RG 280 – Investing in Real Estate as a First-Generation Immigrant with Perry Zheng

Cash Flow Portal founder and CEO Perry Zheng is on the show with us this week. Join us as we talk about his journey from being a first-generation immigrant to a successful real estate syndicator, as well as how Cash Flow Portal came to be so successful in such a short amount of time.

Perry Zheng is the founder and CEO of Cash Flow Portal, a real estate syndication software that helps real estate syndicators raise money, streamline operations, and reach out to more investors. To date, they have over 1,500 units and have raised over $16 million dollars. Perry himself is a lead syndicator with 580 units in his portfolio. He was also a full-time engineering manager at Lyft just recently quit his day job to focus on real estate.

Perry is a first-generation immigrant who grew up in a hardworking family. Growing up, he realized that working smarter bears more fruit than working harder. After getting a good education, working his way up the career ladder, and creating Cash Flow Portal, Perry decided to pour his time into real estate—particularly syndications.

In this episode, Perry shares his insights on career growth, starting out in the real estate industry, and what it’s like to work towards success as an immigrant in the US. We also deep dive into how he built Cash Flow Portal, which is a relatively new company (but is already achieving 80% to 100% growth week-to-week), and how they managed to thrive in the middle of a global pandemic.

Key Takeaways

• Work smarter, not harder.

• You shouldn’t be looking too far into the future; don’t underestimate what you can do in the long term.

• Enjoy the journey; focus on what you can control.

• Networking is an important tool for education and building experience aside from making connections.

Be Bold, Be Brave and Go Give Life a Crack!

Reed Goossens (00:00):

Good. Hey guys. Now, before we dive into today’s show, I want you to let you know that some of you may be aware that over the past eight years, I have built a substantial multifamily real estate portfolio here in the us worth over half a billion dollars. And in that time, my passive investors have received fantastic double-digit returns. And now you too can invest directly into my deals for as little as $50,000. So if you’re an interested investor, head over to [inaudible] dot com to find out more that’s Reed goossens.com. Now back into the show,

Perry Zheng (00:40):

Your ambitions, uh, can grow. And, but you should not, you know, you should not be looking too far into the future. That’s my opinion. If you asked me six years ago, will I be, you know, syndicating 408 units and raise money in like 48 hours? I don’t even know what syndication was like six years ago. Right? So don’t think too ahead. People tend to overestimate what they can do in the next six months, but they underestimate how much they can do in five years. I had no idea, like You’re ambitious growth, so where you’re making more income. You’re like, okay, what is the next milestone, uh, where you making, doing better you’re sightseeing further, and you feel more comfortable about your cushion, right? Like you have better cushions.

Reed Goossens (01:38):

Welcome to investing in the US a podcast for real estate investors, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into the US market join Reed As he interviews go getters risk-takers and the best in the business about their journey towards financial freedom and the sheer joy of creating something from nothing

Reed Goossens (01:58):

Good. I get eight ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another cracking edition of investing in the US podcast from Los Angeles. I’m your host Reed Goossens good as always every with us on the show. Now, I’m glad that you’ve all tuned into learn from my incredible guests and each and every one of them are the cream of the crop here in the United States. When it comes to real estate, investing, business, investing, and entrepreneurship, each show, I try and tease out their incredible stories of how they have successfully created the businesses here in the US how they’ve created financial freedom, massive amounts of cashflow, and ultimately create extraordinary lives for themselves and their families life by design. As I like to say, hopefully these guests will inspire all of my cracking listeners, which are you guys to get off the couch and go and take massive amounts of action.

Reed Goossens (02:45):

If these guys can do it. So can you now, as you know, I’m all about sharing the knowledge with my loyal listeners, which is you guys, and there’s absolutely no BS on this show, just straight into the nuts and bolts. Now, if you do like this show, easiest way to give back is to give us a review on iTunes, and you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter by searching at Reed Goossens. You can find the show, every podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google play, but you can also find these episodes up on my YouTube channel. So head over to Reed goossens.com, click on the video link, and it’ll take you to the video recordings of these podcasts, and you can see my ugly mug of the beautiful faces of my guests each and every week. All right, enough of me let’s get cracking and into today’s

Speaker 2 (03:30):

[inaudible]

Reed Goossens (03:31):

During the show. I’ve the pleasure of speaking with Perry Zang Perry is the founder and CEO of the cashflow portal, a real estate syndication software, which has recently just started very, has actually studied his real estate syndication journey about three years ago. And today he has more than 1500 units. He’s raised over $16 million. And to top it all off, he’s the lead syndicator of over 580 units. His goal is to help other syndicated successfully and overcome challenges like raising capital and finding deals. Perry is also a full-time engineer manager at Lyft, and he’s previously worked at Twitter and Amazon. I’m really excited to have him on the show today to share his incredible story with us, but nothing really let’s get him out here today. Perry, welcome to the show. How are you today, mate?

Perry Zheng (04:13):

Thank you. Appreciate it. Really happy to be on the show.

Reed Goossens (04:16):

Well, it’s absolutely awesome. And we were talking a little bit in the green room, so you live in Seattle right now. Awesome. We’re living cell and I just heard you, you just have, you just told me, you have successfully just recently left your day job, so well done.

Perry Zheng (04:31):

Thank you. Thank you. People always congratulate me on living the Dasia Odyssey. It’s a bit risk because it’s a golden handcuff working in the tech industry. So I actually felt a lot of trepidation of leaving the job.

Reed Goossens (04:46):

I could imagine it. I could imagine. And we’re going to get into that in a little bit more depth, a little bit later on, but I start the show by asking all my guests the same question. Can you rewind the clock and tell me how you make your first ever dollar as a kid?

Perry Zheng (04:59):

The question I came to America when I was 11 years old, the very first daughter, I felt like that my mom told me that I was kind of smart was that there was this game that was played outside of my mom’s workplace. And the idea is that if you draw a line [inaudible] boss and then if there are the same color or same shape or whatnot, that you wouldn’t ask the mountains, if you overdraw more than five marbles, a boss that you, um, you, you do it all over again. So somehow I was able to figure out that if I’m not on the path to achieve the same shape of St Kotter, I overdo it. So I kind of had the game. So I ended up winning every single time. And they’re like, you’re not allowed to play anymore. It’s not a business venture or by any stretch of imagination.

Perry Zheng (05:49):

But I felt like that was the first time that maybe my mom thought, okay, this kid is kind of smart. So that’s why as a kid now my first actual daughter is actually an hour after we came to America, my parents had a Chinese restaurant. So I was like, you know, doing everything for the restaurant, you know, like, wait a waiter, you know, like a cashier, uh, everything. So yeah. Um, I tend to clean, didn’t get paid because I was just helping my parents. So I don’t have a Saturday or anything like that, but that’s, I always do some advertising for them and so on. Um, so that’s, uh, when I was in high school, um, and then, uh, I didn’t work in college. I only do a teaching, a system and a research assistant in college. And that was also a really, really fun time. But my actual daughter is I’ll try and left my, uh, left college and earned my first paycheck as a software engineer. But I think the thing I bought his iPhone right after I got my first paycheck, I did not buy a car.

Reed Goossens (06:50):

Well, being growing up in the tech world, I think you’d have the first thing you have to buy the right of passage is buying the iPhone. But, but let’s talk about your upbringing a little bit, because it’s obviously really interesting you coming from work. When did you, when did you immigrate

Perry Zheng (07:02):

From,

Reed Goossens (07:04):

And where did you come from originally? China, China. China. So how was it growing up in America? Very much. It sounds like you had that hard working immigrant type of family ethic, you know, helping mom and dad or with the, with the chores, not getting paid for it. So how did that help lay the foundations for being well rounded, being well minded about financial freedom and, and going off and trying to achieve the American dream. So to speak.

Perry Zheng (07:32):

Good, good question. Obviously this can go on and on. Um, my parents are very hardworking and it’s just being taught. I feel like people are creatures of habit. And if you are conditioned to work hard, you just naturally work hard. And so I think I work hard. That’s like, that’s the easy part. I think the part that I was struggling with as a high scooter is how to work smarter. So my parents were too hardworking. They work like 364 days a year. The only day they take off is that skimming. So every year I know Thanksgiving is the time that our restaurant doesn’t open. Um, and so that’s the only day they’d have off. So when I become a software engineer and a engineer manager, uh, hard work was never the problem. Uh, the, the trick is to be able to multiply myself and be able to work smarter. Um, and so I got the, my family conditioned myself to just put into hours and then I nerve from, you know, cottage, a good cottage and a good accompanies to work smarter, be more productive. Okay.

Reed Goossens (08:45):

That’s an interesting point because so many people, you know, it’s a generational thing, right. And obviously a cultural thing I know growing up in Australia was, you know, I grew up with blue collar parents, you know, both high school teachers. They didn’t, they didn’t earn a lot of money, but they always instilled in me the value of a dollar. Right. And always being to your point is hard work. Isn’t the issue it’s working smart. So when was that first time that you thought I need to work smarter? Not harder.

Perry Zheng (09:14):

Ah, yeah. Good question. I think it’s very similar to your story actually. So my dad was a high school teacher. He taught geometry and his Chinese history. Uh, the first time I wanted to work smarter, it was ultra reading the rich up, uh, very similar to your story. And then after listening to the bigger pockets podcast, that’s when I realized I, yes, I work at a W2 job, but ultimately I’m working for myself. And so, you know, I, it doesn’t mean I’ll become lazier at work. In fact, I work harder at work because that kind of doing well at work, dries every other part of my life. Right. If I feel crappy that I did a bad job at work, actually don’t feel motivated to work on everything else. Uh, so I learned that, uh, pretty, uh, pretty quickly that, uh, I would rather be a workaholic and put in like 50 hours at work and then putting 20 more hours on my real estate, then trying to say, oh, I’m going to work 30 hours pass by. And then I will spend 40 hours in real estate. It turned out that psychologically, emotionally, that actually doesn’t work in my case because I will feel crappy that I didn’t do a good job in the most basic thing. I actually don’t have energy to work on real estate anyway. So

Reed Goossens (10:31):

That would be, that’d be a lot of your conditioning, uh, bringing up in an immigrant family, right? Like just having that sense of pride in your work, regardless of what you’re doing. Even if you want to leave and you have one foot out the door, you still just want to do a good job. Right. I, I definitely resonate with that. I, I was very similar in my W2 job before leaving. It was like, I don’t want to burn any bridges. Right. I don’t want to be viewed as, or judged that I did a bad job because I’m goofing off or, you know, making it easy for myself. So I definitely assimilate with you in terms of that type of analogy of, of you not wanting to, to ever let people down, I think is probably the big thing. Um, but Perry, telly Perry, when did the bug of real estate, you might, you mentioned Richard Porter, but how, how long ago was that and where, where did you start scratching the surface to, to, to want to do more

Perry Zheng (11:21):

First primary residence in San Francisco is a condo in San Francisco back in 2015. And so it’s only like six years ago. Um, then I caught the bug, um, with reached that point that I tried to buy another house in San Francisco find that the, the, the, the, the numbers just don’t work. So I moved back to Seattle and start doing house hockey. So I bought a single family house, how five rooms rent out the four live in one of them. And then nine months later, I bought another one, nine months later, I bought one. I just kept buying. And then over the course of last six years, uh, I have about, uh, seven single families. Um, all of them are house hockey except for two, which are Airbnb’s,

Reed Goossens (12:09):

That’s incredible, well done, mate. That’s and that’s a great story. And a example of people who listening to this, that you can go out and make it happen. So what we through some of the basic numbers of that house hacking it in the early days. And again, I guess it wasn’t early because it’s only less than five years ago. So it was probably house prices was still been skyrocketing in Seattle, but how did you make that work? What was the sort of rough numbers?

Perry Zheng (12:31):

Yeah, so the first property that I purchased without coming, visiting back to Seattle, I was just buying it online because I know while Seattle looks like it’s a 415 K uh, purchase price, uh, I did about 10% down. Uh, so I did have to pay the PMI, which is totally fine because the numbers do work. Uh, each bedroom rents for about $750. Uh, I live in, uh, one of them. So four times 7,750 is 3000. Uh, my monthly at the interest rate is 3.6, 5% at the time. So my monthly payment is at 2300 of 2,400, um, uh, including my rent, if I, if you count back. So I was basically living there, not just for free, but also make like a hundred bucks a month.

Reed Goossens (13:21):

That is awesome. And then how did you then go to Skyland? So what, what, w what was the point in which you, because you said you did six of them, or four of them, I think, when did you move to the next one and indeed just sell the first one, or do you,

Perry Zheng (13:33):

Um, one of my competitive advantages is I worked in a pre IPO company. And so there are a lot of luck involved as well. Like I have a high income I’m doing what I, my job, uh, I’m a good soft engineer. Uh, I hope, um, um, so I can keep buying houses almost. Um, now, uh, one thing I think audience is important to know is your ambitions, uh, can grow. And, but you should not, you know, you should not be looking too far into the future. That’s my opinion. If you asked me six years ago, will I be syndicating a 408 units and raise money in like 48 hours? I don’t even know what syndication was like six years ago. Right. So don’t think too ahead. People tend to overestimate what they can do in the next six months, but they underestimate how much they can do in five years. I had no idea

Perry Zheng (14:32):

Your ambitious growth, so where you’re making more income. You’re like, okay, what is the next milestone? What are you making doing better? You’ll start seeing further, and you feel more comfortable about your cushion, right? Like you have better cushion. So, uh, in my case, you know, the second property I still bought it. And then third one, not, I just, I didn’t just buy a single family. I also, uh, bought a seven unit with my business partner, uh, that we met on bigger pockets in Tacoma. So that’s, that’s a first call uncle syndication. Um, we, um, pull together some money from my previous coworker. And so, um, uh, to buy this $540,000, you know, seven unit in Tacoma, Washington, right. I’ll put in 150K or renovation and then sold it 18 months later for 900 kids. So they may about 60% return. Right. So that gave me like, okay, well, I can, I guess I can do this.

Perry Zheng (15:30):

Um, so then I went after the bigger properties, uh, a bigger enough deal. And that’s when I realized that, oh, wow, I’m like a small fish in a big pond. And these people are doing are hundreds of millions. And so that’s when I seek out a mentorship group to further my education and to build that network. So like, I have no idea about this mentorship group, you know, until then it’s only proven by reality and realize that, okay, this is the next step. So I always focus on the next step. Don’t focus too far, but then always take the action to get to the next step.

Reed Goossens (16:07):

My, you said it so well. And I think that’s, I talk a lot about I’m in the same boat, right? I moved to this country 10 years ago. I had no idea. I mean, sitting here on this podcast, talking to you about real estate investing and sit like when I’m 45 and 10 years time, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing then. And that’s, that’s the beauty of, you got to let go of the, so sometimes when you have goals, the goals are set with time and rather than goals maybe have targets. So, you know, because someone said to me one time, does it matter when you’re sitting at 70 years of age with your grandkids? Does it matter if you got 2000 units in 2018 or 5,000 units in 2020, or does it matter to them? And that the answer is no, the answer is that it doesn’t matter to them.

Reed Goossens (16:49):

So enjoy the journey and stop stressing about what’s going to happen in 10 years time, which is out of your control anyway, just do what you can control it. And I love what you said, one foot in front of the other, and it’s very much, it sounds like your, your, your, your story is in and around, figuring it out. Like, you know, you’ve had to, your parents moved to this country. They figured it out. They started a restaurant. You helped them. They figured it out. You figured it out getting to university. And you’re figuring out about, you know, education, rich dad, poor dad. And then you’re getting into your first deal, then second and third deal. And it’s just these incredible stories that I love. And you can clearly tell them, jazzed about it. Then people like yourself, immigrants like yourself, like myself, they come here and they can make it happen. Because they’re curious when you’re curious about something, you will follow the bread crumbs, and it will lead from one point to another. So bloody awesome mate, bloody, bloody ripper, ripper of a story. Now tell me when you got into the mentorship program, what was, why did you need to go down that path of Miller?

Perry Zheng (17:46):

Um, we do not need the education. I’ll tell you straight up. Uh, I think we knew how to underwrite. We know the spreadsheets, what we need is the networking. Uh, we need kind of these like little hints here and there details about who’s the best probably mentioned the company. Who’s the best contractor who should I use for due diligence, especially if they’re focusing the Dallas market, right. That kind of information is king for us. Um, I probably did a note that when I went in, I just knew that, okay, I don’t have information, so I want to get more information. I don’t mind paying for it. The other way that I rationalized myself is we lost the bid on a 20 unit in Seattle. And that was a $3.2million. We could have paid 3.25K, a 50K more to win that deal. And I thought to myself, if I’ve got to pay 50K more, why don’t I pay that 50K 25K each, between me and my business partner for a true education and a true network, someone standing behind our back too.

Perry Zheng (18:53):

And when we talked to the brokers was that we are part of this program so they can take us seriously. Right. So that’s one way in terms of money. It sounds like if you’re paid out for the real estate, you must have paid for the education. And then third one is kind of this network for both KPS, you know, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has this, uh, uh, experience requirements and so on. So, uh, just for that network, both investors and co-sponsors as well as KPIs. Um, that’s also something I didn’t really know. Um, but I kind of have a hint that that’s important and if it doesn’t work fine, um, I’m not, uh, I will not be like so sad that, that, that money is nice, but it’s not like it’s not a big part of my liquidity at the time. So again, when you have more, you see higher and you are less worrisome about these like little daughters. I wanna

Reed Goossens (19:45):

No, that’s it. And it’s a good example of how you’ve lost you lost on a deal, but that you could have won it with the extra 50K. Right. And I’m sure if you had that person in your court at that point, you would have over not overpaid, but you would have paid that extra 50K it’d be like, at the end of the day, this is this $50,000 on a $3 million deal is not going to mean anything. Right. We’re going to sell it for four or five, $6 million in time. So, yeah, so, so important. And then the, the, the benefit about being around other people that you can get the little tidbits from, okay. Who do you think is the right property manager or the contractor? It’s just so powerful. And that’s the beauty of these networks. And I don’t know if, what it’s like in China, but in Australia, we didn’t, I didn’t have access to this one.

Reed Goossens (20:27):

Like I was not like I went to one real estate investing club in Australia and it just happened to be in my local city. But when I came here to see these guru gurus and real estate investment associations and its plethora of, of networking at your fingertips, I’m like, I see no 10 these more, and I’m going to learn something. Right. And, and, and to your point, you’ve done exactly that. So that’s fricking, it’s frigging. Awesome. Um, let’s pivot a little bit here because I now talk about your new business, your new venture. You have a tech background. You’ve obviously been in companies with pre pre IPO. What are you doing now? And how are you trying to blow that up? And we’ll talk a little bit about, you know, the transition you’ve just recently made.

Perry Zheng (21:09):

Yeah. Yeah. I’m talking of getting traction. The company is definitely gaining traction. It’s, uh, you know, asked me five years ago. I will never no idea that I will be building a company right now. Um, and it’s also the natural progression. Um, we did our first reassessed indication in 2019, and that’s 172 units. Um, and I wanted to build a software for investors to be able to subscribe to a deal with a click of a button, similar to like instant checkout on Amazon. Right. It should be really fast. It should be legally compliant and it should be very secure like these other basics, uh, at the time the pricing model for the software there is, you know, you’ll have to pay $1,200 a month for a software like that for up to five days. So if you have one deal, you kind of out of luck, that was the pricing model back there.

Perry Zheng (21:59):

Right. So I said, you know, none of this is really that hard. I can do something like that. Obviously it does now you’ve tasted speaking. Um, so I say, I want to do it, um, uh, you know, time passed by. It’s been in my mind for a year and then the pandemic hits, um, people ask, you know, what’s the hobby that you picked up during the pandemic? And my hobby is I started a company, that’s my hobby. Uh, and you know, I do want to like pause here. And so I give credit to like, to lock a well, like, uh, there are like many lucky moments during the pandemic. The first one is because of the pandemic, the stock price was going down, uh, engineers were freaking out. So I was able to hire some really good engineers at a relatively affordable salary. Right. So that’s the part that’s lucky.

Perry Zheng (22:48):

The second part is the first engineer I hire was actually really good. The next 20 engineers that I interview kind of all were not that good. So I got lucky in the sense big, because if that first engineer was the 21st engineer, that interview, I probably have given up at that like, oh, this is too hard. And then the last one is just because of the pandemic. People are not going out. Like for them, it is a very bad thing, you know, for, for society. And I do. So the silver lining in my case that because I’m not going out, I hang out with friends, I’m kind of forced to be able to have time to work on the startup. Right. If, if, if I’m not people all going out to dinner, I probably will not have that much time. So, um, so these are the three things that I did appreciate, um, that like the opportunity gives rise to the fact that I can create a company

Reed Goossens (23:43):

For those of you who are interested in staying up to date with all the latest happenings in my business, or to learn more about passively investing directly into my multi-family value, add deals, then head on to [inaudible] dot com and sign up for my monthly newsletter by signing up, you’ll automatically be notified about my new up-and-coming investment opportunities. You’ll be able to stay up to date with all the latest real estate news here in the United States, and much, much more so head over to Reedgoossens.com and sign up today now back into the show.

Reed Goossens (24:20):

And I love that. And I think that’s so important to, to, to, to pay homage to the lucky moments you have because hiring people and hiring tens, you know, 10 out of tens. Yeah, you’re right. If you didn’t, if you got to 21, you’d be like, screw this, I’m giving up. But it was the night. It was the first person out of the gate. Um, I’m really intrigued about software because my whole thing is business ecosystems, right? Like multi-family is the foundation, but having the property management company, having all the other vertical integrations and now software coming involved with it, which as, you know, being a software guy, real estate is pretty much in the wild, wild west. Like it is, it is so archaic compared to everything else we do. So tell me how, how are you competing? Cause there’s been a lot of flood to market of the deal room, you know, um, crowd street is, is it IMS? I think it is like, there’s so many right now in the space. Are you trying to differentiate yourself with your company? Because you mentioned some of the things that I struggle with, I hate paying 1200 bucks a month, right? And particularly for those startup syndicators who they only have one or two deals, they don’t want to pay that much money. So what are you doing to be different?

Perry Zheng (25:30):

Good question. So there are many, many ways of saying, uh, answering the question. Uh, one thing I want to say is, uh, people think that there are a lot of competitors in the space and I’m a calmer, I no longer have that kind of fear in the last two or three weeks. Uh, and the way I explain that is, you know, the syndication didn’t happen until 2012 and didn’t really become something that’s like, you know, people know about it until 2014 and 2015. So it’s only been picking up in the last five years, right? Imagine like 10 30, 1 exchange and bonus depreciation, all that stuff, right? Like they have been there for a long, but pretty long time, 10 31 check. So we are still in the very early stages and there are already so many companies competing. That’s a good sign. The market is probably in the second out of the 10 intense in terms of its maturity level, right.

Perry Zheng (26:28):

There are a lot of companies buying the next 10 or 20 years. I think two or three people are going to two or three companies are going to dominate. So I’m not late. That’s the first mindset, which I didn’t believe like, uh, like if, if I start a, a year and a half ago, I fell, I was too late, but not, I should don’t feel like the second thing in which I felt like from a personal perspective is at the end of the day, uh, building a software company, the hardest part of it is the fricking software. And here’s honestly, there’s a reason that Silicon valley engineers got paced so much, right? There’s there’s, there are levels to the craft. I felt like because of my training, things that are, that I think are broken on my website that I need to, I will tell the engineers to fix the next day.

Perry Zheng (27:22):

It felt like those bucks were not getting fixed at all, and we’re not getting the attention that they deserve in the competitors. So that attention to detail and it fixing things and making it better, it felt like that would take it for granted accompanies. I live in Amazon, but it’s not being, getting the same attention being our competitor. That gave me a lot of hope that one day, if we do a, like, if the software is genuinely good and better at equilibrium, we can succeed. So that’s sort of very meta point. So those are the two matter points is that it’s due still, already in the, in the cycle of reassess indication. And second that we don’t know who will be the winners yet. Um, in terms of the concrete points, uh, we are growing 80% to a hundred percent week over week. So we really, really proud of that.

Perry Zheng (28:13):

And every customer that has used us has given us growing, uh, reviews and the easiest software to use. It’s very, very easy to understand or the terms make sense. Well, yeah, that makes sense. Because I spent a lot of time thinking about the conceptual design of the software. Right. What does it mean to, um, like the status, the stages of investment, right. Going from soft commitment documents, signing started to wire instructions sent to countersign wire instructions set, and then to wire receive that kind of like host stages or make sense, uh, how are we different specifically? Uh, there are a lot of like feature level differences and there are also like company DNA differences, uh, from a feature level. Uh, uh, we are, I think we are the easiest to use, uh, is speaks to the syndicator. They’re like, oh, I get it because that’s how I think about each deal, but there’s not a lot of fluff.

Perry Zheng (29:12):

Um, it’s, uh, it’s also, um, it has really nice features like, uh, the investors can go on there and subscribe within five minutes because they, everything is laid out for them. You can export your exhibit, a with a click of a button. You can generate this entire audit documents, as well as the signature pages with a click of a button you can integrate with your bank account so that you know, who has wired the money. And so that you don’t have to check the bank account, go back to the portal to mark, which people have submitted the is so early in this journey that I think there are so many things that we haven’t done. People love the softwares right now because it’s a 10 X improvement over the spreadsheets, but there’s another 10X improvement to go on top of the software. Yes. Oh, I don’t want to switch because it’s already really good. Yes. It’s really good when Gmail first came out, but then later Gmail is 10X better than the first genius, guaranteed. That

Reed Goossens (30:14):

It’s interesting. You bring this up because I was, um, one of the first beta users of investor deal room, which just assault, uh, to raise men. Uh, I know the guys over there very, very well, and I hope, you know, somewhat as a, as a beta test to user and knowing as a syndicator, what I need, but there’s, you know, like anything, there was those growing pains. And so I’d be interested. We can talk offline, um, but about, you know, that experience and you know, I’m not a software guy, but I’m, I’m a user and I’m a syndicated. So I know I know what I need to do. And to your point, things should get better. Right. It shouldn’t just be, you don’t just settle for, oh, it works. Now we finally spent six iterations getting it to where it is and amylase, oh, it’s good enough. Let’s, let’s move on. I think iron sharpens iron, and you need to always be improving. So, so it’s, it’s, it’s really, really awesome. What is the name of the company? Where do people go if they want to listen to find a little bit more about that,

Perry Zheng (31:04):

But it is called cash flow portal? Uh, not that I am full-time, um, uh, it’s, it’s an incredible, right. Like I built this software the last, uh, year and a half, um, as a part-time job, basically I was the CEO founder. Um, we have a team of, uh, eight engineers, uh, a total team of 10 people build on that team. Um, they’re all like good engineers, um, like see some soft engineers in, uh, north America. And so that’s really good. Uh, yeah, it’s called cashflow portal. Uh, it’s also the easiest to get started. Uh, you don’t have to talk to a salesperson to get started on registry and creating your first deal. Uh, some customers have told us that, you know, I hate it when I submit a proposal, they get back to me three months, three weeks later with, I hope he here’s the link to try it out, just give me the software, let me play it. And I’ll talk to a sales person. So, um, yeah, hotspot, MailChimp all work the way that you just sign up. Right. Uh, so yeah. Yeah. Casual portal, uh, feel free to check it out, check out our blocks, um, sign up and I will, you know, if you have questions, get in touch with

Reed Goossens (32:11):

Awesome. Awesome. Well, as we come to the end of the show, uh, I like to ask, you know, what’s the future hold we spoke earlier about, you know, stop stressing on the, on the, on the big picture. So what, what’s it hold for you?

Perry Zheng (32:24):

I think one of the biggest problems right now that the syndicators have is how do they raise enough money? And one of the biggest problem that I know that my friends have is they capital, you know, their assets have appreciated and they honestly do not know how to invest that money for consistent and reliable returns. It’s a double edged sword, right? You think that rich people have it so easy, but that should really constantly worry about how to allocate their assets. And the problem is they don’t know who are the best indicators. They know me. I only have one deal once every like a year, because I’m not really want to identify myself as a full-time real estate syndicator. That’s not exactly my passion. Right. I’m good. I’m ready to have a good on it, but that’s not what I want to do. Full-time. So how do they know who are the best indicators that can go to people’s websites, but what does that website really tell that everyone’s website looks to say, who is to say that they have a better chat record or whatnot?

Perry Zheng (33:26):

So there’s a lot of need for information and transparency and kind of like almost a marketplace, the equivalent of IMD before reassess indication of like checking out who is good and who’s not good. That’s a very bold move. That’s going to unearth a lot of syndicators. I totally agree with that. Buy things. That’s, you know, 10, 5, 10 years from now. I do see there’s gotta be a equivalent of the Airbnb of reassessed indication. Um, because this is a, still a very young industry. It’s only been less, it’s been less than 10 years. Uh, so that’s what I think that’s the trend I want to get ahead of it. Uh, even if I felt it’s okay, because I do think that’s a real problem.

Reed Goossens (34:10):

Awesome. I love it. I completely agree with all that you all you’re saying, having a right syndicator and also kudos to you, man, for understanding what your strengths are. You, you, you, you you’re, you’re in the syndication space, you’ve done a few deals, but you also know that maybe this is not my strong, like, you know, my passion and that’s okay, but I can create systems around it to aid others who are better. And that is important. And so well done for that. Uh, so your cashflow portal, I think it’s the cashflowportal.com. I would imagine awesome chat, uh, at the end of every show, but lots of get into the top five investing tips, ready to get into

Perry Zheng (34:51):

It. Let’s go into

Reed Goossens (34:53):

What is the daily habit you practice to keep on track towards your goals?

Perry Zheng (34:57):

I have a checklist of all the things I want to do. I don’t really prioritize. I just write them down. So that’s out of my system. The other one is I like to walk a lot. I usually walk about an hour after work just for things to settle down and think, um, that is definitely, uh, the defining characteristic of, of my daily habit, uh, walk.

Reed Goossens (35:19):

Awesome. Awesome. I love that. Um, who, who’s the most influential person in your career to date?

Perry Zheng (35:26):

I honestly may have to give it to my previous director. I live, um, P is, uh, he’s a direct entry and director at a different company. Now I think so someone who really believe in you, so in our first indication, 172 units, she was actually a KP under syndication. He was a KP because he knew how I was as an employee, as a manager. And so he really believed in me and having someone who really believe in you and put like, you know, that much money into your do that, say something. That’s just like a lot of people invest in the first year because he invested. So I owed it a lot to him. Uh, we got to raise money. So for the startup, and I want to give this opportunity to all the people who, who take the chest on the first deal. And the first deal is doing really well, like a hundred percent return in two years at this point. Uh, so, so that’s good. So yeah, I want to also carry that forward to really believe in people when they don’t really believe in themselves yet. And so, yeah.

Reed Goossens (36:30):

Awesome. Love it. Love. And it’s so important to have that belief early on because getting that first deal done, he knew you personally, and it’s such a good lesson. So awesome stuff. Question number three is what is the most influential tool in your business? When I say tool, it could be physical tool, like a phone or notebook, or it could be a piece of software. So what is

Perry Zheng (36:48):

Besides cashflow portal? I use, uh, one note, uh, to keep track of my daily tasks. I really like one password to keep track of all my passwords. So please do gap one password don’t like memorize your passwords. Um, I’ll I think those are the two tools that I use very consistently,

Reed Goossens (37:08):

Uh, question before is in one sentence, what’s been the biggest failure in your career and what’d you learn from that failure?

Perry Zheng (37:14):

Um, for real estate, I think one of the biggest parts is we underestimate the renovation budget. Uh, I put in the money to, uh, to float the property. And then after we did the renovation, we got the money back. So it was okay. And what I learned, uh, two things is if you really believe in a deal, you just make it work. I didn’t ask my investor for like, uh, extra money or anything. Uh, and now I got all my money back. Um, and second is, you know, be more realistic about the renovation budget.

Reed Goossens (37:48):

Exactly. And that goes back to having a good network around you to advise you. I love that, love that, and that you, you, you learned from your mistakes, final question mate, where can people reach you to continue the conversation they want to be in your sphere? Where do they go?

Perry Zheng (38:01):

No cash flow portal.com or you can email me at Perry at cash flow.

Reed Goossens (38:09):

Awesome, mate. Well, look, I want to thank you so much for jumping on today’s show. I really just want to repeat back some of the incredible things that I took away from today’s show firstly, you know, immigration, immigrant, heart mindset, hardworking down to worth humble, all those things that I definitely, you know, um, assimilate with you on and having that add on top of the, you know, language barrier as well, which I’d show that would be even really difficult as coming to, to the United States. But then also being curious about what you want in life. I think that was the biggest takeaway today. You’re constantly challenging yourself to, to be more, to work smarter, but also not, you know, not give up on your dreams and, and also be realistic about where you’re headed and just take the first step. It doesn’t, don’t worry about step 10 or 12 or 15, just take the first step and then back around to what you said about the no fear around a space that I thought was really interesting that you said, you think it’s a two out of 10 right now in the online syndication portal.

Reed Goossens (39:07):

I’m using word portal in quotes space because you know, I’ve got a lot of experience in as well being an early adopter, but I think it’s, it’s, it’s probably, you’re probably true. We were early in that stage and having a, like a, a goal to get to an IMD, be equivalent of syndication is super interesting to me. And I’m really excited to, to see you grow, man, and I’m going to watch from the sidelines, but did I leave anything out?

Perry Zheng (39:29):

No, this is the thank you. Uh, I can see that you also very curious person and that’s a really good summary. Thank you.

Reed Goossens (39:36):

Awesome, man. Well, look again, thank you so much for jumping on today’s show. Enjoy the rest of your week and we will catch up very, very soon. Well, they haven’t another cracking episode jam pack with some incredible advice from Perry. Please do go check him out@cashflowportal.com. It’s perry@cashflowportal.com and for his email. Um, I just, you know, if you have any questions for him, he’s such an intelligent guy, who’s doing a lot of cool things in the space and he’s doing it all by himself. You know, he’s going to build, build something from scratch. It’s really, really impressive. Go check him out. I want to thank you all for taking some time out of your day to tune in, to continue to grow your financial IQ. If you do like this show, the easiest way to give back is to give it a five star review on iTunes. Any if you’re interested in investing in any of my deals, please head over to reduces.com and click on the investment free button. And we’re going to do this all again next week. So remember be bold, be brave and go give life a crack.