Commercial Real Estate Podcast

JF2847: Professional Poker Player to Mobile Home Parks Investor ft. Pasha Esfandiary

Written by Joe Fairless | Jun 19, 2022 11:00:00 AM

 

 

Pasha Esfandiary was a professional poker player from the ages of 21 to 25. Seeking more stable income, he started flipping houses, eventually shifting to commercial real estate. Today, his primary investments are in mobile home parks and multifamily. In this episode, Pasha shares the lessons he learned from poker that translate into commercial real estate investing, along with his tips for navigating the booming field of mobile home parks.

Pasha Esfandiary | Real Estate Background

  • Founder of Evoke Capital, which focuses on value-add mobile home parks.
  • Portfolio: GP of 550 units/lots/doors between a mix of apartment complexes, motels, and mobile home parks.
  • Based in: Los Angeles, CA
  • Say hi to him at:
  • Best Ever Book: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
  • Greatest lesson: Pertaining to this field of mobile home parks, buy good assets and let time do the work. Get REALLY rich slow.

 

 

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TRANSCRIPT

Ash Patel: Hello, Best Ever listeners. Welcome to the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Show. I'm Ash Patel and I'm with today's guest, Pasha Esfandiary. Pasha is joining us from Los Angeles, California. He is the founder of Evoke Capital which focuses on value-add mobile home parks. Pasha is GP on 550 units, lots, or doors between apartments, motels, and mobile home parks. Pasha, thank you for joining us in how are you today?

Pasha Esfandiary: I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me on.

Ash Patel: It's our pleasure. Pasha, before we get started, can you give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and what you're focused on now?

Pasha Esfandiary: Sure. I'll start a little bit of ways back, because it's pretty unique. I didn't go the traditional route of everyone else going to college. I quickly dropped out of college realizing it wasn't for me, just given my ADD and whatnot. I actually ended up playing poker professionally, from ages of about 20, but technically 21, I have to say. 21, to about 25. And that's probably because my brother's a really big name in the poker world, one of the [unintelligible 00:02:26.13] poker players in the world. And I just said, "If he could do it, I could do it." And man, back then, you could make money off of anybody.

But as the game got tougher, as I got older, I transitioned to this thing that I knew I always wanted to be in, which was real estate. So in about 2011 I flipped my first actual mobile home in a park, sight unseen, from an auction, and then it just taken off from there. I ended up doing about 50 flips in the next three years. Moved to Los Angeles, flipped one house here, realized that I was a really, really small fish in a massive pond in Los Angeles. And then I went with a little bit less competition, which was development. I mean, I've never done it before, I just dove in headfirst to do it.

I ended up buying a lot of land north of downtown Los Angeles in an area called Highland Park, and I've been developing ever since on there. Transitioned into multifamily and mobile home parks now strictly, about I want to say 16 months ago. And now with my units and the syndication deals that I'm doing, we're almost at about 1,000 units now total.

Ash Patel: So many questions.

Pasha Esfandiary: Let's go!

Ash Patel: Alright. The question that I have to ask is what poker experience helps you in real estate, both in terms of reading people and risk assessment?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah. In the terms of reading people, I think that's something that just gets drilled into you when you're a poker player, because you're always constantly saying to yourself, what's the information that's good that you're getting from somebody? What's the bad information? Why are they trying to lie to me?

So I typically... I feel as though, at least, I have a pretty good sense on negotiations and what brokers are telling me, what I could get away with, and really what to say and what to do. I think negotiations are probably some of my strong suits, that realm itself, in comparison to reading people. And then there's a lot of other things that get translated very easily from poker into real estate.

One of them is, I call it, game selection. Game selection being essentially... I'm not the best poker player in the world. I've never tried to be the best poker player in the world. I just tried to get into the easiest and best games for me to win some money at. I never really cared about being the best, and for me, how I relate that into real estate as well, essentially, what markets do you want to be in? What niche do you want to be in? And I think that led me into my mobile home park buying now, because there's less competition, higher yields, than competing with everybody else.

Ash Patel: So trying to get into the judge's game in Rounders.

Pasha Esfandiary: Exactly. That's exactly right.

Ash Patel: We can make a lot of Rounders references, but we'll try to refrain from that. I love that, and I'll try to make this the last question on poker... Such an interesting correlation. Do you ever try to capitalize on that, and make yourself stand out? Because everyone's enamored by poker players at your level. So have you ever tried to plan that experience?

Pasha Esfandiary: I don't really. I don't know, I think some people look at it however they look at it. It doesn't really bother me. No. But that's interesting. It used to be... I'll tell you, Ash, something that used to really make me insecure, truth be told, because I didn't go to college and I held myself small compared to other college graduates or people that I perceive to be smarter than me, or whatnot.. I was a poker player is trying to start a business, and I didn't know how to do it. But the cool thing about it is, again, like a lot of things that translate in poker, you have to be consistently getting better. You always have to learn. And same with real estate. Having all of these podcasts and having all the education at your doorstep, or technically the internet, you just are able to learn, and I've had to be able to do that. But I got that mentality from poker. So although I think in the past it held me back, it has definitely become a superpower of mine. Essentially, just learning how to scale and how to grow quickly, and massively.

Ash Patel: And an enormous amount of patience.

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah, you have to have a ton of discipline. That's by far... And again, another way that translates is you have to be disciplined, and some of the best properties are the properties you will walk away from. A lot of properties are very close, and we might be cool to go buy it, but man, I'm conservative, and I like being disciplined, and you learn that in poker. Because if you try to overshoot something, you're going to get buried.

Ash Patel: Alright, so let's draw on that correlation between discipline and gambling. You fixed a sight-unseen mobile home. Who does that?

Pasha Esfandiary: [laughs] Me, because I just like to jump straight in. No, what I will say is, going back to the education piece, I was lucky enough to go and intern for a close family friend of ours. And I essentially gave three months of my time, and I just went and worked for him, and I learned everything from him. I didn't ask for a dollar, I just knew that education was really important. So he taught me everything he knew about buying properties from the auctions, and then I just went and replicated that into my own life. And in that one mobile home, I made every mistake, but I still made $3,000 and I was really happy about that, that I didn't lose any money. And I got the bug, man. I just went for it.

Ash Patel: How much was that purchase price?

Pasha Esfandiary: That was about $50,000 or $52,000.

Ash Patel: Okay.

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah.

Ash Patel: And what did you run into on that flip?

Pasha Esfandiary: Oh, man. I remember the funniest part of it. I didn't know anything about landscaping. There was something that was sticking out of the thing, and then I ended up hiring a landscaper to do everything on there, just because I thought something was wrong and it wasn't getting watered. And I ended up just realizing later on that was just like a little hose that you water the plants with, and I thought it was something major. So I'm now realizing that I spent way more money than I should have on that property. I also wanted to scrape the popcorn ceiling, instead of redoing the kitchen, for some reason.

Ash Patel: In a mobile home.

Pasha Esfandiary: In a mobile home. Yeah. [laughter] It just goes to show you, you can make a lot of mistakes. But I bought that property at such a good amount. I waited very patiently to buy the right property, so I made all the mistakes... And the people were buying it from me, they were representing themselves and they knew what they were doing, man. They got away, they're like, "Well, the roof is messed up in this one spot, so I want a $3,000 credit." I was like, "Yeah, sure. No problem." [laughs]

Ash Patel: So what is it -- because you've done a lot of flips... What was it about mobile homes that attracted you?

Pasha Esfandiary: Well, I think my life has changed. I really wanted to create more passive income than I wanted to keep flipping. Because with flipping and developing, it's a lot of restraint on your money, you just have a lot of expelling of it. So you're just bouncing one property to other properties, and multiple properties. So I just wanted something more steady, because I wanted to create a family soon. And I always got into development and flipping, then go buy apartment complexes to get into passive income. So I just decided this was the time for me to go create it. It was more of a life decision than anything.

Ash Patel: And you've done apartments, motels, and mobile home parks.

Pasha Esfandiary: That's correct.

Ash Patel: If you had to pick one, what's the best asset for you?

Pasha Esfandiary: Mobile home parks, for sure. But I really do love motels and hotels, and I do love that model.

Ash Patel: Pasha, how long have you been in the mobile home space?

Pasha Esfandiary: A little over a year right now.

Ash Patel: Okay. There's a lot of competition coming in now.

Pasha Esfandiary: I know.

Ash Patel: How do you deal with that?

Pasha Esfandiary: You just attack it like anything. You just attack it, you play game selection on this one. So once I bought my first mobile home park, because as we all know, cap rates were compressing and I just wanted to go when there was higher yields, I got really educated on mobile home parks.

Once I bought my first mobile home park, comparing it to my multifamily and my apartment complexes, which I bought at a great rate, it was yielding higher if not more, and a lot easier. And I said, "Well, there's something here", and there's going to be a lot of money that's going to be happening. It's just a natural progression of what's happening in the multifamily space. Cap rates are compressing, me squeezing people out, they're going to go to other assets - RV parks, mobile home parks. And I just said, "Whoa, I'm still dealing with mom-and-pop sellers and there's a lot of inefficiency there, so let me go and attack this as fast as I can, as hard as I can, for the next few years at least."

Ash Patel: Do you work solo, or do you have a team?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah, I have a team. I have a team that I've built out, for sure. I need a team to help me out.

Ash Patel: Okay, so what do you guys do better than your competition?

Pasha Esfandiary: I think we're absolutely hands-down better at operations. We're just super efficient on operations and we're able to identify a lot of inefficiencies in the operations. We do not attack huge value-add, we do attack high occupancies. We love to operate in secondary and tertiary markets, because as you know, mobile home parks is a non-transitory tenant base. So when you learn that, you're able to really make the paradigm shift between apartment complexes, how to identify markets. So we are dealing with a lot of inefficiency of operations right now.

Ash Patel: What are some of those inefficiencies that you see?

Pasha Esfandiary: Look, most mom-and-pop sellers, the ones that we're dealing with, are scared to raise the rents or [unintelligible 00:11:21.28] to where market should be. They don't know how to bill back the tenants. They're just afraid of their tenants really pushing it to where the market should be. That's really essentially what's happening here.

Ash Patel: What are your biggest value-add components?

Pasha Esfandiary: I think really just getting rents up to a reasonable market rate, but to really just go in and do the infills. Infills take a lot of time, and I'm talking a lot of my team members' time; that's really hard to identify these properties. But once you get a mobile home in and you're able to renovate it, and then do an RTO contract, which is rent to own, you really are making a lot of value, especially with the cap rates being where they're at right now.

Ash Patel: You guys self-manage all of your parks?

Pasha Esfandiary: Absolutely.

Ash Patel: Do you have onsite managers, or do you just have your superstar tenant take care of things?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah. We always have on-site management. It's usually a mix. It depends on how big the property is itself. If it's 20 units or 20 lots, we'll just have a tenant that is our eyes and ears, and we'll get everything else out. On our other properties - about like 150, 160 lots; so we will have on-site management there where we manage the manager.

Ash Patel: And right now, when everybody is trying to court these mom and pop sellers... Not even sellers, owners. How do you get a competitive advantage in getting them to sell to you?

Pasha Esfandiary: Brokers. Everyone is targeting mom and pop, so I'm sure there's been a ton of off-market campaigns. We do not do that; we just go and we really get in there with brokers. And time and time again, they just see how professional we are, and we've gotten that feedback numerous times, like, "Wow, you guys are really professional."

We try to alleviate every problem a broker has, and make it so streamlined, and we always do what we say. So we now have a handful of brokers that work directly and only with us... Not only with us, but they send us their listings first, because they know we will close, they know that we're professional, and they know that we're very detailed.

Ash Patel: Pasha, when some of the Best Ever listeners hear this, they're thinking, "Alright, you're already established in this space, you guys are rock stars. If I want to get into mobile home parks and I find a broker that's got a 20, 30-unit property, how do I build credibility with that broker, with no track record?"

Pasha Esfandiary: I think it's having conversations with them. I'm such a believer, Ash, in just telling them, "Hey, this is where I'm at. This is essentially the first problem, but I've closed here before. This is my experience", or "I have this partner. We will get it done", and just open communication with them. Brokers are willing to help you because they want to have the sale as well. But also, it's on you to have education and learn how to do this, but you've just got to be on top of every game. Don't leave anything out in the open and playing catch-up. Get on top of it. There's enough education out there, there's enough to learn out there that you know all the process to what you need to be doing during escrow.

Ash Patel: I like it. So, really, just have a narrative, tell your story. And important - I tell a lot of Best Ever listeners, when you go to apply for a loan on a commercial property, have a narrative. Even if the numbers speak for itself, tell the story, because your lender has to go to a loan committee and let them share that narrative with everybody else, instead of, "Here's the deal. Here's the numbers. Do we approve it or not?" I love that advice. So always have that narrative, tell your story. You mentioned you bought a bunch of land. Where do you get the money for that?

Pasha Esfandiary: That was from all my flips that I was doing.

Ash Patel: Okay. And what did you do with the land?

Pasha Esfandiary: Essentially, I identified an opportunity. When I first moved to LA, I still had about 16 parcels of land in Highland Park. But back then, it was really easy, in my opinion, to identify where the migration and the next explosion in LA was going to be. Because at that time when I moved to LA, downtown LA became super, super-expensive. And it blew up. New development, prices went astronomical.

And in LA, no one really wants to keep moving East, no one wanted to move South, and then West was already way too high priced. So North of downtown was this beautiful area, Highland Park and Mount Washington, it had views, that was an area that's gentrifying, with some land that was still available to go build on. They're all essentially hillside, but they're buildable sites. And I would able to pick up these for $25,000, $50,000 back then. Now each of those plots are worth about $250,000. Really understanding what's happening on a big macro level, and be able to get ahead of that is really just an awesome game to play.

Break: [00:15:46] - [00:17:34]

Ash Patel: Pasha, your experience in the motel business - is there a good story behind that?

Pasha Esfandiary: There is, actually.

Ash Patel: Let's hear it.

Pasha Esfandiary: I didn't want to be in the motel business, originally. I had called a friend that I had met actually at a Tony Robbins Fiji. We were in Fiji, we met him at a seminar there, and I was talking about how I wanted to get into multifamily and I was thinking about it. And he, at the conference essentially, pitched me to buy a motel with them. I said no, I don't know anything about motels. I know the area, it was on Fremont Street, and I was like, "Eh, I don't really want to be there." And he ended up closing on it, but we ended up remaining good friends and developed a relationship.

I ended up calling about a year and a half later after he bought that motel with other partners. I said, "Hey, I want to buy a 30-unit in Las Vegas. I know the area. You're broker." He was like "Hey, I have a motel. Do you want to buy it?" He goes, "It's 30 units." I said, "No, I do not want to buy it." And he was really persistent. And it was quite interesting, and I said "No, I don't want to." He goes, "Pasha, you really need to come to Vegas and check out my other motel. This is a goldmine, and you're missing the point. You need to just come here." He was very persistent.

So I went there. I was like, "What is this?" Parking lot is empty; he was showing me his numbers and what he's done with that motel right down the street. And I was like, "Whoa." I was really impressed. Then I started really digging in. I said, "Oh, there's a lot of potential here." So we bought that motel about now almost two and a half years ago. We survived COVID, we survived a bunch of renovations and all that, and we've essentially a little bit more than doubled the value of that motel now.

Ash Patel: Good that he twisted your arm to go to Vegas, huh?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah, very much. I'm very happy about it.

Ash Patel: And are you going to keep that motel?

Pasha Esfandiary: I'm actually going to sell it to him. He's going to buy it from me and then I'm going to essentially put that money into more mobile home parks.

Ash Patel: Pasha, is there a certain metric that you look for in mobile home parks? So I know a lot of multifamily people, they do price per door, and that's their gauge on if it's a good deal or not, at least off the very beginning. Is there an immediate metric that you look at on determining whether something is a good deal or not?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah. I have a team that analyzes deals for me. I think my biggest thing is where's the growth? How much growth can I have? For me, it's about what is the market rent outside of a mobile home park, because there's such a need for low-income housing, by far. So I look at what are the market rents and what are my lot rents. Obviously, I look about a per-lot price. But it's essentially where the market rents at and what can I push my rents to.

Ash Patel: Is it difficult getting lending on mobile home parks?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yes. It is more difficult to get lending on mobile home parks than it is multifamily. Now, let me break that down for a little bit, expand it. So there's a thing called tenant-owned homes, and then there's a thing called park-owned homes. Tenant-owned homes is where they own the mobile home and then we just own the land, and then park-owned homes are where we own the mobile home and the land.

Banks do not lend on income coming from park-owned homes, only the lot income that's coming in. It breaks it out where we charge a lot rent, and then we charge a rental fee for the park-owned homes. So if there's a mobile home park that you're trying to buy, lenders will not lend on park-owned home rental income. So it does make it a little bit more challenging, because a lot of parks are primarily more park-owned homes, because you technically are going to get more rent.

Ash Patel: When you have a tenant in a park-owned home, you obviously want to convince them to do a rent-to-own.

Pasha Esfandiary: That's correct.

Ash Patel: What if they're like, "Nah, man, I'm good. I'm going to just keep paying rent. I like this."

Pasha Esfandiary: It really depends on the situation. We're not looking to be savages and kick people out. I think there's some operators that can do that. We try to give ample time, and we try to work with any tenant. And it really just is a case-by-case basis. But yes, the general overview plan for us is always to get them on RTO contract. And if they're just not willing to budge at all... This is the coolest thing about mobile home parks; we're inundated with requests to get into all of our mobile home parks spread out through the states. So we know that there's a line out the door that's willing to get in there and do an RTO contract, and we'd rather have that.

Ash Patel: And how difficult is it to buy a mobile home to move in?

Pasha Esfandiary: How difficult for a tenant to do that?

Ash Patel: Both, a tenant or... How many mobile home manufacturers are there out there?

Pasha Esfandiary: Oh, I don't know. Typically, we never buy from manufacturers, because of where we're located. We're typically in the Midwest, so we always have to find used mobile homes, because a brand-new mobile home will cost about anywhere in the low six figures, like $100,000, $120,000. So that really is a lot more feasible for really high lot rents, like in Southern California, or in like coastal towns of Florida. So where we operate, we just can't afford it, it's not feasible for us.

Ash Patel: Pasha, what kind of returns are you getting on mobile home investments?

Pasha Esfandiary: On parking business, if I'm buying a park myself, I'm North of the 25% IRRs, and I'm always looking at double-digit cash on cash.

Ash Patel: Is there a typical hold period?

Pasha Esfandiary: For me, I always want to hold as long as I can. Obviously, I will swim with the market however it comes my way. But for me, the name of the game is to buy good real estate, let it pay for itself, and let time do the work. I don't want to sell.

Ash Patel: Yeah. What are the biggest mistakes that people make in mobile home park investing?

Pasha Esfandiary: There's two. I think one is the mistake of going in and thinking that you're just going to raise the rents by 50%. That can get you into a lot of trouble. So whenever we underwrite a deal, we're looking at about a $35 rental increase, where I think some appraisers will go in there and just say, "Well, market rents could get pushed up from $300 base lot rent to $450, so we're going to go do that in year one." You can get in a lot of trouble and you're going to piss off a lot of tenants.

And secondly - I don't know, my opinion, I just want to go to sleep with myself at night because of that. You're just killing a tenant base that's already struggling. And then secondly is underestimating how big of a value-add component when it comes to infills can be... It's quite painful. So if you go buy a value-add mobile home park, really understand that it is a tough market out there to get mobile homes onto your park.

Ash Patel: Where do you get them from?

Pasha Esfandiary: Brokers out there.

Ash Patel: That will bring in mobile homes?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah. They will find and source mobile homes. We're finding a lot of luck with FEMA homes that are essentially abandoned from FEMA. But there are brokers out there, that's all they do, is they try to go locate mobile homes, they try to buy them and sell them to people like ourselves.

Ash Patel: Good to know. I didn't know there was out there. Pasha, earlier you talked about pivoting away from multifamily because of the compressed cap rates. When the whole world finds out that mobile home park investing is awesome, cap rates get compressed, what are you going to pivot into next?

Pasha Esfandiary: I don't know. I'm always going to keep my eyes and ears open for everything. I think RV parks are some high-yielding properties right now. Just something I'm keeping a very slight pulse on. But for me, I'll get to that decision when I'm there. Right now, I'm still seeing a lot of fruitful yields, to say, in mobile home parks, and I'll keep attacking it. Until then, I'm not sure. So it might be the development of low-income communities, it might be RV parks... I'm not 100% sure. It might even be tiny homes.

And imagine in three to five years from now, technology might make it feasible so that container parks are a lot easier and better to build, so you might be able to serve a low-income community. So we'll pivot however we need to, but we are experts in mobile homes and we continue to always keep buying.

Ash Patel: With Evoke Capital, do you guys raise investor capital?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah, we just started to. Just recently.

Ash Patel: What's the return to investors, projected?

Pasha Esfandiary: We do it on a 10-year sales scenario, and we're looking at about north of 20% IRRs. We're in about a 22% to 23%.

Ash Patel: Us real estate guys and girls know mobile home parks are cash cows. Do you have a hard time explaining that to investors, educating them?

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah. You know what I actually love? I actually love educating people on mobile home parks, because for some people, there's still a stigma. Anyone who's listening to your show, they're probably somewhat educated, they understand the power of real estate, the power of cash flows. But people who've never invested in real estate, who've never really had a big interest in learning all the ins and outs of it, they're quite surprised on the model of mobile home parks, they're quite surprised on the cash cows... So I love the educational piece, and I actually make it a point to get on investor calls one-on-one and go over what's happening, what we're doing, and how we found it.

Ash Patel: Do you get the "Why would I invest in mobile home parks? What if there's a windstorm or a tornado?"

Pasha Esfandiary: That's the question I get asked the most. 100%.

Ash Patel: What's your answer?

Pasha Esfandiary: I say... For example, the last property that we bought was in Huntsville, Alabama, and I just let them know that the last tornado that happened in Huntsville, Alabama was 1989. So yes, if everything does happen, we are insured to have two years of loss of income, and then it is our job to go and infill. And that is worst-case scenario, if a tornado takes out everything. But at the end of the day, I just say, I can't go buy properties if I always think worst-case scenario. And if you are afraid of that, you probably shouldn't invest. But what I will say is that if you never invest, you're never going to really get ahead or never really grow your money. And then that slightly changes depending on my relationship with a person.

Ash Patel: There's always municipal bonds for certain people.

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah, there you go. And I've met a lot of investors out there who are always thinking about worst-case scenario. And if you invest on that worst-case scenario, you're just never going to invest. I have a lot of people say, "Well, aren't you worried about a recession? Aren't you worried about this?" I said, "Yes, I am, but there's always good buying opportunities at any point in the market. You just have to always buy right."

Ash Patel: Yeah, and build those what-if scenarios into your model and see if you could stress-test it.

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah, absolutely.

Ash Patel: Yeah. Pasha, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?

Pasha Esfandiary: Just get out there and do it. Really protect your downside. I think when I first got into the business of investing as an LP, I would say, or even my own, I got enamored with the big, flashy projects. And I find that the more boring I get, the more non-sexy I get, the bigger cash flows and the bigger deals I get. And then one thing I have to stress to people, just have to stress it, the best advice I ever got, is get rich slow. Don't ever go for a shiny object, don't ever try to get the 100X. Get rich slow, build wealth the right way, and you will get rich.

Ash Patel: Great advice. Pasha, are you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?

Pasha Esfandiary: Let's go.

Ash Patel: Let's go. Pasha, what's the Best Ever book you recently read?

Pasha Esfandiary: I always re-read Think and Grow Rich. I read that every year. It's a staple of my life. So I just re-read it. It is absolutely a game-changer for me.

Ash Patel: This year, what was your biggest takeaway?

Pasha Esfandiary: It's always it comes down to my manifestation and thinking differently. I love that book, because you really can think what you become. And then once you start to change your goals, at least in my opinion, for me personally, once I start writing down my goals every day and I think bigger, it forces me to become a different person, which forces me to make different decisions to get those results.

Ash Patel: I love it. Pasha, what's the Best Ever way you like to give back?

Pasha Esfandiary: Man, it's my community. Absolutely. Hands-down. So my wife and I, we do a lot of fundraising, we do a lot of charity events. But for me, it's really education. Financial literacy is becoming something that I'm really starting to be very fond of, so having those conversations with my group of friends and normalizing conversations around money and normalizing conversations about retirement accounts and compound interest and all that. It is my absolute favorite way to give back.

Ash Patel: I would imagine you have this conversation with all aspects of life. People that are different wealth levels.

Pasha Esfandiary: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Everyone has to start somewhere. I've been broke so many times in my life. Everyone starts somewhere. And it's not just financial, it is health. You have to think of health the same way you think as wealth. Because whatever you do today is going to pay dividends when you're older. So I go out and cold plunge every single day. It's not fun, but I do it every morning, because I know later on my latter parts of my life, I'm going to be really happy that I did that.

Ash Patel: Good for you. I've got a lot of high-net-worth friends that have spent so much time and energy on whatever their craft is, but they don't have financial literacy.

Pasha Esfandiary: Yeah.

Ash Patel: Have you encountered that a lot?

Pasha Esfandiary: I have. As I have more and more conversations, I'll say this is quite interesting. I was having conversation with my friend the other day, and I'm realizing as my network grows and my net worth grows and whatnot, I'm having different conversations is I used to put everyone on a pedestal. Maybe probably because of my poker background, I don't have a college degree, and we're all just trying to figure it out. Everyone's trying to figure out. Even if you're uber-successful, we're all just trying to figure it out. We're all trying to learn together, we're all trying to get better, and to normalize these kinds of conversations, and don't be afraid to ask those questions with people.

Ash Patel: Great advice. Pasha, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?

Pasha Esfandiary: I'm most active at just pashaesfandiary on Twitter. And then also you can go to my website, www.evokecapital.net. That's a really great way to get a hold of me. Or LinkedIn, Pasha Esfandiary.

Ash Patel: And it's evoke with the K.

Pasha Esfandiary: That's correct.

Ash Patel: Got it. Okay. Also, Pasha, I got to thank you for your time today. Dropping out of college, being a poker player for five years, I'm sure using a lot of skills that you've learned over those five years to get to where you are today. Mobile homes, motels, multifamily. Congratulations on all of your success, and thank you for sharing your time with us.

Pasha Esfandiary: Hey, man, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Ash Patel: Best Ever listeners, thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five-star review. Share the podcast with someone you think can benefit from it. Also, follow, subscribe, and have a Best Ever day.

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