The people are important in our company and I feel that the profits sharing is very important with all that are involved, not just one way highway. When people pull cash back, that’s when they are alert. That’s when they’re like, alright, what’s next? I can’t tell what’s next. I’m in endanger zone. That doesn’t help us at all. That’s when nobody goes shopping. If you don’t like it, what do you want? If you don’t like it, what do I do if this guy doesn’t do it? How can I trump that and get this done? Because at the end of the day, you can do nothing and get zero a goose egg or you do something and you make some money. Problems to me are more important than success of a project because problems just what I fix every day. I get up to fix problems. We were funded with an investment group and we have the projects and we’re doing very well, but on the production side, we’re not doing that well on the construction side because

What’s going on guys? Welcome back. Today we have Nazar. Thank you so much for taking the time to today. Been in real estate for a very long time, done hundreds and hundreds of transactions, but I’m curious to kind of take a step back and see how you got into real estate in the first place.

Real estate to me was an extension of being a builder. So my background is really being a builder, being hands-on designer later on in my life. But I think as I evolved in my career and my passion for land ENT development and land entitlement and building, I found out that there’s more and more and more to it. So that’s where the expansion came and when you expand and use your own capital, you really realize quick that with your own capital you’re not going far or it’s going to take a very, very long time for it to cycle. And so roughly around age of 35, maybe a little later, about 35 years old, I realized that I need to expand by going into raising capital and bringing partners, partners and investors. So that’s where the real estate side started really expanding. And the love for that is really I think comes down from building real estate is nothing without building nothing without design. That’s my vision of real estate.

Awesome. And what was your life like before real estate? What were you doing before you got into it?

Building still a component of real estate, but not on the investment side. Being a builder, being a general contractor for others, building schools, doing prevailing wage work, meaning municipal work, town, city government, bonded work anywhere from doing an addition to a high school to renovating one to building a ground up facility for, I recall recently, no long ago, a facility for a Boston Public Works water and sewer department. Then we did a lab for University of Massachusetts, UMass, I meant to say. So different broad scope, different types of work. I think what matters is that in my opinion, is to make sure that your business is a cash flowing business and it’s making profits. Yes, you should be passionate about what you do, but sometimes when people really stay in one lane, sometimes they pay the price when the economy jumps up and down and here, able to diversify a lot by simply being in real estate, in construction, in design build, having our own architect in-house that’s a register architect in many states of New England is huge help because it doesn’t bottleneck anything in the beginning of entitlement or permitting.

Same thing with a civil engineer that we have. Giovanni Fedra who’s a licensed surveyor and civil engineer. So basically at the end of the day, what bottleneck do projects have or real estate projects have, especially if they’re ground up or any kind of construction entitlement, et cetera, is in the beginning, go to the board, get this done, get approvals. Like people have no idea sometimes how much it really takes before they see an excavator on site. Sometimes construction also is very challenging, but to me personally because I have so much building experience, the entitlement in the financing is more challenging than the construction itself. There goes to show that we’re very bullish on ground up because of the ability to do everything in-house and control the cost especially. But also after a building is put up, and let’s say we have investors that are with us for 5, 10, 15 years holding an asset, there’s not much to be done to it because it’s well-built and there’s almost zero maintenance.

So the profits are very good from that perspective. And cost segregation and bonus depreciation is enormous under construction. So that’s another reason why be in the construction, why be in the building industry? And I have this mission statement and I repeat that a lot to myself and others that are in the team in our environment is don’t be so basically worried about being successful, worry about providing value to your customers and you’ll be successful. So I think a lot of businesses focus on selfishly on themselves, but not more providing value to the customer because once you provide value to the customer and they come back, you have a business when they start telling others to use you, you have a brand. And I didn’t even say that Steve Jobs said that I follow those that have done greatness. Warren Buffet said, if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think about is your customer, you’ll be successful.

It doesn’t mean don’t think about God or your kids or anything like that or your health, he meant in a business way. And the first thing that you think about is not like, oh, what am I going to eat today? The first thing you think about is who needs me? Where can I provide value? Maybe there’s a customer that you should have emailed yesterday and you didn’t should hurry up and say sorry it took so long to reply to you. You were on my mind, but I didn’t get to it. And I do that a lot and I think it goes a long way.

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And what does the business look like today as far as people where transactions? What does your business look like right now?

So again, it goes back to the multiple branches of the business, but if we strictly focus on the real estate side, let’s say today I have a very interesting dinner with a couple of investors who are bringing their own attorneys to the table, to the dinner table. In one glare it would be like, why are all these people needed for? But at the same time, do you think those investors are series when they bring their lawyers with them? I think so. So that’s music to my ears. Bring all the lawyers you got because the more lawyers we have involved, the less chance there is that things are going to go bust. So when you say the people, that’s the extension. The investors are the extension of us and I think we’re one of a few that really care about their returns. For example, I’ve heard from investors themselves who said, we really were not appreciated by the last group we invested into.

And I go, well, if you don’t mind, could you tell me what that means to you? Well, we had the quarterly distributions, we got paid, blah, blah, blah, blah. But we had zero allocation for cost segregation. We had zero allocation for bonus depreciation. The GP team took all of it. I was like, I get it, but it’s selfish on the GP side. So if you’re not transparent and you’re not with full, how should I say it? Your heart is not in full commitment to give a fair share, an equal share of their investment to your investor. How do they feel important? How do they feel that they’re needed? Right? It’s like say you have a girlfriend and every time you say we go to dinner, you pay half. She can do that herself. What’s the value you provide? And I’m not saying that females shouldn’t pay for anything.

I’m just saying that what authority do you have? What do you need it for? So I think when you say about the people and the investors, I would say that is important, number one. Number two, let’s say we were funded with an investment group and we have the projects and we’re doing very well, but on the production side, we’re not doing that well on the construction side because those people are not appreciated. They don’t have bonuses. They feel like the ownership takes all the profits from all these investments and the people that actually do the production eat the leftovers that will then the value is lost. So the people are important in our company and I feel that the profits sharing is very important with all that are involved, not just as a one-way highway.

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I love the question by the way. 10 x tv. I’m going to check that out. Interesting. I love the question because the real estate has, like you see behind me, there’s a bull and a bear. Why do I have it? I feel like we’ve constantly wrestling and the wrestle comes from understanding the dynamics of real estate market, understanding the dynamics of stock market, understanding the dynamics of values. I would say all these tariffs and all these things that come into play, even the wars people, I was even saying that to somebody, even though the interest rates may come down and that’s good, the construction cost is going to go up. So you’ve got to be ready for that and it’s normal. I would rather see that than seeing construction costs go up and interest rates go up that we’ve seen. That’s very hard to overcome. But if let’s say the war in Ukraine doesn’t end very fast, or at least doesn’t just stay stagnant, but becomes something bigger or something goes into Europe deeper, these investors that I’d say in us, don’t you think they have European connections? You think they have companies in Europe, that’s when they pull back. That’s when they go, all right, I’m going to stay. There’s a lot of cash. Even Warren Buffet pulled a lot of cash. When people pull cash back, that’s when they are alert. That’s when they’re like, alright, what’s next?

I can’t tell what’s next. I’m in an endangered zone. That doesn’t help us at all. That’s when nobody goes shopping. Now what the dynamics are that when I see that happening? So when people run one way, you run the other, but people run out of the building. There’s a fire I run in the building. So my go-to on seasonal real estate, ups and downs, I call ’em, let’s go Christmas shopping. So why Christmas shopping? Because it’s fun to say that, but when is it? It’s in December. I always feel that December is the time to load up on unrealistic, why?

Everyone’s pulling out,

People are sleeping. Oh, Christmas spirit, blah, blah, blah. So I’m like, oh, great, good for me. Go hang out around the trees and I’ll go shopping. Why? Because I’m the only offer for the most part. So forced equity, very important to me. Sometimes it can be done because the property is so good, you’ll overpay that. But anytime I can get forced equity, but as they say, it depends on how you buy, right? So if we can get force equity at any moment, that’s good. How else do we maneuver? Sometimes there’s not a whole lot you can maneuver. It’s how you position yourself. So if let’s say I see banks are giving decent and cost on capital, you go to the banks, but if the banks are limited, do you pass on the deals? You see a great deal and you’re like, I wish I had a lender on this one. I wish I had an investor on this one. Times get tougher, you offer more to the investors. So my go-to is, if you don’t like it, what do you want? If you don’t like it, what do I do if this guy doesn’t do it? How can I trump that and get this done? Because at the end of the day, you can do nothing and get zero a goose egg or you do something and you make some money. Now

What about these times that are high interest rate, high cost and nobody wants to buy? Well, I think there’s an answer for everything because if people are not buying 3 million houses, then start selling 2 million houses. If your cost is going up, well welcome being a gc. You think it’s fun? It’s not. But I can control the cost better because I have relationships, I have resources. I have connections to China, Taiwan, Turkey, Mexico, and we import. Yes, there’s tariffs, but it’s still cheaper than buying from, I don’t know, home Depot or whoever. I say Home Depot because everybody knows Home Depot. But if I said some lumber yard, you wouldn’t know.

Sometimes we even make deals with Amazon. We make deals with local, I forget the company’s name, but they have a lot of construction, I forget. But it’s a company out of Boston that’s Nashville. So you have to just basically find out where to cut the cost and maneuver things. Sometimes we lock up properties that we don’t buy until we permit. So if you bought it today and then you go and permit the property, even a simple single family, it may take you three to four months around here. During that time, how much are you spending on interest alone and taxes and all that. So let’s say, look, I can offer you to buy this property for a hundred thousand dollars less today, or I’ll give you what you want, but you’re going to have to wait. Which one do you want now for force equity discount?

Or do you want to get what you want? But you’re going to have to wait for me? Always get the permit first because then I know I can count my days and on this project, and I know I can tell the investor, we are not going to be held up. I know I can pay you in this amount of time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think it just comes down to experience and really making it obviously make mistakes and you want to make sure you don’t make those mistakes again. But maneuvering and creating your own model.

For example, we’ve made it very clear to agents where agents that bring deals to us, I don’t go and look for deals, deals brought to me and now I’m knowing around the area that I’m a closer. I don’t mess around, but I also make sure that nobody messes around with me. If I go to see a property nine out of 10 times I buy, if I don’t buy it two times in a row, three times, four times in a row and you brought me to this property, I’m probably not going to work with you again. You’re wasting my time. So how do I mitigate that? I give my buy box. You basically have to deliver. You have to do the homework yourself. If you’re not doing the homework, you’re not qualified to do business with me. And if you’re qualified enough and you’re lazy, you’re not going to work with me either.

But if you deliver everything the way I say you need to deliver and not lazy and do it on time, and this is a great project with great outcome, you’re going to make a lot of money beside me. So that’s kind of the kind of agents I work with and how I navigate my time. The biggest thing, I think that real estate guys, I don’t know if I want to call it real estate investors. I think the term real estate investor is really overused. I’m not a real estate investor who a real estate investor is who just invest and sits there and doesn’t do anything. That’s an investor. I’m an active guy who puts up the money at risk to use value add through his construction experience and knowledge to come out with capital back recapitalizing it, making profit on it with capital gains, and then finding out how to not pay capital gains through qualified opportunity zone and showing that to investors how to do. That’s probably where, in a summary, what I would say I am. I think people are over estate, real estate investments. People say that I have three businesses and I’m like, and how many of ’em generate cash? One. So you don’t have three businesses, you just have three L Cs.

Yeah. And one of ’em makes money when it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it. How do you define the word success and how do you strive for it every day?

I think it goes back to what I said, strive not to be a success, but rather a value. So that’s what I strive to is I strive to be a value. I try to be generous to my clients. I try to be there for them when they need me. Have weekly meetings that give them a fresh breath of air to say, okay, we’re moving the project along. I literally open up with problems. These are the problems we have because I always try to address the problems first. I think problems to me are more important than success of a project because problems is what I fix every day. I get up to fix problems literally. So that’s where the value comes is fix the problems, provide value, peace of mind to the clients, make sure you’re telling them where over budget, but we are fixing it this way.

Have an answer right away. So that to me is what identifies success for the clients, for the client side. And then on the internal side, I think being a leader and showing you’re a leader and showing that if there’s a problem, you’ll fix it. Creating job security is probably my biggest awareness and one of my skills assets, I guess. I don’t know how to identify it, but one of my very important, if I had three apples in a bag, one of them would be job security and pipeline. Because if we have no work, we’ll go home. There’s no more business. So that’s hundred percent. Second, we don’t make profit. We just spin our wheels and why are we even here? And third, which is just as equally important, is if we’re not creating value for our clients, where are we going?

Why do they want to come back to us? Where are we so good? How does that make us different than any other hundred other similar GCs, real estate investors, fund managers, whatever. You want to put that on the table as a mix. I want to be different. I want to be maybe not the one, it’d be nice to be the one, but it’s a lot of work to be the one and sometimes just talent and skill. And some people come from second generation that a father that people say, oh, Trump had his father help him. Well, yeah, but he’s also very determined on what he wants to do. Elon Musk, his mother, gave him a laptop when she could have bought a couch. True smart mother, but he was also a gifted kid. We can keep going on others, but it takes a certain dedication to actually want to do this crap. I say Crap, I don’t mean it is, but as this figure of speech,

Some people get up and they say, I have a friend, let’s say call ’em successful for certain local minds. But I ask them, what are you doing today? He’s like, I don’t know, maybe I’ll go skiing. They’re like, it’s Wednesday. I say, yeah, it’s a good day to go skiing. He’s definitely set up. He has cashflowing business and some investments that are cashflowing, but he’s not me. He’s not looking to go build another $90 million project. He, he’s like, I don’t even know how you do this. He must be so much trust. I go, yeah, at some point it’s just the way it is. That’s what it is. So is it normal? It depends who’s talking, but it’s fun, it’s inspiring. It’s good to see what you’re capable of and maybe there’s some greatness in it at the end. Nobody guarantees it.

If you are going to restart today, the whole business that you have now is gone. You get to keep all the knowledge that you’ve learned over the years, but the actual business is gone money-wise. What you can keep would be enough to live comfortably for let’s say six months. What would you focus on first to rebuild

My mind because I failed. So I would take me at least a month to unplug what that looked like. I don’t know. I dunno if it’s travel or just lay in bed all day and look at the ceiling. I think it would be a mixture of creating a plan, but definitely at least two, three weeks to or a month to unplug. I would definitely cut the cost. I wouldn’t live comfortably because my clock is ticking and the bomb is at the end of six months, as you said, enough to live six months, and I would know that it takes capital to restart. So I would definitely restructure my spending. I don’t know if I would sell the house and move into an apartment, but that could be on the docket to get the value from where I would just start seeing the values. If I had an expensive car that is fully paid off, probably sell it right away because I can get it again. So I guess don’t hang on to things that are not your kid children. I’m not saying if I had a dog, I would sell the dog. I don’t want to feed ’em. That probably would be my last option. But I would probably cut the sushi and that kind of stuff. Still feed the dog. But I would be very conscious of having as much money as I can to restart, and I would’ve no choice but to restart. That’s who I am. I’m a businessman that failed.

But I think for me, I’ve had failures in 2007. They’re very devastating, very tough to come back. So I think if someone knows how it burns, they really want to stay as far as they can from that feeling. It’s not good. I was brought to my knees physically and mentally.

What drives you to keep moving forward? Keep pushing and keep innovating.

A certain style of life that you’re chasing you. It’s seeing that, I think that making your close family proud is important to me. I don’t want my mother to know that I ended up being a crack head, failed business and stuff like that. So that would not be something she would be proud of or me being proud of her being proud or wife, kids. I have two daughters that would say, what my dad is a failure. That’s something I could not live with or want them to say, my dad is a strong good father, blah, blah, blah, but today I’m busy. But my daughter said she doesn’t want to wear a helmet during her ice skating field trip of the private school that she goes to, and she said that if a parent is accommodating their child, the helmet might be waived. I could have been like, you know what? I got to go make money. You put the helmet on and shut up.

Which crossed my mind, but I said to myself, when are you going to get to actually skate with your daughter on her field trip when she grows up, number one? Number two, I said, I want to see how many more daddies are going to be there. Not just see if I’m the best dad, but I want to know how many people are actually able to car out their time that send the kids to school. That is very expensive, to say the least. And if they can remove themselves from their daily moneymaking life and their kid, I mean, it’s an example to me. As long as you don’t let the money become and mess with your family life, meaning you go and skip some important meeting and you went and skated with your daughter, you should have probably thought about that earlier, but don’t cancel it and upset somebody.

I think it’s a balance a little bit, but at the same time, you talk to a lot of high net worth people and they will say, there is no balance. And it’s true. There is no balance. You’re just like one day just going crazy One day. You’re just wondering if everything’s falling around you and you should know about it because why is the day so quiet? There’s some days that it’s so quiet. I’m like, is everything okay? Nobody texted me with any problem. Nobody called me. There’s not that many emails. Is this weird? Or maybe it’s success.

Yeah. Where can people learn more about you? Where can people connect with you? If someone’s interested in learning more, where can people find you?

Well, I’m on YouTube. You can see some of my videos to start, but if you want to skip that, I’m reachable by any of my websites that I have, which is nazar vincent.com. You can reach me there. You can reach me by my main mother of all company, avatar Construction, which is avatar construction inc.com. There’s contact info for me there. I’m on social media. I can be reached there on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, not on TikTok. I don’t know. Not a big, I guess I shouldn’t say I can’t be on all of them, but sometimes it gets overwhelming. This one and that one and this one. It’s just like, alright, enough is enough. I think LinkedIn is very important. Instagram depends on the business you’re in. Facebook depends on the business you’re in, but I think LinkedIn, everybody should be there.

Yeah, a hundred percent. I really appreciate you taking the time and coming on here today. Everyone, thank you for watching and we’ll see you next time.

I appreciate it.