Joe:  Welcome. This is the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. What's up, guys? Joe McCall here. Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. Special guest today, Ross Hamilton. How are you doing, Ross? I'm doing fantastic.

Ross:  I'm really excited to be here.

Joe:  I'm glad you're here. I wanted to get you on this for my show for a long, long time. You've been around, you're an industry goat. You've been in the real estate investing world for a long time. And I remember when you were kind of brand new in the market, this must have been 2010, 2011. I was at a conference and you were there. And it was funny to watch. You were running around trying to get new customers, affiliates for your, I think it was Connected Investors at the time. Was that what it was?

Ross:  Yeah, I've been doing this since 2005. So that was my, that was my jam. Okay.

Joe:  So it must've, yeah. Well, anyway, you have been very, very successful in your career and your business. You recently sold Connected Investors. You're now into, you have a nonprofit called Saving Homes. We're going to talk about that. And so, but I wanted to get you on to talk about Saving Homes, number one, but also wanted to talk about some of the secrets to your success over the years, right? You have what you call pillars of prosperity. These are little known hacks that you have found to be successful in your business. And guys, I just want to tell you, Ross Hamilton is one of those guys that when I have some questions about my business as it's been growing, Ross is one of those guys that I'm going to call and talk to because he's been there, done that. And he's kind of been on the other side. So thanks for being here, Ross. How are things since you sold Connected Investors? How are you doing?

Ross:  Yeah, no, Joe, I appreciate the, you know, the introduction and, you know, I've learned so much from you and your podcast over the years. Never stop learning. That's, that's not something we're going to talk about here, but it's definitely an important lesson where I see people that kind of fall, whether it's during their upswing, or maybe they had a huge liquidity event and they stopped doing things. What the first domino that falls is they stop learning. So it's, it's really important that you have a good relationship with figuring stuff out. And I'm a father. And one of the things I really instill into, you know, my daughter's life is just making learning fun, making sure that we're positive when we're trying to figure out obstacles, because there's more value in the obstacles than there are in the celebrations. So I've been doing really well, I've been learning so much, I've been able to kind of move my mental focus into some areas that, to be quite frank, I ignored for a long time. So I'm a startup human. And just really, I've had some really good time to kind of look back at what worked and why I have a great network of very successful people that I've spent a lot of time kind of indirectly studying. And Joe, just like our relationship, like if you need someone, you got someone you can call and say, hey, he's been there. Let me let me shorten my learning curve here. You're really good at a lot of the things that we're going to be talking about.

Joe:  Talk about if you could people who don't know who you are, right? How did you get into real estate? And then how did you start private investors that the program you had?

Ross:  Yeah, I like how you just combined them connected investors.com and I had private lenders.com. And yeah, and I'll keep this little background kind of short and also educational. You know, I was a BMX rider back in the day, and I had I was fortunate enough that Dave Mira, who was like Michael Jordan, moved to my town in my industry when I was like 14. So I got to ride every day with X Games gold medalist. And I got really good really fast because he made the impossible possible. And anything that I was trying to do just seemed so trivial that I was like learning faster and I was surrounding myself with high flyers quite literally. And it was it was a really exciting time. Fast forward. Dave wound up leaving Wilmington. I was a semi pro traveling around, had a BMX clothing company. It really was my whole life. Yeah. And then I had a really, really bad injury right at a critical time. You know, I twisted my ankle so far, it broke my leg. And I will never forget when I stood up, I could feel the weight of my foot on my skin because there was just nothing holding my ankle there. And yeah, I was I was out for a long time. And it was tough to it was tough to recover after that. So that was right at that pivotal age in extreme sports like the 17, 18. It's like, hey, am I going all in with this thing or I need to figure something out? Well, Dave left my town, the whole scene left my town. I had kind of fallen behind a little bit. So I had to figure out how to make money. And I never planned on going to college. It just wasn't my just wasn't in the cards for me. So I went to Barnes and Noble instead and started reading books on how to make money. I found Think and Grow Rich, which I still use. I read every year kind of as some founding principles. And then through that, I found real estate and didn't know anything other than more millionaires made their money through real estate than any other industry. So my plan was I'm going to play the odds. I was it was like 17, 18 years old getting into real estate investing. And yeah, and that's when I started my real estate career.

Joe:  What year is that when you got started in real estate?

Ross:  Oh, man, I would probably say 2004. I bought the domain name for Connected Investors in 2005. That much I remember. And, you know, the same way the way you do anything is the way you do everything. It's one of my favorite quotes because it has me take everything I do a little more serious. So in BMX, I was OK until Dave Mirra moved to town. Then all of a sudden I got really good, really fast. So with Connected Investors, the first thing I knew I needed was I had to surround myself with people that were making the impossible possible. You're in real estate and you don't have a good network. It's just harder. Period. End of discussion, whether it's online in person is what I love. But just people that you can connect with and you can you can ride with, you know, in BMX, Joe, you were the people that you trained with were also the people you competed with. You know, when it was contest time, my buddy, I rode every day. I knew I was riding against him in the contest. And it's an interesting way that you kind of work together and support each other. And that's kind of how real estate was as well. You know, so I found the best people I could in real estate and I got my very first real estate mentor and I learned a really important lesson there. And I want to this is this is one of the first pillars of prosperity, a little a little piece of it. And it has to do with OPE. And we all talk about OPM, other people's money. Very important. But to me, OPE is the most important. That's other people's energy. Right. So I had to surround myself with people that were operating at a higher energy. Right. They were attracting things just into their into their life. And I was there as well. But a lot of people, you know, they want to mentor. You know, we have mentors, we have coaches and we have sponsors. Those are kind of the three buckets. Before I get into mentors, you know, what a coach is someone that you're going to you're going to write a check to one way or another and they are going to help you. If you're a football player, you know, you have a coach to help you throw. Right. They're giving you the tactical on the field advice. Very, very important. I still have coaches today and I don't even really have a business. You have your sponsors. Those are essentially mentors, which I'll talk more about that turn into investors, people that know, like and trust you. They're wealthy. They throw some they throw some money your way. You have a combined financial interest. And that's a great path for mentors to eventually become a sponsor. But mentors is where a lot of people kind of they get wrapped around the axle because to find like a true mentor is challenging. You know, you're not going to like Google online, like find me a mentor. Like the mentors are always kind of coaches and there's accountability coaches. It's to find a true mentor. The big mind shift for me, Joe, what I'm trying to share is you actually choose who your mentor is. They don't say I'm going to mentor you. Out of all the mentors I had that made the biggest impact in my life, not one of them said, yes, Ross, I will mentor you. I met the individual. We had some sort of a connection. I nurtured that connection. Business stuff slowly started to float that way to where the frequency of their advice picked up a little more, a little more over time. And then it just became a true mentorship. So I have some things to chat about as far as that goes. But I just wanted to for a second, Joe, and just see a similar experience.

Joe:  Well, that's really good. Yeah, I would say I have some guys in the industry, in the real estate space and the marketing space who I would consider mentors. I'm friends with them, but I don't have regularly scheduled calls with them. You know, they're mentoring me more by what they do than what they say. You know what I'm saying? Like I'm watching what they do and I'm duplicating their success. I'm modeling what they're doing and what they've done in the past. So that's really important. You know, if I were to ask these guys I'm thinking of in particular, like, hey, can you mentor me? They would probably be like, what? No, that's weird. So, yeah, that makes sense. That's a really good analogy. Who are some of the people in your life specifically with Connected Investors? Because you did a lot of deals, but Connected Investors was the company that really you exploded and you did really, really well on. So like, what were some of your, you don't have to give us names, but who were the kinds of mentors that you had that helped you with that business?

Ross:  That's a two phase answer here because in real estate, my first mentor there did not want to mentor me. I just found the most successful investor in town and just started working for this gentleman. I would show up with deals. He kept joking. He was trying to chase me away. It takes a little bit of persistence and maybe some ignorance as well, but I just kept showing up until I found a way to be useful for this individual. And then one day the person that he usually worked with didn't show up and he was like, can you go put these signs up for me? I'm like, sure. I went and came back. I'm like, now what? And he's like, oh. So I just started working for this individual for free for a while until I became valuable. That was the only thing I had at the time was I had my hustle. I had the ability to show up. Yeah. And I was bringing good energy. So that was my first real estate mentor. I just started showing up to their office every day. And that parlay, this individual actually started to sell information on how to make money in real estate. And I was there and I grabbed a camera and started filming him. And I'm like, what is, what are you doing here? And then you had people come to his office and I got to see him training real estate investors. And that side of the world just opened up to me. I'm like, oh wow, he's making money in real estate. And every few months people pay him 10, 20 grand to hang out at his office. Pretty good deal. It seems to work well. And that's what kind of opened my eyes to the real estate info space. But the way that I got into that space was a little bit different because I started investing and I realized the more people I was connected with, the more money I was able to make in real estate. Through my mentor, I learned different tactics and I was out there and deals would come to me that weren't really what I was into. I'm like, oh, that'd be a great deal. I need to find someone else who wants this. So I started building spreadsheets, which everyone online probably has. And I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. It was right when MySpace came out. So I thought, hey, if there was a social network where everyone who signed up had to kind of fill out what they were interested in, I could be like the Tom for the real estate world. You know, Tom was from MySpace, right? Everyone's friend. So I built Connected Investors out as a buyer's list for myself. You logged in, there was a discussion board and a map and you can message. That was about it. But at the time, there was nothing really like that just for real estate. So I was just using Connected Investors to solve a problem in my real estate business. And I was funding it. Hold on, not a tech guy at all, really, when it comes down to it, but I love building things. And I was using the profits from my real estate investing business to fund the tech side of Connected Investors. Real estate is a stepping stone to where you want to be next. You know, you get into real estate, you can make a lot of money so you can do what, right? Your reason why, like what is your other reason behind real estate? It's the best way to make money. So I was using real estate to fund the tech company. And through that platform, I got to meet some very high level CEOs and had mentors that were CEOs of Fortune 100 companies and billionaires for a long time that I got to ride with just like I did when I was riding BMX. So that was kind of my transition from real estate into real estate tech. I was just solving problems.

Joe:  I hope you guys listening to this are picking these up. Like Ross just isn't telling you his story. I hope you're hearing the story behind the story. I hope you're listening to pay attention to these little gold nuggets of what you can do yourself to succeed in business, no matter what kind of business you're doing. You have some more prosperity pillars. Talk about another one here. And while you're talking, I'm going to fix something below my desk here. So I am listening, but keep on talking. What's another prosperity pillar?

Ross:  So whenever I'm working with people right now, because I'm at the phase right now to where I'm giving back and trying to help other people in all sorts of different ways. And when I talk to individuals, the thing they seem to have the most trouble with is figuring out what to focus on. Right now, in this world, there are more distractions per hour than there used to be per year back in 2000, 2005. So it's really important that you go all in on the things that you have 100% control over. There's a lot that you don't have control over. So what are some of the Joe, what are some of the things that you think you have 100% control over?

Joe:  This is interesting because I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I have 100% control over my momentum because I know in business when things are slow and I'm not making enough money, it's because I've allowed myself to lose momentum by not continually making offers. So I can control how many offers I'm making, whether it's offers for houses, whether it's offers for software and services that I'm selling or whatnot. Right. Does that make sense?

Ross:  Yeah. Yeah, no, it does. And the way that I kind of categorize that is you have control over the amount of effort you put in, right? You, everyone on the line gets to decide how much effort are you putting in today? That is 100% within your control. Some other things, I'm just going to a few things off here, what you consume, not just what you eat, but what you, what you're watching. It is, you know, I say you have 100% control over it, but you have to be really intentional because everyone and everything is getting better and better at controlling what you consume. So you need to make sure that you are intentional with that. It is, if not, you are basically handing over the keys to the powers that be and fear, anxiety are going to creep into your business, into your life, into your relationship. And it's going to be really hard to build off of anything. These are foundational things. If I'm working with someone and they have good control over the effort they put in, over what they're consuming, I'm like, okay, over their, their perspective, not what happens to you, but the meaning that you give to it. If I'm working with someone and they're, they're giving just horrible meaning to everything, I can't even mentor that person because there's an, they have a few steps before I can really come in and help. You have control over how kind you are. Kindness is really important in this world and we need it more than ever. So you get to control how you're going to respond to people. The questions you ask, the questions you ask determine your life. And one of my early mentors wrote a book, The Power of High-Quality Questions. And this gentleman is still a mentor to me. I talked to him this morning. That's how often I talk to my mentors. And through his questions, he really challenges me. So the questions you ask yourself, this is a little hack, Joe. And one of the reasons I come on podcasts, when I come on a podcast, people say, Ross, you've been, how have you been so successful? Do you know how powerful of a question that is? Because now my mind is going into looking at all of the things that I did right. And I'm attracting more of that. If I'm at home and I'm by myself and I'm like, oh, why do I always mess up? That's really, that really messes, messes with your psyche over time. A big one, your willingness to forgive both yourself and others. You know, if you're holding on to a, to a grudge, that's like holding a hot pan. You're hurting yourself. So there's some more, but these are just some of the things that I like to work with people on to see if I can even provide any value. If not, I have to start with their perspective, with their thinking, with how they look at opportunities and get that right first, because that's what you're building off of every single day. When you wake up, you're building off your perspective and your habits. And that's like a really important part of the pillars in successful people. I sat down with my billionaire mentor not that long ago. He's kind of a low key. He's been a billionaire since the eighties, low key guy, married, super, super good from moral perspective. And he was going, he had a business, he's helping his son's business and they were, they were going through it. Right. I'm talking about like, they're like international and they were getting, they were getting in trouble for like moving money in a weird, in a weird way. Right. Don't know all the details, but it made, it made some headlines. And I sat down with them. We were having lunch with our families and I asked him about it. And he was just like, this has been great. It's brought the whole team together. This will pass. But we noticed on the team who is stepping up and our team has never been stronger. And I'm like, wow, you know, his, he didn't lament at all. He wasn't upset at all. He found what made it better. And he taught me through that, through that moment, because there's only, you will 100% certain have some really hard challenges. And it's just the world throwing something at you saying, are you going to respond to this one? You know, and if you respond, well, you level up. If you don't, you stay stuck or you go, or you go backwards. Focusing on what you have control over is so important.

Joe:  And, and focusing on what you're consuming. Don't ask me what I was watching last night on TV. I was watching a stupid show with my wife because my wife suggested it, but we both were like, that was dumb.

Ross:  Joe, listen, laugh and have fun with your spouse. That's an investment, you know, in just hanging out with your spouse, my spouse and I watched the show neighbors the other day, which is kind of hilarious. So I'm not saying I don't watch any TV, but I'm, I'm not going to doom scroll. I am not going to just consume negativity. I'm going to pause and ask myself, why am I watching this? If it's with my spouse and there's connection there passes the sniff test.

Joe:  Let me ask you some questions about books. What are, number one, what are some books that you liked or you're reading right now? What are some of your favorite books, but also do you ever just read a fictional book, a fiction book just for like the relaxation of it? Here we go.

Ross:  I do like a lot of fun sci-fi. Okay. Right now, Joe, all I do is I'm reading a lot of books on a family right now around creating rituals within, within your family, just being intentional with that. So as I've transitioned away from nothing but how-to books and biographies, which still play an important role more into sci-fi and building a strong family and community right now, the intentional family is a good book. I'm always investing in my relationship with my wife, getting through nonviolent communication right now. That's important. Yeah, it is. And it helps this, this stuff applies to all relationship. So, so yeah, Joe, I think it's important to, to unplug from the screen, get some entertainment with the old fashioned way.

Joe:  All right. So what are some other pillars of prosperity?

Ross:  Yeah. So, you know, we talked about OPE, other people's energy, and number two, making sure you're consuming the right things. You have control over what you can, you're, you're investing in what you have a hundred percent control over. Also when I work with people, making sure they have their quest written out and documented. This comes from Think and Grow Rich. So there are goals, which I love, but the word goal is kind of seems like a moving target. Like maybe we do it, maybe we don't. So I started embarking on three year quests because a quest to me, Joe, is like, you're packing your bags, you're walking out of town and you're coming back a different person. You're going to go do something you've never done before. What I've found is you can get a lot less done in one year than you think you can get done. People always overestimate what they can get done in a year, but people often underestimate what they can get done in three years. So I use Napoleon Hill's formula to make sure I have a well-documented three-year quest. You can call it a primary aim if you want. And I am relentless on reading it every single day. I know it's one of those things you've probably heard before. If you've read Think and Grow Rich, it's one of the things he says you have to do, but I read it every single day to realign myself with where I want to get. So you have your three-year quest, then you have your quarterly goals. Your quarterly goals, you're going to shift those as the market shifts, but you're going to make sure that you're moving in a certain direction. And I even have a whole document on how to write this, on how to make sure you do it, but it has been monumentally important to have that. And I've built systems in place to make sure that I hit those goals, because here's the thing that, again, only always happens. You start your day off, you got a plan, you get pulled in 100 different directions. Happens to everyone, no matter where you are in your life. That's why you have to build things around you so you can reset every day. And that gets me into kind of the fourth pillar is your, I call them your bumpers. Life is kind of like bumper bowling. You start going down, you hit that bumper, you get straight. So the way that you start and end each day is so monumentally important. And I know that you can carve out the 10 minutes that it takes to start and end your day correctly. But that is where you readjust like a missile. You wake up, you read your primary aim, you already know what you're going to do that day. You know your top three for the day. You're not waking up thinking, what am I going to do? You go to bed, making sure you know what you're going to do. Because what you want to do, Joe, is you want your, you want to give presents to your future self. When I wake up in the morning and I know exactly what I'm doing, my clothes are laid out, even breakfast is kind of half started. My past self is giving my future self a present. It sounds a little kind of weird, but thinking like that helps you invest, helps you think about the future. And before you know it, you're waking up in the morning, everything is clean, it's orderly, you're not starting off panicked. You have extra ability inside you to help other people that weren't as intentional as you. And you get back on, you get back on your path. So your bumpers are so important. I even have, I even made special audios that I listened to. And it's so cool to have a little bit of AI because I've always wanted to write like just audios for me to listen to, but I never wanted to listen to my own voice, because I think that's really weird. It's like Kenny Powers, if you ever watched this, but I've been able to create just little realignments in my goal goals every morning so I can listen to them and get realigned every day. And it keeps me moving in the right direction. And life is a game of inches, right? Every day, just a little further forward. As long as you're going in the right direction, you look back and you're like, oh my God, look how far I've come. So yeah, making sure that you know where you're going and you have those bumpers. When you have those things in place, things compound.

Joe:  Wouldn't you say? Yeah, I love it. Hey, a couple of things here real quick. Do you have these written down somewhere that we could send to somebody? Yeah. If they go to savinghomes.org slash Joe. I love it. Okay. So I want to make sure we talk about saving homes. This is your passion project. This is your, you have really taken this seriously for the last few years and it's been really cool to see. I, at first you were doing this, I thought, oh, is he going to still be doing this in a year, six, 12 months? But yeah, it's, you started this how long ago?

Ross:  It's been two and a half years now going on. Yeah. It's yeah, we're going on, we're going on three years now. And I remember you talking about it before that.

Joe:  But anyway, so talk about what is saving homes?

Ross:  Yeah. So saving homes is a really cool nonprofit. And if you're in real estate, your mind's going to be blown because it's crazy that this hasn't been done. So after I sold my company, I had more money than I knew what to do with. I always wanted to, you know, donate a million dollars to a nonprofit. So we started building villages in other countries. Joe, I think you were there when we, gosh, started doing that, making big investments.

Joe:  I remember you talking about it. I didn't go with you. You were going to Haiti, weren't you? Or? Yeah, I did.

Ross:  I mean, I just, I was just making big donations to other nonprofits, people that already had it up and running while I was, you know, acclimating to the new reality of my life. And, you know, then things got a little quiet and I said, Hey, you know, if I'm going to be donating this money, I want it to be helping kids in the U.S. I want as much of my money as possible to go to the cause. Cause I didn't, I didn't like that. If I gave a hundred bucks, only $20 of it was going to the cause. But I mean, Joe, you, you run a business. If you have a 20% margin, 30% margin, that's not bad. Nonprofits are the same. And I wanted my donation to make a long lasting impact. I didn't want to just to solve a problem today. So it was really tough to find. So through sitting down with my mentors, looking back at my past life, I made my first million in real estate by knocking on doors. That's what my first mentor had me do here, kid, go knock on these doors, get their phone numbers. So I knock on the doors of people in foreclosure and they would open their door. I could smell what they were cooking. I could see the stress on their face. And I was like, Hey, you want to sell your house? And I always wished there was a better way, but there wasn't right. And real estate investors will kind of get a bad rap sometimes, but I mean, people have to do something with the house. So we gave them the best option we could. Then I got into real estate and data and I was able to pinpoint any type of person in any type of situation. And then we had privatelenders.com. So I started lending. So I'd like real estate data lending. That's where my network was. So through that, and through conversations, my mentors, we came up with savinghomes.org. Definitely check it out. You're going to go there to get the principles anyway. And what that does is we essentially look for single parents. I mean, I have a wife and one daughter and I'm wealthy and it's still freaking hard. I couldn't imagine being a single parent, you know, up to here with multiple kids. Like, man, those kids need stability. Those individuals need, need help. So we look for single parents that fell behind on their mortgage due to a medical hardship. So it could happen and will happen to everyone. I could talk about the healthcare industry, but that's a whole other conversation. So we pinpoint those people through my background and data. I can find every single parent that's about to lose their house in three weeks, four weeks. We reach out to them. And if they're, if they're back on their feet and they can start making their payments again, we come in and we crowdfund the reinstatement of their mortgage through donations. So typically costs roughly $10,000 to keep four or five people in their house. So people make donations to Saving Homes. Saving Homes then sends the money directly to the bank. The individual never gets, never sees the money, but it goes right to the bank. Their foreclosure is stopped. Those kids don't have to move school districts. Usually their option is moving in with a family member, if they're lucky, an extended stay hotel, their car, or a homeless shelter. And, you know, those aren't good options. Even if they move in with family, it's, it doesn't last long. So we crowdfund their reinstatement. But the cool thing is, so that's helping kids in America, right? Here's where it gets sustainable. The donations are done as a recoverable grant. So in the future, when they sell or refinance their house, or even if they fall back into foreclosure, eventually that money comes back to Saving Homes so we can help the next family. These are people that have, they've lived in their house for 10 years. I forgot to mention that they have significant equity. They have like a two or 3% mortgage. So typically the same house in the same neighborhood is three times more expensive than their house. They're, you know, in Charlotte, North Carolina, we helped someone paying $700 a month for a 3-2. Daughter needed a bone marrow transplant, cost them 60 grand, they fell behind. They had to make the decision, do I pay my mortgage or do I save my daughter's life? If you never had to make that decision, consider yourself lucky. Now, not everyone has that extreme of a situation. However, the repercussions on losing their house is just as bad, whether, you know, it was a small medical issue or a big life-saving medical issue. These people have nowhere to go and we're able to step in right before the foreclosure and help them save their house.

Ross:  So that's what saving homes is and how it's sustainable.

Joe:  So you will get them caught up in their mortgage. That money you said you get back. So does that mean like, how, how does that work? You, do you record, is it like a, like a lien on the property? Exactly.

Ross:  It's a lien on the property, no points, no payments, no interests, no funny business, no professional fees. The attorneys that do this, they, they're part of our team. So they don't even charge anything to write up, do the title and write up the notes, thank goodness. Because then the offer would be, Hey, we can help you out plus attorney fees. But right now there's no attorney fees.

Joe:  And so then if they did lose the house to foreclosure later, there's already equity in this house. So then when it goes to auction or when it goes to the sale, if you're in a second position, how do you recover the money that way? Does that make sense?

Ross:  Yeah, there's so whenever we do the, whenever we put the note on the property, there's also a notice. So if they fall behind, we get notified. And then as it goes to the sale, we watch what it's being bid on. If it gets, if they owe the first mortgage a hundred, right. And they sell it for a hundred, then we won't make any, we won't get our money back, but if it sells for one 50 and we had a $10,000 note, the money will come to us.

Joe:  Does it have to, or do you have to go in and request it? How does that work?

Ross:  Yeah, we have to go in and request it. And who do you request it from? Right. Directly from the County. Okay. There's yeah, the legal team handles, handles that piece of it. But thankfully we haven't had to work through that process because if someone's falling behind, we step in and help them sell the house for top dollar. We don't make any, it's not a profit center for us, but what we've done is we've taken someone who is three weeks away from losing their house. Now they're six months away from losing their house. So we can help them transition because there's no reason for them to go to foreclosure with the amount of equity they have. That would just be, that would just be horrible.

Joe:  Right. You stopped the foreclosure. Now they have more time. If they're in a situation where they can't afford that mortgage anymore, you can help them sell the house, get their equity back out of it and find another place.

Ross:  Yeah. We just want to make it so it's not two weeks, three, you know, they need more time so we can step in and stop it and then figure out what's best for that family. A lot of times, I mean, being an investor myself, that's when investors want to step in and there's still plenty of room for investors, but every now and then the people deserve to stay in the house, not every now and then, but it's nice that a handful of people haven't have an option to where even if an investor comes in, Joe, and the person walks away with 20 or $30,000, right. Or some money, it doesn't solve their problem. That money, they can't get a rental. They can't move in anywhere. They're probably going to spend the money in weird. They could spend the money on weird things. Maybe they owe a lot of different people money. So it's, it's best just to keep them in their house and help them find their next best place.

Joe:  How successful is saving homes in helping them keep the home for another five years? Like, I mean, I, cause sometimes I wonder if they got behind on their mortgage, you know, over the last year, what's going to keep them current on their mortgage going forward if they're not making more money or what's what, what do you do about that?

Ross:  Yeah, you're 100% right. Um, currently because we've been in this for two and a half years, we haven't had anyone fall behind yet. We've had people like almost fall behind, but we look for people that can afford the property, but even if they fall behind, it's almost part of the model because if they stay there for a year or two and they fall behind, we can help them find a new place. The money comes back and we can help the next family. So we're sad when they fall behind again, but they are a thousand percent better off and we can now help the next family. So there's, they're coming out a lot better, better off. And, and we project roughly 30% of people will fall behind and have to sell the others. Literally, they just couldn't work. They had a medical procedure. They were laid up for six months. Now they got their job before that they had their home for 10 years. Now they have their job back and they're fine. So the vetting is important. No, that's really cool.

Joe:  That's cool. And so that's a big detailed process, isn't it? The vetting of them.

Ross:  Yeah, it's, it's detailed, but what we're really looking at is how many kids are in the property.

Joe:  Talk about how many people have you helped since you've been doing this?

Ross:  We've helped, we've kept about 50 people in their house. That's awesome. And right now we're doing roughly 10 a month. 10 people are staying in their home every month, right? Last month was eight. This month we're looking for 10. So it's, we're keeping about 10 people, actually, I'm sorry, 10 people a quarter in their, yeah, in their house. And it's a nice sustainable goal. If we're keeping, you know, 50, roughly 50 people a year in their house at our current level, we have the capacity to do hundreds, but it really takes donors, you know? So if you're on this call, visit savinghomes.org, make a donation. What we need right now is monthly donations. So choose that reoccurring option and you'll get to stay in touch with the mission. It makes a big impact. If you're a single parent, you had a single parent, if you've ever lost your home, if you've made a lot of money in real estate and you want to give back, please do it. So such a high percentage of your money is going directly to the cause and then it comes back. So it's not like I can't even tell you what the percentage would be over the course of the time, but theoretically it could be 500% of your money as it keeps recycling. So yeah, it's a really cool mission. It's a really cool mission. We hope some of your listeners jump on board. We're also looking for volunteers. Yeah, there's all sorts of ways to kind of jump in with the network and help.

Joe:  Savinghomes.org and if you go to savinghomes.org slash Joe, you get this resource that we were talking about. We only talked about a third of the pillars, but Ross, this has been a great interview. Thank you so much for sharing and looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Ross:  Yeah, I should see you in October. We're going to be sharing all the success with some big networks of people that love to make big impacts in lives. So thanks so much for having me.

Joe:  All right. Thank you, Ross. We'll see you guys later. Again, go to savinghomes.org right now. Check it out. We'll see you guys. Take care. Bye bye.