121. Rent Where You Live and Buy Where You Rent with Jonas Bordo

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Jonas Bordo with Dwellsy. So Jonas it's super excited to talk with you today. I know we talked a little bit before we hit the record button and I'm really excited for the topics we're gonna discuss. So thanks for joining me.

Mike. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on the pod.

Yeah, absolutely. First question, I'm gonna ask you is the same thing I ask everybody that comes on the show and you've already told me you listened to a couple episodes, so you know, what's coming. But we wanna know about you and your story, your journey, like how did this all get started for you? Who is Jonas Bordo?

I'm a lot of different things. I'm a dad, I'm a long standing real estate guy, husband but how did I get started on my career and what I do for a living, in a really roundabout way, I've been passionate about real estate for a really long time, grew up in a family that was investing in real estate. So I've really been around it since I was a kid in a lot of different capacities. And as I got older started to get really interested in it and started buying a couple of small scale three flats and then just decided to get into it as my day So ended up getting in the real estate investment management business was working for a firm called Benal Kennedy, which owned and operated a huge number of real estate assets around North America, about 40 billion in assets under management, huge property, a huge portfolio. And then from there to assets property management, where I ran portfolio of about 60,000 And one of the things you get when you see something like that is you get an upfront personal view of things not working. And one of the scariest things I saw in that situation is that the market was really failing both renters and landlords. It was nearly impossible for renters to be able to find places they liked and it was incredibly difficult for landlords to be able to get their places rented and the opportunity for Dwellsy came up and honestly, I just couldn't ignore a problem that big and it just felt like it needed to be solved and I tried to get the existing market participants to go solve it and nobody was interested. So here I am a couple years later working on solving that.

Yeah. That's awesome. You saw a problem and you said, there's gotta be a way to fix this and you came up with the solution and that was Dwellsy. Can you share with our audience what is Dwellsy and how does it help landlords and renters?

Yeah. Fundamentally it's a rental marketplace. Really first of it's kind being a little bit grandiose by saying first of it's kind, Craigslist was really the first of it's kind. If anybody remembers back in the ancient days, 10 years ago, or so Craigslist used to be where all rental deals got done. If you were looking for a rental 10 years ago, Craigslist was where 80, 90% of deals were listed. That was where you found your new rental. That was where you found your new tenant. If you're a landlord and starting about five, six years ago, I saw it firsthand when I was running the portfolio at Essex. We used to get 50, 60% of our lead volume from Craigslist. And from 2016 to 2018, we saw that volume go almost to zero. It just completely went away and nobody really came in to fill that. And we're trying to figure out how to deal with Google and other tools to try to replace that. And just none of those worked very well and nobody is well positioned to do that. So what we're doing here at Dwellsy is building a platform that is completely free for landlords. We wanted to take all of the bears. We know how hard it is to be a landlord. We know how difficult it is to get your place listed in the word out about your place. And we also know that it's not your typical sales process. You're not selling shoes where you have a thousand pairs of shoes and if 10 people show up, you just get more shoes made. Most of us as landlords have 1, 2, 3, maybe if you're really good at it, maybe you got 10 or 15 or 20 places. But just because 10 people show up doesn't mean you got 10 more apartments, you can rent them. It doesn't work like that. So having 10 people show up when you got one place is not a good thing, that's a bad thing. That's a lot more work for you to do. So you wanna be able to get the word out efficiently. You don't wanna spend a ton of money for it, and you don't wanna go through a huge amount of hassle. So building a system that was incredibly inexpensive, free- is the right price we think to get something listed that was safe for all involved, free of fraud and that gives you great tools, so landlords can look professional and effective and renters can find their place really efficiently. That's the system that we're building and then over time we'll be able to bring more and more tools to help landlords and renters offer operate really effectively on the platform, do a great search, no matter what you're looking for, whether you're looking for a new renter or whether you're looking for a new place to live.

Yeah that's all very good points and there's two key words that you said there that, that really stuck out to me free, which is my favorite price and then safe. So safe from fraud and things like that. A good spot for landlords that are trying to get their listings out there and get their rental units out there to get quality tenants. From a tenant standpoint, how does Dwellsy benefit them?

Yeah. From the starting point, renters wanna be in the place that has the most inventory and we have the most inventory. Why? Because it's free, because it's easy for landlords to list, right? Most landlords are not, and have never been willing to pay for listing and the legacy places other than Craigslist, when Craigslist kind of went away there was nobody available, no places available where they could list for free. And so Dwellsy fills that of being that place where you could list for free in a safe way. And Craigslist was not safe, it was never safe, but then it became toxically unsafe for all involved over time. And then, other places were charging. So we became that destination that is safe and available for everybody at a free price. So that means the most inventory. And then you go from there, renters are being defrauded in huge numbers. So we have a survey that we've just done. That'll be coming out shortly. Over 60% of renters have seen or experienced fraud in their search. Staggering the numbers that they're dealing with and the losses that they're dealing with in the process of doing their rental search, it's horrible out there for them. It's bad for landlords too. Landlords are experiencing fraud almost as much as renters are. It's really brutal out there for them. So making a safe environment for landlords is everybody as important as making a safe environment for renters. But you asked about renters and for renters having that safe environment is critically important. So fraud, zero is critical to what we're doing for renters. One of the challenges, the legacy approach is if your entire business is focused on selling advertising, the landlords, your customer and the renter is the product being delivered to the landlord. That's not great if you're a renter. And I was talking to a renter yesterday who all she's looking at is these places she's not interested in because those are the folks who paid the most to show her listings. And she's have inquired on a bunch of them, but I'm not really that interested in them. And she's like , I go see them and they're nice, but they're not the right place for me. It's just a waste of everyone's time. Whereas with Dwellsy, she's not having that experience. She's having a much better experience just seeing the places she's interested in and it ends up being a better quality lead for the landlord as a result of that too.

Yeah. That's all, that's a very good point. Now for the tenant that's on Dwellsy and looking for a place, can they filter it down, like specifically for what they're looking for?

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's great. When you're talking about. Yeah. When you're talking about the whole fraud piece, you see it a lot, like on Facebook marketplace even on Craigslist now, too, right? You'll see like all these fake ads that come out. They're just, they're not legitimate and they're just ways to steal people's data. And it's pretty sad because somebody's sitting here trying to look for a home and next thing they lost their first and last month's down payment and their security deposit, because they got scammed out of it. And now they're really stuck. It puts people in a very disadvantaged situation where it seems like, if, Hey, if you would just go on Dwellsy and look at what's listed there, at least, you know what you're gonna get. It's not gonna be something that's, you try to go get something and then all of a sudden you're out of your security deposit and you don't have a place to live. The safety thing I think is probably the biggest point that you need to make here because it really is bad out there. And it's not just in real estate. There's so much fraud out there for just about everything. And I see it on my stuff too. People will post, these crypto scams, these forex scams, all this stuff. And I would hope by now people understood and get it, but people still click those links and they still get their data stolen. So it's still happening, unfortunately. When it comes to safety, internet safety for one. I think that is a prime thing to look out for. That is one thing I could definitely say I appreciate about what you guys are doing. And the fact that again, it's free, which is my favorite price. So for the the landlords that are out there that are looking to, post their listing somewhere it's a good spot to do that for free and get quality leads, not just any lead, you're gonna get quality leads, somebody that's actually looking for your place. So I really like how you kind of niche that down.

Yeah. That has to be the core of it. I think, the smart landlord realizes that more is not better. And, to some degree there's a little bit of a negative reinforcement cycle, which we have to fight against. Because it feels great. You put a listing out there on a site, that's gonna get you a lot of low quality leads and it feels great. Wow. I got 50 leads in the first few minutes that's amazing! But that first thought is then followed by the, oh my goodness, how am I gonna handle 50 leads. How am I gonna follow up with all of them? Oh my goodness. That's a lot of work. And at best you follow up with the first five, six of them. If you know what you're doing around fair housing, you follow up with the order, which they came in. And then after that you then have after you, you do that initial follow up, then you end up losing a huge number of people who just never hear back from you, which is a really problematic experience for them. If you're a landlord, who's trying to create a brand around your landlording business, then you've got, 50, 60, 70 people out there in the end who have lousy experience with you, cuz they never heard back from you. Which is terrible for everybody.

Yeah. Right on. That user experience is something that, I don't think too many people think about too much when they go into this, it's on the end to end both you as the landlord hosting your listing and both for the renter that is coming in, or the tenant that's coming in and looking at your listing. So having that, having a good experience while you're doing that, sells the product even more. Now, there was something that we talked about before we hit the record button and it's it's a topic that I really wanna discuss with you because we were talking about the other side of building wealth as a renter versus owning the real estate as the landlord. And this, and I even told you this before we started that this might trigger some people. And that's okay because I want to hear this side of the story, cuz I've actually, I've had this argument with other people before about, Hey, I tell 'em like, Hey, you should buy the place that you wanna live in, buy it and live in it, and if you're renting, you're throwing away your money, so tell me why I'm wrong there. But no, tell me how a renter can use living in a rental as a a way to build wealth versus actually owning the asset.

Yeah. There are a lot of consumption decisions that we make in our lives, and some of them are obvious, going out with your husband or wife to a fancy dinner is an obvious consumption decision. I think we can all agree on that. Going on a nice vacation, taking the family to Europe consumption decision, buying a beautiful. Is a consumption decision, right? None of us are going to buy the bare minimum home we require to live in and manage it in the way that is most capital efficient. We're gonna live there. We wanna make it a beautiful home. We are going to be subject to the pressures of our community, we're gonna be subject to the pressures of our spouse, we're gonna be subject to the pressures of our children who want the place to be decorated, kept up, maintained in a certain way. We are going to buy more house than we need. Because fundamentally, it's a consumption decision, as well as an investment decision. I'm not gonna say that there aren't investment aspects of owning a home, certainly there are. You get the leverage benefit of finance on that property and you get the opportunity for appreciation in that home, which is a wealth builder. But there is a much better strategy available. In most markets around the country today, not all, you have to know your market, but in most markets around the country today, renting is dramatically cheaper than buying. When I say dramatically, renting is half the cost of buying or less. So if you can rent the same place for half of what it would cost to own it, and you can take care of your personal housing needs for half the cost of what it would cost to own that property. Why wouldn't you do that? And then you can look around the country and find a place where you can deploy your capital in a place where you can actually rent it much more effectively and get much more cash flow for each dollar that you're deploying, much more effectively and get a much better yield on that levered cash cuz you can still get that mortgage on an investment property, maybe you can't get quite as good of a mortgage because you can't always get 5% - 95% mortgage on a place you're not gonna live in but you can still get most of what you can on an owner occupied place. If you're buying an investment property and you end up getting a dramatically better yield on your overall portfolio and you spend a lot less money on your own place and when there are unexpected things that come up, you can make a rational decision about whether it makes sense. Yeah, your water heater's out and your rental property, that your tenant's coming in, that your tenant's living in, yeah you gotta replace that. Does it really need that perfectly manicured lawn? Maybe not, maybe your tenant can live without that. Would your wife put up without having that manicured lawn when the neighbors are walking by and not thrilled with it, eh, maybe not. Would you put up with that? Is that how you wanna, the reputation you wanna have in front of your neighbors? Maybe not. Maybe you're gonna make a different decision and spend like crazy to have that perfect bond. Are you gonna do that for your tenants? You're probably gonna make a more rational financial choice in that situation. If that's your tenant's place that they're occupying and people end up making a lot more money. So I'm not saying you shouldn't be buying housing, I'm just saying you shouldn't necessarily be buying it for yourself, rent for yourself, buy something else and make that your business asset, not your personal asset. You end up gonna end up making a lot more money that way.

Wow. I've heard this saying in the past, I can't remember who I was watching him say YouTube video, and this was a couple years before I even got into real estate and this guy was talking about, and I wrote this up as you were talking. I don't know if you saw, and by the way, I'm just gonna add this into you. I dunno if you saw before, when I was fiddling around with my pen and notepad, but my pen just like. I don't know, it exploded. So now I'm typing stuff up on notes. So that's why you see me like typing away. But one of the things I just typed up was rent where you live and own where you rent. And one of the things that you pointed out, like in most markets, how renting costs less than buying, that is very true in some areas. But in some areas it's more advantageous to buy and that's where you wanna buy your assets that you're gonna rent. You wanna buy those cash flowing assets. I love the fact that I own my primary residence where I live at and I know that if I was to rent it out, it would barely cash flow just because of the market I live in Hawaii. So I get that and a lot of times the homes out here will rent for less than what I'm paying on a mortgage. I just got lucky that when I refinanced I got a very low rate. So now my mortgage is a lot more competitive to the rental price where I would actually make a small piece of cash flow. But if I'm vacant for two months than I'm done for.

Which is not unusual, to have two months of vacancy,

Yep. Especially during it's turnover periods. Okay. Fantastic. So those are all very good points and I can see where that argument's coming from. And the fact that this isn't the first time I've heard something like this, makes it stand out a little bit more that other people look at it this way as well. So for those of you that are listening that feel like you're in an area where you can't buy right now, because you can't afford to buy the home in the area that you live in so you're renting to make it more cost effective, start saving up to buy assets in an area that's more affordable for you that will cash flow better. So yeah, I would argue that a lot of homes in the Midwest, that area are a lot more affordable for one, for two, they don't appreciate that much, but that's okay because you're buying them for cash flow.

Exactly. So appreciation is wonderful. Cash flow is also wonderful, right?

Cash flow is king

Have a fabulous role in wealth creation and appreciation is great. And when it happens, but you can't count on appreciation, but cash flow is really every real estate investor's best friend is cash flow. And, so many people in this country live in markets like you described. You live in a coastal market, you live in New York, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, LA, any of these markets where you're looking at average homes being over a million dollars with mortgage rates going through the roof right now, they're 2X what they were six months ago. The cost of buying a place in one of these markets has gone astronomically. So rent where you are, buy something in a Midwestern market at a dramatically more advantageous price point and rent out and the rents and some of these places are compared very favorable to the ownership prices. Compare very favorably to the ownership prices. And when you look at the fully loaded cost and you factor in taxes, maintenance, everything else, like I live in the bay area and by the time you layer not just cost of ownership, but cost of maintenance, everything else, cost of renting here is roughly 40% of the cost of ownership. That is a dramatic difference. And that was before mortgage rates started spiking. I can't even imagine what it would be like now, if I did the math, I'm terrified to look at it.

Yeah. That Jonas, that's a key point too. When you point that out, when you're the tenant when you don't own the home and you're the tenant, you get to make those phone calls when something breaks and say, Hey, this broke please come fix. Where when you own the home, it's oh my toilet's broken. I better make that trip to home Depot and pull out my credit card and go replace things. And this and that, or this broke, and I gotta change this. I gotta change that. Yeah that's that's pretty huge as well. But then again, if you are renting where you live, so that's good for you, but then, remember the assets that you're buying out in other more cash flow affordable areas you're likely gonna get those phone calls. You won't always escape it. But now it's at least for where you live at you've got, you can rest easy when it comes to repairs maintenance and things like that. The other thing that you talked about previously to this was the consumption decisions, right? And when we talk about like a consumption decision, how buying a home is a consumption decision, you do you get the pressures of the community, the spouse, the children. So where I live at in Hawaii, we have a HOA and all that and of course my wife wants the house a certain way, my kids want their rooms a certain way. So these, all these little things that we gotta do. I probably, I've lived in the house for four years and I've probably already done a hundred K in renovations alone. And guess what I got in return for that? Yeah, zilch. Now I got some appreciation. If my home came and they appraised my home, it would probably be a lot higher than where I think it is right now, just from all the work that we did, however not looking at that because my house has not been appraised yet, I'm just going off the tax records. So yes, we've had some great appreciation, but at the same time, with that comes more taxes. So I gotta pay more taxes. But also the fact that I just spend all this money and I'm getting nothing in return until I actually sell the home, which we don't plan on doing for a very long time cuz we live here.

Yeah. And that's the problem with, appreciation in the home that you're living in is accessing that capital is at best difficult and expensive. And for me I never plan on accessing the capital in my home, I plan on living here till the end of days. And so it's not my capital, as far as I'm concerned, it's, my kids or charities or whatever, and, so it's irrelevant to me.

Yeah. I'm a little different there. I access my capital with a HELOC and I take that out and I've used it to invest in some other things, but there's another thing you said too, that when you buy a home for yourself, you usually buy more house than we need, right? And that was the case here too, because like, when we moved to Hawaii, we were like, oh, cuz we moved from Virginia to Hawaii we were like, okay, we're gonna downsize, we're gonna live on an island, so we everything's gonna be smaller. It's gonna be nice. This and that, and we have our budget here. We bought a house almost the same exact size as the one that we had in Virginia for about four to six X the price of what it was in Virginia.

That happens, yep.

And again we didn't need the house that big but we wanted it, so we bought it. So yeah that's definitely something to take into consideration where if we came out here and we were renting, we would be looking at, okay, how much is the rent gonna cost versus how much I make and the allowance for housing that we get and everything else and we would base it off of that and be like, oh, this place is good enough for us and the kids, we've got a little yard. We're good. Whereas when you're looking at the house, we're like we're gonna live here potentially for the rest of our lives, we wanna make sure that we have everything that we've ever wanted right now.

And that's one of the other things about home ownership is because of the transaction friction and the cost associated with buying and selling you really have no choice because you gotta plan to hold onto it for seven to 10 years or else there's a reasonable shot that you end up underwater on the transaction costs alone, right? Because if you don't get that appreciation and you have to deal with the 6 to 10% transaction costs and you're trying to sell it after five years because you under bought and you end up having more kids than you expected, or you end up having, we all end up working from home. I don't think anybody expected us all to be working from home to the degree that we are today. So we all need more space than we anticipated. And then you layer into that. Lots of people have more pets than they expected. Lots of people have more going on at home than they expected. So we all need more space now. If you didn't have that extra space at home and you decide you need it and you've gotta trade out of your home, the odds of being underwater that are fairly significant if you didn't over buy. That is an additional opportunity for loss in that consumption decision. Again, if you're renting, you get to the end of your lease, find a bigger place. And you don't have that friction

fair point

you have that flexibility again whereas if you'd, rented a place, just switch it up and the place that you bought from an investment standpoint is still out there making money for you.

Yeah. Jonas, absolutely fair points there. And I just wanna say that there's one person out there that's gonna be listening to this episode that when you hear all this, I want you to message me and tell me that you listen to this episode because I know you're gonna love what Jonas was putting out, cuz you're one of the people in particular that I argue about renting versus buying. I'm gonna message them and let them know, Hey, I have an episode that's coming out just for you and you let me know when you hear it. So ,so yeah that's awesome. No, I really appreciate this and your perspectives and what dwells he does for both the landlords and the tenants. It looks like you've created a great place for both of them to get the best of what they're looking for right? The landlord's gonna get quality tenants, the tenant's gonna find the properties that they want to rent, not the stuff that's okay, I'm just gonna settle because this is all that's getting thrown in my face based off of advertisements who paid more money to list their vacant unit. I think that's huge for one the fact that it's free and it's creating something that's gonna help you feel a little bit more safe. So those two big things. So I definitely wanna say that's awesome Jonas. I appreciate the service that you provide for landlords and tenants. And with that said, I have, I'd like to go into transition this episode into something that we call the final round. Where I'm gonna ask you four hard hitting questions, same questions I ask everybody that comes on the show and if you're ready, we'll get right into it.

I am.

Okay. Awesome. These questions all tie into each other. I'll just point that out from the beginning. And I wanna let you know that these are more geared towards you personally, cuz this is what you've done throughout your time and then building Dwellsy/ I think this can help give us and the listeners a better perspective of who Jonas is and how you got to where you are today. First question is what's the biggest mistake you've ever made?

Mike I think a few of your listeners will appreciate this one. I thought I could time the market at a certain point. 1997, I remember telling a friend of mine that there was a huge real estate bubble and she should definitely not buy her place. And it was ridiculous. And I waited and waited and waited. And finally, in 2006, I was like, all right, I give up. And I started buying places and I got my rear end handed to me. It was hideous. It was all I could do to hold on and not go under with what happened there. I ended up buying a couple of places and it was awful. As a result of that. Can't time to market. Don't try. Maybe somebody a heck of a lot smarter than me can. I think it's all you can do is just keep feathering it in and take advantage of the market when it happens as opposed to, trying to time it. So that's that's my biggest mistake from a real estate standpoint, for sure.

Yeah. And usually people say don't time the market, they're talking about the stock market, but it also is effectively for the real estate market as well. I bought my first property in 2007. So yes. I feel that July of 2007, I bought the property and ouch. Yeah. Or June, 2007. Yeah. If I would've bought it in July, 2007, Yeah. If I would've bought it in July, especially since I did a VA loan, then I actually would've been eligible for, they had this program to help people that used VA loans when the housing market crashed. But because I bought it a month earlier, I didn't qualify. So that was painful.

Really painful.

All right. Hey, that is definitely a big mistake and I'm pretty sure you've learned from that. Yeah, but that kind of ties into what the next question. And that is what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

I, one of the things that I didn't fully appreciate at the beginning that I do now is the importance of talking to people out there in the network, in the world. And how much I have learned from conversations like this one, how much I've learned from conversations with people I don't know with people I do know. Just reaching out to friends, people I don't know and having conversations about topics that matter to me about things that I'm wrestling with. Just being open to that intro to that person I don't know and having the conversation, you literally never know. So much of what I'm doing right now comes as a result to being open to that chance meeting and that chance opportunity and having that conversation with those people and spending that time with folks. And I spent so little time doing that early in my career. I thought all I needed to do was just work, and I work like crazy, and that has its place. But there's so much space for learning from people in conversation and in collaboration with folks and talking about ideas with people. I wish I'd known that back in the beginning.

Yeah. That's a great point. Cuz all work in no play, always results in bad things. And networking is huge. I talk about that a lot on this podcast about how important it is to meet people, especially like-minded people they're only gonna help you accelerate and push yourself and your goals further, versus trying to do everything by yourself. I know some people that do it by themselves and they struggle. And even when you have a great network, you can struggle, but you've got people that got your back and you've got people you can rely on people, you can ask questions to. That's huge, that's worth more than anything else out there. Just having some reliable contacts that you can call on when you need help and things like that. And you get that through building relationships. Definitely great point. Absolutely. So this again, it's gonna tie into the next question and cuz I think that was actually a great thing for people to hear, but do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today?

The biggest thing I tell young folks starting out is just to take a chance and to say yes to things. It's easy to close yourself off, it's easy to feel busy, it's easy to feel like you don't have time or bandwidth. It's easy to say no to things but to say yes, to take a chance on something I've always learned the most, I've always gotten the most mileage when I've done the things that are scariest to me. I remember this very, this one moment where I was deciding between two jobs and I was sitting in a parking lot talking to a mentor of mine and one of them was very comfortable. It was a continuation of work I'd been doing for a bunch of years. And the other job just frankly, scared. Scared me like crazy he was like it's obvious, isn't it? You gotta do that one. Like, why is it so obvious to you? This one is terrifying. But he was absolutely right. And I, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. I wouldn't have learned any of the things that I now know and have created so much value in my life as a result of that role. If I hadn't taken that chance, if I hadn't said yes to the really scary thing. So saying yes and taking that chance, I think is really important and hard to do. But no better time to do it than when you're starting out cuz you have a lot less to lose so much more to gain at that point.

Yeah. That's, those are some great points Jonas and I would actually also argue the other side that sometimes you have to know when to say no. Cause sometimes if you say yes too much I've been in that boat a lot where I'm just like, oh yeah. Hey, that sounds great. Let's do it. And I'm like, oh, I should have really thought about this a little more. This was probably something I should have said no to. But yeah, so there's that fear on both sides of it, right? Whether it's a yes or a no and you just really gotta make sure you understand what you're getting into, but you gotta take a chance sometimes. Sometimes you gotta roll the dice, sometimes you gotta go with your gut, sometimes you gotta go against your gut, but yeah, you gotta do what you feel is right for yourself and your family as you move forward. But yeah, you gotta, and you gotta take a chance on people. You gotta take a chance on people. Cause if you don't, you're gonna wind up just stuck in that that spot that you were, where you weren't building those relationships and networking and stuck alone. And that's not where somebody wants to be. Not in this business not, in real estate, not in any type of investment business, you wanna have people you can rely on. So yeah, take a chance on someone. Final question of the final round, and this is an opinion based question and that is, do you Jonas, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

So I am going to take a completely different direction on this. I actually Get the most inspiration from non-fiction books. I find it as a constant challenge for me to keep an open mind and to be truly creative as I'm going through my work. I need to be constantly coming up with new ideas. I need to be constantly challenging the status quo. And I find most business books would've made a really good long form article and don't make a really good book. And I wish I'm actually working on a book myself, so I keep this council for myself as well. I'm doing my best to make it worth the book, but so many of them are, would make a really good 3000 word article. So I actually am a huge fan of science fiction writing and just really creative, really thoughtful, original writing in whatever genre you like. I find gives me the most creative juices, the most regeneration. Yes. Lord of the rings. Fabulous. I was just watching the Hobbit trilogy with the kids star wars. Fabulous. Yes, man. After my own heart, I love it. I was just reading a great series. I can't the name of right now, so good. Anyway, there's just there's really creative thinking that just forces me out of my business mindset that I spend so much time in all day, every day and I find when I get to the end of the day, if I'm just reading more of that it doesn't help me reset, it doesn't help me refresh, it doesn't help me reengage the next day. It doesn't help me bring creativity to my work. But really good science fiction does. So I definitely recommend something to compliment the work as opposed to something to contribute.

Yeah. Something to just pull you away a little bit, separate your mind, give yourself a little bit of enjoyment, right? Yeah. And just refresh everything that's going on. You gotta recharge the battery somehow. And if all you're doing is you're business all day, and then you're reading about business all night, again, that goes back to the all work and no play statement that I made before. Yeah. And you're gonna put yourself into this regressive cycle where you just, you know you're gonna burn, you're gonna burn out. Yeah. For one. Yeah. So for me, yeah. Same thing. I'm a huge sci-fi fan, huge star wars fans. So for those of you that are listening, that, that aren't watching this on YouTube and seeing the video as he was talking about that I pulled out my Lord of The Rings book and held it up to the camera in my Star Wars book and held it up to the camera cuz that you do, you need to have some type of creative outlet besides just your work can't be your outlet. Because you're just gonna, you're gonna wind up being a hermit, right? And yeah, so Jonas you'll appreciate this too is I got my Star Wars tattoo here. See the death star.

Oh, fabulous. Look at that. That's amazing.

And then, Darth Vader in the back.

Oh, good. oh, that's so cool.

Yeah. Awesome.

I was just remembering The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin. That's what I was just remembering. It's an amazing series. Highly recommend it.

Yeah. Awesome. I'll have to check it out.

Yeah. Good stuff.

All right so there you have it guys, a non-business book related. I think this is a first on the podcast.

There we go,

That we had something that was non-business related and science fiction related, which is fantastic. At least for me, I'm super excited about that. But I think the main point of that is to understand that you need to recharge your batteries, right? You don't, you just can't keep going and going and going. You're gonna burn yourself out. So that is huge. All right Jonas this was awesome. Absolutely fantastic. And that's it for the final round. But I do have one more question for you. , it's the most important question of all, because those that are listening to this episode are like, wow, we really like what Jonas is doing in Dwellsy and the fact that it's a great product for both landlords and tenants, so for those that are listening right now that are either a landlord or a tenant and they wanna know more about you, where can they find, or you, and Dwellsy, where can they find more information about about you and the company? Do you have a website you could share with us any social media that they can follow, anything like that.

Yeah, absolutely. Dwellsy is just dwellsy.com, D W E L L S Y dot com. We are on all the socials as Dwellsy or Dwellsy rents. And if anybody wants to chat, I'm just at jonas@dwellsy.com. Anybody should feel free to reach out to me.

All right. Fantastic. So everyone, I'm gonna make sure the show notes are or all these links are in the show notes to make it easy for everybody. And you heard Jonas. If you got a question or anything like that, reach out to him, shoot him an email and he'll get back to you with an answer. And this has been absolutely fantastic Jonas. What a great interview, I had a great time, especially where we could let our nerd flags fly a little bit and talk a little sci-fi that always brings joy to my heart, especially as podcast host, but this was absolutely a treat. And I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. So thank you so much.

Same here, Mike. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for the time. All righty, Aloha.