looked at the ten-year returns on the index. I forgot the exact name of it right now, but there’s an index for real estate, for commercial real estate. And the 10-year return had been negative 9% annually. 

In the US, I wanna say about plus 10, plus 11 or 12% annually. And if I recall rightly. But the most interesting thing was at the standard deviation, which measures to risk. I hope I’m not losing you. The one that measures the risk was 30% in Latin America and about 12% in the US. So you’re losing money and taking on a much higher risk. 

So that just opened up my eyes. I’m like, “What am I doing? I have access to the US, I’ve been doing it in the US already. I’ll just go through it over there and forget about investing in Latin America for some time.” The CBRE came out with the study as well, like two years ago that I read that the spread between the Cap rate and their government are equivalent to a 10-year treasury was about 200 basis points. And at the time, the spread in the US was about 450 basis points.

So you also have lending challenges, we don’t have the liquidity in Latin America, you’re not gonna have the liquidity in the market, in general lending, equity or any of the areas of the capital stack, you’re not gonna have nearly as much liquidity as you have here.

0:12:01.1 

WS: Are you gonna have to fund it mostly yourself there, or will you be able to get debt? 

0:12:06.5 

BP: You will be able to get that. It’s gonna be more expensive. It’s not gonna go below, it depends on the country. Mexico, you’ll probably be somewhere around 7%. If you are on the low end. Chile has also added challenges recently, but Chile, in a good times you can probably get six, six-ish. Nicaragua, 10. Costa Rica, 9. 

0:12:28

BP: What were some of the first projects you started doing in the US? What was your game plan after you realized this. Everything you just said like, “Okay, what am I doing? I need to focus on the US now.” What was your plan then?

0:12:40.2 

BP: I had this big interest for multifamily investing and syndication in general, and I had been invested with a group of syndicators. And I just asked the, “Look, I wanna keep investing, but I also wanna know how can I be part of the team? How can I be a part of  the GP team?” And we came to an agreement, and I started being a GP with them which was in the Atlanta area. And yeah, and ever since, we did about three, four deals together. 

0:13:09.8 

WS: Nice. So you started as an LP, started educating yourself, you invested, and they built a relationship with that GP and asked to partner with them. So in that position, as I guess it’s partnering in them, and what was your role or what did that look like? Just for the listener, many of them, otentimes, I’ll say, you know what, some of the best ways to get started in our industry are by having some type of skill set, there is something that’s valuable to an operator, and trying to partner as you have done it. How did you do that? And what did that relationship look like? 

0:13:43.3 

BP: I’m sure many listeners are thinking, “How do I even find my skill set? I’ve never done this before.” And that’s a valid question. I’ve had the same problem. In my case, what I did was I asked, it worked. I’m not saying to go through that, but I had to build the relationship to the level where I could do that. I had been investing in these guys for three, four years, I had invested with them in five, six deals. So if you’ve done that, I mean, I would highly encourage you, if you can, if you have the funds available or the relationship, to try to get in as an LP in a deal and build a relationship with the sponsor team and you may end up doing deal with them on the GP level or not, but it’s gonna give you an experience that, it’s gonna give you so much education and experience, I think it’s very valuable.

For me, it was a game changer.

0:14:21.9 

WS: What was maybe a resource or two that you used to become confident being an LP, even to start investing passively?

0:14:28.8 

BP: I just read a lot and he listened to a lot of podcasts. I self-educated. That’s what I did. So one of the things I do is, I don’t watch TV much anymore, anything like that. In my free time, what I do is I listen to real estate podcasts, like your show, and after a while, if you listen to enough of them, it just ingrained in you, and that becomes natural when you start getting the confidence and you understand the language and you for me, that’s what work. I wasn’t studying it in an academic study for school, but listening enough about the subject and listening to podcasts eventually it just ingrained in you and it becomes natural.

0:15:08.0 

WS: Constant education. They appreciate you mentioning, “Hey, I’m not watching TV. I’m choosing to spend my time more wisely.” Right? As I think all of us could consider it. What are things we’re doing? I also do not ever watch TV, I feel like it’s such a waste of time or almost feels guilty like I can be doing something else.

0:15:25.3 

BP: I enjoy it more too. I enjoy more listening to the podcast , watching on the YouTube channel.

0:15:30.0

WS: What is your real estate business look like now? 

0:15:33.0

BP: Five GP and just over 400 units now, and we have properties in Atlanta, North Carolina. in (inaudible) area, and we’re starting to buy. And we like very much the Oklahoma market and Chrleston. We’re starting to buy some properties now with the 30 to 40 units in the urban core of Oklahoma City, trying to build a portfolio of units that are within a block or two of each other, and where we can get those economies of scale. For us,i t’s been easier, I guess, to get access to the type of the older, less competition. We tend to be the better-qualified buyer for the 30, 40, 50 units is building, versus when we go into the 200 unit-building, that’s not gonna be the case always, right.

0:16:15.9 

WS: So what’s next for your business, what are you all striving or maybe goals you even have for this year?

0:16:20.8 

BP: Continue growing in those two markets. Two markets I really like, and as I was saying before, I’ve experienced doing real estate in Latin America and in the US, and I’ve done research. I’m in a unique position, I guess, where I live in Miami, which is the capital of Latin America. It’s like the capital of Latin America. I don’t know, I think most people know that, that we speak a lot of Spanish there, and Latin Americans just spend a lot of time there. 

And I’ve started bringing this opportunity to Latin Americans, and they come to the US and I got to talk and educate them about the industry, and it’s completely new to them, ’cause even here, a lot of people don’t know how multifamily works in the whole commercial real estate space work, but it’s even less in Latin America, just ’cause the concept doesn’t exist. So my goal has been to bring this opportunity to them that I’m educating them and trying to bring them this great opportunity that I think can benefit them a lot. Everyone’s worried about Latin America, but there’s a lot of countries that if you look at Chile, Peru, Colombia, at least those three countries have recently had elections that are not favorable towards all capitalism. So just to stay away from politics. So investors from those countries ar, very concerned about their future of their countries. So Mexico, same thing, and

0:17:42.2 

WS: Really you are, you have a co-direct connection with those people, it’s a niche that you mean like you’re gonna connect to them a lot faster than I would. Right? I know we talked about it briefly before we got started, but what is your best source for finding investors right now? Let’s jump into that a little bit better. It’s part of the same conversation.

0:17:58.4 

BP: My best source recently has become Latin America, I get invited to speak at different events, there are not many people that have no multifamily and speak Spanish fluently or natively as I do, so I guess that’s probably, no that’s my advantage and my competitive advantage, and I get invited that his event and many of the listeners of the event reach out to me, of course. And historically, it’s been mostly friends and family in the past, it’s been mostly friends and family, and that type of things I haven’t been too intentional. I’m starting to get more intentional about it now and going to (inaudible).

0:18:31.0

WS: How do those people know who you are to even reach out to ask you to speak at an event, like many of the listeners, I’ve done this myself, but you gotta figure out some way to get yourself out there. You gotta figure out some way for people to even know that you’re somebody qualified that they would want to come and speak. How do they find you? 

0:18:46.0

BP: Networking and referrals. That’s my answer. I’ve been referred to, once again into one, if you speak well, and first of all, you have to, if you find a competitive advantage, there’s not many people, they don’t have any options anyways, right. So I’m the go-to now in the area for multifamily to talk about multifamily, and I start a refer. So what happens is, I’m not gonna say the only one, but I’m one of the few who can speak multifamily in Spanish, so having that uniqueness, I guess, is once you get into one and then you can get it the second one, a third one, and the first one can be small, it doesn’t have to be, it can be a meetup.

0:19:26.0

WS: Probably good practice too, if it’s small or the first time?

0:19:28.0

BP: Probably better that you start off on the small. 

0:19:33.0

WS: So I guess I’m moving forward to, I would just think through, what do you see as maybe your biggest challenge is next year?

0:19:37.8 

BP: I’ve not been as involved in the investor relation side of the business, have been mostly involved with the asset management side of the business, and my newer investors, I’ve always started the having investors from Latin America. I’ve ever had a couple, but not many in the past, but that’s started to change. My biggest challenge, I think, is gonna be, how am I gonna balance investor relations and asset management, and can I do both? I don’t know, but I’ll have to be involved in the investor relations for now, unless I can hire someone who can replace that side of the business for me.

0:20:12.5 

WS: And I think that’s gonna be more difficult for you than say it would be me to I think to hire somebody to replace you ’cause obviously, they need to be fluent in Spanish, most likely, right? If any of our investors are coming from Spanish-speaking countries, it’s their native language, and you want them to feel comfortable with who they’re speaking to in the same language.

0:20:31.0

BP: And to that point, investors from Latin America and from other countries, I’m pretty sure this happens from the rest of the world, these are sometimes high-net-worth individuals. And they have an ego. If you speak to them in English, they’re not gonna understand it. They may speak English, but they’re not gonna understand. And if they don’t understand, they don’t wanna admit it. Right. So it’s a very delicate thing to do, right. I mean, some of them are fluent in English and they’re comfortable, but out of them are not, and especially if they’re older generation and they’ve been in business for some time, they’re used to being on the mentor side and being the one giving the advice and all of a sudden that changes and how we change the language on them, you have to know how to do that.

0:21:17.0

WS: And if someone’s confused, especially an investor in our space, usually their answer is gonna be no, right.

0:21:19.5 

BP: Right, right. 

0:21:22.0

WS: Yeah, and I don’t blame them at all for that. And yeah, that’s why even on our side, I would say even speaking English to somebody speaks English, the language you use, how do you speak to your investor, you just have to be conscious of, “Hey, we’re not talking down to them, we’re using language that’s very clear and understandable.” So it’s a good reminder, even if we’re not speaking to someone whose the native language is Spanish or a different language than your own.

0:21:44.0

BP: It takes a lot of discipline to not over-talk ’cause we wanna share everything, we know all this and wanna share everything about the great deal we have or about what you know the industry, how great it is, but it takes discipline to keep it simple.

0:21:55.3 

WS: With everything you’ve done now in Latin American development, now I come into the States with all the research you’ve done investing passively, but now being on the general partnership side, what would you tell yourself, five years ago, what would you say, “you need to know this” or do this differently? Or anything like that, that we could learn from.

0:22:10.8 

BP: If you would have asked me this six months ago, I would have said, don’t invest in an Latin America, go directly to the US, that’s changed. And we’re out here in GoBundance, were in part of the conference, and even as I’ve been part of GoBundance and being exposed to different individuals here, what I’ve seen is that if anything, that experience, it wasn’t bad as it was a good one. What I have been financially better or more here in the US probably. I don’t know that.

But the struggles and the challenges that I dealt with in Latin America, in general, put things into perspective at a level that I would have never ever, you just can’t communicate it to someone if you have to live it. So I’m happy I went through that, and I would say to myself, “Just keep doing it and be patient.” I still struggle with patience, so looking back, if you put the work in and if you do things right and you educate yourself and you do the research, and you know what you, eventually, you know what you’re doing and you do it. You can let partnerships and if you have a plan and you doing things right, you’ll be fine, it’s gonna take time, so that’s where you do the patience.

0:23:21.4 

WS: Patience. We also probably need more of that to say the least. What about any predictions that you have for just a real estate market over the next six to 12 months, anything you’re considering as you’re looking at new projects that maybe was different last year that you’re looking at for this next year.

0:23:37.1 

BP: So I think that better quality assets are more attractive right now, but they’ve been more (inaudible) for some time, but operator looking at predictions, I would say interest rates are gonna rise slightly less than what we think. I think also that there’s so much liquidity out there in the financial system, in people’s bank accounts and pockets in general, I follow Peter Linneman a lot. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, he’s a real estate economist, and I’m very inspired by his analysis on the market, and I’m taking most of this from him, but there is so much liquidity in this market that we still have a lot of room for growth.

0:24:18.0

WS: Nice. Say his name again. 

0:24:19.0

BP: Peter Linneman. But he is one of the founders of the University of Pennsylvania, Real Estate Department, and I believe he’s one of the founders. If not, he was an important figure. 

0:24:38.2 

WS: Yeah, I just want our team to go look it up, we’ll try to have a link him or something on the show note, that would be great. I think listeners would appreciate being able to look him up as well in that somebody you look up to. What about preparing for some type of downturn, just in case there is, are you doing anything say different now, when you’re looking at deals then maybe you did, would have done two years ago, just based on what’s happened in the economy?

0:24:56.0

BP: Two main things: one, and not just what I’m looking for, but the way I buy, financing. It’s very important right now, we just have to find it, right. I don’t wanna put myself in a position where I have to re-fi in a year or two, and maybe I was counting on the love of growth is gonna be unachievable. So I’m being more conservative on that side with that and what. Not that I won’t do (inaudible), but I won’t be as aggressive with that re-fi in my underwriting. That’s it. I do think they’re space to grow, but we all get nervous obviously, ’cause it’s been growing so much lately that we get nervous and we’re trying to be a little bit more conservative, but that’s been happening for the last 10 years or so, we’ve been nervous for the past 10 years.

0:25:41.7

WS: And all of us wish we had more even a year ago, much the last five years ago, right. What’s the biggest thing that’s holding you back right now, say from scaling, many times over.

0:25:53.8 

BP: A team, a good team. I have great partners. We need, I guess, get out of our comfort zone and start hiring.

0:25:59.0 

WS: Who’s gonna be your next hire who is just gonna help you to scale?

0:26:01.0

BP: Investor relations or acquisitions.

0:26:06.0

WS: I can completely relate to that personally as well. What about a way you have recently improved your business that we could also apply our business?

0:26:13.3 

BP: I have started hiring more administrative level team members, VAs, and things like that, that has been very helpful. And I would encourage anyone that’s thinking about it, don’t hesitate to go out and hire someone. And if it doesn’t work out, it won’t work out, it’s not gonna be one of the worlds, you can try it out for two, three months, if you do have a plan to be prepared to train them, do all this, don’t just hire them and think that it’s gonna be magical, it’s not.

0:26:40.1 

WS: Yeah, no doubt about it. The team is so important, virtual assistants, VAs. They’re so capable. And different aspects of the business. Right. I just encourage people, we have a whole team of 10-12 full-time VAs and couldn’t make it without them and are very loyal as well. We’ve appreciated their help. And so what about a few daily habits, Bernard, you are disciplined about that have helped you achieve success?

0:27:03.7 

BP: Okay, so I already mentioned it, but I’m gonna mention that again and I’m gonna explain more about it, so what I say is I replaced my entertainment with educational entertainment, specifically real estate. So that’s my habit. I rarely watch Netflix or for any of the other stuff on TV or the news. Never, I never watched the news.

0:27:22.9 

WS: That’s too discouraging.

0:27:25.7 

BP: So that’s it. I’ve replaced my entertainment with education entertainment ’cause it’s entertaining for me.

0:27:33.2 

WS: It’s a good habit, the constant education. Yeah, no doubt about it. What about, if you could pick one thing that’s contributed to your success, what would that be?

0:27:40.0 

BP: I am an introvert by nature, so it’s not as easy as me as it is for others to networ. Tthroughout the years, I have found my ways to network, and I just take it easy, I don’t force it, I just got myself out there.

0:27:55.2 

WS: Nice. Maybe early on, what were a couple of key things that you did to network, grow your network?

0:28:00.8 

BP: Talking about what I do is huge, you talk to your friends, to your family, and they’ll connect you. And, family members of my brother or my father in law, and when I have taken me to lunch with other people that I have ended up doing business with.

0:28:18.2 

WS: I’ve learned so many times like you just can never judge a book by its cover, you share what you do with all kinds of people, and it’s incredible how interested most people are, right. And they wanna talk to other people about it or you just never know where connections are gonna come from. 

0:28:39.0 

BP: For me, it was so hard to network that I guess, but my solution to that was to not force it. Just get out there. Just do it one day at a time. Just so you get out there, you go. You start into the events, you start going to, networking doesn’t have to be going to a real estate conference, it can be going to dinner with others, that stuff is socializing in general, and it’s also networking, there are several ways to network to find your way to network.

0:28:58.1 

WS: How do you like to give back?

0:28:59.2 

BP: I donate to charities in Nicaragua just because I have ties to that country and they’re going through a hard time, so I try to stay on churches that do more educational stuff, but yeah, the country’s going through a very hard time, so it goes to my heart. I also like to talk about what I do. I love when people ask me about what I do, and if I can get the money advice, I love it, I enjoy it more than anything else.

0:29:22.5 

WS: And that’s awesome. It’s neat, just the personal tie that you have there too, and that you’re able to help them in a big way. But, Bernard, it’s been a pleasure to meet you and hear just really about your story. I mean, investing in Latin America. There’s not many of us that are probably listening, if any, that have done that, especially development in another country, a lot, much lesser development as our first deal, much less in another country. So just grateful to hear that in your story, but even the research, level of depth of research that you did to understand, “Hey, I just need to stop this and start investing over here because of all these things,” it was obvious to you after you did the research. But even how you found investors… How you’re finding investors, some of the challenges you’re facing, just appreciate your transparency. How can the listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you?

0:30:02.3 

BP: I’m on all the social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, if you look at my name, you’ll find me and you can message me there or you can email me to [email protected]. And equiti is with an I so for international. So equiti-partners-dot-com.

0:30:22.0 

WS: Nice. Again, a pleasure to meet you. I hope you have a blessed day.

0:30:25.8 

BP: Thank you, thank you, Whitney, It was was great being on here.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:30:29

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being a loyal listener of The Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show. Share with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget to go to LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing to real estate today. Have a blessed day!

[END]