Ep #576 – MFRS – From College Dropout to over 300 Doors

Pasha Esfandairy has a very interesting path. After dropping out of college to pursue professional poker, he soon started flipping homes. He quickly realized that the leverage that multifamily real estate provides was for him and he went ‘all in’.

Here’s some of the topics we covered:

  • The value of emotional intelligence
  • Going it alone in multifamily
  • The power of people to accelerate your results
  • Building relationships
  • Life’s biggest lessons
  • Power moves to those who serve
  •  Setting up benchmarks
  • The value in giving back

To find out more about our guest:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pasha-esfandiary-a7695496/ 

Full Transcript Below:

Rod
Welcome back to Multifamily Rock Stars. So as you know, this is where we interview people that are freaking crushing it in this business and of course, in their lives as well. And this is a real treat for me today because the gentleman we’re interviewing today is actually a friend of mine. And, you know, but this is the show where we show you guys the inside scoop into how multifamily investors are creating massive success in their business. As always, I’ve got my co-host, who’s a director of our massive action team for our Warrior mentorship program on the call, Mark Nagy. Mark, what’s up, brother? What’s got you excited?

Mark
Well, just as a reminder for the listeners, I’m always excited about these calls because we actually get to hear from students that are just regular people that are changing their lives. So I tell people, pay attention to these ones, but especially today, since we’re going to dig deep into some mindset stuff and that’s always got me tingle and excited.

Rod
Love it, love it, love it. So my guest today, again, is a friend. His name is Pasha Esfandairy. And Pasha is just a very, very cool guy. So we’re going have a lot of fun today. Welcome to the show, brother.

Pasha
Thank you. I’m really excited to be on here. Thanks for getting me on.

Rod
Absolutely. So, you know, to give us a little background on you, if you would. That’s kind of how we start these things. So if you wouldn’t mind just, you know, talking a little bit about your journey and who you are and where you came from and what you love and just take it anywhere you want to take it, brother.

Pasha
I always get a little funny asking these questions. But yeah, let me start off. I definitely feel when I reevaluate my life that I’ve had a different path than most. You know, I really don’t go to college. After high school, I was almost a high school dropout, went to college for a semester, dropped out. I just was searching for my path and I ended up falling into playing poker professionally. But I played poker professionally for about five years. And that was really fun as a kid. I mean, being 21, traveling the world and playing poker professionally was awesome. When I was about 25, 26, I really understood that this lifestyle wasn’t for me. I’ve always wanted to get into real estate. I knew it was my passion and my dream. And so what I did is I ended up doing an internship for free. I met somebody, I did an internship, I did it for three months. I just shadowed this man and he was, he’s the best. He’s like my uncle to this day. And he taught me how to flip homes. And so I did that in L.A. I went back to Vegas where I was living, and I flipped my first mobile home about 10 years ago. Made all the mistakes you could freak and think about. I don’t renovate the right things and whatnot, but I still made a little bit of money and man Rod, that’s where I got my hitch. And I just was all in head first into as many homes as I could flip.

Rod
Well, let me interrupt for one second. I forgot to mention on your bio, so Pasha owns 300, excuse me, Pasha owns 300 doors, multifamily doors himself, doesn’t have any partners or syndication or anything like that. And another 80 under contract. I think you’re thinking about maybe syndicating here in a bit, but that’s all been on your own, so I forgot to give you that accolade. But please continue. So you were flipping houses where you go from there.

Pasha
Flipping houses, then my wife wanted to move to L.A. to pursue her acting career at the time. So we moved to L.A. and I quickly realized that I’m just a really small fish in a much bigger ocean here. And then I said, okay, well, where’s there’s less competition? Where can I make more of a margin? And I started getting into development and that worked out really well for me. Obviously, all the pain and mistakes that I made there, too. And then I want to say about almost two and a half, three years ago, I was like, I really need to get a multifamily. And one thing about me, is I’m always about who can I seek out to give me the best education. You know, I lived that my whole life, just like, well, into my time. I’ll still do it now if I need to. And then I ended up stumbling onto from a recommendation from a friend, a mutual friend to your program. And that’s where I learned everything. I said, oh my God, I could do this. I love this. And I want to say for about the next year, I just started learning about it, kept my development projects going and, I was like, you know what? It’s time. You know, Covid happened, learned all the lessons, I said, you know what? It’s time to get into this. Let me accelerate what I really want to be doing. And I just hit the ground running. I mean, I made a full commitment this year. And, yeah, we have 300 already locked down and I have another 80 in contract already.

Rod
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, you know, let me ask you this question, because I know you’ve got a beautiful bride. She’s a sweetheart. And what have you had to sacrifice, if anything, maybe nothing, but what have you had to sacrifice for this success?

Pasha
You know, I’m really– you gave me chills as you asked that, because, you know, if you meet me now, I’m a very outgoing, fun guy or I hope at least, you know. But what a lot of people don’t see is that the three days in a row that I stayed up playing poker and flipping homes back in Vegas. The part that my wife supported us completely, I still have chills talking about it. You know, there was a good six, eight period that I never spent a dollar. I just put it back into everything that I was doing. And someone my age was 38. I mean, these are prime times to go out and enjoy. That’s a lot of what a lot of people do not see. They just see what they see now and they’re like, oh, you have such a great life. I’m like, yeah but you don’t see the three days in a row where I went to poker, then the real estate and I wouldn’t sleep, so committed to my vision completely.

Rod
Yeah. And money as well. Yeah.

Mark
What do you think Pasha is one of the most like worthwhile investments that you have made? It could be time, it could be people, it can be knowledge.

Pasha
My wife know for sure. My wife, I mean, my wife is my everything. She’s utterly amazing. But there’s so much to say. But I will say the number one thing that I feel very blessed for in my life is that, you know, when I was 26, 25, I wanted to get out of poker and I wanted to get into my future, which is real estate and building a business for myself. I joined in Emotional Intelligence Course and I just said, oh my gosh, this is unlocking so much of me. And I like to look at my life on a continuum of like ten year blocks. Right. And I said, hey, okay, you know, in ten years I want to be up here. I’m okay with sacrificing two years of just continual education, emotional intelligence, personal development, Tony Robbins, just getting my mind right so that is second nature to really accelerate my results. And I think that is my number one contribution to my success. Is that my mindset. I’ve trained it. I made it my personality.

Rod
That’s probably why we aligned as well, because, of course, you know, that’s what I live for. And, you know, I spent 20 years on Tony Robbins around the planet. And, you know, I’ve done, you know, emotional IQ is just such a critical component of your ability to communicate and influence and everything else. And so, no, I love that.

Pasha
Just to interject. And that’s why I really loved the course so much because, you know, for me, I really personally believe that the knowledge is all there. But you got to get your mindset right and you really focus on mindset where the other course, you know, that doesn’t. And it’s just like, hey, this has got to be different. And the way you really nurture that, though, that’s, you know.

Rod
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Well, let me ask you this. What do you think are the best sort of people to align yourself with? Now, you’ve done this solo, which is very unusual, very impressive actually, but very unusual because this business typically is a team sport. And I think maybe you’re leaning that direction now because, of course, you run out of money at some point, you know, and there’s a lot of money out there looking for deals and, you know, why limit yourself. But as you are built, I don’t know if you have a team now or not or if it’s just been you. So maybe you can–

Pasha
I do.

Rod
You have a team? Okay. Well, talk about that. So what sort of people have you aligned yourself with?

Pasha
You know, so I really aligned myself so, you know, and you’re right, I was the lone wolf for a very long time when I was doing my development, very much a lone wolf. I hired the contractors, I hired the you know, the engineers and whatnot. This is my project. I’m doing it. And what I’ve really learned about multifamily, and really also just to back up a little bit, what I really learned during Covid was that the power of teams and the power of trainers and the power of people in your life to really accelerate your results. And what, you know, I obviously know about myself is I’m not the analytical type. So when I went into my first deal, I just said, hey, I underwrote this. I think I know what I’m doing. But then I went to somebody that I know has done it so many times, can you just overlook my shoulder and help me out and just make sure I did it right? They ended up doing such a good job and give me so much information. We just riffed on everything on our vision. I was like. Hey, this is amazing, I’m going to give you a piece of this deal because they did such a great job at overlooking on their shoulder, so and then it should grown since then and really figuring out who you are in a business sense and aligning yourself with someone that can help come up with the weak spots that you may have.

Rod
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me expand on that just one second. You know, you guys have heard me say time and time again, but let me just reiterate it, that, you know, if you can play to your strengths, so Pasha is a people person. He’s a visionary. He’s a, you know, that’s his strength. And if you can play to your strengths and hire or align or partner for your weaknesses, success is inevitable, period. If everybody’s playing to their strengths, you’re like a freakin train on a track and you’re not going to get derailed. So, you know, I can’t stress that enough that, you know, that you align with people. And honestly, that’s what the Warrior program is so fantastic because, you know, is you may not even know this Pasha that Warriors now own over 45,000 doors. And I’ve only been– I’ve been teaching less than four years, so I’m just blown away by that number. And that’s, you know, that’s– and most of the men done between warriors. So it’s just incredible. By the way, guys, if you’re interested in applying text the word “CRUSH” to “72345” and we don’t take everybody. We be candid about that because right now, at this point, I feel like a steward of it. And it’s just incredible how it’s grown. And but if, again, if you want to apply, you can check us out, we’ll check you out. And that’s just text “CRUSH” to “72345”.

Mark
Well, I actually want to jump back to the Emotional Intelligence part of the conversation, because so much on this show, we talk about who to build your team with and who you want to look for, but we don’t talk much about how to do that. Right? Because people, they don’t understand that like logically, you can look for these people. But to build relationships, people are going to remember not what you said, but how you made them feel. Right? Which is a big part of building relationships. But Pasha if could, could you give us maybe like one or two tips, emotional intelligence of how to go about building relationships with people that the listeners could take and use?

Pasha
Sure. I mean, the first thing is the easiest, be authentic. Like truly and honestly be authentic, right? I’m a fond, I’m a pretty goofy dude and I like to just addressed elephant in the room right off the bat because I feel like it really puts everybody at ease instantly. I also have the same belief along the same lines as I’m going to be authentic, I’m going to be myself, I’m going to pronounce words funny. And if someone judges that or doesn’t like it, well, then they don’t have to be in my life. Right? So whole heartedly, number one thing, it would be authentic and then ask yourself the question, hey, do I like this person? Do I want to be around this person all the time? And can I get some genuine compliments? You know, and you have to mean it, though, and you just can’t fake it. I’ve really learned that if you do that and you’re just completely authentic, then you build some fabulous relationships with people and deep relationships. You know, there’s people that I’ve talked to three years ago and that just happened at one of your events, Rod. One of your warriors, Will Yoder. I ran into him three years later and we just picked up because we had such a genuine, authentic conversation, which he’s doing fabulous, by the way. He’s doing amazing. And it just build that —

Rod
That’s so funny. Will is a good guy. He’s actually been to my compound here in Florida that two friends of mine is just so interesting to me because, you know, it’s funny how God, would the universe, how it works and aligns people that vibrate same level. Yeah, he’s definitely on his way with multifamily. I think he’s on his first or second kid. Definitely had his first already. I don’t know if he’s on number two, but super. He’s a dentist. Super nice. Well, anyway.

Pasha
Amazing.

Rod
Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful guy. So let me ask you this, Pasha. I’m really interested for my own purposes to hear your answer to this question. How do you define success?

Pasha
Oh, you know. It always brings back me to a memory when I was growing up. Growing up, you know, I have to just say I want to give the biggest thanks to my father. My father came to America from Iran, dead broke, like left everything behind for me and my brother to just make it here in America. And, you know, to do that for kids, just crazy. But I remember even then, I didn’t process this information. Yeah, but as a child, I remember saying, man, the definition of success for me is I want to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. That doesn’t necessarily mean go buy whatever I want. But I don’t want to think about money in the terms of that it’s going to hold me back from living the life that I want. But as I’ve gotten older, I really realize the things that I’m most grateful for is my family and my chosen friends that are my family and seeing the joy that I can bring to them. So it’s a little combination of the capitalist in me is being able to do whatever I want to be honest with you. And then but also it’s the love that I have in my life that is makes everything worthwhile.

Rod
Yeah, you just really resonated me with what you said because my mom took– you know, very brave. We immigrated when I was six and, you know, she brought us to the United States strange country. We didn’t speak English. My mom spoke a little English. But, you know, they just resonated with me. What you said about your dad because, you know, it’s there’s some real parallels there. So thank you for sharing that.

Mark
And for people listening, like, that’s super important to think about. You know, if you want to do an exercise, it’s think about if someone were deposit a hundred million dollars into your bank account just randomly and you had– you could have the freedom, you can send your kids to college, whatever, what would you want to do after that? Because that’s the thing that’s really going to drive you. It’s not about just that first initial thing. It’s about the second thing. For you, it’s obviously family and those other things you mentioned. But just for people listening, think about if you had all the money, what would be next for you?

Rod
Yeah.

Mark
And it’s just a good exercise to walk yourself through. But let’s flip the script here for a second. Tell us about an extremely stressful situation that you’ve had in your business. And if you come across it again, how do you think you’ll handle it this time around?

Rod
Or a failure, you know, a seminar, you know, whatever. And really what you got– excuse me, this damn Covid still get my lungs. Whatever you got from.

Pasha
Of course. Yeah. So I’ll tell you one. One that is it’s kind of hitting home. Just recently, yesterday I found out some bad news on a project. I’ve been in for about close to four years. I bought some land here in L.A. and I want to entitlement into four pieces or parcels and build an all of them. It’s been a four, almost four and a half year process. I’ve spent a few hundred grand on this deal already. And, you know, just got the news quite literally yesterday. Not only am I being sued by a neighbor on a frivolous lawsuit for it, saying that I can’t change my plans once failed. It’s really crazy. But the specialty firm just said, hey, listen, there’s no way to cut it. You can only build one home on here. So all that time and effort and money spent was really wrong. But I will tell you, I am always grateful for these lessons. I don’t mean that as just bs people say that. I’m genuinely grateful because I do know in my life I’ve just started my career, right? I’m still young and I’ve got another 40 years of investing. And if I can learn this lesson for this amount of money right now, it could cost me millions upon millions later on. And so the biggest lesson for me was I had a partner at the time and I let that partner choose the people we were working with for the entitlement process. And he has a different vision than I do on how we can hire somebody. And really what always resonates with me is team building, picking the right people. Like there’s the old adage, you get what you pay for, which is in real estate, I believe to be really true. You just don’t want to cut any corners. And had I not, this would have been a two year process. I would have had much better results and I would have made a lot of money. But now I’m losing money on this deal.

Rod
Ouch. But, you know, I love– you know guys, I hope you heard what he just said because that was huge. If you don’t get anything else out of this episode, if you just give that life is about meaning and you choose the meaning you place. And this is in one day, he’s come up with an empowering meaning for a negative event in his life, which is very unusual. Usually it takes, I mean, it took me a lot longer than that with my 50 million. But I’m sitting here thinking, you know, I don’t even think I could do it that fast on a quick failure. So really impressive, brother, because, you know, you choose it. It can be, you know, it’s fascinating. You come across people that have had what perceived to be horrific things happened in their lives and they have a positive meaning that they placed on it. So really appreciate the way you just shared that and allowed the opportunity for us to expand on that dynamic. Which is just because it’s just so important.

Pasha
May I just say one thing?

Rod
Please. Please. Please

Pasha
I think that kind of backtracks into our emotional intelligence. I mean, really to be able to process your feelings because it’s suck. Don’t get me wrong. It hurt and it stings and it doesn’t go away. You know, when I heard it’s like, oh man, it really hurt. But what I really learned in emotional intelligence as well, too, is, hey, things are going to happen, but I’m going to process it. I’m not going to put in the back of my mind. I’m not going to just ignore it. I’m going to sit there. I’m going to sit with the hurt, and then but I’m going to let it get out of my system. And then I’m going to say, okay, a new start, let’s go. What’s the next thing? You know, and I have a lot of things plates I’m juggling. It’s, you know, it’s kind of just one thing.

Rod
You know, in your world right now. What do you enjoy the most and what do you enjoy the least?

Pasha
You know, funny, my business coach, Gary, always asked me this question because he always sees me get into something because he get really excited about. So I know who I have any idea want to. I will say that’s my number one thing that I’m enjoying is building– oh, by the way, another thing, another person I met in your warrior program, Monica Newhart, we’re building low income housing and we’re developing low income housing and going to light tech route and our visions, just a line about what we want to do and to create a nonprofit around by empowerment and with education and our low income community, because we just don’t believe in building just the community and just saying, here you go. Right. There’s so much more to that. So that is the thing that I get fired up on. Super.

Rod
Let me just put an exclamation mark on what you just said, guys. This is why we don’t accept just anybody into our program, because I attract givers and I look for people that want to help other people. And, you know, this is what I listen for when I when we’re interviewing people for the program, because I want people that want to make the world a better place, want to help other people, make, you know, change lives. And that’s what we attract. And, you know, power moves to those who serve, whether you believe in God or whatever you believe in. It’s just the way it works, period. And so here’s a great example of that dynamic right there. So, you know, I really appreciate that you allowing us to expand on that as well.

Pasha
Yeah.

Mark
Well, I mean, he’s said both sides, right? He said this deal to where it’s not going the way you want to do it because you and your partner didn’t have the same vision and now you’re talking about the positive side of when you do have a similar vision with somebody, how well it works out. And that’s why so many people end up doing deals together as warriors together, whatever it may be.

Rod
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, talk about– well, you know a lot of our listeners are people that haven’t taken action yet. Okay, I mean, you’re a doer. You’ve taken action. Talk, you know, what would you tell someone that’s listening that has been exploring this business? You know, maybe cut analysis paralysis. We get a lot of analytical people that listen and join our program, and they’re the hardest people to convince to take action because they have to check off every frickin box, you know, and it’s very seldom that you can see the whole road. You just have to move forward with some faith. But, you know, what would you tell someone that’s thinking about this? What words of wisdom would you impart on them?

Pasha
I would say, it’s always, always, always do it now. You know, don’t wait obviously. I think there’s a really good tool that you could do, especially for the analysis paralysis is that you set up some really good benchmark for yourself and you say, hey, I have an agreement with myself that these benchmarks get hit in a property. I’m going to go after it. I would also say just have somebody overlook your shoulder, right? There is no excuse. And especially in the Warrior program, there’s so many people that are willing to help and just say, hey, we just overlooked this for me because I know that what I really needed. I was like, oh, I don’t want to make a big mistake. But I just said, hey, I’m going to go after something. Once I find something, let me just ask somebody to overlook my shoulder. And then once you do, go do it because, man, once you do, you get the itch. And it’s just like, you’re like, I wish I did this so much earlier on almost every venture I’ve ever done. I always say, man, I wish I had this earlier.

Rod
Yeah, all right. Thank you. Great answer.

Mark
Well, I want to expand on that. I mean, let’s say you could go back in time before the flipping, the multifamily, the development, all that stuff. But you have your current knowledge of today. How do you think you get started and do it differently?

Pasha
Well, I would have–

Rod
If you would.

Pasha
Yeah. No, you know, it’s funny. I always think about this answer. I really love the path that I did. I really love being where I’m at. Let me just say that. But if I would do it back again, I would obviously go into the commercial route first. And I would I often wonder, okay given the resources that I had or where I was at, what would be the first step to get to where I need to be? I said, well, I would want education. I’d probably become a commercial broker. I’d learn how to underwrite, I’d learn how to find deals, and then I would learn how to piece it together. I just would focus on the education and also focus on a way I can make money while educating myself to support myself and support my habits. I probably would have done that had I started all over again.

Rod
Yeah, love it. I love it. Yeah. Guys, if there’s ever an opportunity for you to fall into a business that is a feeder or supports this multifamily business like a commercial broker, like a property management, you know, some of the best, most successful people I know in the business started in property management or asset management or leasing or whatever. No, I love it. All right. Last question. Do you have a favorite quote or favorite– oh gosh, piece of wisdom from a former mentor or maybe someone that’s no longer with us or anything like that?

Pasha
You know, my favorite quote always has been, “It doesn’t matter how about how many times you get knocked down, but it’s about how many times you get up”. I really feel like that’s like symbolizes my life and how many times I’ve gotten knocked down. I just keep getting up and I’m like this quiet, persistent. I’m always going to get what I want in life. I will say and, you know, one thing that I do try to look at is I try to look at my life at the end, working backwards. When I’m on my deathbed, I hope that doesn’t sound morbid. But what I’m on my deathbed, what am I going to regret or what am I going to really be happy about accomplishing? You know, on this– you get to a certain point in your life where you want to give back. And I saw when I look back in my life, I say, how many people can I impact and help but also be doing what I want to be doing with what I would be loved. So I like to just fast forward and then work backward. Always, always, because it usually gives you the right answer every time.

Rod
A great answer. It was great to see your brother. I really appreciate you coming on. I’ve been yelling at you to get on here and share some wisdom, so I really appreciate you coming on. And hopefully, the world, you know, where I can do well, I’m not hopefully we’re definitely going to have an event either by the end of this year or early next year. You know, and I’ll be great.

Pasha
I really appreciate it, man. I honestly, I got my start in multifamily from you and I love what I’m building now. I’m heading into lightech and development these big things. And you know, we start somewhere–

Rod
Beautiful, love it, man. Mark?

Mark
Yeah. Well, good seeing you, Pasha.

Pasha
Good meeting you. Thank you so much, guys. I really enjoyed it.

Rod
Likewise. Thanks.