Join host Steven Pesavento as he engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Alvin Hope Johnson, a successful entrepreneur and visionary in the real estate industry. They explore the power of finding alignment, letting go of fear and baggage, and embracing a life of purpose and abundance. Discover how getting clear on your strengths, passions, and desires can lead to creating a ripple effect of positive impact in your personal and professional life.
Key Takeaways
Resources Mentioned
Interested in connecting with other like-minded individuals? Then join our VonFinch Private Capital Network. Learn more at http://www.vonfinch.com/invest.
About our Guest:
Alvin Hope Johnson is a visionary entrepreneur in the real estate industry, known for his passion for creating opportunities and impacting lives. With a focus on developing affordable housing and workforce housing units, Alvin's work goes beyond profitability, aiming to provide safe and decent environments for families and generate opportunities for various stakeholders. He believes that true freedom and fulfillment come from doing what we love and aligning our work with our purpose.
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00;00;01;28 - 00;00;24;28
Steven Pesavento
I'm Steven Pesavento and Welcome to the name Your number podcast presented by the Investor Mindset. As someone who comes from a challenging childhood, I've spent my life seeking financial security, personal growth, and ultimately freedom. The freedom to not wake up worried about the next paycheck, but rather with the confidence of knowing that my passive income pays my bills without the need to think about it.
00;00;25;12 - 00;00;53;25
Steven Pesavento
When you name your number that you'll earn passively, that creates your ultimate quality of life, then I believe you've achieved real freedom. Welcome to my show. It's time to name your number. You then invite other people into your world who are able to then live that same style of living and really enjoy what they do because they're really good at it and they get a lot from it and they're able to get you closer to that end.
00;00;53;25 - 00;01;16;29
Steven Pesavento
Outcome of, you know, making a huge impact in the world, helping all of these tens of thousands of families that live in your units or all the people who kind of trickle down the line from that business and all the benefit that it brings. Welcome to the name your numbers show presented by the investor Mindset. We're on a mission to help create financial freedom for over a million investors.
00;01;16;29 - 00;01;35;13
Steven Pesavento
And I believe that when you name your number, the amount of money that you want to earn every single month passively to live the life that you want to live, then I believe you've achieved real freedom. So today, I'm really excited to have Alvin Hope Johnson in the studio today. How you doing, Alvin?
00;01;36;23 - 00;01;44;11
Alvin Hope Johnson
Freeman I'm doing great, man. It's a wonderful day to day. I'm looking out at the sunshine and down in beautiful, sunny Texas. Man is amazing today.
00;01;44;19 - 00;02;09;24
Steven Pesavento
Man. So blessed. So, so grateful for the life that we get to live. And I feel like we share a lot of that, that view on life and really how great it is that we get to create this life. And for those of you who don't know Alvin, he is the founder and CEO of Hope Housing Foundation, a nonprofit corporation supporting affordable and workforce housing for low to moderate income families.
00;02;10;04 - 00;02;38;17
Steven Pesavento
He has been working in the affordable housing space since 1990. He's got a truly incredible story. I think it's very inspiring and I'm excited to be able to share some of that with you, so I won't take any of that away. But before we get into that, what I'd love to start out with is actually on more of a personal note by looking back at your life, what events or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today and how has that impacted you on your money and investing journey?
00;02;38;26 - 00;02;58;22
Alvin Hope Johnson
Oh, boy. There you go. Well, I'll tell you, man, I was just looking through one of my files this morning at my TEDx talk I did back in October. I had a friend call me and her son is going through some things. And the thing that I was able to share with her is, is one of the things that happened to me as a child.
00;02;58;22 - 00;03;35;19
Alvin Hope Johnson
I was sexually assaulted at nine years old and I didn't remember that until I was 38. And within the last year and a half or so of doing a lot of deep, deep work psychologically and just trying to become better, a better person. I realized that the reason that I have been under the radar and behind the scenes never wanted anybody to know who I was was because the night that that creep did that to me and I walked out of the bathroom.
00;03;36;16 - 00;04;05;28
Alvin Hope Johnson
There were six or eight other kids in the room. And so from that moment, I never wanted to be seen. I never wanted to be heard. I never wanted anybody to know anything about me. And so for 40 plus years, I operated at that level of fear, which prohibited me. It precluded me from being able to talk to people the way I wanted to because I didn't want to be known.
00;04;07;13 - 00;04;38;11
Alvin Hope Johnson
I didn't want to be seen. So I didn't operate as in my full potential. And so that trauma that I have been able to release in the last couple of years has I mean, I can't even imagine what it did to me for being, you know, I thought I was all a man of faith, but I realized, oh, great man of fear because I was doing everything based on like, oh, God, if I don't do this, this will happen versus doing it out of a knowing.
00;04;38;17 - 00;05;21;12
Steven Pesavento
Isn't it such a different place to operate from that place of faith, place of belief, of the goodness that is already here and that goodness that's happening. And I'm so sorry to hear about that trauma that you experienced. And, you know, the truth is a lot of people face really tough things. So I really appreciate you sharing that with all of us because at the end of the day, whether we've experienced the exact same thing, I know I've been through a variety of different traumas and tribulations and challenges, and it's not until we actually dive in and do the work that you're talking about that we can find out, one that it's been influencing who
00;05;21;12 - 00;05;43;23
Steven Pesavento
we are and how we're showing up, but also that it's a gift. And maybe you're not at that point of seeing it as a gift, but I know that some of the traumas I've experienced have been some of the greatest gifts I've ever received because they've forced me. They've driven me to become the person that I am, to be absolutely obsessed with understanding how to think differently and be better and and do better and help other people.
00;05;43;23 - 00;05;56;07
Steven Pesavento
And it wasn't until removing some of those blocks that it actually allowed me to really thrive. And I can I can feel that energy coming through you that that you're finding another part of yourself that you'd forgotten about.
00;05;56;08 - 00;06;18;17
Alvin Hope Johnson
Absolutely. That's so interesting that you say that one of the books I'm reading says, you know, we're all spirit beings having a human experience. And we all came from from a place that was not human. Right. And so from our creator and we forgot that God has empowered us to do all this stuff that we all really want to do.
00;06;18;18 - 00;06;37;21
Alvin Hope Johnson
He's already put everything in us to do what we need to do. He's there greater works than these that he was doing, Shall we do? And we just forgot. And so I'm glad you said that. And, and so when we when we are able to come in to that level, aware of awareness of who we are, of who we really are, that's when life happens, man.
00;06;37;21 - 00;07;10;15
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so I have become so free. I'm so excited. I'm I've de-aged by 20 plus years, you know, I look like I'm in my mid now instead of my mid-fifties and I just feel great. Everything's great every day. I expect nothing but positive things to happen around me now. I don't expect the ball to drop like I used to all the time, and it's because we're operating from that place of faith, of knowing that we are co-creators.
00;07;10;15 - 00;07;24;10
Alvin Hope Johnson
Everything in our life that we have today, we created it. Whether we like it or not, we're responsible for it. And so when we get that level of awareness, I think it's just a place where we get to make some better decisions going forward.
00;07;24;12 - 00;07;42;10
Steven Pesavento
Well, it's like when we shed these masks, we shed all these layers of scar tissue and trauma and all the things that we've experienced our life. We, we we find this other side of ourselves that we thought we had to hide away. We thought we couldn't show people that part of us. And and that's what true freedom is all about.
00;07;42;15 - 00;08;06;16
Steven Pesavento
You know, we're here talking about naming your number. We're talking about reaching freedom Financial, really. But to be honest, for some people I know I've been one of them and still am on that path that the only way I can ever be truly free is to be able to let go of some of those things, you know, to let go of the blame and the shame and the guilt let go of all of those emotions, those negative feelings.
00;08;06;16 - 00;08;37;26
Steven Pesavento
And then replace them through the work that we're talking about, through meditation, through inner child work, through all the different modalities that are available to us to be able to reach inside and start shedding those layers and then sitting down and envisioning the beautiful life and future that we're living right now. And that's the place where some really incredible things happen because you start feeling whole, you start realizing you don't have to look externally too, for that validation or that fulfillment that you actually can create it inside.
00;08;37;26 - 00;08;54;17
Steven Pesavento
And what's phenomenal that I've found, I'd be curious your thought on this is that when I'm in that state of wholeness, when I'm in that state of letting go and being okay, then I can actually go solve the problems, whatever that problem is, we got a big problem on a project call. Let's go figure out and solve it.
00;08;54;17 - 00;09;13;13
Steven Pesavento
If I can let it go, I can come to that place from such a stronger position versus if I'm going there emotionally with all that fear and baggage. But if I can come to a place of faith, let's look at this in reality then where we can actually face those things and really open up another level. What are your thoughts?
00;09;13;25 - 00;09;35;24
Alvin Hope Johnson
I wholeheartedly agree with that. And, you know, I've heard this freedom thing so many times, and I hear the freedom number, which your freedom number that you can just live forever. And the other day, one of my mentors, oh, it was so funny because he's like 33 years old and he's one of my closest friends and he's a mentor, so he's younger than my son.
00;09;37;01 - 00;10;01;26
Alvin Hope Johnson
And he asked me, Well, what do you want? And that's like, What do you mean, what do I want? No, really, what do you want? And I couldn't answer that because that's so vast. I said, What do you want? He said, I want freedom. I said, Well, tell me about that freedom. And so I have implemented one of his thoughts.
00;10;01;26 - 00;10;28;19
Alvin Hope Johnson
And what he said was he said, album up. And he's been asking me for the last few months, what do I like to do? What do I don't like to do? And all of these things as we're creating this new company, this new life of mine, he said, I want to be free from doing the things that I don't want to do, so I don't need a freedom number because if I'm doing only what I want to do, then I'm operating in my highest and best self.
00;10;28;27 - 00;10;50;29
Alvin Hope Johnson
I'm the happiest I'll ever want to be. And so if I'm doing that in a way that's providing an income for me, I'll probably never quit doing it because we're going to continue to create. So we may as well create something that we want. And so he's not the kind of guy, and neither am I, that can just have money coming in and go sit around and go fishing for the rest of my life because that's not productive.
00;10;51;23 - 00;10;57;27
Alvin Hope Johnson
So totally. I think now that that freedom, unless you don't sell a fish but you know, I'll feed somebody. Well.
00;10;58;07 - 00;11;22;00
Steven Pesavento
I think the interesting thing is that it's not to me it's not a one or the other, but it's an and the only way that naming your number really makes sense to do is as a starting point for people who are unclear about where they're at financially. So they can have one single target of what they're working towards, but the targets can grow, Right?
00;11;22;00 - 00;11;39;11
Steven Pesavento
Your target number today might be, well, it costs me $10,000 a month to live with a little bit of emergency savings. So my number is 10,000. But when I sit down and I create my dream life vision and I answer those questions that you're talking about and I get clear like, what do I want to do? Who do I want to help?
00;11;39;17 - 00;12;01;23
Steven Pesavento
Why is this important? What what difference do I want to make in the world? What gives me energy and like, what emotions do I want to feel? Wow. Well, maybe that number might be different. Or maybe more importantly, I'm going to be focused on doing those things that fill me up. And in the end, you end up finding that you're able to create so much more wealth and income when you're actually in that place of alignment.
00;12;01;23 - 00;12;18;10
Steven Pesavento
For a lot of people, though, they need that. They're so focused on that scarcity. There's so focused on what they don't have, that when they can target well, okay, well, at least I'm clear on this. And so now I can actually step aside to get clear on what matters most, which is what you're talking about.
00;12;18;17 - 00;12;44;13
Alvin Hope Johnson
Is exactly it. And so when we focus on just doing those things, the money always comes that those things just it'll just come because you're being productive, because we're creating. And so then that freedom number is not such a big deal because as you said, it's happiness. And as long as it's reciprocating itself and any, any will, then that just kind of takes care of itself.
00;12;44;23 - 00;12;57;15
Alvin Hope Johnson
I don't want to sound like, you know, So what's the word spiritual spoke or any of that kind of stuff, that if you just do the right thing, the right will happen. But if you just do the right things, the right things always happen.
00;12;58;15 - 00;13;19;19
Steven Pesavento
Man. It's funny because a lot of people are allergic to that spirituality, but when you actually get down to it, whether you're talking about God or Oneness or the universe or Christianity or Judaism or you're atheist, whatever it is, where you can connect to that understanding that when you do the right thing, when you live in alignment with who you are, natural is meant to be.
00;13;19;27 - 00;13;23;09
Steven Pesavento
A lot of amazing things happen. Stuff just start showing up.
00;13;23;12 - 00;13;47;13
Alvin Hope Johnson
Is that alignment with who you want made to be? And when you can figure that point out. And it might be as simple as understanding what you like to do because sometimes those lives kind of go along with our purpose sometimes, and probably innately they probably really do. If we just peel back the onion far enough and ask the right questions.
00;13;47;13 - 00;13;50;20
Alvin Hope Johnson
So I am one of these kind of conversations.
00;13;51;27 - 00;14;09;23
Steven Pesavento
I think it's really beneficial because it's like so often times we get so caught up in the idea of our business or our job or what's that next investment strategy that's going to get in there? And guess what? I can, and I'm sure you can as well. We can both teach people a lot of stuff about how to get into that place.
00;14;09;23 - 00;14;28;08
Steven Pesavento
But ironically, if you get this stuff clear while you're learning the skills and knowledge, some really amazing things happen. But because we're on this topic, I'm curious. Like you're at a point where I feel like a lot of people are at. They're at a point where they're looking to figure out like what's important in their life and you're defining it.
00;14;28;08 - 00;14;47;13
Steven Pesavento
So tell us a little bit about what is that vision for the life that you're creating? What are those things that you're doing? How are you helping people? What are you looking to build, not only from the business standpoint, I'd love to hear about that. I think the audience would as well, but also from a personal standpoint, because I think at the end of the day, that's really what we're talking about matters.
00;14;47;20 - 00;15;15;21
Alvin Hope Johnson
It is that freedom of doing only what I want to do well and what I want to do right now. And in a started more so with what am I good at. And so and we're talking about work first and you know, working life kind of correlates. So he asked me about what are you good asset I know but I don't really know because sometimes the things that we find very easy to do, you might not put that much value on them.
00;15;15;21 - 00;15;23;15
Alvin Hope Johnson
He said, Well, let me tell you what I know about you and what you're good at, he said. Then we're going to pick up the phone and we're going to call for other people and ask them the same thing.
00;15;25;16 - 00;15;49;00
Alvin Hope Johnson
That was kind of scary. But when we got the second person on the phone, I said, Hey, do you love me? Yeah, I love you. Okay, good. You're going to answer these questions with Aaron, and I need you to just be as honest as you can. Nothing that you say will affect our relationship, I promise. And so he asks, What does I'm good at and what are his weaknesses between of four other people?
00;15;49;22 - 00;16;15;01
Alvin Hope Johnson
All five answers were consistent. I mean, almost of the two. He had asked a couple of questions to get down to to the nitty gritty on a couple of them because they were real apprehensive about the weakness they had. But we got there. And so me now, understanding what I what I what I thought I was good at and understanding what other people see me being good at, that kind of solidified how I felt about me.
00;16;15;17 - 00;16;35;22
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so now that I know I'm good at that, I really like it. So how can I do just that in my business? And so if I'm doing just that at work, then I'm happy when I go home. I'm happier when I'm around other people. And and so I'm not really affected by some of the other things because I'm not doing anything I don't want to do.
00;16;36;16 - 00;17;02;20
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so by having that part solidified now, what it does is I believe that because in work we're building a team and building a company and all this stuff to support other organizations as a consulting company, all the things that I am not good at or I don't want to do the universe, God, whatever you believe, those people will navigate to us because we're doing what we're supposed to believe.
00;17;03;04 - 00;17;28;08
Alvin Hope Johnson
We're doing what we're good at and what we're supposed to be doing. And we believe that way. And it really, really does happen. And so people ask me, What do I do? Well, as a profession, we develop workforce on affordable housing. But what I really believe I do is I create opportunities for people. So I create opportunities for associates to come work with me.
00;17;28;18 - 00;17;48;28
Alvin Hope Johnson
I create opportunities for contractors to build for us. I create opportunities for high net worth individuals to earn double digit returns on their money. I create opportunities for families that need housing to live in a great, safe, decent environment. So everything I do is, like I said, we're creating, whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not.
00;17;49;15 - 00;18;20;13
Alvin Hope Johnson
So those are the things that I love to create. So when I'm doing those things, creating those things, it puts me in a place of being happy or free of just being my ideal self. So when I go home, my ideal life is the same way because I've been doing everything that I want to do. And so when I bring people into my into my sphere, when they come into my sphere, if they have the opportunity to do only what they want to do, then look at what kind of environment we've created.
00;18;21;01 - 00;18;46;06
Alvin Hope Johnson
We've got an environment where everybody is happy, everybody's free, everybody's doing only what they want to do. Sometimes we have to do what we have to do, right? We just got to do it. But when you can kind of design a system around doing only those things and have everybody else on the team doing that same thing, and then you hammer out the other things that you have to do, then it just makes work so much more pleasant.
00;18;46;17 - 00;19;09;10
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so I've taken that same thing home and now at home I only do what I want to do. Everybody at home only does what they want to do, and we hire out for what we don't want to do. And that has created opportunity for somebody else to do what they like to do as well. Whether that's the yard man, whether that's a cook, whether that whoever it is, we've got another opportunity for somebody else to do something.
00;19;09;25 - 00;19;34;26
Alvin Hope Johnson
So it is it is freed of the freedom that I get from doing that at work and at home. Just it is just creating a totally different life. And so now I believe that will us creating this kind of life will allow me to create the opportunity that I want it to have 20,000 affordable units, workforce housing units in the next five years.
00;19;35;22 - 00;19;53;10
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so guess how many people we get to help by creating those opportunities? All of these families that live there out of all of this. So that'll work for the construction companies that build these units, all the finance people that'll help us finance these things. I mean, that's a ripple effect that'll go on for years and years and years and years and years.
00;19;53;25 - 00;20;09;24
Alvin Hope Johnson
And I get to be the one that kind of thought about that and walked this thing out. And I get to do it with people that get to do only what they want to do. And so it's really so dynamic to have that kind of thought process. Now, as I, you know, the best part of my life. What do you think?
00;20;09;27 - 00;20;28;08
Steven Pesavento
I feel like, too, to really look back at some of those key things that you shared about there, Alvin, is you really talking about getting clear on what you want and why you want it, what you want from your life? And with part of that is what are you really good at? What are you good at? What are you not good at?
00;20;28;22 - 00;20;46;27
Steven Pesavento
What gives you energy? What takes it away? And when you can get clear on that, when you can actually step into that and ask yourself the questions honestly and open up to other people in your life, or bring in a coach or a mentor who can do that so that they can feel a little bit more comfortable sharing the things that are challenges or weaknesses.
00;20;46;27 - 00;21;21;17
Steven Pesavento
Because a lot of people don't want to tell you something that they think might hurt you, but at the same time, it's so valuable to be able to hear it because when you can be honest with yourself, when you can have that self-awareness, you can then make decisions from that place. And when you tie that in, just to summarize what you said, to tie that in to this idea of just being who you were meant to be and and having that intention and that vision of what you're creating your life, you then invite other people into your world who are able to then live that same style of living and really enjoy what they do
00;21;21;17 - 00;21;40;26
Steven Pesavento
because they're really good at it and they get a lot from it and they're able to get you closer to that end. Outcome of, you know, making a huge impact in the world, helping all of these tens of thousands of families that live in your units or all the people who kind of trickle down the line from that business and all the benefit that it brings.
00;21;40;29 - 00;21;41;18
Steven Pesavento
I love that.
00;21;41;22 - 00;22;08;14
Alvin Hope Johnson
That's a fact. And so when I I mean, this is I feel like I'm in the best season of my life right now. And, you know, real estate market is challenging. It's, you know, our interest rates have gone up. We've got insurance going up 200, 300% on some properties. I mean, every thing that you can imagine is going on in the economy and, you know, people not being able to pay rent, some people can.
00;22;10;01 - 00;22;29;26
Alvin Hope Johnson
And those things that we worried about, those things where we would just not have a good life. And now that we have the ability to just set this thing on, on, on just doing the best we can do across the board, being the best we can be. One of my other good friends that as we get better, it gets better.
00;22;30;18 - 00;22;50;07
Alvin Hope Johnson
As we get better. Everything in our everything and our influence gets better. Everything we see gets better. Everybody we know get better because we have seen it from a better position. And so I'm just just striving to always become that better person and and as I get better, it all gets better.
00;22;51;11 - 00;23;12;16
Steven Pesavento
It's so true. And I think we've been we've really been having this conversation at a very high frequency, a very high level. We're talking from a place that I hope many of you who are listening are are understanding and can relate to. And if you can't even better, because there's an opportunity to be able to say, hmm, I wonder what's going on there.
00;23;12;16 - 00;23;36;17
Steven Pesavento
I wonder how he got to that place of thinking like that and really change his mindset with the investor mindset. We talk a lot about the importance of shifting the way that you think, stepping into a new way of thinking, and I think that's exactly what we're talking about here, Alvin. And so for those folks who aren't super familiar, I think you have a really inspiring story of coming into the real estate space.
00;23;36;17 - 00;23;59;11
Steven Pesavento
A lot of times when when people hear folks that, you know, own commercial real estate and own tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, they can sometimes look and say, hey, well, that's cool that he did it. But I'm not you know, I don't really know how I could ever get there. Would you mind just sharing a brief version of kind of that path towards you learning this business?
00;23;59;11 - 00;24;19;22
Steven Pesavento
Because I think through that process of finding a great mentor and being willing to do whatever it takes to learn the things that you've learned. When we apply that thinking with what we've been talking about so far, I think it really opens up kind of rocket fuel for people to be able to launch themselves into whatever new life they want to create.
00;24;19;28 - 00;24;47;08
Alvin Hope Johnson
Yeah, not a problem. You know, it sounds good on this side of it, but, you know, I started out right out of high school painting houses. And so not just your typical A-frame little house. These houses were ten or 15,000 square feet. This was in the early eighties, and they throw me in a closet and I'd have the sand and sheet rock and till it was smooth and I'd have to put it a nail holes with putty until you couldn't tell that there was a nail there.
00;24;47;19 - 00;25;05;27
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so I really learned that. And so I got really good at painting. And then a couple of years later, the guy I was working for went out of business and I started knocking on doors because I still had to eat and I knocked on the guy's door and I was playing your house 4 to 50. If you bought all the paint, you know, all these how to brick houses.
00;25;05;27 - 00;25;20;10
Alvin Hope Johnson
All I had to do was paint, you know, one story eaves and things like that. No big deal. Half a day. And this guy said, I know you used to work for such and such, and we're doing this hotel. Could you get some guys to to work with you if I gave you a paint job? Oh, yeah, no problem.
00;25;21;04 - 00;25;40;07
Alvin Hope Johnson
So I think I was 19 or 20 years old and that situation turned me into a millionaire. We worked on a job for a couple of years, and by the time it was done, we had done several million dollars worth of work and I had $1,000,000 in the bank. It was really great. And I thought it was great until it wasn't great.
00;25;40;24 - 00;26;06;02
Alvin Hope Johnson
And I think it was 1989, my son's third birthday, all the money was gone. The interest rates were over 18%. Nobody was doing any construction work anywhere with those kind of interest rates. Nobody was nobody that I knew anywhere. And so I didn't have any more money. And on my son's third birthday, I didn't have enough money to buy a hot wheel car.
00;26;06;02 - 00;26;21;03
Alvin Hope Johnson
We were literally getting kicked out of our house that day and I thought that they would be better off without me. So I went and put a 38 to my hair, pulled the trigger, The gun didn't go off. I took a bottle of nitroglycerin pills, woke up ten days later in the hospital and said, Man, you are a freakin loser.
00;26;21;03 - 00;26;46;04
Alvin Hope Johnson
You couldn't even kill yourself. Uh, let's fast forward past that drama. And I got back into real estate a few years later. And about 1996, I drove a truck for three years after that. My family knows me back to hell. But we never talked about the situation, never talked about it. And so I got it back into real estate.
00;26;46;04 - 00;27;07;02
Alvin Hope Johnson
In about 1996, a guy introduced me to what a mortgage company was. I had been doing second mortgages for clients in their home and didn't know it. Hey, fill out this two page application and the money. I'll show up in your bank account. Pay me. I didn't know there was a mortgage until I opened the mortgage company in 96 and did that from 96 to about 2008.
00;27;07;03 - 00;27;34;00
Alvin Hope Johnson
12 years. We had our own warehouse lines of credit. We were funding our own loans. So, you know, I rode through the the end of the nineties and into the 2000s being a lender and doing that on a really high level. And then about 2008, of course, the world changed again. Financial. But at the beginning of that year I met a gentleman who had 16,000 units of apartments and he want to help me.
00;27;34;18 - 00;27;51;04
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so he gave me a couple of assignments and uh, for three weeks I would call him after me and he flew in to Dallas and met with me. I drove up from Houston to Dallas, met him. This guy was so good looking. He walked in the room, sucked all the air out of the room. I never saw anything like this before.
00;27;51;23 - 00;28;11;25
Alvin Hope Johnson
And so after that meeting, we'd helped me for three weeks, gave me assignments, and I'd call him and he'd answer the phone and he told me, No, that's not right. No, that's not good. This is what it won't work. And after those three calls, he couldn't answer my call. I called him for 49 weeks after that, and I think it was February of 2008 that album.
00;28;11;25 - 00;28;30;20
Alvin Hope Johnson
Man, I am so tired of you. Him. Oh, you know, it was me. He said, Yeah, I know it was you. I've never met anybody night. So if you want to know what we do, you can get up here next month and stay for 30 days and I'll put you up. I'll send you home every weekend, and. And then we'll see how where that goes.
00;28;31;14 - 00;28;54;03
Alvin Hope Johnson
March 1st, 2008, I showed up at his office with the biggest suitcase. I wasn't planning on leaving. After three days. He asked me if I was going to stay. I said, I'm not going home unless you send me home. But he gave me the opportunity to go into every property, every building, any office into his office. I said in the board meetings I met with him and a few of his investors from time to time went to the banks.
00;28;54;03 - 00;29;14;07
Alvin Hope Johnson
He really let me know how this thing, how big it was, how it worked. But there were still a lot of unanswered questions. But anyway, 13 months after the day I got there, he died in a car wreck. And after about a month or so, I became the president of that foundation. The board asked me to step in.
00;29;14;09 - 00;29;43;02
Alvin Hope Johnson
I know five or six people that were left out of over 150 200 employees, again, 16,000 units of apartments. When he died, the foundation got put into a bankruptcy. We had to sit there and write a bankruptcy plan. So I learned a lot about bankruptcy and plans and me and a group of misfit individuals did that. And I say misfit only because we were not qualified to do that or by by profession or by training.
00;29;43;20 - 00;30;05;10
Alvin Hope Johnson
But God didn't always call a qualified. He just calls the ones that are willing to go. And so we did that. And after after two years of battling with that, the bankruptcy was over, the trustee was put in place. I got fired and then I realized that nobody is going to hire you. And you started over there as a volunteer.
00;30;06;00 - 00;30;22;18
Alvin Hope Johnson
Then the company went into bankruptcy and then you got fired. And then so what are you going to do? And I just didn't know what to do. And my friend's family gave me an opportunity to take over what is now Hope Housing Foundation. And they put a board in place and the board hired me to be the president.
00;30;22;18 - 00;30;42;12
Alvin Hope Johnson
And we said, Man, we're going to go buy some apartments, one building at a time. And make some money and change how some people live. I'll use my color and my influence to show some of these kids in these ghettos that, hey, you can succeed. You don't, you know, just because we're brown skinned, black skin, whatever you want to be does not is not a disadvantage.
00;30;43;03 - 00;30;51;19
Alvin Hope Johnson
It's actually an advantage for you to do better and show other people that you can do better. So I've always wanted to use my platform to help other people.
00;30;51;26 - 00;31;16;04
Steven Pesavento
I just feel like it's such a valuable story for people to hear because oftentimes, you know, where we're at today doesn't represent where we came from. And what I really take away from that story and what I hope others will take away is just the importance of flowing with the challenges that come, because they will. Without a doubt, we're talking about challenges at the beginning.
00;31;16;04 - 00;31;39;00
Steven Pesavento
We're talking about challenges that are coming, and there's no doubt they're going to come. And so when you can prepare yourself to be able to flow with those challenges and know that another opportunity is around the corner, especially if you go after it because you put yourself in a position to be able to go learn from somebody else who is already living the life or running the business or had some knowledge and skill that you didn't have.
00;31;39;15 - 00;32;02;16
Steven Pesavento
And by putting yourself in that position, be willing to do whatever it took to be able to be of value and service to that person, that person was able to share so much with you, and it's really led you to be able to build, you know, such a real estate empire, be able to really inspire other people, to be able to get back up, keep going, find their way out of whatever situation they're in.
00;32;02;27 - 00;32;20;29
Steven Pesavento
And I think it really just goes to show you know, what's possible. So this has been a lot of fun. I wish we had more time to be able to dive deeper in. Would you share with the audience? We've got one more question after this to wrap up. Would you share with the audience a little bit about what you're working on and how people can get in touch with you?
00;32;21;12 - 00;32;58;03
Alvin Hope Johnson
Thank you. What we're doing now is we've got about 1000 units of workforce housing under development right now. We'll be breaking ground on a 685 of those units within the next 45 days. And as as as being a creator, I'll say this really quickly. You know, we're doing workforce housing. And what that means is that we're focusing on people that make between 60 and 80% of the area median income in specific markets and the markets we're looking at have area median incomes of above $80,000 a year.
00;32;58;18 - 00;33;24;04
Alvin Hope Johnson
So that means that our ideal client tenant would make 60% of that $48,000 a year. Great tenant, great workforce, housing community. So as a minimum about that and as there's no maximum, but so we have put together this platform to to do these units for workforce housing all across the country. And we're doing this with 50133 tax exempt bonds.
00;33;24;23 - 00;33;48;10
Alvin Hope Johnson
These tax exempt bonds allow people that partner with us the opportunity to make these double digit crazy returns on their investment backed by tax exempt bonds because they become part of the debt stack. And all of the money that they make from these investments is exempted from their income tax. It's an absolute amazing thing that our race has done.
00;33;48;20 - 00;34;07;06
Alvin Hope Johnson
It's been going on for hundreds of years. You think about every municipal bond across the country to build stadiums and schools and all of these things. There's there are companies that buy those. And those companies that buy those municipal bonds don't pay income tax on their gains. And so this is just another way of doing it. With housing.
00;34;07;17 - 00;34;36;26
Alvin Hope Johnson
We're doing the same thing. We're putting together some institutional quality funds for that that are backed by these real estate bonds. And it's really, really a safe investment when our partners and investors become part of the debt stack because in any real estate transaction, the debt always gets paid. Limited partners don't always get paid. And so we put these things together where our partner investors can become part of the debt stack and make these returns that are exempted from income tax.
00;34;37;09 - 00;35;00;09
Alvin Hope Johnson
And they help us do something really great. I mean, 20,000 units of affordable workforce housing across the country in the next five or six years is just a phenomenal task. But we can do it because there's so much money out there. There's so many people that want to do good while doing good. And that's what we that's what we're charged with and that's what we're that's what we put together.
00;35;00;19 - 00;35;01;22
Steven Pesavento
What's that email address?
00;35;02;03 - 00;35;21;00
Alvin Hope Johnson
Oh, thanks. Oh, yeah. Alvin at 307 to hope dot org has Alvin at three seven to hope that our hope housing foundation is the website for the C three the nonprofit that we that we champion that's spearheading this initiative.
00;35;21;00 - 00;35;46;14
Steven Pesavento
So well. Amazing. Amazing. This is some really powerful stuff. And I've really enjoyed the conversation of getting to know you. And and in just one sentence, answer this question. We'll wrap up. What's your advice for those who are listening? We're on that path towards creating their ultimate dream life and being able to live that life free from any of the worries or challenges that they're currently facing today.
00;35;47;02 - 00;36;14;21
Alvin Hope Johnson
I think it starts with self-awareness that's becoming aware of where you are right now, becoming aware of how much money you spend and becoming aware of how much money you make, becoming aware of your budget, all those things. It starts with self-awareness, right? And so my advice would be to become as much aware as you can. So becoming super, super aware of where you are and then where you want to go.
00;36;15;08 - 00;36;30;08
Alvin Hope Johnson
Because if you can if you can figure that out, I mean, with, with certainty of what you want, then you'll get there. But if you don't know where you're going or where you want to be, guess what? You'll you'll get there and not even know it. And that that's a life that's not well lived.
00;36;31;27 - 00;36;55;14
Steven Pesavento
Such good advice. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Alvin Ho Johnson. People definitely follow him on Instagram and appreciate you joining us. Alvin, We'll see you next time. Today's episode is sponsored by Avon Fish Capital. If you're interested in investing alongside me in the same type of real estate opportunities that I personally invested, then head over to Von Finch, Capital and join their private investor network.
00;36;55;26 - 00;37;20;11
Steven Pesavento
You can do so at von Finch dot com slash invest. Join me on that next deal. I look forward to seeing you on the inside. Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, make sure to rate review, subscribe and share with the friend. Head over to the investor mindset icon to join the insider club where we share tools and strategies from the top investors and entrepreneurs and how they take it to the next level.