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3 AI Habits That Aren’t Bad, But You Should Know About Them Anyway



Ten minutes with AI might be all it takes to make your next hard problem feel harder.

None of what follows is a mistake in the way a leaked password or a made-up citation is a mistake. Nobody gets fired over these. Nobody files an incident report.

They’re quiet, documented patterns in how using AI changes your behavior. And if you use AI every day, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of them. It’s become part of the day for a lot of people, which is exactly why these patterns are worth knowing.

These are the AI habits to be aware of. Each one comes from research released in 2026, and none of them is a reason to stop using AI. But all three are worth a moment of real thought.

Here’s what they are.


Disclaimer: While these are general suggestions, it’s important to conduct thorough research and due diligence when selecting AI tools. We do not endorse or promote any specific AI tools mentioned here. This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide legal, financial, or clinical advice. Always comply with HIPAA and institutional policies. For any decisions that impact patient care or finances, consult a qualified professional.

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1. Give Hard Problems a Few Minutes Before You Reach for AI

In April 2026, researchers from Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, MIT, and UCLA released a preprint. That’s a paper shared publicly before it goes through peer review.

It described a series of randomized controlled trials with 1,222 participants working through math and reading comprehension tasks. Some had AI help available. Others didn’t.

Here’s the thing. The researchers weren’t only measuring whether AI helped in the moment. They wanted to know what happened after the AI was taken away. While people had AI, they performed better. No surprise there. The surprise came next.

Once the AI was gone, the people who’d been using it did significantly worse on their own. They were also more likely to give up on difficult problems altogether. And that drop showed up after roughly ten minutes of AI-assisted work. Ten minutes!

The authors explain it by comparing AI to a good mentor. A good mentor will sometimes hold back the answer, because working through the problem is the whole point.

AI tools, as the authors describe them, are tuned to hand you a complete answer right away. Outside of safety limits, they almost never say no. Their hypothesis is that this trains you to expect instant answers. And that leaves you with less patience for problems that don’t give way right away.

So does this mean you should avoid AI for hard problems? No.

It means that the next time a task without AI feels unusually frustrating, it’s worth asking whether a recent AI session is part of the reason. The task itself may not be as hard as it feels.

And every so often, try working through something difficult before you reach for AI, even when it’s right there. It’s a pretty straightforward way to keep that persistence in practice.

If you’ve ever felt your patience for a tough problem slipping and couldn’t figure out why, this might be part of the answer.

2. Hand Off the Work, Then Question What Comes Back

You’ve probably heard that using AI regularly wears down your critical thinking.

A study published in March 2026 in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education complicates that story.

The researchers surveyed 912 business-school students in China, Europe, and the United States. They checked in at three points, about two weeks apart.

They looked at two things students do with AI. One was critically evaluating what it produces. The other was strategically handing tasks off to it. The researchers expected those two to pull against each other.

They didn’t.

Students who treated AI as a working partner reported more of both. And both were linked to stronger self-reported learning. Even delegation, which the authors had predicted would hurt, was positively associated with learning. That link was strongest at higher levels.

In fact, the most common pattern among students reporting the deepest learning was heavy delegation paired with active scrutiny of what came back.

Two caveats matter here.

First, the participants were business-school students. Second, the outcome was self-reported, not a test of reasoning.

So the study doesn’t show that one style of AI use protects your thinking skills and another erodes them. What it supports is narrower. Handing work to AI and questioning it aren’t an either/or.

Think about what that looks like in practice.

You can ask AI to draft something, then read it closely, question its assumptions, and decide whether it’s actually right. Or you can accept the draft because it sounds confident and well-organized. From the outside, those two look identical. They save you about the same amount of time. But they’re different acts.

In one, AI is doing your thinking for you. In the other, AI is giving you something to think about.

For decisions that matter, like a diagnosis, a financial commitment, or advice you’re giving someone else, the more effortful version is worth the extra few minutes. Even when the easier one is sitting right there.

3. Get a Second Opinion When AI Agrees With You

This might be the most surprising finding of the three.

A study published in Science in March 2026, led by researchers at Stanford, measured something called sycophancy. That’s the tendency of AI systems to affirm and agree with what you say instead of pushing back.

The team tested eleven widely used AI models. They compared the models’ answers with human responses to the same advice-seeking prompts. On average, the models endorsed the person’s actions 49% more often than humans did. That included prompts describing deception, illegal conduct, or other harm.

One test used posts from a Reddit forum where people describe interpersonal conflicts and ask for a verdict. In posts where the community had unanimously judged the poster to be in the wrong, the models still sided with the poster in 51% of cases. Let that sink in for a second.

Then the researchers looked at what this does to people.

Across three preregistered experiments with 2,405 participants, a single validating AI reply left people less inclined to own their part in a disagreement or try to mend it. It also made them more certain they’d been right.

According to Stanford’s summary of the research, some participants worked through pre-written dilemmas based on the forum posts. Others discussed a conflict from their own lives.

And here’s where it gets tricky. Participants rated the agreeable replies as more trustworthy. They were also more willing to come back to them.

The authors argue that this gives developers a commercial reason to leave the behavior in place. Think about that for a minute. The thing that makes an AI reply feel good is the same thing that keeps you coming back, whether or not it’s steering you well.

And it’s pretty easy to see how it plays out. You describe a situation from your side, which is the only side you can describe. The AI tells you you’re right. You walk away feeling better and a little more dug in.

So the habit worth building is a specific kind of skepticism, aimed at AI’s agreement rather than its facts. When AI validates your decision, your draft, or your side of a disagreement, that validation isn’t neutral information. It’s coming from a system with a measured tendency to side with the user. And in the study, people preferred that tendency even as it skewed their judgment.

If you’re dealing with a real conflict with someone, a business decision that affects other people, or a moment of genuine self-doubt, talk to an actual person too.

A second opinion from a human carries information that AI agreement often doesn’t.


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Keep Using AI, Just Know What It’s Doing

Each of these studies has limits, from who was studied to how the outcomes were measured. They’re worth reading in the originals. None of them makes a case for abandoning AI.

That said, the sycophancy researchers are explicit that the effect they measured is harmful. And the study’s lead author has cautioned against using AI as a stand-in for people when you’re working through interpersonal problems.

The answer is awareness.

AI tools tend to be fast, complete, and agreeable. The research above suggests those same qualities can sometimes work against you. Knowing that isn’t a reason to be suspicious. It’s useful context.

You don’t need to second-guess every answer AI gives you. You just need to know which way it tends to lean. It can change how you read your own frustration, your own confidence, and your own certainty that you were right, the next time any of those show up in an AI conversation.

So which of these three have you noticed in yourself? We’d love to hear it so share it in the comments!


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Disclaimer: This article is for general informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical, legal, compliance, or professional advice. The information provided here is based on available public data and may not be entirely accurate or up-to-date. It’s recommended to contact the respective companies/individuals for detailed information on features, pricing, and availability. All screenshots, if any, are used under the principles of fair use for editorial, educational, or commentary purposes. All trademarks and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

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Further Reading



2 Soaring Stocks to Hold for the Next 7 Years


If you are looking for soaring consumer stocks you can actually hold, forget about, and think about in seven years, it helps to start with names that already look too obvious and then ask what most people are missing. Two that fit that mold for me right now are The Coca‑Cola Company (KO +0.01%) and Costco Wholesale (COST -0.91%). Both companies and their stocks are already widely followed, but there are still some lesser-known angles that make them worth watching and help explain why investors remain interested.

Image source: Getty Images.

Coca‑Cola: branding to combat health traffic

You might look at Coca‑Cola and think it is a slow, sugary beverage company that will get chipped away by health trends and new brands. The numbers from this year tell a different story. In the second quarter of 2026, Coca‑Cola reported global unit case volume growth of 5%, net revenue up 7%, and operating income up 9%, then raised full‑year guidance. This shows that the business is not stuck in neutral.

I’m not much of a branding enthusiast. I think brands like Coca-Cola already have pricing power without needing to change much, but in July, Coca‑Cola rolled out a new global visual identity system across more than 200 markets, designed to make every can, cooler, and digital ad unmistakably Coca-Cola. At the same time, it is committing about $10 billion to U.S. production and distribution infrastructure through 2030. In the company’s own words, they are building out the infrastructure behind its systems through a new “Brand Center” and technology-powered Design Intelligence tools that provide its marketing and agency network with shared resources for managing and enforcing Coca-Cola’s visual identity at scale.

To me, that’s a forward-thinking move. Coca‑Cola is tightening its presence everywhere while deepening the physical network that gets drinks into coolers and restaurants. Over seven years, that kind of brand and logistics work is what keeps the company relevant even as tastes evolve. Add the company’s dividends to this, and it is a safe stock that will continue to soar.

Coca-Cola Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(0.01%) $0.01

Current Price

$88.10

Costco: Low yield, high conviction

You might glance at Costco’s dividend yield and assume it is not worth holding for income, especially after a strong run over the last couple of years. The way management is treating cash and growth makes me see it differently. For the June 2026 retail month, Costco reported net sales of $29.24 billion, up 10.6% from a year earlier.

At the same time, Costco continues to open and remodel warehouses, investing roughly $6.5 billion a year to expand capacity and improve the member experience, according to company management. The warehouse additions get plenty of attention, but I don’t think investors fully appreciate how much revenue and membership growth each new location can add to the business, giving Costco another runway for growth as it expands its footprint. The regular dividend, recently raised to $1.47 per share, is only part of the story, as Costco has also used special dividends to return excess cash to shareholders while continuing to prioritize investments in the warehouse model.

So while you may think Costco is “too expensive with a tiny yield,” I think of it as a membership machine that keeps gaining scale, with a management team that treats growth and cash returns as two sides of the same coin. If you own it for seven years, you are betting that more households will choose Costco as their default place to stretch budgets and that you will share in both the earnings and the occasional big payout when cash piles up.

Chase Offers: 15% Off Optimum


Update 9/24/26: 15% back deal is now available on U.S. Bank offers. Valid through 11/9/26. Minimum $60 payment and $27 max cashback.

The Offer

Check your Chase Offers for the following deal:

  • Earn 15% cash back on your new Optimum subscription when you spend $60 or more (including taxes and after any discounts). Max $26.75 cash back. Please note that this is for a subscription purchase.

The Fine Print

  • Offer expires 7/31/2026.
  • Offer valid for new customers only.
  • Offer valid one time only.
  • Must make first recurring payment by 7/31/2026.
  • Offer valid on first payment only.

Our Verdict

Seems to be widely available on all Chase cards with the exception of the INK Cash/Plus cards. This is an excellent deal for Optimum. Note, again, the fine print suggests this won’t work for existing users – I’d be curious to hear if anyone actually tries this out.

Also note, you might lose your autopay discount if you pay with the card; sometimes bank payment is required for that.

Hat tip to reader Fay White

OpenAI to unveil GPT-6 Cyber model, plus a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity-focused product to help deploy it



OpenAI is preparing to preview its latest cybersecurity-focused model, GPT-6 Cyber, in the coming months, according to multiple sources familiar with the plans. It will also unveil a new product to help customers deploy the model in a more secure, automated manner.

The new, yet-to-be-named product will be a first for OpenAI, and extends a paradigm that OpenAI pioneered with its consumer products, in which ChatGPT serves as a gateway through which many users access new models like GPT-6 Astra. It aims to help customers create automated workflows and patch vulnerabilities in the face of increasingly sophisticated, AI-powered cyberattacks. It also gives OpenAI more oversight into how its models are being used, to monitor for safety.

A limited number of customers in OpenAI’s application-only Daybreak Red program already have access to GPT-6 Cyber for alpha testing, the source said. Daybreak is the company’s cybersecurity program, which is broken into two access tiers—red and blue. Customers in the Daybreak Red program have access to OpenAI’s most advanced cybersecurity products. Daybreak Blue is its more generalized access program, though it is also application-only.

The release of the new cyber products comes as OpenAI and other leading AI labs have been under fire for a string of worrisome incidents in which “rogue” agents escaped their sandboxes and hacked outside websites including the Hugging Face site and an Australian government site. But while the incidents have set off alarms about AI’s security risks, OpenAI’s new cybersecurity tools are part of an ongoing effort by the company to develop AI security products.

GPT-6 Cyber is the fourth cybersecurity-focused model OpenAI has released this year. Its first was GPT-5.4 Cyber in April 2026, followed by GPT-5.5 Cyber in June, and GPT-5.6 Cyber in August. OpenAI has been focusing on enterprise sales of cybersecurity products, an effort now led by its Chief Revenue Officer Dali Rajic, who joined the company in August.

OpenAI said earlier this month it will invest $1 billion to subsidize the use of its cybersecurity products for critical services.

Next week, OpenAI also plans to ship a dozen or more other products at its annual DevDay event, set for Sept. 29, according to another source familiar with the program. Most of those releases are not related to cybersecurity but rather other areas of the business, both enterprise- and consumer-focused.

OpenAI has put a freeze on any major launches in the past 2 weeks, save for its affordability-focused GPT-6 Sol and Luna models, so it could ship them all at DevDay, the source said. Earlier this month, CEO Sam Altman teased the buffet of new releases at DevDay in a tweet with multiple ship emojis.

Fortune Daily breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms Fortune’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders. Watch here.

The dinner reservation that moves home prices


A visitor who comes for a tasting menu also books a room, rents gear, browses the boutiques and has a nightcap down the street. The Harvard team’s finding that restaurants rarely crowd out other businesses fits that picture: good kitchens tend to attract neighbors rather than replace them.

Colorado shows how seriously resort towns take this. When the Michelin Guide arrived in the state in 2023, Aspen and Snowmass Village, along with Vail and Beaver Creek, were among the few areas inspectors covered. According to The Colorado Sun, each participating area agreed to pay between $70,000 and $100,000 a year for three years, alongside roughly $135,000 from the Colorado Tourism Office. In 2026, those deals gave way to a single statewide agreement. Tourism officials, in other words, are treating a restaurant guide as economic development spending.

The catch: somebody has to cook

This is the part that should matter most to anyone underwriting in a resort town. A dining scene is only as durable as its workforce, and in many vacation markets that workforce can’t afford to live nearby.

In Colorado’s mountain communities, worker shortages have forced restaurants to cut their hours. In the Florida Keys, NPR reported this summer on restaurant workers who serve tourists all day but can’t afford to live in town. Near Telluride, the housing squeeze has become so acute that hotels are being converted to long-term worker housing as vacation rentals take over homes, sometimes ending up in court.

Crowdcube: Veremark Offering Is Secondary That Allows Existing Shareholder Liquidity


Crowdcube has just listed an offering of shares in Veremark, a screening and background-check firm that supports employers.

According to the offering page, Veremark is offering shares at £6.34. The Series B funding round in February valued the company at about $100 million and raised $26 million from VCs. Currently, the offering shows purchases of £457,152.

The offering is part of the PISCES partnership with the London Stock Exchange. This secondary offering allows existing shareholders, frequently employees, to gain some liquidity. Crowdcube has been selected to provide retail access to shares in the private company. Crowdcube acts as a Registered Auction Agent (RAA) for the private securities market. Singer Capital Markets is working as an RAA alongside Crowdcube on the buy side.

Launched in 2020, Veremark has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in 2026, as recognized by the FT. Veremark reports year-over-year growth of 241% for the first half of 2026. The company reports an active customer base of over 8,000 clients globally. Veremark now employs over 300 people worldwide.

Veremark was created with the recognition that artificial intelligence is being leveraged to create fake profiles, and firms are finding it more difficult to discern what is true and what is bogus. Veremark’s tech stack allows companies to instantly implement global background screening at scale.

In a blog post, Matt Cooper, Crowdcube’s co-CEO, said they have become the go-to agent for employee share transactions on the London Stock Exchange’s Private Securities Market.

The Veremark employee share sale opened this week (September 22nd), with the auction taking place on October 7th.

Have a crowdfunding offering you’d like to share? Submit an offering for consideration using our Submit a Tip form and we may share it on our site!



Best Investing Apps for Beginners in Europe 2026



👉🏼 Master ETF & index investing from Europe – here’s the easy way to get started or optimize your portfolio:

📩 Get investing insights for European investors in your inbox – join 70’000+ newsletter readers:

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:46 The most beginner-friendly investment apps
00:50 Trade Republic
05:53 Lightyear
09:51 Trading 212
14:23 Taxes
15:15 Daily banking apps that offer investing
15:32 Revolut
21:10 N26
26:26 Important principle
27:44 The biggest, most reputable brokerages
27:50 Interactive Brokers
33:02 Saxo Bank
37:25 Degiro
41:52 Final results

—

All the content on this channel is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Any examples of investments, investment firms, or strategies are provided purely for illustrative purposes and are not endorsements. This content does not take into account your personal financial situation or risk profile. Investing involves risk, and you should do your own research or consult a licensed financial advisor before making any decisions.

Always watch out for scammers in the comments. Any recommendation of a specific financial advisor or expert is almost certainly a scam. Any profit claims that sound too good to be true are likely a scam. I will never ask you to message me privately. I will never recommend you use a specific investment platform or buy a particular investment.

I only offer educational courses via my website indexmasterclass.com (use the links above).

source

From a $200K Duplex to Replacing His 6-Figure Salary with Rental Properties


Real estate investing won’t make you rich overnight. But keep at it for long enough, and it will make you very wealthy.

Philip Henry had been doing all the right things: buying a rental property every year, renovating it, raising rent, and then rolling his home equity into the next deal. Yet after nearly 15 years, he had very little to show for it, and the stress and workload were beginning to take a toll on his health and relationships.

Right when others would have given up, the real estate deal of a lifetime landed right in Philip’s lap—a seven-figure, 31-unit rental property that would change his family’s future.

Now, Philip is financially free, has quit his W-2 job, and is building generational wealth with rental properties.

How did he do it? Today, he’s pulling back the curtain on the deal that changed everything and the strategies behind it: seller financing, other people’s money, and perhaps most importantly, the patience and persistence needed to win in real estate.

Henry Washington:
Real estate is not a get rich quick kind of game, but it is a get rich for sure game. Keep at it and it will eventually make you wealthy. Most investors get out too early, usually right before the big payoff. For 15 years, investor Philip Henry felt like he was treading water. He was doing all the right things, buying multifamily property every year, renovating the units, raising the rents, and then rolling his equity into the next deal. On paper, he was building wealth, but it was not showing up in his bank account. The stress was mounting and the workload was taking a toll on his health and his relationships were suffering. But that’s exactly when the breakthrough came, a real estate deal that would single-handedly change his life. Philip bought it with none of his own money, and then he created enough value and cash flow to replace his six-figure salary.
Today, he’s going to pull back the curtain on that deal and the strategies behind it, plus the patience and persistence it takes to win in real estate. What’s going on, everybody? I’m Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and today we’re bringing you an investor story with Philip Henry. So let’s bring him on. Mr. Phillip Henry, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

Philip Henry:
Well, thank you so much, Henry. Appreciate it. Appreciate you having me on. Why

Henry Washington:
Don’t you go ahead and give us a little background. What got you into real estate investing in the first? What were you doing before that?

Philip Henry:
Wow. Well, originally from Canada, I went to chemical engineering and then moved to the US in 01 with my wife. And at the time we had a new baby and started doing engineering work in Boston and then just started reading books about real estate. You drive by a golf course and it’s like noon on a Wednesday and someone’s in there with a nice car and golfing and my dad always was working at that time. So I was like, “Something’s different about what they’re doing versus what my dad did.” So anyway, that’s how it started. And then I bought a two unit. That was how I got off the ground.

Henry Washington:
How long ago was that?

Philip Henry:
That was in 2003, I think. Oh,

Henry Washington:
Man. So you got a long investing history.

Philip Henry:
Yes.

Henry Washington:
I know it was a while ago, but it was your first rodeo in the real estate game. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that deal? What did you buy? How did it go? And then how did that propel your investing career?

Philip Henry:
So a lot of the new engineers, new families starting up would get a single family home in Boston and then they’re mortgage poor. And I was broke. I had no money. Started out salary with 40 grand or something like that. And $200,000 price point, two unit. We bought it. I think it was an FHA. I would come home from engineering school, go up into the second unit, sand floors, paint, rented that out for 800 bucks. So my costs went from 900 in an apartment to 450 and I owned the place. And then a year later I sold it and left the closing table with a check and it said like 50 grand on it. I paid off my student loans and that’s when I was hooked. I was like, there’s no way. I just made a year salary by living in a house. So you

Henry Washington:
Did house hacking before it was cool, before it was a fancy name for it.

Philip Henry:
You got it.

Henry Washington:
How

Philip Henry:
Did

Henry Washington:
That change or shape what you ended up doing next?

Philip Henry:
Well, I think the first thing is it increased my belief. So my belief that I actually could be a real estate investor, that was huge for me. And then I got transferred up to Bangor and I bought a four unit right out of the gate. Same way, FHA, three and a half percent down. The seller carried closing costs, so I had very little in it and I started with that. That was my next acquisition.

Henry Washington:
Okay. So you house hacked that one as well. The first one, it sounded like you had some renovation to do. You were doing some of the sweat equity. Were you doing the same thing on the next one or was it more of a turnkey deal?

Philip Henry:
It was a little bit more ready to go, but it still needed a fair amount of love. So it was like you come home from the end of the day, pick up some supplies and grab your hockey buddy and tell them there’s a six pack waiting for him and off I went.

Henry Washington:
When we talk about owner financing, a lot of investors understand, well, yeah, I can go to the owner and I can ask them to give me a loan since they own the property, but owner financing is bigger than that. Owner financing can be something just like that where the owner just carries part of the loan, like the down payment. So with that being your second deal, how did you know to do that or how did that come about?

Philip Henry:
So one of the things that usually stagnates people from getting off of their first unit is that you’re capital poor. It’s hard to come up with 20% savings to get another unit. So once I got that four unit, I was tapped. And then another kind of worn down landlord had a two building, 11 units. And I don’t know how I came up, maybe it was a book I read and that it was an option. And he was a savvy investor. He had a bunch of units. So he said, okay, yeah, I’d be willing to carry paper. And I was like, carry paper, what the hell does that mean? But once we got through that, he was very open to doing that. So he carried the 20% down payment that I needed and he carried closing costs. So I ended up taking another 11 units under ownership and I walked away with a small check for prorated rents at that time.
It needed a ton of work, but that’s all I had for options. But I bought those two buildings for 200 grand and they just appraised for like 950 and I had no money in the game.

Henry Washington:
My perspective on seller finance is that it has nothing to do with what you want and it has everything to do with what the seller wants. That’s why it’s called seller finance. And I have found it to be a more productive and successful conversation when I am focused on trying to figure out what it is that the seller needs. And then I try to structure the deal that gives them what they need. Now it’s hard for them to say, no, you said you wanted a down payment, I’m giving you a down payment. You said you wanted a 7% interest rate. I’m giving you a 7% interest rate. But all of the other factors of the loan, I’m tipping in my favor. 100%. And so I found that to be the most successful strategy. How do you go about approaching somebody and offering seller financing?

Philip Henry:
Really it’s to your point, you’re trying to create a win-win. You’re trying to understand the motivation factors of the seller. And I think it starts with a conversation like, “Hey, would the seller be open to that?” Well, they’re not really open to it. They don’t really understand it. Okay, well now you have another roadblock to get through. And so every deal’s different, but in order to grow when you lack capital, you have to be creative and you have to either leverage seller financing, get really good at approaching sellers with the idea of it, and then being really good at explaining why it benefits them as well and not just you. And then it’s so funny, Henry, once you get a track record of success and you have a few deals under your belt, there’s a lot of people that have money that is in the market making six, 7%.
And if you can get a down payment for a place and tell them that you’ll just pay them 11% on their money until you pay it back or for two years or for three years to get into a deal, which I’ve done too, it benefits them, it benefits you, and it’s just another tool in the belt. Yeah.

Henry Washington:
Your goal as an investor is to educate yourself, understand what are all of the ways that I could finance a deal so that when a deal comes across your desk and a seller is in a certain type of situation, you can go, ah, that’s this type of loan and I can underwrite it this way because it gives a seller what they need. It helps me get the deal done and it helps solve the problem for me, which is not having to spend a ton of my own capital. It’s a tool in the tool belt. I love that analogy. All right, Mr. Phillip. I love the last name by the way, Mr. Phillip Henry. Thank you. I want to learn more about how you continue to grow and scale, but I want to do that right after we take a break.

Philip Henry:
Sounds good.

Henry Washington:
Imagine if real estate investing was easy, all the benefits of owning real properties without all the complexity and expense. That’s the power of the Fundrise Flagship Fund. Now you can invest in the $1.1 billion real estate portfolio starting with as little as $10. Visit fundrise.com/biggerpockets to explore the portfolio, see historical returns and more. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at fundrise.com/flagship. This is a paid advertisement. All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets podcast. I am with investor Phillip Henry who has a wealth of experience, done some creative finance deals, and we’re here chatting about those. Mr. Phillip, now you mentioned that you bought a duplex house hack, then you did a fourplex house hack, then you did 11 units and the 11 units was mostly all owner finance, correct?

Philip Henry:
Yeah, the entire down payment, the 20% I required for a down payment, the seller carried that.

Henry Washington:
So what happened after that?

Philip Henry:
Well, I was a full-time traveling engineer, so I’m on the road, but I made a small little tire. I said, I got to get at least one multifamily a year. So I just kept adding one a year, one a year, one a year. So four unit, four unit, four unit. And most of it was that until I had about 40, maybe 46 units or so. But what I found, when I was at that stage, it wasn’t at critical mass. I still had my six-figure engineering travel, but I’m traveling, staying at Marriott’s doing that. And then I have 46 units at home, so my wife’s raising kids and dealing with these calls. And it started to put some major, major stress on the relationship. It was just a really, really difficult time. I don’t have entrepreneurs, parents. I got a work ethic from my dad. I got compassion from my mom, but they are so conservative.
They were wondering if I was a crazy absolute lunatic and wasting my money and time and I’m in a different place today because of those things.

Henry Washington:
It took my father probably four or five years of me doing real estate before he stopped asking me how my 401k was doing. That’s right. I got rid of that thing so long ago, dad. I’m good. I’m fine. It makes 8%.

Philip Henry:
My real estate makes 25 or 30% return. No, no, thanks.

Henry Washington:
Yeah. I like this concept of buying one a year because it seems manageable. That sounds attractive to a lot of new investors. They know that’s not scary. I could buy one a year. Cool. Now let’s talk about what it actually took to buy one a year. So you were buying one multifamily a year. Were you buying them all on owner financing or was this traditional financing?

Philip Henry:
Every deal I go in, I propose seller financing and 90% of the time I was able to pull that off. And so that allowed me to do that. And then just really MLS, things that have been sitting for a while. I was big on, because I wanted to find a motivated seller. Usually those are tired landlords or whatever. So I would go in and negotiate that and then I would go into each unit. So one unit would vacate, I would go in, redo the unit, get someone else in there, increase rents, change the NOI, increase the value, and then I would have equity. Then I would just start to use equity for the next acquisition, next acquisition. So either equity or seller financing.

Henry Washington:
Love it. So almost like a little cross-collateralization kind of style you were doing there.

Philip Henry:
Exactly.

Henry Washington:
All right. So you’re doing some of the work, you’re getting these things up to speed because obviously the way we get good deals is we buy problems and those problems a lot of times are the property needs some, let’s call it love. Next is you’re obviously keeping these things as rentals, so who’s managing these things?

Philip Henry:
So because I was a chemical engineer and I’m traveling all over, I didn’t want to create another job. I didn’t want to have another job for myself. I mean, the whole thing about having financial freedom is the freedom part. You know what I mean? It’s one thing that money coming in, but if you don’t have the ability to do what you want, when you want to do it with the people that you want to do it with. So yeah, no, I hired a couple full-time folks and they take all the calls. They schedule all the maintenance, do all the maintenance, and I still do the leasing and advertising.

Henry Washington:
So you do the fun part. You get it looking pretty and then you get

Philip Henry:
To

Henry Washington:
Tell people how awesome it is and get it filled. You got it.

Philip Henry:
And

Henry Washington:
Then you’re –

Philip Henry:
I get to shake her hand,

Henry Washington:
See

Philip Henry:
Who’s going to be in my buildings. Fair enough. I like to keep my hands on that part.

Henry Washington:
While you were in this stretch of one property a year and you were doing all the things that I was asking about, how much time were you spending in and on your real estate business?

Philip Henry:
I would say probably 10 to 15 hours a week, 45 units at the time. 10

Henry Washington:
To 15 on top of a day job where you’re driving.

Philip Henry:
On top of a day job, yeah. And that’s the hardest part. When you have these units, yes, they’re kicking off cash, but you’re re-injecting a lot of that cash to bring them up to snuff. And so your wife’s like, okay, you’re gone all the time. The account’s not really growing. And in my head, I know I’m getting equity. I know I’m building this future, but you don’t see anything. And that’s the hardest part to be in. It’s like I’m doing all this work that was a tough place to be.

Henry Washington:
Look, I appreciate the honesty and the transparency here because this is the reality. For almost every real estate investor, at some point you start to realize in the beginning parts of your journey that I am not reaping the fruits of the amount of labor that I feel like I’m putting in.

Philip Henry:
You got it.

Henry Washington:
People say real estate is a long-term game. And we hear that and we understand it and we go, “Yeah, you start now and then in the future you’re wealthy.” That makes sense. But no one talks about what that feels like when you’re actually in it. It’s a long-term game. What people mean when they say it’s a long-term game, what they’re saying is the financial benefit to what you’re doing doesn’t really hit you until a while in the future. And if you want that to happen, you’ve got to remain capital heavy enough to stay afloat in the meantime. And yes, you’re buying assets that produce cash flow and yes, you’re getting cash flow from every single unit. And then you look at your bank account and you’re like, “Where the heck is that cash flow?” And that’s because I get in trouble for saying this, but I stand on my business, cash flow is a myth.
It’s a myth. You absolutely shoot for it, you underwrite for it, you don’t buy a deal unless it’s going to produce it, but cash flow is hard to chase because yes, your property’s producing two, $300 a month in net cash flow, but if you’ve got an HVAC go out in year one, that’s $8,000. You’ve only made $2,200 in cash flow and you’ve now spent $8,000 on an HVAC unit.
And so if you’re trying to live off that $200 a month of that property and you put a new HVAC in it, you can’t do it. The money’s not real. It’s real in the future, but on a day-to-day basis, it is so hard to predict living off your cash flow. And that’s what makes this business so hard is because in the first five years, you feel a whole lot of that and you don’t feel a whole lot of your bank account growing. But then once you get past five, you start to get to 10 and 15 years, things start to look a little different in that bank account.

Philip Henry:
They sure do. And it’s so crazy because I almost feel like the universe is saying, “Do you want this or not?” Because there are dark places in there when there’s no money in the account and the HVAC unit goes and you’re like, “Do I have to put this on the card again? I don’t know if it’s going to be able to handle it.” Your wife’s like, “What’s going on? Sell it all. Get out of this business. This is a stupid idea.” And then that’s when faith comes in because if you can get through that pain, what I can tell you is the other side is a beautiful place.

Henry Washington:
It’s so amazing. And I know I’m preaching here, but man, you’re speaking my language. Look, folks, there’s a lot of ways to invest in this country. There’s the stock market and there’s crypto and there’s futures and there’s all these things you can invest in. Real estate is the only get rich for sure.
If you buy assets and you don’t sell them, either because you want to or you’re forced to because you couldn’t remain capital heavy enough in the hard times, you will become wealthy. The goal is you got to stay in the game. How do you stay in the game? You buy good deals, you underwrite correctly, and you make sure you got some capital in the bank account to cover you when things go hard because they will get hard, but it’s the only get rich for sure, but you’ve got to maintain. And I like the honest and open conversation about those moments. I’ve seen people in the past six to 12 months posting, multiple people posting on social media about, “I used to have a real estate portfolio. I had 40 doors, 50 doors, 20 doors, and I wasn’t making any money.” But when you dive into their story, they were only three to seven years in the business.
They hadn’t hit the money part yet. That’s why I mean that you know you weren’t making any money or didn’t feel like it because it takes time to get there. But if you stay, if you can stay, I promise you, the wealth comes and that’s a pretty cool guarantee.

Philip Henry:
It sure is. I will say. And what’s so cool about it is that as you’re going through the journey and as you’re going through all these challenges, you get better at cash flow management, you get better at identifying challenges when you’re underwriting or looking at a deal. So then when you have an opportunity for a big life changing acquisition, you capitalize on it and you only need one.

Henry Washington:
Do you have one of those deals and could you tell us about it?

Philip Henry:
Yes. So after I had 46 units, like I said, my wife and I, it was like this inflection point in our marriage. The stress was heavy and we had discussions, you come home from a week away and try and blend back into my family. And it was like they had their thing going on and it’s like I was disrupting it. It’s like as long as there’s money coming in and I felt like I was an ATM machine, she felt like she wasn’t being heard or listened to or understood or my presence wasn’t there. I was always distracted. And so I knew that I was close, you know what I mean? I knew that if I could get another good deal on this, the building that I’m in right now, it was a 31. It’s a 32 unit now. So I chased this guy who owned it.
I would find out where he was having a beer and I would sit by him. “Oh, hey Larry, what’s going on? Good to see you.” Are you

Henry Washington:
Saying stock the owner of a building until he sells it to you? Is that

Philip Henry:
Your

Henry Washington:
Advice here?

Philip Henry:
Everything’s on the table. Everything’s on the table. But no, I basically was like this guy, the deal came to my direction. I’m like, “Okay, this is a 31 unit. There’s no way I’m going to be able to enter into this. This is a new level for me.” So we finally got to a point where it was a $1.2 million asset at the time in 2017, right? 1.2 million bucks. He carried 10% paper, which was 120K. And then I had an old engineer that I had really good relationship with and he said he would chip in the other 120 and that’s how the deal went. So I had no money. I borrowed 120 from a guy 10 years elderly than me, had some capital. The seller chipped in. And then one by one, the units vacate, I come in, new granite counters, redo it, rent it, and then 32 times.
And we just got an appraisal, 5.2 million. Wow. Did a whole re-amortization, took a million bucks out tax-free. And then you’re driving by, Henry, and you’re like, “I own that thing, man.” It’s just such a crazy thing because when I grew up, I was like, “Man, who owns that? Who would own that?” And it’s an amazing thing that if you stick with it long enough and you stay diligent and you learn and you grow and you keep doing it, a deal will come your way that will change your life.

Henry Washington:
That’s incredible. So I mean, I’ve got a couple of questions about it, but on its surface, that’s amazing. You said you had the seller carry 50% of the down payment

Philip Henry:
And

Henry Washington:
You had a private investor for 50% of the down payment.

Philip Henry:
For me, I did a five-year balloon. So I basically said, “Hey, carry it.” I knew that I could turn the thing around and then have enough equity to be able to pay him off. And we didn’t really have a time limit on the private investor because hey, he’s making 11% on his money, so he was happy. Keep throwing me a check every month. But yeah, so I did the same. As soon as I knew I had the equity, I pulled it out, got it appraised, and then took some money and tossed it their way. And then it was 100% owned by me.

Henry Washington:
So when I quit my job, it was hard for me to give up the safety net. I was very scared, even though I knew I had done the math. I was making much more money on real estate per hour than I was making in my day job by a lot, but it was still extremely scary to leave. And I actually had to have a friend of mine who was an entrepreneur, had been an entrepreneur kind of pushed me over the edge and say, “Hey, I have the same fear, but once I took the leap, it was way better than though I was going to be. Don’t worry about it. You’re going to be fine.” How did you get comfortable with the idea that you weren’t going to have that safety net anymore?

Philip Henry:
Oh man, I don’t know. I felt like if I didn’t make this change and be present and be home with my family, so it was just like I didn’t want my legacy to be a dad on the road all the time. The money wasn’t really as important at that point. I needed to make change. But there’s a lot of fear because I had the six figures and yes, I had replaced it, but now I was so comfortable with that along with my six figures. You know what I mean? It’s like, okay, now I have – You’re losing

Henry Washington:
Something. Yeah.

Philip Henry:
Yeah, you’re still losing something. So even though I gained a fair amount of cash flow from this 31 unit, I was letting go of a six figure salary. But in my mind, I said, “Listen, if you were part-time in this thing and you got to this point, imagine if you have 100% focus and you’re able to stay in this business, what you could do.” That allowed me to flip houses. It allowed me to grow the portfolio strategically. So yeah, when I quit, I had a 15-year engineering career. And then from 2017 to now, I have five, if not 10X, my net worth from those years.

Henry Washington:
All right, Philip, I want to get a little vulnerable if you’re going to be willing, but you have every right to say, “Hey, I don’t want to go there because it is personal.” But you did mention that you had some struggles with the wife and the family and not being present enough as you were building this and the bank account not being where you want it to be. I’m very curious if you’d be willing to share with us what some of those conversations were like and then how did you as a couple navigate through those difficult times?

Philip Henry:
I think this is a huge passion of mine because number one, staying married is hard. It’s really, really hard. And raising children is hard. And when you combine raising children with trying to be, trying to have a passionate, a connected marriage, and you’re also trying to build a huge business for your family and for your future and for your legacy, it breaks a lot of people. It breaks a lot of men. And so I had to start to search internally. Why are these arguments continuing? Why are these disconnections continuing? Why am I sleeping on one side of the bed looking one way and she’s on the other side? I’m five feet away from my wife and I feel like I’m alone. And that is a very, very difficult place to be for a man. And I think a lot of people quit in that spot.
They quit, they get divorced, they call it a day, but then the next relationship stops at that same exact point. You want deeper connection, you have to go inside and get deeper connection with you. And I think the more you can get comfortable with all the things, forgive yourself, love yourself more. So the more you love yourself, the more you can love the spouse that you’re with and the more that you can pour into your children. So I had to go away for a while and I joined kind of a mastermind, a men, entrepreneurial men. I had to get around people that were experiencing deep marriages, people that understood how to communicate better, what does a wife need? Love language. I started to invest in understanding how are these conflicts happening? And those are the things that when you start to layer those on top of each other over and over again, you start to rebuild and reconnect the marriage.
And you can do it, anybody can do it, but when you don’t know and you feel hopeless because you just, “Man, I’ve been trying all this stuff. I’ve read a book. What’s going on?”

Henry Washington:
I love that vulnerability. And the key there to what you said was self-awareness and not placing blame. Right, wrong or indifferent, what I’ve learned, or at least what I think I’ve learned on this journey of entrepreneurship and marriage is that if things aren’t going the way I think they should go in the home or that I expect them to go or that I want them to go in the home, 90% of the reason why that is, is something that I can fix and I can control because it’s probably something that I can do differently. But it takes a lot of humility and self-awareness to be able to take your frustration at a situation and maybe even your frustration with somebody else in a situation
And go, “All right, what did I do to put us to where we’re even having this conversation and what can I do to get us out of it?” And I don’t know if that’s just our responsibility as men or husbands, but I’ve just found that when I take my feelings out of the situation and realize that my wife isn’t my enemy, she’s not trying to make me mad. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. She doesn’t want to make me angry. She wants me to be a good husband. She wants to be a good wife. And so when I realize she’s not coming from a place of trying to harm me, it really helps me get out of my own feelings and figure out what things I can do to change.

Philip Henry:
I love that. What I’ve learned is that the stories in your mind, as soon as you have an emotion of anger or frustration, it only comes from a story. What story you’re telling yourself creates the emotion and from the emotion you start to take action, like you shut down. Oh, she doesn’t appreciate me. What do you do? What’s the action you take? You shut down. And then what are the results of that? Well, does that bring you closer or does that bring you further apart? And so when you start to realize that’s the way that it works, what story am I telling? I got to reframe the story. How about she’s had a hard day and she’s just looking to confide in me and I’m appreciative of that. And then what action am I going to take? I’m going to be more open. I’m going to be more loving, going to be more patient, more kind.
And then that brings you closer together and it takes practice, it takes intention, and you have to have hard conversations. I see so many people that avoid hard conversations with the people they love the most because they are difficult. At least my experience talking to men, it’s like when we’re connected to this woman, we only are vulnerable to usually very few people and one of those people is our wife. So it’s one of those things. We’re opening our heart to this one person that we’ve chosen to live our life with.
So it’s the story, the feelings, the action, the results. Change the story, change the results.

Henry Washington:
Man, that’s incredible. I agree with you. And whenever you start your marriage retreat for real estate investor couples, just send me the link. I’ll sign up.

Philip Henry:
Sweet. Will do. Will do.

Henry Washington:
All right, Mr. Phillip, first and foremost, I want to say thank you for the openness and honesty, both around the deals that you were doing and how you did them, what went well and what didn’t, but around marriage and life and some of these real conversations that a lot of people are having. Before we go, can you wrap up? Give us an overall, what does your portfolio look like and are you looking to do anything cool or crazy next?

Philip Henry:
Sure. So right now the portfolio is about a little over 20 million bucks, a lot of commercial, about 50% commercial, 50% residential, ski condo, a place in Florida that we Airbnb. So I think, not to digress, but I think you can get these places and then book out your two weeks. Yeah.

Henry Washington:
And then you can

Philip Henry:
Have fun. Have someone else pay for it. Go to the ski place, go to the place on the beach. And meanwhile, now you own these assets and they’re just part of your portfolio. So it’s just another thing that I’ve done. And right now I’m in the position of some of my assets, I want to parlay them. So I’m at a place with the equity that I have, I’m starting to look at 1031 exchanges. So to parlay all those profits, all that equity into bigger deals as I move down to Florida, I’m looking to get bigger deals and leverage the equity that I have in those. So that’s the plan.

Henry Washington:
And if anybody wants to Who find out more about you or learn from you? Is there a place where they can do that?

Philip Henry:
They can. On Instagram, it’s Phillip M. Henry with one L. And then I wrote a book describing some of the strategies. It’s called Running in the Snowstorm and it’s on Amazon. And then I coach. I coach men, faith, family, fitness, fortune. So it’s four pillars. I feel like there’s very few role models that are fit, are connected, that have purpose, have a thriving marriage, and have financial abundance. And I look to plan my life and I invest in each one of those quadrants. And because before I used to invest in one and that was production. And I would just leave the other ones behind. And that is not an abundant life, I can assure you.

Henry Washington:
All right. Thank you so much, Mr. Phillip. Thank you for sharing your story with us. And if you’re listening to the story and you’re thinking, “Man, I would love to be able to share my story with the BiggerPockets audience,” well, you might just get to do that. You can head on over to www.biggerpockets.com/guest, fill out the form and we’ll go through it. And you may be able to just be here just like Philip sharing your story with us in the near future. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of BiggerPockets Podcast. We’ll see everyone on the next episode.

 

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The U.S. and China are quietly talking AI guardrails—even as Trump publicly rejects them



The CEOs of two of America’s top AI companies told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that artificial intelligence has become a threat to global security, and asked world governments to write shared rules for it. 

Yet the White House won’t jump. On Thursday morning, ahead of his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump posted that “super intelligence”—his administration’s new term for AI—would be a big topic of discussion, “but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China’s position also.” He added: “Our guardrail is the DOJ!”

And hours later, standing next to Trump at the White House, Xi struck a different, more cooperative note. “We have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good and ensure that development of AI is always under human control,” he said.

Behind the scenes, the two nations have begun talking. China’s commerce ministry said at a press conference Thursday the countries had held their first dialogue on AI, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York earlier in the week. Bessent said that the U.S. proposed a notification mechanism between the two countries for national security-related AI incidents.

That’s similar to what Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei asked the Security Council for a day earlier. “No leader, no company, and no nation can manage this alone,” he said.

It’s also an early sign that the administration’s public posture and private diplomacy don’t fully line up. Two days earlier, Trump told the UN General Assembly the U.S. rejects any “globalist scheme” to control AI. Yet now his Treasury secretary is proposing a formal channel with China, the country which Trump and American VCs cast as the main villain in the race to AI against the U.S. 

Yet Amodei’s proposal at the Security Council went further. He called for starting with small agreements every country could agree on, such as a ban on using AI to make biological weapons, then building systems for governments to verify each other’s commitments, and then the global alert system. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also called for fast, shared incident reporting. And he said his company had slowed down its own AI development before and would again, undercutting the industry’s usual argument that they’re locked in a race they can’t escape from. 

Borrowing the UN’s language

Xi’s line about keeping AI “under human control” echoed nearly word for word what speakers told the Security Council a day earlier. Yoshua Bengio, an AI scientist who co-chaired the UN’s scientific panel on AI, said the goal was AI that “demonstrably remains under our control.” Pakistan’s foreign minister also said the top priority was to “retain human judgment and control” over AI.

That allows Beijing to present itself as the responsible party on AI as it visits the White House, while Trump claims China shares his hands-off approach.

China is also building its own coalition on safe AI. In July it launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, with 29 countries (and no major Western democracies), pitched to the developing world as a way to share AI rather than let a few American companies dominate. At the Security Council, Pakistan, a founding member of that organization, warned that measures “pursued in the name of safety must not become instruments of denial of technology,” a thinly veiled shot at U.S. export controls on advanced chips, or of a regulatory regime that would prioritize a few top models at the expense of open source. Loosening the chip controls is one of Xi’s top asks this week.

Clement Delangue, the french CEO of Hugging Face, the company OpenAI’s models hacked this summer, agrees with Xi that open models keep all the companies safer. He told the council that when his team tried to use closed American AI models to defend itself, the models’ safeguards blocked them. So they fought the attack with an open sourced model from China. The bigger risk than powerful AI, he said, is that just a few companies and countries control it.

That’s an awkward pitch for OpenAi and Athropic, both of which sell closed models. The safety regime that they are instead pitching, with extensive testing, verification and a coordinated pace at the frontier, is also the kind that only a few well funded companies can most easily meet.

American tech isn’t necessarily united behind the CEOs, either. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told NBC News this week that he doesn’t think the industry needs “some kind of industrywide coordination,” arguing there’s “plenty of commercial incentive to get this right.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is expected at Thursday night’s state dinner with Xi, has called AI fears overblown. Trump’s position is much closer to theirs than to Altman’s or Amodei’s.

Fed officials see rates likely rising to curb high inflation




Fed officials see rates likely rising to curb high inflation