John Lee Dumas: Entrepreneurial on fire, 765 entrepreneurs near and far. John Lee Dumas here. I am fired up to bring you our featured guest today, Nick Ruiz. Nick, are you prepared to ignite?

Nick Ruiz: I’m ready to light it up, brother.

John Lee Dumas: Yes. Nick is a twice self-made real estate entrepreneur that started from scratch and became a millionaire by his mid 20s. The big crash in 2008 forced him into bankruptcy but he created financial independence again after the bankruptcy with real estate entrepreneurialship. He blogs about his journey and strategies at Alphahomeflipping.com. Nick, I’ve given Fire Nation just a little insight. Share more about you personally then expand upon the biz.

Nick Ruiz: I’ve been an entrepreneur pretty much since I can remember, even going back to like grade school days. Some of the moves I made, I’m like, “Really? I did that?” Now that I’m older, I connect the dots. Really. We won’t go into all of them but some of them were pretty outrageous. I always loved to buy and sell, connect with people. It was fun to me since I was a kid. I tried a lot of businesses throughout high school even, some multi level marketing businesses. Some of them were good because they taught me salesmanship, gaining rapport with people, shaking hands, getting out there, getting out of my comfort zone, which obviously is a key as you know, for all entrepreneurs.

You gotta do things you’re scared of as often as possible for real growth. Boom. I kind of got a job when I was 18, 19 years old working in a family business. I just knew I didn’t wanna be an employee even though it was for family. I wasn’t making much money and I was between four walls all day and it drove me nuts. I’m like, “How do I put my own stake in the ground?” I tried a couple of other businesses, made some money. I’m 19 years old and I see an infomercial, a late night infomercial. This was ’99, 2000 ish. Not a lot of Internet stuff really going on back then. No money down real estate.

I’m like, “I don’t really have any money. I know real estate’s a solid proven wealth model.” It always has been. It always will be. It’s one of the oldest businesses in the world. I’m like, “Okay. I heard of people making money with this.” I put my credit card up, $250.00 bucks and they send you workbooks and DVDs through the mail. There’s no online courses or anything like that back then. I devour the material. I’m all hyped up. There were a couple of strategies in that that didn’t really kind of jive with me and some of them didn’t really work out. I thought they were pretty far fetched so I kind of set it aside in my closet. It collected dust for a few months.

I still had that entrepreneurial itch. I’m like, “I wanna do my own thing.” That’s just period. I always have and now that I’m adult, I gotta make some real money; none of this nickel and dime stuff. I pull it out of the closet. Bottom line, I pull out a few strategies that worked. I found an ad in the local paper that talked about a motivated seller trying to sell his property and it needs work. Those are beautiful buzzwords for entrepreneurs in real estate. Needs work, motivated seller. Maybe he’ll sell at a discount. It was a duplex. For those of you who are listening, a duplex is two units under one roof.

The bottom line is he was asking $69,000.00. I write him an offer for $77,000.00 but I needed him to credit me $8,000.00 for the down payment and repairs and miscellaneous things because again, I didn’t have any money. That was one of the strategies that I learned. I got into the house with nothing out of my pocket. I rented out both units and after all the expenses were paid every month, I was making $500.00 a month. That was a beautiful moment. I’m like, “Oh my God. Let me do this again.” Back in those days, borrowing money was extremely easy in the early 2000’s, John. You know what I’m saying, right?

John Lee Dumas: Oh yeah.

Nick Ruiz: I was young so I thought it was gonna be a tough thing but the money faucet was very, very wide open. I’m like, “Okay.” I borrow against that one, buy another one with that money. Still no money out of my actual pocket and now I’m making $1,000.00 a month with two duplexes. $1,000.00 a month passively at 20 years old is pretty solid. The bottom line is, I sold the first one because I needed more mon – I was out of money and borrowing ability, walked away with $22,000.00 cash, which again, in your early 20s, that’s a lot of money. Then I sold the second one a few months later for $35,000.00 cash in my pocket. Then I’m like, “Okay. This is serious money. Why would I work at all?”

I started compiling things and parlaying that money into more deals. The bottom line is, by my mid 20s, I had 70 buildings, multi million dollar net worth, rental revenue like in the $70,000.00 a month range. It was beautiful. I was flying high. 2008, we all know about the economic mortgage crisis –

John Lee Dumas: Crash.

Nick Ruiz: Crash, clobbered me down to pieces, forced – there’s a lot to this story but I wanna keep it simple here just so people can understand. Forced me into bankruptcy, real bankruptcy. I wasn’t just financially bankrupt. I was mentally, physically just every bankrupt. I was a jerk. People hated to be around me because I was Mr. Hotshot, young, successful entrepreneur. Now I’m at zero and it just really destroyed my whole psychology. Tough family times; I was trying to raise a family. I have two little daughters; one daughter at that time. Either way, it just was really stressful. I got resourceful. Went insanely just 24 hours a day.

My back was against the wall, which by the way, I believe is the best place to be as an entrepreneur, backed into a corner where you must do things. I eventually became financially independent again as a real estate entrepreneur. I’m twice self-made. I crush all excuses. Don’t tell me you don’t have resources, time, energy, money because I’ve come from scratch once and after bankruptcy, which is bankruptcy, the resources when you’re bankrupt is less than probably everybody listening to this podcast. It’s less than zero. I’m kind of an excuse crusher that way and it’s kind of fun. I’m back. Boom. That’s the summed up story in a nutshell.

John Lee Dumas: Nick, let’s spend today crushing excuses. Let’s make that the theme of this podcast. I always love addins. You’ve just kind of given us a quick little snapshot of your journey. We’re gonna start to do a deep dive into some specific stories within that; the successes, the ah-ha moments, of course, and obviously, a failure we’ll start off with. Before we get into that jazz, share with us a success quote and why you chose to share it.

Nick Ruiz: I love a lot of them. They’re really – it’s hard to choose. One that I guess is close to my heart is when the winds change; you have to adjust your sales. I actually don’t know where that comes from but it makes a lot of sense to me. The bottom line is you can still get to your destination if you’re constantly adjusting your sales. You can’t control the wind. I learned that firsthand in the economic crash of 2008. It’s really close to my heart. You can’t control the economy but you can adjust those sales and strategies to still get to your destination. That hits home to me.

John Lee Dumas: Especially in this day and age. Nick, we’re living in a time where the winds are constantly changing. There’s no other 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s, go work for a big corporation and there’s one onshore blowing wind for the next 30 years until you get that Rolex watch and then you just go off into retirement. It’s like hello. We’re living in a hurricane of an economy, which to me, is awesome. I don’t want that onshore wind. That’s just frankly boring. I love the fact that I have to adjust and can pivots even multiple times a day let alone a career. That’s just fun stuff. Nick, what we’re gonna do now is we’ll do a focus on your journey as an entrepreneur.

We’re gonna stay with this theme of crushing excuses but you weren’t always an excuse crusher. There’s been times when you used excuses, I’m sure. Now you look back and be like, “Who was that little pansy boy that was full of all these excuses?” That’s what we’re gonna kind of talk about today. Take us to a moment in time, Nick, when you failed big. You’ve done that multiple times as of I, as of every entrepreneur. What story do you wanna share with our listeners today? What lessons can we learn?

Nick Ruiz: I’ll give you my big one and then I have quick mini one. The big one goes back to the bankruptcy. In the 2008 crisis, and hindsight’s obviously crystal clear 20/20. When you’re in the moment of things a certain way, you just seem to get this tunnel vision where peripheral goes away. The money faucet was on. I was extremely leveraged. As long as borrowing was available, I was exhausting all borrowing abilities and leveraging much higher than I should’ve been on certain properties and things like that. The problem with that is when a change, a big change in the economic environment happens, like we saw in 2008, it just leaves you with your pants down.

You owe $80,000.00 and now all of a sudden, the properties are worth $15,000.00 or $20,000.00 or whatever, as an example. When you have that across 50, 80 buildings at my peak point, it forces you in extremely tough spot. The tenants couldn’t pay the rent because the economic collapse happened. It’s just a perfect storm of events that forced me in – yeah, bankruptcy, it was a failure that looking back, I would’ve done things differently but at the same token, I do say it was also the best entrepreneurial moment of my life. That sounds a little outrageous and a little controversial.

I have to say looking back, I’m thankful it happened. Would I have done things differently? Absolutely. Again, everyone connects their life dots in a certain way. They are where they are because of the dots they have. This was mine. This was a major dot. I am thankful for it. It sounds crazy but it’s true. I made a lot of borrowing mistakes. Again, bankruptcy was the ultimate result of it. Again, I don’t wish it upon anybody; as much as I’m thankful it happened. It’s just such a miserable experience especially when you’re coming from a huge success standpoint then it all gets pulled away.

You really get stripped mentally in a crazy way than if you just never had anything at all. For those who have been through it, they understand what I’m saying. To be high and then go extremely low, it’s not cool. It really just makes you crazy more or less. I went insane.

John Lee Dumas: There are so many psychological studies that have been done that it is just so much more painful to lose $10.00 than it is to gain $10.00. Once you have that, you can’t take it away. Like you can give an animal one apple and they’ll be fired up for that apple. If you give them two and then you take one away so they’ll only have one left, they’ll be furious. That’s the psychology of not just humans but of just species in general. Nick, what I really kind of wanna do here. Something maybe a little interesting because it’s not a topic that we have really ever dove into a lot.

Someone like myself who’s never been through it, I don’t even know much about it. We always hear this word bankruptcy. Can you just take us to that moment when you finally decided that you had to declare bankruptcy? What was the process? What exactly does it mean?

Nick Ruiz: It’s crazy. Just thinking back on it just trips my mind out to actually walk through this. I will because it’s important for people to hear.

John Lee Dumas: It is.

Nick Ruiz: It just came to a point where I was “bleeding.” I was bleeding all of my money to plug a bunch of holes in my ship because of this economic crash. All kinds of things were going wrong. It happened to billionaires. I was one of many people that were like drastically affected especially in the real estate sector. It affected all industries.

John Lee Dumas: Anybody that was leveraged got crushed.

Nick Ruiz: Absolutely. What I was doing is taking all of my money and constantly plugging holes, but little did I know, I was the Titanic. I could plug as many holes as I wanted to but the ship was certainly going down. There was no question. As I started proceeding, that became clear. As I was plugging holes, John, the certainty of this is going to nothing really soon eventually materialized. Again, when you’re in it and scrambling, it’s hard to see. You’re just trying to stay above water so you don’t say, “Oh,” you don’t start doing the math and say, “Okay. If I do this and this and this, this is gonna “equal bankruptcy” on my spreadsheet.”

You don’t think like that when you’re scrambling. There was a point where I was like, “I have to stop this bleeding.” I have to stop this bleeding before I’m at the worst possible point I can be.

John Lee Dumas: What do you do at that moment?

Nick Ruiz: I pretty much got a referral for a bankruptcy attorney. The banks were coming after me. I was getting sued with deficiency judgments. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s some scary stuff when banks are legally just coming at you and you’re getting served. I’m sitting at home getting served with lawsuit papers nonstop from all these different bankers. Again, it’s really freaky. It doesn’t sound that scary as we talk over an interview here. When you’re in a place where people are constantly serving you at your door for lawsuits, it’s just a miserable feeling. It really, really, really is. I can’t even put it into words.

Eventually, I called an attorney. We were talking about bankruptcy protection and how do I stop this. Bankruptcy is a solid tool for the right person going through things. I filed bankruptcy. I went to federal court. I went to my hearing. It’s like a couple month process. You have to go through all these paperwork. It’s a tough, tough place to be. That’s what happened.

John Lee Dumas: What happens to all your property when you’re going through bankruptcy? Is the bank just taking it over? How does that work?

Nick Ruiz: Yeah, the bank takes it over. They start the foreclosure process but a lot of times that can take anywhere from 6-12 months maybe more depending on some of these bank. Some of these banks were foreclosing on so many places it took two to three years to actually do their own lawsuit against me because they were so buried. What they do is even before – now they have a law that lets them take over the property and take over the rents and all that even pre foreclosure date to protect the bank so they can start collecting your rents. They hammer off the locks and put their own locks on even when you still own it. There’s nothing you could do about it. Just crazy stuff, John.

We could talk so much about all the craziness that went on with that. Bankruptcy wipes out all your judgments so you don’t owe them anymore but obviously they seized all your properties. They’re all gone.

John Lee Dumas: Nick, let’s kind of go to the point where now you are bankruptcy. Talk to us like what does that mean? You shared a little bit earlier where that even puts you more to deficiency than people who don’t even have any money but are not bankrupt. What did you mean by that? What are some of the restrictions of bankruptcy?

Nick Ruiz: You can’t even file bankruptcy if you have any money to speak of or any assets. I had nothing. I had no assets. I owned my home. You’re protected for your personal residence. You can’t have much money in the bank. You’re just at such a low point. Your credit’s shot. Luckily, nowadays though, laws have changed because of all of the foreclosures and bankruptcies that happened nationally, it’s not like a ten year black mark against your credit. You’re at such a negative point. You have a bankruptcy on your record. Banks will send you on your way. You can’t borrow money. You can’t get a credi – I had to get secured credit cards in the beginning.

For people who don’t know what that is, you have to send the credit card company $500.00 bucks to be able to borrow $500.00. That’s how low it was. I walked into grocery stores, John, and I’m like, “Wait a minute. We’re paying this for a gallon of milk?” I’m talking real deal like psychological flip upside down. I’d tell my wife, I’d be like, “Wait a minute. This is how much milk is?” For some reason, milk stands out. I’m like, “That’s crazy.” Where I never would’ve thought about that. That’s the kind of point I was at. I’m questioning a gallon of milk purchase. We weren’t in a cardboard box; don’t get me wrong. I don’t want people to get the wrong impression. We weren’t literally on the street.

Literally, “We don’t need that $0.99 bag of chips. Put it away. Put it back down. We’re not buying it.” That’s where things were at. Things were slimmer than slim.

John Lee Dumas: Nick, this is powerful stuff. I’m really glad that you’re opening up the doors and sharing this with Fire Nation because a lot of our listeners – or I’ll say all of our listeners, remember 2008, 2009, and a lot of our listeners were seriously impacted by that. There’s going to be future crisis’s very similar to that. We are on this cycle of the good times and the bad times. That’s the cycle of life. Anybody that thinks that the bad times aren’t coming back unfortunately is a little delusional. It’s important, Fire Nation, for you to protect yourself from these things and to really be saving for that rainy day.

What would you in just one sentence, Nick, because I wanna fit in a couple more things on this interview, what would you wanna share with our listeners as a way that’s they can maybe protect themselves for this next future clammy that could be five years, 15 years, 25 years down the road?

Nick Ruiz: I’m gonna say this. It is a certainty that everybody listening to this podcast will see a very rainy day. That’s number one. The good times do – I’m not gonna say the good times end but there are major bumps in the road. It is a certainty, listener, listen up. You will have a major rainy day. If you’re not prepared, it could turn into a hurricane and wipe you out. As far as what I’ve learned and just what people need to understand is, leverage can be a positive thing. There’s no question. Over leverage, constantly borrowing – first of all, if you’re gonna borrow money, make sure it’s an asset, not a liability. That’s like financial savviness 101. Again, it’s changed a lot of what I do.

I don’t borrow much money at all anymore. My properties are free and clear. I don’t max things to the hill. Here’s the bottom line. You will have a rainy day. Be prepared.

John Lee Dumas: Be prepared. Nick, what I kind of wanna move into now is another story. This one’s gonna be of you having an ah-ha moment, a light bulb that at some point you’re just like wow, like maybe this is pre or post bankruptcy, whatever it might be. What is that moment in time that you just had this great idea? What steps did you take, Nick, to turn that idea into success?

Nick Ruiz: I got a great one. This is pre bankruptcy, early in the early 2000s. I saw an ad in the paper for a guy that was selling a house for $47,000.00. It sounded like a good deal for the area it was in. I go out and look at it. I go, “Okay. This is a good price.” I wrote him an offer. I was like, “How long have you owned it for?” He goes, “I don’t own it.” I go, “Huh?” I go, “You put an ad in the paper. You’re selling it for $47,000.00.” He goes, “I don’t own it.” I go, “What do you mean? I’m buying. I just wrote you an offer. You signed it.” He goes, “I know.” He goes, “I have it under contract.”

This was like super light bulb in real estate for me, like super, super light bulb. Here you go. He had it under contract for a lower price, which means he wrote the seller an offer for $37,000.00. They signed it. He then marketed it for $47,000.00 and he pockets that $10,000.00 difference without ever taking ownership of the property. That was like, “Oh my God.” That was craziness to me. I’m like, “You can do that?” I was trying to beat him down on price. I was trying to get him down to like $43, $44. He said this and I thank God I made this decision because my life probably would’ve gone – it would’ve went in a little different direction at that point.

He goes, “If you pay me $47,000.00, the price I want,” which I still could pay but I didn’t want to. He goes, “I’ll show you exactly what I did here,” which was extremely generous of him, if you really think about it. People like to keep their secrets or whatever. I go, “Okay.” I said, “This is interesting to me.” I gave him the $47,000.00, bought the property, which I later sold I think six months later and made like 30 grand on so it was all good either way. He showed me how to do it. It’s a process called wholesaling. That’s a huge thing. We can talk about it at the end.

Wholesaling, where you don’t need cash, you don’t need credit, you’re not buying property. You’re literally finding sellers at one price and assigning your rights to close on it to a higher priced buyer. He made $10,000.00 without taking ownership. I basically took what he taught me because he taught me how to do it, and just crushed it. I did tons and tons of those deals after that. I’m like, “This is a dream come true.” No headaches. Just one, two, three. You spend a couple hours and you make $10, $20 grand. It’s insane. I started wholesaling a ton. That was just a whole facet of real estate entrepreneurship that I didn’t know existed.

Now I actually teach it to people because people are like, “How do you do this,” because it’s a very interesting concept. That was a super, super duper light bulb moment for me.

John Lee Dumas: You are right, Nick. We’ll dive into that at the end. Let’s make sure to let Fire Nation know exactly what that is all about because little teaser, Fire Nation. Nick, you’ve had a lot of not so proud moments. You’ve also had some proud moments. You’re a self made man twice over. You have a family. You’re doing some great things in life. Tell us a story of the proudest entrepreneurial moments that you’ve had thus far, that moment in time.

Nick Ruiz: I’ll tell you, it wasn’t when I was at my peak net worth of almost $2 million when I was 25 or 26, which sounds insane. That’s a great accomplishment. But I would have to say my proudest entrepreneurial moment is when after bankruptcy, when I immediately started doing deals and got a crazy resourceful and made like $30,000.00 on a property and then made another, I think, $30,000.00 or $40,000.00 right after that and was very conservative with the money, bought a couple rental properties free and clear. I was sitting on a couple free and clear rental properties and did a couple flip deals and that catapulted me into doing a ton more.

Even though my net worth wasn’t nearly what it was, and if you look at it on paper, the success monetarily was not even close, that was another light bulb. It was like, “Oh my God. I filed bankruptcy and I just did this. Who couldn’t do this,” number one. Wow and I didn’t think, “Oh my God. I’m gonna pat myself on the back but thinking back, it’s kind of like, “Whoa.” I was coming from the toughest possible spot and I was already a successful entrepreneur in a very short amount of time. I felt really proud of that. I really, really did.

And I felt extra proud because I knew I could relay this message out to other people, destroy any excuse you bring to me and just kind of prove for myself and other people that, “Holy cow. No matter where you’re at, you can actually put another stake in the ground and just boom. Just crush it,” John.

John Lee Dumas: Nick, love that. That’s moments to be proud of because just like he’s sharing, Fire Nation, that he came back from the ashes. Literally, like a Phoenix rising. When he came back and proved that not only could he do it again but he could do it with that handicap to the bankruptcy looming over him, that’s the crushing of excuses that we’re talking about, the theme of this interview. Nick, let’s now talk about present times and you today. What is the number one thing that has you most fired up right now?

Nick Ruiz: Other than the nice deals that I’m doing and buying more single families, I would have to say what I really love doing is since I went through this and I came from scratch twice is helping others. The beauty of the online world as you know, you can share your message and story with people and impact tons of lives just like you’re doing. On my website, I’ve been able to connect with people, mentor people. I do have a book that’s being released early December called Flip: the Unconventional Guide to Becoming a Real Estate Entrepreneur and Building Your Dream Lifestyle, which goes into my story, which is extremely motivational and inspirational.

We just touched on it here. I also give you nuts and bolts to do your first wholesale deal. A lot of books either hype you up and they’re all motivation or they’re all hard nuts and bolts strategies. I combine that in this. I’m really, really excited and fired up about it because I’m gonna be able to impact a lot of people who wanna be entrepreneurs especially in real estate. But just in general, it’s a really motivational book. I’m really hyped up about that right now.

John Lee Dumas: You said that’s coming out in December?

Nick Ruiz: The first week of December.

John Lee Dumas: Cool. As we’re speaking right now, this is the end of November. You might have some presales available through Amazon, who knows. Fire Nation, go check it out. Nick, we are about to enter the Lightning Round. Before we do, let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors. Nick, welcome to the Lightning Round, where you could just share incredible resources and mind blowing answers. Sound like a plan?

Nick Ruiz: Let’s do it.

John Lee Dumas: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Nick Ruiz: I gotta say nothing. I was obsessed with entrepreneurship since I was a kid. I really, really was. Nothing really held me back. I just knew from day one that’s what I wanted to be.

John Lee Dumas: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Nick Ruiz: Buy when the masses are selling and sell when the masses are buying, no matter what industry you’re in.

John Lee Dumas: I love that. It’s very similar to the Warren Buffett that is, “Be fearful when people are greedy and be greedy when people are fearful.”

Nick Ruiz: He also said, “You’ll always know who’s swimming naked when the tide comes in.” I like that one too. I like that one too.

John Lee Dumas: Share one of your personal habits that you believe contributes to your success.

Nick Ruiz: I have some good ones. I do. I admit. I have some bad habits. As far as ones that have really catered to my success, I’m obsessed with responding to tasks and requests to look at houses or meet with people or respond to people via e-mail that need help. I’m obsessed with doing it right away. I don’t waste a second. The door of opportunity in my opinion can shut in like two seconds. If an opportunity arises and someone knocks, I am obsessed with answering the door a.s.a.p.

John Lee Dumas: Love it. Do you have an Internet resource, Nick, like an Evernote that you can share with our listeners?

Nick Ruiz: I don’t have a ton. Zillow.com is a nice website that it shows you what people paid for houses and the surrounding sales and comparables. I use that a lot, to be honest.

John Lee Dumas: If you could recommend one book for our listeners, what would it be? Why?

Nick Ruiz: Other than my new book, Flip, I would have to say I’m a Robert Greene fan. I like the book Mastery. I love him. His book Mastery really breaks down how to master things and become an expert and just really change your brain around. It goes into depth and I love it.

John Lee Dumas: I love all his books. One of my funnest interviews was with Robert Greene himself, having him on and getting to talk about his books, Mastery and The 48 Laws of Power. So cool. Nick, Fire Nation loves audio. Fire Nation, if you haven’t already, you can get an amazing audiobook like Mastery for free at eofirebook.com. That’s eofirebook.com. Nick, this next question’s the last of the Lightning Rounds but it’s a doozy.

Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world, identical to earth but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have. Your food and shelter’s taken care of. All you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Nick Ruiz: Network my brains out, go to a meet up, find other local real estate people, figure out how to get in on properties low through channels that they – through meeting these people can open up to me, and then I would immediately find some other cash buyers to immediately do a wholesale deal considering you really don’t need any cash or credit. I would network like crazy, find real estate people and do a wholesale flip.

John Lee Dumas: Where do you feel like a great place for you to find these potential networking opportunities and events are?

Nick Ruiz: Every city has them. They’re local real estate groups that you can – that just meet up. Like I said, every major metro area has them. You can just look them up online.

John Lee Dumas: Nick, let’s end today literally on fire with you sharing one parting piece of guidance the best way that we can connect with you then we’ll say goodbye.

Nick Ruiz: Again, the piece of guidance I gotta go back to, there’s always gonna be a rainy day. Be prepared. Be conservative. Don’t overstretch or overleverage. As far as reaching me, alphahomeflipping.com. Check me out. I blog about all kinds of free strategies and talk about my journey. I’d love to hear from you. Send me an e-mail.

John Lee Dumas: Awesome. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. You have been hanging out with Nick and myself today, so keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. Just type nick in the search bar. His shonos page will pop right up with all his contact info, recommended resources galore. Nick, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Nick Ruiz: Thanks, John. It’s been a pleasure, brother.