The Entrepreneurial Couple: Building Business Together

 

In this episode, August Biniaz, Chief Investment Officer at CPI Capital, and Ava Benesocky, CPI Capital’s CEO, share the unique experience of building a successful real estate company together while also being married. They discuss the challenges and rewards of balancing their personal and professional lives, the dynamics of working as a team, and the lessons they’ve learned on their journey. Whether you’re a couple in business or an entrepreneur seeking inspiration, this candid conversation offers valuable insights into partnership, leadership, and love.

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Important Links

• Traction
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• CPI Capital Email
• CPI Capital Fund of Funds Program

 

The Entrepreneurial Couple: Building Business Together

Introduction To The Episode

I’m very excited about our guest. August always bugs me, “You are always so excited about the guests,” but in this episode, it’s yours truly and August Biniaz.

We thought that all of these years, while running our show, we had never had an intimate sit-down between the two cohosts of the show or the two hosts. It’s like Batman and Robin. Robin is complementary to Batman. Batman is the main show. Is it a host and a co-host, or are they the two hosts?

That’s a good question. I’m Batman.

You’re Catwoman. In the world we live in, there might be a chance. Catwoman takes over Batman and becomes the main star of the show. You never know. Things are happening in the world these days. The feminist movement, the pendulum is swinging way to the other side. Let’s not get political. Let’s go back to it. We have been running the show now for several years. We have had over 300 guests. We have attended many different conferences and events around North America, Canada, and the US. We have interviewed many expert guests.

We have never had a chance to do a sit down and do an intimate talk between the host of this show, Ava Benesocky and August Biniaz are not only hosts of this show but also partners in CPI Capital and building this company from the ground up, having enough guts and bravado to leave their careers and build a real estate private equity firm from the ground up without having a finance, or a corporate background and then also being partners in life. That’s another topic. We want to break it down by being in a relationship and building a company together or being in a relationship and working at a company together, co-owning a company.

Everybody always asks us, “How do you guys do it? How are you guys building a company? How are you guys, parents?”

The most common question I was ever asked from us on the show particularly was, “Are you guys together?” It’s because people saw us from a different angle.

People always ask that. They got very confused.

My last name is Biniaz and people always ask.

To clarify, I kept my last name because of the brand I had built around Ava Benesocky. That’s why I kept Ava Benesocky because people know who I am. If I was Ava Biniaz, nobody would know who I was anymore.

It wasn’t only that, though. It was all the fact that traditionally, the woman is given to the man and she has to bear the man’s last name. I’m the farthest thing from when it comes to being a feminist. I was raised by a single mom with my two sisters. I grew up with women most of my young life and until I became an adult, but I’m very pro-woman and pro-equality. It’s all that great stuff, but certain traditional things work great. A woman can bear a child. A woman can take care of her child much more. They are much better at certain things in life than men are automatically, and men are better at certain things than women are.

On the last name part, that’s somewhat up in the air, in my opinion, where this idea of a woman bearing a man’s last name is still very traditional and still very somewhat archaic and we want to be trailblazers. We want to bring this new idea that a woman can keep her last name. She doesn’t have to bear the man’s last name. The brand can be built around Ava Benesocky and she can build that brand and take it to superstardom and August Biniaz can do the same. That was the logic behind that.

Starting CPI Capital Together

Getting back to the core of what the show is going to be about, we wanted to talk about what it’s like to work with your spouse. As August mentioned, we build CPI Capital from the ground up. Fun fact about August and I. When we met, he proposed two weeks in. I said yes, and honestly, ever since, we have been together 24 hours a day and most people look at us and say, “How do you guys spend 24 hours a day together?” Trust me. It was one thing and we have done our lives together. We have been together for many years now. Building a company, we are co-partners. We eat lunch together and we have dinner together. We have our baby together. We have another baby on the way, and we wanted to talk about the inner workings of what it’s like.

The first step, right off the bat. I’m not going to sugarcoat this in any way. My opinion and recommendation is against trying to build a business or run a business with your spouse. Running a business and building a business is already very difficult in the competitive world out there. Forty percent of marriages fail. Probably a much higher percentage of romantic relationships or boyfriend- girlfriend relationships that fail. Now, you want to bring that into the mix of a business, different emotions and ways of thinking? Right off the bat, don’t do it. Do not start a business with your wife or your significant other. It is going to be very difficult because now you are compounding it with a lot of other stress that exists.

However, if you have, you can crack the code and have happiness, and have it all.

 

 

It’s a barrier.

I agree. It’s very difficult. We are going to share some of the things on the show what we do to keep a healthy, happy, productive, and strong relationship.

Importance Of Complementary Strengths

Aside from that, it is very difficult to make a business and a relationship work at the same time. I recommend against it for anybody who’s trying to do it. If you are lucky enough to find someone who’s compatible with you and that you can spend a lot of time with and then there’s a lot of alignment, your visions align. Another very important point here is that this individual, your significant other, your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, or your girlfriend, this person cannot be your clone. They cannot be your duplicate. They cannot have the same assets that you have.

I was going to say that. We have complemented each other from day one. Your strengths are my weaknesses.

When you look at a company organization, you have the visionary and the implementer, which is the CEO, and then you have the executives underneath who get the work done.

Your strengths are my weaknesses, and my strengths are your weaknesses and that’s how we complement each other.

The key to a strong partnership? Know your strengths and weaknesses and let each person play to theirs. Share on X

Both of us are pretty savvy, but I would say that what you excel at, I don’t excel as much.

We are a good team.

Right off the bat, it’s highly not recommended that you start a business with a spouse or a girlfriend, but in the chance that you have found that person who complements you who then falls into the company org chart or the corporate structure as if you are a visionary, they are an implementer, or if they are an implementer, you are a visionary, then that makes good work.

In our case, August is the visionary. He’s coming up to me several times throughout the day, every day for years, with ten new incredible ideas. Maybe two are bad once in a while, but they are incredible.

Let’s get that out of the way with us, and then another factor was when we came into this, it was a new uncharted territory for us for building an investment firm from the ground up. We are both real estate professionals. I have always been in real estate for most of my professional career. When Ava and I met, I was in this business. I have been a real estate agent. I have been a builder and a developer for a long time. Real estate is a language that I understood very well.

I started my real estate career when I was 22 years old as a broker focused on investors, mainly. When I met August, I was in real estate for quite some time. We both had this real estate background. We both had this passion and love for real estate. When we first met, that passion of love for real estate was what connected us from day one. We had lots to talk about.

It was more than that. It was compatibility not only in our careers. I was a builder. She was a realtor. There are synergies right there. We were both very athletic.

I wanted to sell your single-family. Beautiful matching luxury homes.

I wanted you to sell the homes I was building. There was synergy there and then we were both very athletic. We were very health conscious.

August has never met a girl who could run faster than him.

I was very surprised. The first time we did a little sprint and how fast Ava was and the fact that working out and going to the gym and having a good diet and longevity, we felt that was a culture in our household. When we met, COVID hit not far after, and I built a beautiful brand new home or luxury home. I was planning to sell it, but I moved into it, and my intent was to move into it. Maybe I would have sold it in the future, but we met. Ava, after a few weeks, it went so fast and you moved in.

August said, “Welcome home, baby, to this beautiful new home,” the home that he built. I was very in awe of him and who he was as a man. He was a gentleman. Most importantly, he told me one thing from the very beginning, “I come as a package.” “What do you mean you come as a package?” “My mom. I come as a package. Me and my mom together. If you don’t get along with her, this isn’t going to work.” I have such respect for that because you always know how a man treats his mother and how he’s going to treat you. August treats his mom as a queen. I have gotten that same respect over the years.

It wasn’t only that, though. It was all so setting boundaries right from the beginning. You are good, you are bad and anything else in their relationship both get together. In the legal system, they call it a proffer, but you are self admitting all the good and bad and say, “This is what I am. This is who I am on both sides. Are you good with this? Are you ready to give this 100%?” That’s when we know. I said there were no surprises in the future when it came to who we were. We are not perfect human beings. There is no supreme being except God. My mom always says that.

We felt like we didn’t have to compromise. That’s a pretty powerful statement right there.

It wasn’t a significant compromise. We are not settling. We were both single for a long time when we met each other. We know what we wanted and it was not as a result of settling down for convenience. It was finding that person that matches you and trying to build something great and CPI came very early in our relationship, and we started building the company. Let’s talk about that a bit.

 

 

After we both got involved in a business, I was working on this idea of syndication and Ava was very intrigued and she got involved. Initially, the idea was for her to play a part within the company. Myself was on more investor relations at that time. Ava came on, and we realized early on that she was tremendous at interpersonal relationships, building relationships, and booking calls with people who were somewhat impossible to book a call with. If she reached out to someone, they would always call back.

There was so much alignment there, but there was also a lot of conflict, which was great because I have a very strong personality. Sometimes, people who have a strong personality are surrounded by Yes Men. People around them just say yes and that they are comfortable with them because they agree with them. They are agreeable. There’s no conflict there. With you, you stood your ground from day one.Yyou spoke your mind.

You say how you feel. I remember when we started CPI, we were going over the color palette for the company. Every time you create a logo, there’s a color palette that goes with it. The company was blue. Now we call the CPI blue and I couldn’t imagine, I couldn’t believe, and I couldn’t understand how long it took for Ava to give her blessing on this color blue, and it didn’t make any sense to me. That’s the difference between men and women, and that’s a great thing about having women in a corporate setting, in an institution, and in a business because they bring their feminine side and viewpoint from their ideas to help build a company.

She wouldn’t settle with some random blue. It had to be the perfect blue and we worked so hard. Weeks and weeks went by until we finalized on this color blue. We had a blue and she went against it. “I don’t want this. I want to change it.” It was frustrating for me. I wanted to get things going but it created a culture for us that we are not going to settle. If we are not going to settle on a relationship, we are not going to settle with anything to CPI either.

Now, our marketing is top-notch for a boutique private equity firm. We are a boutique real estate investment firm. Our marketing is top-notch. Our logo looks better than Blackstone’s logo. Our marketing is better than Blackstone, in my opinion. Blackstone is the largest private equity firm in the world with the majority of their allocation to real estate. They have a larger allocation to real estate than they do to mergers, acquisitions, alternatives, and equities.

Little things like those conversations that we had at the very beginning where we started planting the seed of who we are in business, because you fall in love on the personal side and you start your relationship, but when we started a business together, that’s a whole other ballgame. You need to know your horse. That’s what we say all the time. Know your horse.

To define that, what that means is don’t give tasks or responsibilities to your partner. I don’t have high expectations of whether they can achieve something. Don’t put it on their plate. Know your horse or on the other side, don’t give something too simple or too easy. Understand what your horse does good and what your horse doesn’t do good. It’s knowing your horse. That’s the definition it makes.

That’s true. Also, knowing your horse and trying to push them to do things that they don’t think they are possibly good at. One of the things that I wanted to say that is beneficial for working with your spouse is you love and respect that person so much. They are your everything. Sometimes, you bring out the best in them and push them to do great things that you wouldn’t do with somebody else.

For example, August has done that many times with me before. Maybe limiting beliefs or Imposter Syndrome that I possibly had getting into the real estate private equity world with sophisticated people, because of his love and respect for me, he was saying, “You can do it. You can do this. You can get on stage in front of 2,500 people. What are you talking about? You got what it takes.”

Things that I honestly would have never done on my own or would have taken me a long time to do on my own. He gave me that little push. That is probably a benefit of working with your spouse because you bring out the best in that person, but you nudge them a little bit more as well because you know the talent they have. You know your horse and you are like, “You are selling yourself a little bit short.” That’s another one thing that I wanted to mention.

One of the benefits of working with your spouse is that they can give you that extra push. Share on X

Most importantly, communications and boundaries. You and I weren’t very good at that at the very beginning and we had to grow. These things take some time at the beginning. Some of the arguments that we would have naturally that’s going to happen, but we set our communications and boundaries. Dividing responsibilities so that there’s no, “I thought you were going to do that.” It’s like we have this culture not only in our personal life but also in our business life, where it ends with this person.

Let’s switch the conversation a bit here as well because talking about some of the negatives and some of the challenges that exist being with your spouse is something I never fathom would happen. I always saw our relationship and our marriage as strength. Early on, we syndicated a deal and we had a bunch of investors coming in, and there was an investor who asked us if we were married and we have a fiduciary duty to our investors to answer truthfully any question they have from us to the best of our ability.

Of course, we were married and their viewpoint was, “What happens if the two of you get a divorce? You don’t have any children together. You are young and having fun, it seems like. You’ve just got married. We are concerned that there might be a divorce and a divorce in the syndicated deal where you guys are to GPs could cause issues for the partnership. There could be litigation. There could be other issues.”

I never saw it from that perspective. I saw our marriage as a bond, as something that strengthened our business, but others at times might not see that. Since then, we have had our baby boy, Atlas, and then we are all expecting our next baby boy, Apollo. The relationship has been getting stronger but also keep in mind because two people are married, two people are in a relationship and they run a business together, that doesn’t automatically mean that they are more powerful. It could be a negative as well, so keep that in mind.

For some people. A lot of people also appreciate the family business aspect as well. It’s connected.

Before I forget, I was at the Vancouver CoStar event. CoStar is huge as this data and analytics platform for real estate data in the US. They are huge. You can’t buy property in the US institutional property without getting a CoStar report or having a CoStar report. Our director of acquisitions, Paul Hopkins, is always on CoStar getting reports and downloading reports. CoStar is trying to build their platform here in Canada. They started in Canada in 2015 and they have been growing, but they had this event and it was the who’s of who.

All the big Vancouver developers were all there at the CoStar event at the Fairmont. I was introducing myself to people and people were like, “You are August Biniaz of the CPI. I have listen to your podcast and watched your YouTube show. I know what your company is. I’m part of your email list.” People knew about my son. “You have a new family,” and what have you. That resonates with people.

Building a company, building a family, being strong, being focused, being down to earth, and being a family man are huge points that help in most businesses, particularly in the business that’s finance in real estate. In real estate private equity, you are talking about, “There needs to be so much trust for people to want to invest with you.” I’m a big promoter of marriage and settling down at the right time with the right person, which could be hugely beneficial for your company and your growth.

The Importance Of Shared Vision

The next topic to discuss is vision. Let’s talk about long-term vision because if you don’t share a long-term vision with your spouse or business partner, it’s a recipe for disaster. When it comes to long-term vision, we follow the entrepreneurial operating system by Gino Wickman, the book Traction, and that’s what we are implementing within CPI. We are reading a book over and over with our executive team members and implementing the systems and processes. Vision is a huge part of the system.

 

We are on the same page. Reinstating that on weekly meetings and quarterly meetings with your team members, “What is the vision of this company? What is our big, hairy, audacious goal? What is our three-year goal? What is our one-year goal? What are our quarterly goals?” If your vision doesn’t align when you are building a company, it’s like I said, it’s a recipe for disaster. The company is not going to get to where it needs to go because all people are not rolling in the same direction.

It’s the same thing when it comes to relationships. If my vision is to make some money, live a very casual life, risk-free, you are a very content type of life and Ava’s vision is trying to achieve more, do more, do better, to be able to help others, build something great, build an empire, employ a lot of people, help a lot of people, give back, and build great communities, from day one, that was something that matched with us.

From the very first day that we met, the grandiose ideas were setting down. I find our journal sometimes and I find some of the goals that we wrote down. Some of them have come true but we have always been exactly connected, intertwined with our vision. That has been something where people are like, “You guys work together all day long.”

Let’s go through our day. We woke up around 6:00 AM. Our life has changed a bit since we had our baby, young king Atlas. 6:30 he wakes up and we play with him. We have fun with him, but by 7:30, we are out of the house and we are at the gym. In Florida, our gym has a daycare. In Vancouver, my mom, God bless her, takes care of Atlas while we are at the gym.

Fun fact about August and I, we believe the gym is one of the most important things ever. We have culture in our house, so we go to the gym every single day, seven days a week. Even if you are sick and you feel like you are dying, get up. Go to the gym.

If you have the flu or if you are contaminated, then no. Do not go to the gym.

I was saying it as if you were mentally drained. You are like, “I’m tired,” this or that.

I remember being at the gym in Florida. Somebody came up to us. Ava looks at him and says, “I’m due tomorrow.” The person’s jaw dropped, but you didn’t stop.

It was a culture in our household that we go to the gym every day. That’s how our day starts. We go to the gym for an hour, the two of us. We are working out. Sometimes, like once a week, we will have music in, but we usually talk and bouncing ideas off of each other, working out, cheering each other on at the gym. When we come home, it’s pretty much go time. We feed the baby and play a little bit more.

Our workday starts and we go. Having lunch and dinner together. Plans going out. Everything. We are together 24 hours a day and we love it. That’s why I said at the beginning of the show, trying to find someone that you love spending 24 hours a day with is a near impossibility, but if you did find that person, that is a marriage worth saving, building, and growing.

Trying to find someone you love spending 24 hours a day with is nearly impossible. Share on X

The one thing to know, we are not perfect. We do have conflicts once in a while. Maybe we don’t see eye-to-eye on something. We do have systems in place if something does arise. Another culture we have is positivity. We are working together all day. We are together all day. We need to have a positive environment to work with.

Maybe somebody is having a bad day. It feels like they are complaining a little bit. Not in our household. We keep the complaints for the Monday meeting that we have at  9:00 AM every single Monday. I want to mention this because people have different emotions. They feel different every single day, different hormones or whatever it may be and this could be beneficial to a lot of people reading this.

In your relationship, if you wish to try to implement the strategy, but if there’s something that may be bothering us that day or a complaint, we keep that complaint. We write it down in our own book and we have a religious meeting every single Monday. 9:00 AM, we sit down together. No phones, no computer, no distractions, and we sit down and we give each other one hour. We talk about our concerns. We talk about our problems and issues, and then we end the meeting positively.

If you are arguing all week long while you are supposed to take care of our family, build a family, and build a business, take time away from that. What we do is we say, “Let’s talk about that on Monday morning at 9:00 AM. The scheduled meeting.” Everything is written. It’s not forgotten and forgiven. Let’s talk on Monday at 9:00 AM, and we deal with that time and it recharges us. It makes us feel a lot better.

In that moment, it makes you feel a lot better, too, because you know that you are going to be heard. You know that you are going to be listened to and you know that there’s going to be a resolution to that particular problem. Whatever it might be. Whether it’s in business or if it’s on a personal side. That’s one thing that we do for conflict resolution and staying strong throughout the week and being with somebody 24 hours a day. Most people say, “I would kill my spouse if I was with him for 24 hours a day,” or, “I would kill that person if I was with them 24 hours a day.” We have implemented certain strategies where we have this healthy, happy relationship.

Talking about conflict is very important to also, going back to the conflict, especially in business. Both of us are very Alpha. We were very outspoken. We are not Yes Man by any means. If you believe in something, we go all the way and sometimes we don’t agree. We don’t see eye to eye. We are vociferously against these ideas about a certain topic, whether it’s about a team member joining, an initiative, or an investment, but that is constructive. It’s not in this case where we are vetoing each other. It’s in the case as it’s constructive and it’s not a homonym. It is about the fact. We are not attacking each other on a personal basis. We are talking about facts. We are giving our opinion on why should this work and why it shouldn’t.

In the several years, we have learned a lot about each other. What I have learned about August is that he has a great gut feeling. There are some things where my mind might think something different, but then I go back to over the last few years, the track record August has had when it comes to having an opinion about something, or maybe being able to read some person that maybe I’m like, “Maybe we should partner up with this person.” August is able to read that person. Maybe have his own thoughts about that person and me saying, “My opinions are so strong, but then the track record of August is that his gut feeling is always right,” and it’s never been wrong. Not once. That’s been helpful, too.

A similar thing as well. I come to you a lot of times for advice as well. “Am I doing this right? Am I thinking about the right decisions here? Is this right?” It’s great to have this with different perspectives. With Ava, she’s got a much calmer way of dealing with situations. Very risk averse, much more calm, much more amicable way of dealing with situations, persons, disagreements, or conflicts and mine is very straight to the face. It’s very direct.

The combination of the two becomes this beautiful. I talked about the Lincoln letters. I’m not sure if you know the story about Lincoln, but in the North and South wars, the Civil War took place in the US, he wrote this damning letter to one of his generals and it caused a lot of issues for him. He learned not to write letters in a moment of anger. He would write these letters, but he would not send them. He would keep them on his desk, and then when he passed, his wife found a bunch of his letters that were never sent. I drafted many Lincoln emails, August Biniaz emails, throughout weeks and months and I run those by Ava. “Is this the right way of dealing with this person? What would you do?”

I think about the Persians. Ancient Persians, 2,500 years ago, when wanted to make a decision, they would get together. They would have a meeting and they would discuss a topic, the decision they want to make, and then that night, they would go drink. They will discuss the topic again while they are drunk. The next day when they woke up, they combined the two like, “When we were sober, this was the way we looked at it. When we were drunk, this was the decision we came up with.” That is a combination of the two, because you get both risk taker and risk-averse, the amicably aggressive type of viewpoint and come up with the best strategy.

We have leveraged each other’s attributes to the best of our abilities and it worked well, worked great, and worked tremendously. I feel like it is a lottery ticket so far to be able to have your best friend be your business partner as well. Build something great with them and share the same vision. I don’t want to take this too long. We will make some more of these videos as time goes. Is there any very important point you want to share before we jump up? I have a surprise, Ava, that I don’t think you knew I was going to pull on you.

Celebrating Wins Together

I was also just going to talk about celebrating the wins together as well. That’s a huge part of us getting excited when we do something big or have an amazing meeting. It makes the romance even more. Working together, there’s so much celebration every single day.

 

August’s Rapid-Fire Questions

What’s the point if there is no celebration for the wins? The ten championship rounds for financial freedom. I’m going to ask questions from you. We have put our over 300 guests under the gun, asking these questions from them, and it created something very interesting. We have cried on some of the shows. Our guests have cried multiple times. It seems to be very common. I wasn’t told. I came up with this while I was on the show. This wasn’t something I planned on, but I’m going to ask you this series of questions, Ava. Whatever comes to the top of your mind. Be yourself. Question number one. Who’s been the most influential person in your life?

August Biniaz. Yes, you have, as I’m tearing up. Now I know what it feels like. On so many different levels, you were so inspiring to me and I don’t think anybody’s built me up as much as you built me up in my life. Getting me to do some of the things that I have done and accomplished. I felt like Superwoman this whole time. You’ve been the most influential person in my life. Thank you for that. You are an incredible father and you are an incredible husband. Thank you.

Next question. What’s the number one book you would recommend?

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan. When we first started building our company, Who Not How started playing a big part because, like, “We can’t do this all.” There are so many moving parts to build a company and we were doing it all. Remember, at the beginning, working sixteen-hour days for years and years, having a blast while doing it? By the way guys, it wasn’t work for us. We were so passionate about it. As you keep growing, the business keeps getting bigger than it’s like more who’s not how, and then you become a mom and a wife. Who Not How is, honestly, I’d recommend it to everybody whether you are building a business or not. Incredible book.

Next question. If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

Be more confident. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Negative self-talk is detrimental to your success. Don’t have limiting beliefs. You have to literally look in the mirror every morning and talk to yourself like you are somebody great and then you will start achieving great things.

Next question. What’s the best investment you have ever made?

The best investment I have ever made would have to be in CPI Capital. My time, money, the resources, and brain power.

Great answer. What’s the worst investment you have ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?

The worst investment I ever made was not investing when I made a ton of money in real estate. I know when we are young, we want to be cool and have cars, fashion, travel, and all that stuff. We are trying to live our best life. We are making good money. Spending that money on silly things like that and they are not silly, but they can wait until a little later. My advice to people who are possibly young who are making some good money to get excited about, they can’t wait to buy the next new best thing, just hold off a little bit. It’s not as exciting when you get it. It doesn’t mean much.

What means a lot is taking that money and investing it and you can brag about that a lot more than you can about a new car you got or something like that. “I started investing when I was 25. This is where I’m at now.” Imagine saying that instead of saying, “I bought a car when I was this age or that age.” No. Start investing. The worst investment was not investing.

Next question. How much would you need in the bank to retire? What’s your number?

Being August Biniaz’s sugar mama, I probably need $100 million. I’m kidding, but I don’t know. August and I are planning on having a big family. Putting all of our children in college, traveling the world with them, and honestly building this great company and so forth. I could never see us retiring, to be honest. I’m going to say what some of the guests say. I don’t ever want to retire, but it would have to be up there.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?

There’s a couple of people. I would like to have dinner with my grandpa Benesocky, my dad’s dad. It would be so cool to sit down with him. He was such a strong guy. A strong man. I would love to sit down with my grandpa Benesocky. I only knew him when I was a little girl. On the famous side, I would love to sit down with Elon Musk. It would be the coolest thing ever. The guy is not in this world. There’s so much you can learn from him from building so many businesses and what he’s accomplished. That would be an incredible person to have dinner with.

Next question. If you weren’t doing what you are doing today, what would you be doing now?

I always wanted to be a dermatologist. I’m so into skin and taking care of myself. Before real estate, there was a point in time where I wanted to become a dermatologist. I was so into that and opening up the beautiful boutique place where women can come in to get their laser done and their botox and all that other stuff.

You can syndicate a salon.

A boutique beautiful. You feel like god when you walk in the door.

Next question. Books smarts or street smarts?

This is a tough one because if I could go back in time, I would have prioritized book smarts a little bit more. I have my high school degree. I got right into real estate out of high school, but I would have loved to go to college and prioritize that. It wasn’t a priority for me back in the day. I thought I was an entrepreneur and I was going to start a business, but I do think that going to college and having book smarts is key to life.

You choose book smarts?

I choose street smarts. What I have learned from meeting all the incredible people that we have interviewed over the years, doctors, lawyers, accountants, and people that truly have book smarts, they say street smarts is more important. Being in the game ourselves, I choose street smarts because you have to have that for yes.

Next question. If you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment now, what would it be?

It would be 100% deploying it back into CPI Capital and building our company, or honestly, putting it into a couple of different multifamily projects as a GP. Our own projects.

That was great. Thank you so much for your transparency. Thank you so much for being vulnerable and sharing this information and sorry for pulling this thing.

That was a lot of fun. I know what the guests feel like now.

It’s my turn.

August, are you ready for the next segment of our show?

Absolutely.

The ten championship rounds to financial freedom. First question, who’s been the most influential person in your life?

The most influential person has been my mom by far. By such leaps and bounds, my mom has been the most influential person in my life. When a fetus is inside a woman’s body, it’s a clone of the woman. That’s why men have nipples. The reason we have nipples is not because it is the only reason we were literally a little clone of our mothers and eventually, the DNA kicks in and starts changing.

Aside from the biological reasons, my mom has been the most influential person in my life. She’s such a survivor. She’s such a great woman. She’s been able to build something great and be a single mother for a long time. In a foreign country, she raised three great kids, has a beautiful home, and has built a family and legacy. I owe my life, my career, and everything I have to my mom and she’s part of my mind and sometimes I get anxiety in Florida and I miss her.

We fly back to Vancouver to see mama.

Not only that, she’s supportive. She was one of the first investors who always believed in me. I learned so much from her. She’s always got a saying about everything that happens in life. Talking about the little things she says, they are mostly in Persian, but some examples like, “A bird in hand is better than two in the bush.” A lot of these little sayings. I have learned so much from those sayings alone.

When you told me that I have to get along with your mom when we first met, it wasn’t hard to do so. She’s my best friend now. I’m grateful to have her in our life and my life. Ready for the next question? What is the number one book you’d recommend?

Number one book I recommend. I would say Sapiens is a great book. It talks about the journey of human beings from where they started and where they are now. I suggest that getting an overall understanding of human beings, where we have been, and where we are now is a great book. Who Not How is another great book that you mentioned. Dan Sullivan has this the idea that we don’t have to do everything ourselves. We can hire other people to do it. Those are the top two books that I would recommend.

If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

The advice would be to try your best to be a specialist. Rather than being a jack of all trades, being a specialist is the best way to go. Also, time moves fast, so you can become a master of a trade much quicker than you think. When you are young, a lot of times you think, “Time is moving so slow,” but you can become great at something. Whatever attributes that you have, you can leverage. If you are good at speaking and interpersonal relationships, you can do great in sales and you can make a lot of money and a great life. If you are good at school, you can follow academia or what have you. Leverage your attributes and do great at what you are.

What’s the best investment you have ever made?

The best investment I have ever made was in investment in myself. This is a cliché response we get from a lot of our guests. Monitoring investment. It’s hard to try to put my hand on certain things I have invested in to make money, but if it wasn’t for the investments I made in myself, I could have never made the investments into financial instruments that have been very helpful to me over the years.

 

That’s a very good point. What’s the worst investment you have ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?

The worst investment I ever made was a reverse of what I said about my time. It is wasting my time on shiny objects syndrome, ideas, businesses, or concepts that were shiny and exciting but it deviated me from my plan and goals in life. Even if there was some short-term pleasure, it took away from my long-term goals. Wasting my time would be the worst investment I ever made.

Don’t waste your time on shiny objects—stay focused on what aligns with your long-term vision. Share on X

How much would you need in the bank to retire? What’s your number?

More.

That’s August. I love it. Next question. If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?

It’s a very interesting way I’m going to answer this question. I would say if I could have dinner with someone, dead or alive, the one person in this world would still be my mother. I have her here. I have dinner over here almost every single night, but if I could have dinner with anybody, it would be her. If we go down the list, she’s on top. My next person would be my maternal grandfather. It would be great to chat with him. He passed away when we moved to Canada. I was around 15 or 16 years old.

I spent a lot of time with him when I was younger or when I was in my early teens. As a child, I didn’t get to talk to him and chat with him about what the inner workings were on his mind. The decision he made early on that affected our family still now at the time of the issues in Iran and in the 1950s that still affects us. The decisions he made in the Army to go against the Shah of Iran and end up going to prison. He was a military man but ended up part of the coup d’etat. He was imprisoned in Operation Ajax. I want to pick his mind about the decisions he made that affected his family.

The last person on that list would be, I can’t give an answer to it, but it will be a historical person that made certain decisions at that time that people still have questions about is like, “Why did this person, at this juncture of history, made this decision?” It would be great to sit down with some of these historical figures and find out why they made a certain decision at that point. That would be the third person that I would want to have dinner with.

If you aren’t doing what you are doing today, what would you be doing now?

A pro boxer.

I didn’t even realize this world of boxing existed before I met August and we are big boxing fans and it’s incredible. It’s so much fun. Pro boxing. Next question, August. Book smarts or street smarts?

We got over 300 guests on our show. Only one guest ever said book smarts and I am going to be the second guest to say book smarts. Let me explain. Having book smarts is the safe way to go. There’s a difference between being clever and being smart. Being smart is being educated. It’s doing well in academia. Most people can do well. Graduating, going to college, and getting a decent job, you will be in a decent place in life. It doesn’t matter where in the world you live.

Street smarts, those guys are cutthroat. They will eat your lunch and laugh right in front of your face. To try to make it there without having to treat smarts in your blood, it’s going to be hard. The safe way to go is be book smarts, do well in school, get a great job, and build a company, whatever you wish. You have those credits to do well. I go the risk-averse way and say book smarts. We are learning stuff about each other on this segment. There is so much about you that I didn’t know.

August, if you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment now, what would it be?

The way I respond to that question is what you invest in has to be what you believe in and what you understand. You have to understand the language that you are investing in. There are a lot of financial instruments, a lot of things you can invest in. Safe, risky, higher reward, or decent reward, it’s got to be something you understand.

I understand real estate, multifamily, and location. Hurricane Helene and Milton passed through Tampa and caused major devastation. I am bullish on Tampa. Wth a population of 3.2 million, Tampa MSA is larger than Vancouver. One of the best work-life balance in the world. Median home price is $450,000. It has a huge runway.

I would buy a smaller or mid-sized multifamily property, however far the $1 million gets me, to have some contingency, have enough down payment, get a good debt on. Fixed interest rate, put the $1 million, get a 12-unit, 20-unit, or 30-unit. How far my money goes, I will put that money there. I’m cashflowing day one. As long as I’m hitting 5 cap or 6 cap, I’m good. It depends on the amount of debt we put on it. If it’s something about 5% cash on cash, I’m good.

Ava’s Takeaways On Business And Partnership

I love it. I wouldn’t expect anything else from you.

That was great. Should we do our high five? Thanks, everyone, for reading. That’s about it. We will catch you soon.

We will catch you soon on the next episode. Thanks so much.