[00:03:04] Patrick Donley: That’s awesome. And you’ve got six kids, you’ve got the whole family over there.

[00:03:09] Yonah Weiss: Yeah. Good job keeping track. Yeah, it’s hard for you to keep track. I bet. Not quite. Not quite, but yeah, they’re amazing. Great. Yeah, my oldest is, is now 18, so she’s in her last year of high school and yeah, just really, really enjoying life.

[00:03:23] Patrick Donley: I wanted to actually talk about your younger years. You come from a family of teachers.

[00:03:27] Patrick Donley: I wanted to talk and learn a little bit about what is money and investing in real estate, something that was taught in the household grow.

[00:03:34] Yonah Weiss: Not at all. So I grew up in Southern California and kind of middle class family, you know, my mother was a teacher. My grandparents on my mother’s side were both teachers.

[00:03:42] Yonah Weiss: My father was, you know, in business. He did a number of different things, but changed career paths, not, not really an entrepreneur per se. Had a couple different businesses. But you know, we were taught at a young age to, you know, if you, we wanted something, we’d have to work for it. And so I had the, not necessarily finances, but work ethic and the understanding of, you know, money doesn’t grow in trees and really words, I would not say privileged at all.

[00:04:07] Yonah Weiss: I mean, I went to in a neighborhood we lived was a little more upper middle class, but we were definitely on the lower end of that spectro, you know, like all my friends in high school had brand new cars when. 16 and stuff like that. Definitely not my case. You know, I had a, a used car that was a hand-me-down from an older brother that, you know, I had to pay for.

[00:04:25] Yonah Weiss: It was like an 85 Buick Skylark, you know, it was like, really? You know, well all my friends had brand new you know, all kinds of stuff. So I definitely had the awareness that, you know, money was, was an issue, but I never really had any education in terms of saving or financial literacy and that kind of stuff.

[00:04:44] Yonah Weiss: So it learned a lot of it later in.

[00:04:47] Patrick Donley: Is it something that you are teaching your kids now money and investing and talking about what you do with real estate Invest.

[00:04:54] Yonah Weiss: Definitely to a certain extent. I mean, they’re definitely not getting in school either, like I did. But sharing them with different things, teaching them about saving, investing and all that kind of stuff, have, having invested on their behalf also in a couple deals, so, you know, to each one on their own.

[00:05:09] Yonah Weiss: Obviously the, the eight year old is not going to really know much about what that means, more abstract, but you know, it’s like, oh, I have money and I’ll get more money later.

[00:05:18] Patrick Donley: So growing up as a kid, what kind of career aspirations did you.

[00:05:23] Yonah Weiss: I really didn’t have any career aspirations. I, I was a teacher from a young age, like a, a tutor and a camp counselor and, you know, youth group kind of advisor and things like that.

[00:05:33] Yonah Weiss: So I was always working with kids. Always enjoyed teaching and, you know, I, I went to college with, for a history degree because I didn’t really have any career aspirations. It was like you had to pick a degree and I, I was pretty with remembering names and, and dates and kind of stuff like, , but I literally had, had no clear aspirations whatsoever and it was only, and I continued being a teacher just cuz that was my passion and I love that.

[00:05:57] Yonah Weiss: And it was just, you know, something, I paid the bills a little bit, but I never had any real aspiration for, for making money. Never. And to this day, I still don’t. Even though, well thank God now I am making a lot of money. I don’t have. Desire to make more money, per se. It’s just about having enough to, you know, to help my family just be relatively, I mean everyone has a different level, but we’re very frugal.

[00:06:19] Yonah Weiss: Have, my family should have enough to get by, to have what we need, basic needs and you know, what I can give away, it really is, is really one of my main focuses. So charity and I kind of work is something I focus on Extens.

[00:06:31] Patrick Donley: I want to get into your faith later here in the talk, but I read on your website that your grandmother calls teaching the family business.

[00:06:38] Patrick Donley: That’s really cool. And so, you know, that’s been a big part of your life. You mentioned history. What was the focus of your studies? And then I am curious how you’ve been able to bring that into the real estate world. How it’s impacted your, how you just operate in the, in the business.

[00:06:54] Yonah Weiss: So I never really had a focus in history.

[00:06:55] Yonah Weiss: It have to pick a focus a little bit. And I actually took a year abroad to study in Israel, which is where I kind of grew my, my love for the country. And it’s my first time visiting and so I did more of a focus on Jewish history. A lot of studies in that, both in San Diego where I went to college and in Israel and that year abroad.

[00:07:13] Yonah Weiss: But because of, I just have a really good memory for names and places. Like if I meet someone, for example, I’ll remember them even if it’s years and years later. A very good memory for that. So that’s actually helped me tremendously on social media as well, because it’s hard for be able to keep track.

[00:07:28] Yonah Weiss: But for me it’s, it’s actually pretty easy because if we met or we had a conversation, I’ll. I’ll remember you and remember your name and remember some details about you. It’s just kind of a natural gift that I have. So for me, that was just history was the easiest thing that I could do just because of that.

[00:07:43] Yonah Weiss: And again, didn’t really have any focus in doing anything with it other than just getting a degree, which ironically I had no use for or desire for after, and actually was not even in the country when attend graduation and had my diploma sent to my parents’ house. And, uh, I, I don’t think everyone’s seen it to this day.

[00:08:02] Patrick Donley: That’s funny. So I know you, like on your podcast, you like to ask some questions and one of them is like the worst job somebody’s had. What were some of those early jobs, like during college or after college? What did your early career look like?

[00:08:16] Yonah Weiss: Yeah, I had kind of odds and ends of jobs from the time I was in, you know, high school.

[00:08:20] Yonah Weiss: Again, most of them were, I was, I was a camp counselor, I was a youth advisor. I was a, a tutor and that kind of stuff. So those were things that I actually really enjoyed, although some of them were pretty difficult. But one summer I had a horrible experience working as a, at a a magazine. In the advertising department.

[00:08:37] Yonah Weiss: So I’d have to like cold call people trying to get them to advertise in this in this free publication that was put out, you know, people pick up at grocery stores and those kind of things. This was, you know, 20, 25 years ago, so that was a really common thing. People didn’t, you know, go on the internet and, and stuff like that to scroll as much, but.

[00:08:52] Yonah Weiss: It was horrible, ju I worked there for maybe like eight weeks and I, I hated it like every single day. Not, not so much. You know, the cold calling was, was something I didn’t enjoy, but it was really the environment of the people. It was just a toxic kind of people that I said to myself, I do not want to ever have to go into sales.

[00:09:10] Yonah Weiss: Ever again in my life. Cause just the people that were there, there were a couple people that were really great, like the manager and the editor of Magazine, really great people, had great conversations with them, but some of the other salespeople were like, yeah, Chainsmokers, and you know, yelling on the phone or whatever that slam the phone down and then stuff like that.

[00:09:27] Yonah Weiss: I’m just like, that’s not an environment I wanted to, you know, you started a nonprofit.

[00:09:32] Patrick Donley: Talk to me a little bit about the nonprofit and what she did.

[00:09:35] Yonah Weiss: Well, I had, you know, as a teacher, I actually had some financial struggles as well along the years and saw that there were many other people and I, in fact, I had a really kind of health crisis in my family.

[00:09:46] Yonah Weiss: That was the, the impetus for me kind of switching career paths. But even before that, I had seen other people in my community and people that I knew that had struggled with. Things that happened, the death in the family or health, the sickness or just, you know, losing a job, things like that where people were struggling financially.

[00:10:03] Yonah Weiss: And I wanted to be able to help and you just help people in my community and people that I knew. And so we started this nonprofit really to raise funds to help people get through, you know, difficult times. Simple as that. Providing meals, providing you know, clothing and vouchers and things like that where people wouldn’t be a little bit, you know, too embarrassed to come and ask.

[00:10:22] Yonah Weiss: If you have a relationship with people, you can kind of tell when someone’s struggling and and so that’s what I did. It was a really amazing thing. It lasted for many years. I handed it off to someone else and when I kind of went more full-time into real estate, but still helped support that and, you know, countless other organizations.

[00:10:38] Patrick Donley: That’s awesome. Was that a full-time thing that you did? I mean, was the bulk of your time spent on the nonprofit.

[00:10:44] Yonah Weiss: No, it was, it was not full-time. It was more, you know, it was a volunteer type thing. I definitely sometimes were, I would travel, you know, probably like once every six to eight weeks or so to travel, just to go around doing some fundraising and stuff like that.

[00:10:57] Yonah Weiss: So during those times, at a, a week at a time, every couple months, that was full-time. But the rest of the time it was kind of more a hard time thing.

[00:11:05] Patrick Donley: That’s cool. So at what point did the real estate bug bite you? And what was the inspiration for that? Talk to us how that came.

[00:11:12] Yonah Weiss: You know, it was, it was, I don’t want to say by accident because I believe everything happens for a reason and so I see more of divine ties.

[00:11:18] Yonah Weiss: But like I said, I kind of had a family health crisis and without getting into too many details and that really kinda shooked me up. And I was, had debt, you know, I had consumer debt, had student loan debt still, and we’re struggling, you know, month to month to really, you know, teacher side love what I was doing, love spending time with the family.

[00:11:35] Yonah Weiss: Was not really making it. And I never really thought about it too much because I never had a drive to make money or to to be you know, have any financial independence or anything like that. It really wasn’t something I was taught at a young age. And so I was, you know, getting by living very frugally, but this kind of shook us up and incurred many extra costs.

[00:11:54] Yonah Weiss: I was like, okay, I need to figure something out. And so it was almost by accident. Reached out to many friends of mine. This was about, you know, eight years ago what should I do? I’m all good to some other, you know, maybe part-time or full-time. Just opportunities and real estate kept coming up in conversation with people that I knew.

[00:12:09] Yonah Weiss: So I reached out to some friends and family members that I knew were successful. And just said, Hey, what should I do? And a lot of them pointed me in the direction of real estate, and that’s really where I just started. Okay, let’s, let’s do it. It happened to run into a friend of mine in a parking lot one day and suggested he was a mortgage broker.

[00:12:26] Yonah Weiss: He was a property manager. He owned sub rental, multi-family rental properties on his own and his family did for years and had a lot of experience in commercial real estate industry. I knew nothing and I sat down with him for, you know, a couple hours one day. We’re just. and he was teaching me all these like different things about mortgages and about financing, all that stuff.

[00:12:42] Yonah Weiss: I was like just fascinated cuz it was all brand new to me at the time. And one thing led to another and ended up just like working, like interning basically for him, working side by side with him. And learning a tremendous amount over about an eight month period. Was that in New York or where was that?

[00:12:57] Yonah Weiss: So actually that was in Israel also. I was in Israel at the time. Yeah. And so, you know, kind of back and forth a lot over the years, but it was, it was pretty incredible. So we’re working again, kind of remotely, In the US and I found a passion for it and found really so, you know, found Bigger Pockets at that time.

[00:13:14] Yonah Weiss: And it was still in the early stages, Bigger Pockets, and found some other platforms and was really just connecting with a lot of people in the real estate industry and just fascinated how people could make money. And really there was almost no seemingly no, no ceiling, no limit to that. And there was so much knowledge and information out there that I really assimilated quite a bit just due to my teaching background.

[00:13:35] Yonah Weiss: I was like, okay, I can do this. And one thing led to another, I did a bunch of other things during that time, some fix and flips and some, you know, did some real estate brokerage as well. Just learning how to find properties and learn how to read, you know, things like the GIS and stuff like that. Just figuring out the, the city plans and looking through them.

[00:13:53] Yonah Weiss: There were so much knowledge out there. I was just like taking in everyth.

[00:13:57] Patrick Donley: I want to take a step back. You mentioned that you don’t believe that there are any accidents, that everything’s kind of God ordained or however you universe, whatever, however you want to phrase it. In my research, I believe I came across this story, you were reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

[00:14:11] Patrick Donley: Can you go into that story about you were studying that and then you, you know what I’m implying here, but I like to hear that. It was a great story and I’d like to.

[00:14:19] Yonah Weiss: That was a great story. Yeah. So as, as you said, one of the first business books that I ever read was The Seven Habits of Highly Affected People.

[00:14:26] Yonah Weiss: And it was all the things that were in, there were things that I felt were, to me, at least self-evident and, but he just arranged it in such a way that. Was really powerful, really moving. But one thing that I had not really come across beforehand was this concept of synergy. And obviously that’s the sixth habit, is one of the thing that brings everything together.

[00:14:45] Yonah Weiss: And so I was reading about this synergy and literally at that time was, you know, doing the, the mortgage brokerage with my friend and was still open to opportunities and saw a sign for a company called Synergy Real Estate. And I like took that. A really eye-opening sign. It was like, oh, very interesting Synergy real estate.

[00:15:04] Yonah Weiss: I wonder what that’s about. And you know, I said like, hiring agents. And I was like, okay, well we give this guy a call. And literally I did. And I went down the next day in his office, met him, really cool guy, young guy, about like 24, 25 years old at the time. And he was crushing it in, in real estate, had made, you know, a lot of money in brokerage working for someone else.

[00:15:21] Yonah Weiss: Started, started his own company and he also named the company Synergy based on the Seven Abbots. And I was like, wow, this. Really and we ended up hitting it off becoming really good friends. I ended up working for him as a broker and learning that side of business, and that really opened up a lot of opportunities to me, and we ended up becoming partners and doing a couple deals together as well.

[00:15:41] Yonah Weiss: So it was, it was really amazing just from that one. You know, it’s, what I saw was when you’re reading something, and this is a really incredible concept in psychology. You may have come across things like all the time, but you may never have notice. . But when you learn something new, your mind focuses on that thing and so you’ll end up seeing those things.

[00:16:00] Yonah Weiss: And I forget the actual technical term for it.

[00:16:03] Patrick Donley: I think it’s the reticular activating system.

[00:16:06] Yonah Weiss: That’s exactly right. So like you’re looking to buy a new car, for example, and you come across this you know, I don’t know the Toyota Sienna. I just like a minivan. You’re like, okay, that’s a great car. But you never, never looked at it before.

[00:16:17] Yonah Weiss: All of a sudden you start seeing them every. And I don’t know.

[00:16:20] Patrick Donley: I love that just the clues that God or the universe gives to you. Like if you’re aware they’re, they’re out there and it, it’s cool that you made the step and talked to that guy, introduced yourself and had a relationship with him. I wanted to talk about your, you, it sounded like you worked for about eight or nine months with a gentleman.

[00:16:35] Patrick Donley: Were you just kind of sitting with him shadowing him? Were you working for free? How did that work?

[00:16:42] Yonah Weiss: Yeah, so I was, I was shadowing him, I was learning from him. He was someone that he had, you know, a decade of experience or more in real estate, and literally I would sit with him as an office every day for, you know, I don’t, I don’t even remember how long every day, but it was like, you know, easily four or five hours.

[00:16:57] Yonah Weiss: Just learning through, we started doing cold calls. You know, he was, he was doing mortgage financing, you know, brokerage, and he was doing his own things on the side also. So he’d have calls had he had some property that the pipe burst and he had to call the property manager. And so I was literally learning from every step of the way.

[00:17:10] Yonah Weiss: But the main thing we, we were doing, Was you know, brokering loans. So it was regular, traditional commercial financing as well as hard money loans. So that was eye-opening as well. So we’re dealing on the commercial side as well as the residential side. I just remember calling, you know, banks like cold calling banks and researching like, which bank in the city?

[00:17:28] Yonah Weiss: Local banks, you know, and things like that, who we talk to and just get them on the phone, get term sheets and all kinds of stuff like that. So it was re and it was, yeah, I was literally working for free, so I was working on commission, you know, if we ended up closing something, I’d originate tons and tons of loans.

[00:17:41] Yonah Weiss: We ended up closing something. Obviously, I, I needed commission on that. So, but I was doing it more than anything for the, for the experience and just for the knowledge.

[00:17:48] Patrick Donley: And you had had the experience with the magazine earlier when you were in your late whatever, 18, 19 or 20. And so, you know, you weren’t shy to cold call.

[00:17:57] Yonah Weiss: I wasn’t shy to it, but I also learned a little more about it just through him in terms and something that I apply even now, still today, which is not just blind cold calling, right? Not just taking a list and just calling people. That’s what I despise, and I think everyone can relate to that in terms of.

[00:18:13] Yonah Weiss: Either receiving or, or you know, making those calls. But it’s more about an educated cold call. You know, you find out more information and the more information you have, the more you can make that connection with the person on the other line. And so that’s what I did a lot of research before actually reaching out to Carl.

[00:18:29] Yonah Weiss: Call people. So, you know, I go online and research this bank, for example, and look at all their products and you know, all the things, and I come to them and say, Hey. We have a Rite Aid in that neighborhood where you’re in, this is the length of the lease, this is et cetera, and you know, do you have a term sheet?

[00:18:46] Yonah Weiss: Can you provide something? I see your program for this X, Y, and Z. So obviously it was you know, cold calling, but again, with a lot more background and knowledge.

[00:18:54] Patrick Donley: Really good advice too, to handle cold calls in a way that you’re educating, you’re teaching and it’s your strong point. In many ways, it’s what you’re all.

[00:19:03] Yonah Weiss: Yeah, it’s also, you know, you appreciate, you know, if you get a cold call from someone and they know more about you, like this conversation. Right. Patrick, you’ve done your research on this podcast, which I can’t say is the same with, you know, hundreds of other podcasts I’ve done. You know, you obviously take the time to get to know someone, do your research before even interviewing them, which I love.

[00:19:22] Yonah Weiss: So too, if you get acon, someone calls you and they know that you have X, y, Z business and your pain points are this, and they know they can provide something to help with, you’ll be much more receptive to that call than someone that just calls and like, are you a business owner? It like no thank you.

[00:19:39] Yonah Weiss: Wrong number. It goes a long way. Absolutely.

[00:19:42] Patrick Donley: Absolutely. Good advice. Good points. So you mentioned a few fix and flips that you did. Was that your first real estate investments that you did and how did those go? Did was it something you enjoyed or not so much? Not so much.

[00:19:55] Yonah Weiss: What Ava did you not like? It just wasn’t my skillset, you know?

[00:19:58] Yonah Weiss: It was like you hear these things, you seep your pockets and you hear all the, you know, these different shows and stuff like that. It’s like, oh yeah. So easy to do. And I had a friend who was also, had never done it before, but knew other people that did, and he ended up meeting someone that had a really close tie to the sheriff’s auction in that county and he said, we can get properties.

[00:20:19] Yonah Weiss: Before they go to auction, you know, so like really, really dirt cheap. And I was like, okay, that sounds like great. Yeah, someone I really trusted. So I was like, okay, let’s, you know we can do this together. And it just the things that I didn’t, so there were things that were great about it, but there were things that I didn’t like with, you know, specifically just dealing with contractors, dealing with.

[00:20:36] Yonah Weiss: Delays and things that were unexpected, that were totally out of your control. You know, I like to have a little more control and investment, and when something’s told me out of your hands, it’s like, that’s not really a solid investment strategy. So that’s one thing that I def, you know, if you’re doing all the work yourself, it can be much more fulfilling.

[00:20:52] Yonah Weiss: But I wasn’t, and I didn’t enjoy that aspect of the, of the business. We had delays, we had change orders, we had all kinds of stuff which contractors are notorious for. And the, the first deal that we did, it ended up sitting, even though we finished it and completed it, ended up sitting on the market for like six months.

[00:21:09] Yonah Weiss: And so that just killed the returns. Alright. I mean, the whole business plan was to have it, you know, flip within 90 days and then have the capital reinvested, et cetera. And so having it sits, you know, twice or more than twice as long that we had expected, really killed a lot of metrics.

[00:21:24] Patrick Donley: What was the reason that it sat so long?

[00:21:25] Patrick Donley: Was it just over?

[00:21:27] Yonah Weiss: I don’t think it was, I don’t honestly don’t think it was over. Christ. You never know what the reason is. You know, I think maybe to me, my, my real reason is that this was kind of God’s way of telling me, don’t do this. Like, this is not for you. This is . You know, don’t waste your time doing this.

[00:21:41] Yonah Weiss: So that was my takeaway. Yeah.

[00:21:44] Patrick Donley: So what happened next? You, you still wanted to stay in real estate, even after the fix and flip experience.

[00:21:49] Yonah Weiss: What happened? I ended up feeling if it was just open to opportunities, we’re still doing some brokerage, but had an introduction to this company, Madison Commercial Real Estate, based out of Lakewood, New Jersey.

[00:22:00] Yonah Weiss: Really great company, title company. And they had this cost segregation division. I didn’t know much about it at all, but was made the introduction, they were looking for someone to do, you know, business development. And I was like, okay, yeah, listen, why not? It’s a great introduction. I was open to opportunities and I ended up just interviewing, taking a job, and you know, really the rest is history.

[00:22:19] Yonah Weiss: Like I like to. So I want to hear more about that.

[00:22:22] Patrick Donley: How did you sell them on yourself to hire you as the business development guy? You didn’t have an accounting background. You had a little bit of real estate experience. I, I just want to hear how you talked your way into the job.

[00:22:34] Yonah Weiss: Sure. You know, fascinatingly enough, the little bit of real estate experience that I had was apparently enough to, you know, convince them that, and the teaching background is something that I found was, you know, they were looking to have someone give webinars and, and do stuff like that and write some articles.

[00:22:52] Yonah Weiss: And so that was something that I could do. And I was, I really went out of my way to show them that I could do what they were looking for and more. And I think they were just kind of impressed by, by mi at, you know, obviously a background in teacher for many years. And so that really, I think, was the clincher more than anything else.

[00:23:09] Patrick Donley: We’re going to get into cost segregation here shortly. It is it’s definitely something that needs to be taught and I’m eager to be taught here today as well cuz it’s relatively new to me. So I wanted to talk first though about your, you’ve got, at the beginning of your podcast, you say that your network is your net worth.

[00:23:26] Patrick Donley: Talk to me exactly what you mean by that and why you chose to put that at the beginning of each.

[00:23:32] Yonah Weiss: It’s a great question. I think that it’s something that always stood out to me, and the more I got into real estate, the more opportunities opened up to me because of that network. And so it doesn’t mean literally you know, your network is your net worth.

[00:23:45] Yonah Weiss: Obviously you can’t put that on your balance sheet. The number of friends that you have, but you know, Jim Ron, or, you know, Zig Ziglar, one of the two, or or both of them were, were famous for saying, you know, you are the five people that you surround yourself most with. And I truly firmly believe that if you want to be something, surround yourself with other people that have already done that, and you will end up doing that same thing as well, because they’ll push you, whether it means, you know, physically, you know, they’ll test your limits, but just being around them, hopefully you’ll be inspired and.

[00:24:14] Yonah Weiss: Driven to, to do more than you’re currently doing. So social media has really, over the past, you know, five, six years that I’ve been involved in this business has really opened up opportunities to me beyond measure. And I know that’s kind of cliche, but it has, I’ve, I can’t even imagine where I’d be right now without the people that have met.

[00:24:33] Yonah Weiss: Through, literally through social media that many, you know, hundreds literally have become friends and, you know, and met in person and have really taken my life in the business perspective to a whole different level than I never, even, never even consumed of. And so the fact that I’ve, you know, invested in multiple limited partner opportunities and in multi-family and self storage, RV parks, mobile home parks, you know, these many asset blast, I knew nothing.

[00:24:57] Yonah Weiss: Five years ago, six years ago. And so I learned about those through my network. And so literally my net worth is because, you know, a byproduct of that.

[00:25:07] Patrick Donley: I could take this in a lot of different directions at this point, but I, you started off and I wanted to talk about social media later, but since you brought it up, let’s get into it now.

[00:25:15] Patrick Donley: You started off primarily focusing on LinkedIn, is that right? That’s correct, yes. And just have recently gotten into real estate Twitter. Talk to us about like the differences that you find in LinkedIn versus Twitter. What’s the pros and cons of.

[00:25:29] Yonah Weiss: I started on LinkedIn almost by accident about, you know, five years ago ago.

[00:25:33] Yonah Weiss: I was just prospecting, looking for people and just the one thing that I found an amazing thing about LinkedIn is that if you, and I recommend anyone to do this right now, if you have a LinkedIn account, go ahead and type your name into Google. If you don’t have an extremely common name, then guaranteed guaranteed that your LinkedIn page will come up, if not the first, in the first five search inquiries of Google search.

[00:25:58] Yonah Weiss: Okay? That means your name. So nowadays, if anyone is looking for you or looking to do business with you or anything, they’re going to Google your name. That’s just, that’s simple fact what happens with a you all name, they’ll, they’ll learn about you. Yes. Your social media files, even if they’re not so active.

[00:26:13] Yonah Weiss: Will show up there. The more active you are on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, those will show up towards the top of the search. But LinkedIn, even if you’re not active, that’s the amazing thing that I found. It will still come up at the top of the search query now your LinkedIn profile, and so I ended up just like.

[00:26:29] Yonah Weiss: Stumbling upon it. Cause I was looking to, you know, searching for people I didn’t account for many, many years, but it was just like, you know, college friends. It was a place to post resumes and post to get a pleased to get a job. But what I found about five years ago, there was a transition after Microsoft bought LinkedIn, was that it became much more of a social media content sharing platform, but it was still very professional.

[00:26:50] Yonah Weiss: I knew, you know, I wasn’t on any of their platforms, didn’t have a Facebook account, Instagram, anything like that. Not even. By LinkedIn I found was okay. I had an account cuz you know, I had friends that I connected with and now I kept finding people sharing educational and inspirational content. I was like, oh, that’s interesting.

[00:27:06] Yonah Weiss: Maybe this can work. And so I just literally started posting content, you know, just educational stuff and found people were connecting, people resonating with that and making connection. I ended up being invited on a podcast, , my first podcast through that, and that really snowballed everything from there.

[00:27:20] Yonah Weiss: And so I’ve built, you know, 25,000 followers all LinkedIn and. Been an amazing community that I’ve found through that in specifically in the real estate space and you Creative podcast pen on 400 guessing eight appearances. And most recently, someone pointed out to me, there’s this thing called retwit, right?

[00:27:36] Yonah Weiss: Real Estate Twitter. Which I didn’t even know was a thing and so, you know, tagged me or something. One time I opened an account many years ago, three or four years ago, and ended up just looking at it. One time someone tagged me and I got a notification. So like I went, went, checked out. I was like, oh, interesting.

[00:27:53] Yonah Weiss: These are some people that I know from LinkedIn. Who are over here and they’re like, it’s so much better here on Twitter because there’s so much more kind of community and, and discussion as opposed to LinkedIn where there is that, there’s a lot of downsides to LinkedIn as well. There’s, you know, spam and the inbox and that kind of stuff, but there’s less of a, you know, discussion sometimes on a specific topic.

[00:28:12] Yonah Weiss: Whereas the, the retwit has a lot more of that kind of back and forth discussion from, from many, many different perspectives in the industry. LinkedIn is still great to make incredible connections to post content. To have those kind of interactions in your community. And there are discussions, don’t get me wrong, but it’s less involved.

[00:28:28] Yonah Weiss: I mean, you, it’s rare to have like a thread, have a post, and then have a, a discussion back and forth, you know, more than four or five comments back and forth between one person. In Twitter, you can have, you know, hundreds.

[00:28:40] Patrick Donley: So you’re a couple months into Twitter, are you, do you focus your time equally on them or are you leaning more towards Twitter at this point?

[00:28:46] Patrick Donley: How do you, you spend a lot of time on your social media network. How much time? I want to know, I need to tell my wife this cuz I’m, I spend a lot of time as well and I said, it’s work honey. You like, you need to understand

[00:28:57] Yonah Weiss: it’s, I’m working. That’s exactly the point. If it is work and you are getting what you intend to get out of it, then it doesn’t make a difference if, if that’s your platform for outreach versus, you know, email or cold calls.

[00:29:11] Yonah Weiss: I find that, you know, for outreach, especially for people in sales or business development, social media is the best way. To use and marketing, and I’m a huge, huge pro of that. So how many hours a day? Many, many hours a day. I mean, I have, I’ve scheduled calls and podcasts and all kinds of stuff like that throughout the day, but basically any in between time, you know, my social channels are open and I’m there Commenting or or posting.

[00:29:33] Patrick Donley: We talked about the network net worth. What are some ways that advice you have for somebody new getting in, involved in real estate to start building their network?

[00:29:44] Yonah Weiss: Social media. I mean, that’s really it. Like find people that you aspire to be, learn from them, connect with them. If you can meet people in person that’s great.

[00:29:53] Yonah Weiss: But nowadays there are plenty of you know, online networking events like Zoom events. Like I have every week, and I’ve done this since the onset of Covid. We started a, a weekly meetup. On Zoom where we have a guest speaker come in and, and then breakout rooms in Zoom where we have networking. You get to know people.

[00:30:07] Yonah Weiss: And so there are plenty of those out there. You can meet people in the industry. You never know where I’ve literally had people on my meetup find new jobs or find partners and investors and literally from just. Connecting with people through these channels and yeah, I mean, it’s great if you can go to in-person meetups in your, in your town real estate meetups.

[00:30:26] Yonah Weiss: There are, they exist everywhere, right? But you don’t have to limit it to your, you know, your town. You could do it online, anywhere. And so that’s the first advice I would say, just connect with people, make those relationships, and then keep educating yourself. Be humble. Don’t think that you know, you know everything you know more than you actually know, because the smartest people that I know are people that constantly are learning.

[00:30:47] Yonah Weiss: And constantly think, the more that they know, the less that they know. Meaning, the more that you learn, the more you actually learn how much there is to know and how little of that you actually know.

[00:30:58] Patrick Donley: I wanted to ask you too about, you said you’re the average of the five people that you are around, does that include books, social media?

[00:31:05] Patrick Donley: Do you include that as well?

[00:31:07] Yonah Weiss: To a certain extent. I think it, it really has a lot to do with kind of personal, you know, people rub off on you when you surround yourself with people. So yes, you can, you know, if you’re an introvert and not really talking to people , then yeah, probably the people you’re surrounding with are, are not real people or, you know, online or or books and things like that, podcasts.

[00:31:24] Yonah Weiss: But, you know, it has a lot more impact when you actually spend time with people in.

[00:31:31] Patrick Donley: I want to hear a little bit about, you’ve done a great job at at building a, both your LinkedIn and Twitter following. What kind of advice do you have for people to build a following?

[00:31:40] Yonah Weiss: It really comes down to two components.

[00:31:42] Yonah Weiss: Any social media, number one. Is, find the right people that you want in your network and engage with their posts and engage with them. Right? And what does that mean? Engage with It means adding relevant either questions or valuable comments in their own posts. And so that’s something that anyone can do.

[00:32:01] Yonah Weiss: So a lot of people struggle with social media like, Hmm, how do I, you know, I don’t know what to post. I don’t know what to post. And that’s a huge struggle and I totally relate with that. The one that’s the second step is getting over that and just, you know, hunkering down and posting, what can you post?

[00:32:15] Yonah Weiss: There’s so much information. The way that I view social media in terms of posting is just sharing your journey or sharing what you’re doing. Great example of that podcast, right? I can do a post right now that I had this great podcast with, you know, the real estate one-on-one podcast with Patrick, and it was, it was amazing Ed.

[00:32:32] Yonah Weiss: That is a social media post. Yeah, sure. It’s not adding tremendous amount of value, but when the podcast goes live and we can share, you know, some clips from that, hopefully that will be adding more value. If you know something, it doesn’t matter what that is, share that or ask questions and that can be a great post.

[00:32:47] Yonah Weiss: So again, there’s two components. One is engaging with the right people. And growing your following that way and and growing your network through that. And the second thing is posting original, valuable content over and over again. And I know a lot of people struggle with that, so I’m not going to sit here and say it’s easy, but once you get used to it, it just comes naturally for a lot of people and you’ll learn a tremendous amount.

[00:33:08] Yonah Weiss: My writing and my communication has gotten so much better just through using social media.

[00:33:15] Patrick Donley: And has your business taken off because of social media

[00:33:18] Yonah Weiss: as well? Tremendously. I mean like to say 10 x it’s like more like a hundred x. Yeah. Directly. Directly impact.

[00:33:26] Patrick Donley: That’s crazy. I want to get now into what you’re known for, which is cost segregation.

[00:33:30] Patrick Donley: You are known as the cost said king, and I’ve been investing in real estate for, you know, quite a while, and cost segregation just came into my awareness. Probably this, I don’t know, within the last six or seven months. Largely through real estate Twitter, Keith Wasserman said it was like the 10th Wonder of the World or something like that, and I was like, what?

[00:33:49] Patrick Donley: What is this cost segregation thing? So I want to get into that. Can you explain to us really simply what cost segregation is and then how you became an expert on it?

[00:33:59] Yonah Weiss: Sure. So cost segregation is an advanced form of depreciation. So depreciation is a tax deduction that anyone who owns a property a rental or investment property.

[00:34:10] Yonah Weiss: So it doesn’t apply to your primary residence, but any investment property, the government actually allows you to take an income tax deduction called depreciation. Based on the purchase price of that property. So you can literally write off the value of what was paid for that property over a 27 and a half year or 39 year period.

[00:34:27] Yonah Weiss: And so that’s called your depreciation. Deduction. And again, I say it’s based on it’s called depreciation cause it’s based on the principle that things go down in value as time goes on, but it’s not actually happening because it’s not intrinsic to the property, it’s specifically to the tax. So the depreciation on the property starts over that 27 and a half years, starts over every time it’s transacted and changes hands.

[00:34:50] Patrick Donley: And so just so real quick, the 27 and a half years, that’s for residential, correct? Correct. In the 39 is for

[00:34:56] Yonah Weiss: commercial. That’s exactly right. Yeah. And so we kind of arbitrary numbers, but that is what the rules say. So there are actually different schedules that certain components of a property depreciate on faster five or seven or 15 year schedules, and that’s where cost segregation comes in.

[00:35:12] Yonah Weiss: It used to be called component depreciation. Which essentially is, is what it sounds like you could depreciate certain components like furniture or fixtures of the property at over a five year schedule. So now they’ve got cost segregation. We take that cost that was paid for the property and we segregate it and break it down into different components, into different buckets that through an engineering breakdown of the property, we can see, oh, the furniture or the cabinet to the carpet.

[00:35:35] Yonah Weiss: All depreciated on a five year schedule, the value is X. And so now we can take the value of those those components as a deduction over a five year period instead of just lumping everything together over a 27 half year period. So it’s a cash flow mechanism essentially allowing you to take bigger deductions in the earlier years of ownership.

[00:35:54] Patrick Donley: When you’re talking to real estate investors, what kind of percentage, roughly speaking, would you say know about cost segregation versus those that.

[00:36:03] Yonah Weiss: Well, I mean this really is going to come to answer the second question that you had previously is how I became the expert in the field, because I was fascinated when I got involved in it, I had reached out to everyone that I knew that was in real estate previously, and I found that, you know, I just asked Neil, what do you know about cost segregation?

[00:36:20] Yonah Weiss: And I got, Primarily two answers, right? There are two opposite end of the spectrum. One answer was, yes, this is great. It’s an awesome thing. We use it. And the other answer I got for everyone else, which was the vast majority, was, I’ve never even heard of this. Okay. So there was almost no middle ground of people that, yeah, we know.

[00:36:36] Yonah Weiss: We know about it, but don’t really use it. And this is something that I. Literally, every single time I give a presentation in person or on a webinar is I ask this question, what is your familiarity with cost segregation? You know, a, the first time you’re hearing of it, you know, B I’ve heard of it, don’t really understand it, you know, c I know really well I’ve used it, et cetera.

[00:36:54] Yonah Weiss: So the vast majority, I’d say still to this day, about 80% of any group that I speak to is in that first category of either they’ve never heard of it or they’ve heard of it, but don’t understand it. And and so that to me, At the beginning and still to this day, really has been, I guess a blessing for me is because, hey, I’m just a teacher.

[00:37:14] Yonah Weiss: That’s all I’m doing. I’m just educating people about this. And when once you learn about it, for most people it’s almost a no-brainer to use it. And so selling a service, which is essentially what we’re doing because our company provides this service, we’re the biggest national company doing this is the way that people end up using the service is first learning about it.

[00:37:32] Yonah Weiss: And once you know what it is, then it’s, it’s almost a no-brainer to.

[00:37:37] Patrick Donley: Why do you think it’s so little known? Why is it it seems crazy that more people don’t know about it and utilize it?

[00:37:43] Yonah Weiss: You know, I’ve done my best way the past, you know, five, six years to educate the masses about this. But it’s, my theory is that it has something to do with taxes.

[00:37:53] Yonah Weiss: And for most people, if you ask them about taxes or mention anything about taxes, their brains kind of shut. and for whatever reason, like, okay, taxes, my, my accountant deals with that. But the amazing thing is, is that the vast majority of accountants. Either don’t know about this or don’t know enough about it to recommend it to their clients.

[00:38:13] Yonah Weiss: And that may be for, like I said, maybe they just don’t know or don’t understand enough, or they’re not proactive. They’re not tax advisors, pursu, they’re people that are put, you know, putting in numbers and that’s what most majority of accountants are. And so that, to me, that’s a combination where the investors themselves don’t know what it is and they rely on anything that’s tax related.

[00:38:31] Yonah Weiss: They assume that their accountant is going to take care of that for that, but on the accounting side, they’re not proactive to necessarily tell their clients about all the different options that they do have. And so you just end up with this void. And that’s really where I came in and hopefully have been not been able to spread the knowledge.

[00:38:47] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I had the same experience with my accountant this past tax season. I asked him, you know, what cost segregation was and he kind of gave me, gave an explanation, not very clear, but I kind of was wondering like, why have we not discussed this before? Like, why hasn’t this even been brought up as a, at least a consideration to look into?

[00:39:06] Patrick Donley: It sounds like a lot of accountants just don’t, also don’t know about it or don’t know how to do it. Would you say that’s true? Like a lot of accountants don’t know how to do a cost segregation?

[00:39:15] Yonah Weiss: Well, that’s part of it because it can’t be done by accountants. Oh, it cannot be done. Correct. So 99% of accounting firms cannot do this in-house because it does require an engineering component to it.

[00:39:27] Yonah Weiss: And so in the IRS guidelines, the cost segregation audit techniques guide, it clearly says this, you know, cost segregation must be done. A quality cost segregation must be done by someone who has experience in construction and engineering. So, Even if an, and there are, you know, the large accounting firms, the big four and you know, big 10 and whatever, they all have engineers in-house and provide this for their clients.

[00:39:46] Yonah Weiss: So I’m not saying that no one does this, but the vast majority of accountants, because requires that kind of third party or, or engineering component to it, they’re not doing it on their own. And so that’s really been a, a big, I guess, restraint today, if you will, for accountants to do this because, hey, this is out of my wheelhouse.

[00:40:02] Yonah Weiss: I need to go to a third party engineer. And so that’s already out of my wheel. I’ll focus on what I can do personally.

[00:40:09] Patrick Donley: So when you’re doing your business development, are you reaching out more to real estate investors or are, are you also reaching out to accountants to educate them to say, Hey, here’s what we do.

[00:40:19] Patrick Donley: Send your clients our way, we can do this study for

[00:40:21] Yonah Weiss: them. It’s a combination. And we have people in our company that focus on, you know, the, the accountant outreach. For a while I was giving CPE courses, which is the continued education for CPAs that they need to in order to retain your CPA, you’ll certify public accounting license.

[00:40:37] Yonah Weiss: You need to take a certain number of hours of courses every single year to renew that. And so one of the things that I was doing was working on giving these courses and providing these credits and usually accreditation, et cetera, but we went through that. and, and I would be teaching and giving webinars to accountants or in-person events to accountants and, and teaching about cost segregation.

[00:40:55] Yonah Weiss: And again, the same percentage literally among the accountants. When I’d asked that poll that question at the beginning is, what’s your experience with cost segregation? And the vast majority didn’t know what it was or knew very little about it. And so yes, there is that component, but I personally try to focus on educating real estate investors just because it’s a much.

[00:41:14] Yonah Weiss: First of all, it’s, it’s a network that the people I get along with a lot more, you know, cabinets that tend to be a little more boring. Entrepreneurs, we tend to be a little more exciting and, and great personalities match my personality a little bit better. And so that’s where I’ve been focusing on and especially podcasting.

[00:41:28] Yonah Weiss: And so that’s, to me has been probably the biggest growth vehicle for myself. Just reaching more people possible, you know, being on the Bigger Pockets podcast that was very, you know, obviously eye-opening to the people that I reached through.

[00:41:42] Patrick Donley: So you offer a, a free 15 minute consultation. What does that phone call look like?

[00:41:47] Patrick Donley: If I were to call.

[00:41:49] Yonah Weiss: Typically I like it’s, you know, for someone that has a property or they have, you know, something under contract or they’re looking to understand more about cons, costion from an action standpoint, like they want to, that consultation is usually, we like to also run the numbers of free feasibility analysis on any property.

[00:42:04] Yonah Weiss: So usually I’ll try to combine them both. If someone schedules a call, I’ll ask them, Hey, Thanks for scheduling. Would you you know, be interested in a free analysis on any property? And so the call can be a little more directed. A lot of it’s, again, it’s just education. People have questions and they’re mostly the same questions over and over again.

[00:42:21] Yonah Weiss: So, you know, I’ve created some content I can point them to, but it’s really just getting to know people. Everyone has their story and everyone has their business model and people have, you know, some of specific questions. And for me, it’s more about getting to know the person because that is usually.

[00:42:35] Yonah Weiss: The, what’s going to encourage them to do cost segregation or not is based on their personal situation. So there’s, you know, things like the real estate professional status and, you know, for short term rentals, there’s, there’s there roles regarding that. And so I want to get to know, is this, you know, can you even use these deductions if you get a cost segregation study done?

[00:42:54] Yonah Weiss: As, that’s really usually the, one of the first parts of the conversation. If we get past that and we can talk about, you know, the real numbers and how this can actually benefit.

[00:43:02] Patrick Donley: So are there some properties that benefit more from a cost segregation study than others? And what would those.

[00:43:09] Yonah Weiss: Certainly, yeah.

[00:43:10] Yonah Weiss: Certain types of properties. I mean, on the high end you’re looking at like gas stations, car washes, those are, can be all literally cost segregated, the entire value. Then you’ll have things like mobile, home parks, RV parks. Part of the reason why I’ve invested in those assets is because the large amount of accelerated depreciation, the cost segregation, cause the majority of what you’re buying there is land and improvements, and so land itself doesn’t depreciate, but what’s on top of the land, dusts like.

[00:43:33] Yonah Weiss: You know, asphalt, landscaping, fencing, signage, all that stuff has value to it. And when we assign a value to those components, you can now take the value of those, you know, 15 year depreciation at a faster rate. And with this thing called bonus depreciation, you can actually take the entire accelerate depreciation in the first year.

[00:43:51] Yonah Weiss: And so that’s a huge, been a huge benefit for the past few years. And so those are probably the properties that are on the higher end of cons.

[00:43:59] Patrick Donley: I want to kind of slow down a little bit the non-structural things that can be used in a cost segregation study. What are some of those things? Let’s say I, I own an office building, which I do.

[00:44:08] Patrick Donley: I just bought an office building. What are the things that I can write off in a five year period versus the 39 year period?

[00:44:16] Yonah Weiss: So there’s really two categories. There’s a five year, which is considered personal property or tangible property, and then there’s a 15 year, which is land improvement. So I mentioned some of those before.

[00:44:24] Yonah Weiss: In office buildings, you’re going to have a parking lot, you’re going to have, you know, signage, landscaping, and so all the value of that, it’s going to include a 15 year schedule. The majority is always going to be in the five year, which can include things like furniture. Fixtures window treatments. In an office building, you’ll have telecom systems, you’ll have security cameras, you’ll have light fixtures and and things like that.

[00:44:43] Yonah Weiss: If they’re movable partitions, you know, in a lot of office spaces you’ll have move partitions. Those are also all considered five year property flooring. If it’s vinyl flooring or carpeting, wall coverings. All of these things I’m mentioning often into that five year category. And so we’re going to.

[00:44:58] Yonah Weiss: Sometimes, you know, 20 or 30% of the total building cost is going to fit into these faster depreciation categories and can get, you know, like I said, much larger deductions in those earlier years.

[00:45:09] Patrick Donley: What’s a cost segregation study cost? Does it depend on the, I would imagine the size of the building or what’s a, like an average range for a study.

[00:45:19] Yonah Weiss: It does, it depend on the size. It’s not contingent on the cost of the building or the amount of tax savings that’s actually not proper to do because the irs, you know, frs upon that. In fact, it’s, you know, not officially illegal, but people have been slapped with punishments and penalties for doing it like that.

[00:45:34] Yonah Weiss: So yes, it is contingent solely on the size of the type of the property. I’d say the average, it’s somewhere between, I’d say four to $10,000 for most types of properties. The larger the property, the more obviously the more work there is. Cuz again, it does require an engineer to actually study each unit, especially in an office building or retail property.

[00:45:53] Yonah Weiss: They’re going to go into each and every single suite or unit to see how the differences are. Whereas a multi-family property, for example, they only need to go into one of each unit type and they can use all the rest. Just to extrapolate that,

[00:46:04] Patrick Donley: If you’re doing a value add deal, at what point does it make sense to do the cost segregation study at the, like at the time of acquisition or after the, after the renovation has been completed or both?

[00:46:16] Yonah Weiss: It’s a really, you know, it depends. That’s really the answer. It depends on a lot of things and I’m not sure we’re going to be able to cover all that in this conversation, but most people like to get it done in the beginning at the acquisition stage. So you can capture everything in the property as is and can accelerate depreciation over those.

[00:46:31] Yonah Weiss: Once you’ve done renovations, you can actually, many cases then capture the depreciation amount of those renovations and and take cost segregation on that as well. So it can be done in two stages, but again, we will depend on many circumstances.

[00:46:47] Patrick Donley: You mentioned bonus depreciation. Explain that a little bit more and some of the tax changes that are taking place that will affect bonus depreciation in the future.

[00:46:55] Yonah Weiss: Yeah. In the, in the tax cuts and jobs accidents back in 2017 there was a change to the rule that instead of just taking regular cost segregation, which is five year, 15 year, you know, 39 year schedules and taking some of those accelerating amounts, so those faster respective years bonus depreciate 100% bonus depreciation came into the books in 2018 and saying that, You have the option, once you’ve done cost segregation study, you have the option to take those faster depreciation schedules in the first year, 100% of those deductions in year one.

[00:47:26] Yonah Weiss: So that’s called 100% bonus Appreciation has been you know, a game changer for, for many, many people over the years in 2023 and, and was written in the books when they made this pass. This law, it’s started to sunset, so it’s going to start phasing out by 20% each year. So in 2023, it’s only 80% bonus depreciation.

[00:47:43] Yonah Weiss: And then next year, Et cetera. What that means is once you do a cost S study, you can take 80% of those accelerate deductions in the first year. The remaining 20% can still be spread out over those five and 15 year schedules, so it’s not going to be as advantageous as it was last year on previous years, but still extremely, extremely beneficial.

[00:48:03] Patrick Donley: Will that affect your business at all as it reduces in the bonus appreciation? Do you think that will affect business for you guys?

[00:48:10] Yonah Weiss: I don’t think so. I think to the contrary, people will may, who may not have considered cost saving before just because of the current environment. You know, people trying to get as many tax deductions as they can to kind of cover maybe for, for other decreases in income and things like that.

[00:48:24] Yonah Weiss: So it may have an effect, but like I said before, cost segregation was around for a long time before this bonus depreciation came into into the books and was extremely beneficial beforehand. So I think it will continue to be, so even as a bonus depreciation, you’ll phases out.

[00:48:40] Patrick Donley: I wanted to talk about your podcast.

[00:48:42] Patrick Donley: I’m relatively new to doing podcasts. You’re maybe my, I don’t know, 20th interview. 15th or 20th, somewhere like that. But you’ve, you’ve done over, I think, what three or 400 episodes I you’ve done on your own podcast. What Weiss advice, over 300 episodes, what got you into doing podcasts? What’s it been like for you?

[00:49:01] Patrick Donley: I also want to hear why’d you start it and what’s it been?

[00:49:04] Yonah Weiss: So after being a guest on so many podcasts for, you know, for a couple years, I really enjoyed this kind of back and forth en enjoyed the conversations and the education, but I also wanted to learn as well. And like I said, I really enjoyed this kind of platform.

[00:49:19] Yonah Weiss: And so I, for a long time was thinking about starting my own podcast, just to interview other people. And it took me a while to, to launch it, but eventually I did. And that’s correct. Over 300 episodes to date at on the Weiss Advice podcast. It’s more than anything just been an opportunity for me to get to know people better and kind of strengthen that relationship.

[00:49:39] Yonah Weiss: You know, when you, I’m sure you can tell when you have this conversation with someone, it’s now like a whole new level of relationship. You know, it’s very difficult. I find, and people can probably attest to this, if you want to take someone out to coffee or just get on a Zoom call and talk for, you know, half an hour with some random person, they’re probably going to say no.

[00:49:56] Yonah Weiss: But if you offer them to be on a podcast, they’re likely going to say yes. And so it’s really an opportunity more than anything. For that connection between the guest and the host more than it is for the audience. That’s what I’ve found. And what kind of topics do you like to cover for our audience? So my approach is actually not to look at it in topics, but in people.

[00:50:17] Yonah Weiss: And so I approach people that I know that are successful in real estate and 90% or more of the guests have had on my podcast are actually clients of mine that are real estate investors that have done costing. And so I already have that rapport with them. They are very successful people. And so for me it’s more about just interviewing them, hearing their story as opposed to, you know, speaking about a specific.

[00:50:38] Yonah Weiss: Each one will have their niche, and we’ll end up talking about, you know, a topic or, or two anyways. But again, it’s not not focused on the topic. More of a person.

[00:50:47] Patrick Donley: Do you have any advice for how to be a great guest and a great host? I mean, you could. You’ve done both. So let’s hear some advice on being a great guest and a great host.

[00:50:56] Yonah Weiss: Well, a couple things. I would say just no brainers. Make sure to have good sound set up. You know, it doesn’t cost a lot to get a professional microphone. I mean, I still have a pretty relatively cheap one as the, you know, blue Yeti, it’s like three, 400 bucks. It’s not, you know, not high quality. At all. In fact, I’m probably getting a new one shortly.

[00:51:13] Yonah Weiss: But that’s one thing, and that’s really simple . But being a good guest is just being open to conversation and not trying to lead the conversation in one direction or another. I’ve been on plenty of podcasts as a guest. Then they’ll prepare the questions beforehand and, and I’m totally fine with that.

[00:51:29] Yonah Weiss: I’m, I love that, you know, I’m pretty versatile, but don’t try to lead it in the direction that you want to meet it end, rather just kind of go with the flow and see where it takes. Yeah, that’s good advice. Love it.

[00:51:41] Patrick Donley: I wanted to talk a little bit more. I read an acronym that you have, it’s called hope, and I wanted to talk more about the role of faith for you, which is super important and you talk openly about it, which I really admire.

[00:51:54] Patrick Donley: Talk to us what the acronym hope is and then how just your faith affects your business.

[00:52:01] Yonah Weiss: Hope I, and I learned this from a friend of mine, actually, someone who came on my podcast who said, help one person every day. So that’s what hope that Akron is. And I just, I resonate with that a lot and it was, to me, kind of what my life has been about.

[00:52:14] Yonah Weiss: It’s just helping other people. And even through the education I I, and through the cost segregation, I literally, I see it like I’m helping people. I and I am, because helping people save money on taxes is a great service and a great thing to help people, but going out of your way to make connections going out of your way.

[00:52:29] Yonah Weiss: To find people who are maybe struggling and see if you can help them either financially or with mentoring or so many different ways. And so that’s one thing that I go on a way to do every single day. And to me, that’s kind of my definition of success is how can I help other people? If I can help other people?

[00:52:44] Yonah Weiss: You, you can, you know, make sure that you will be helped tremendously. So. My faith and, you know, I’m, I’m religious, Jewish, you know, orthodox a lot of different terms for whatever. But essentially what it means is that I have a very close relationship with with my, my faith, with my people, with God.

[00:53:01] Yonah Weiss: And you know, we see it as our life has a mission. Everything. Everyone has a purpose in life and everyone has a mission. . And what that is, is kind of, we’ve been given instructions, we have very detailed rules. A rule book, the Toon, which is really an instruction manual. is really what it is. And so a whole code of law that comes along with that.

[00:53:20] Yonah Weiss: So a lot of religious kind of practices that we do on a daily basis. But a lot of it has to do with just, you know, interpersonal interactions. Like how do we treat other people? Like how, oh, do business dealings and the like. And so it really allows you to open yourself up to a spiritual or metaphysical world that is, Like, again, going back to what we were talking about before, like kind of the analogy and education.

[00:53:42] Yonah Weiss: You don’t know what you don’t know. And so the more you open yourself up to learn, the more you realize how little you know. And so when you’re in the face of, you know, infinite, you know, God, there’s no end to to knowledge. And so there’s no end to that relationship either. And so to me that’s become a very solid component of, you know, obviously who I am, what I do, how I act and conduct myself in business and through all the interactions I have as.

[00:54:07] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I can attest when I reached out to you to, to be a guest on the show, you actually asked and I, I said, what are some, a couple podcasts I could listen to? And you mentioned a few, but then you also were like, please let me know if I can connect you with anyone. And you know, I can attest that like you, you live by what you’re saying and it’s pretty awesome.

[00:54:22] Patrick Donley: I think it’s a great way to live. I wanted to jump into a quick fire round your favorite Twitter account.

[00:54:28] Yonah Weiss: You know, there’s so many anonymous accounts, and that’s what fascinates me about Twitter more than any other platform. Like every other platform, it’s social media. These are people that you know, and so there’s a, a connection there.

[00:54:39] Yonah Weiss: And so Twitter, to me, it’s a little bit strange that there’s so many anonymous accounts is you don’t really know who the other person on the other side of that that profile is. And so to me, it’s hard to have a favorite. In terms of that, because even if it’s someone that I maybe like their content, like street mall guys, it’s just amazing, right?

[00:54:56] Yonah Weiss: His content’s just incredible. But I don’t know who the guy is, right? I’d love to get to know him. Maybe I do, and he’s just stringing me along. It’s quite possible that I do know, but again, it’s hard to kind of say that because I don’t want to necessarily give her a favor to someone that I wouldn’t necessarily, you know, connect with in, in real life.

[00:55:11] Patrick Donley: Yeah, there’s so many good ones out there. Second one, most impactful.

[00:55:16] Yonah Weiss: From a business perspective, I think the most impactful book would have to be that seven Abbots that, that we mentioned earlier.

[00:55:22] Patrick Donley: And then you kind of mentioned it, but what, what does success mean to you?

[00:55:26] Yonah Weiss: Just helping other people. Success is not financial whatsoever.

[00:55:30] Yonah Weiss: You know, and one thing that I’ve learned from, and again, I asked a similar question on my show, and the vast majority of people answer this not in re with regards to finances or you know, a number, which is fascinating to me, but rather the answer in terms of impact or how can I, you know, do for other people, or how can I have more control in my time?

[00:55:50] Yonah Weiss: So finance or in wealth, monetary wealth is only a. To an end, right? Is really how to give back.

[00:55:57] Patrick Donley: That’s a great place to end it here. Yonah, I really appreciate your time. It’s been awesome talking to you. What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you who want to reach out and learn more about you or learn more about cost segregation?

[00:56:07] Yonah Weiss: You can find me on all the social platforms we mentioned up until now. You can also go to yonahweiss.com.

[00:56:13] Patrick Donley: And I encourage everybody to check out your podcast. I had fun researching it and listening to quite a few. It’s been, it’s a really good show and you’ve got great guests and you’re a great host too.

[00:56:21] Patrick Donley: So anyway, thanks a lot for your time today, Yonah. I appreciate it.

[00:56:25] Yonah Weiss: Oh, I appreciate you, Patrick. Thanks for having me.

[00:56:28] Patrick Donley: Okay, folks, that’s all I had for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’ll see you back here real.

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