Raise the Bar

In this episode, Seth Bradley, a successful real estate investor and former attorney, shares his curated list of the 12 most impactful business books that have profoundly shaped his approach to wealth generation, investing, and entrepreneurship. Seth Bradley expresses his frustration with the majority of business literature, but firmly believes in the transformative power of these selected titles.
Seth Bradley emphasizes that achieving financial freedom requires moving away from traditional employment and developing a mindset focused on asset building and strategic operations. Each book he highlights has played a crucial role in guiding Seth Bradley’s journey, offering insights on productivity, relationship management, and scaling businesses effectively. He stresses that success comes not just from reading these books, but from actively applying their principles in real-world situations.
To conclude, Seth Bradley encourages viewers to take action, read these influential books, and implement their teachings to improve both their financial position and overall life outcomes.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QXX37vgJPE&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=4
Bullet Point Highlights:
Transformative Reading: Seth Bradley highlights 12 business books that transformed his financial mindset.
From Employees to Investors: Books teach the importance of shifting from earning through employment to making money through investments.
The Power of Mornings: The “Miracle Morning” book stresses the significance of a structured morning routine for success.
Execution Over Perfection: “The Lean Startup” emphasizes launching quickly and improving based on feedback.
Relationship Building: “How to Win Friends and Influence People” underscores the importance of communication and building relationships in business.
Mindset Shift with 10x Rule: Grant Cardone’s “The 10x Rule” encourages ambitious thinking and significant effort to achieve exceptional results.
Love Languages in Business: “The Five Love Languages” reveals how understanding different communication styles can enhance business relationships.
Transcript:
(Seth Bradley)
[Music] I've read 236 business books and let me tell you honestly most of them are a complete waste of time but these 12 these are the ones that actually made me Rich these books change the way I make money I invest and I run my businesses and before you ask no I'm not including Rich Dad Poor Dad why because it's the purple Bible and if you don't know that one you're already behind so real quick if you don't know me I'm Seth Bradley really estate investor Capital Riser and former big law attorney I left a
 
multiple sixf figureure corporate career because I realized I'd never get rich working for someone else at least not wealthy I don't mess with stocks I don't waste time on 401ks I build businesses and I buy assets so if you want to break free from the 9 to-5 start raising capital and actually control your financial future this is the list you need this is the real playbook for Financial Freedom the books that shaped How I build wealth just stick around and at the end I've got a book you'll never
 
expect but it might be the most important one on the list all right let's get into it book number one it is Robert kosaki cash flow quadrant kosaki breaks down the four ways people make money employee self-employed business owner and investor most people spend their whole lives on the left side trading time for money the rich they're on the right side where businesses Investments make them money while they sleep you know I was making six figures as a lawyer but I was still on the wrong side that's when I knew I had to start
 
buying assets the second I understood this what my man was saying in this book I stopped thinking like an employee and starting moving towards Financial Freedom book number two Miracle morning by how El Rod now it's a solid morning routine is a cheat code for Success when I'm consistent with mine I dominate when I slack off my entire day suffers this book gives you a proven structure to start your day like a high performer if you don't control your mornings you don't control your life one of the
 
biggest takeaways for me was how much intentionality matters if you wake up and immediately start reacting to your world rather than you dictating how you perceive the world emails notifications demands you're already behind but if you take time to focus on yourself set goals and visualize success you'll operate at a much higher level this book will give you the tools to craft a morning routine that sets you up for Success now I do have to say that my morning routine is changed over time I read that book I had
 
a very structured morning I started out I needed that discipline but now I don't necessarily need it as much because I can really get into that flow get into that zone a lot easier I get up I make coffee I take my supplements I sit down and I start doing the hard work first so that morning routine whatever works best for you sometimes you need that structure and discipline to get going then once you kind of harness how you can do that you no longer need to take all those steps number three the 4our
 
work week by Tim Ferris now this one gets a lot of attention and also a lot of criticism but this book it taught me that time is the most valuable asset it's really not about working less and working 4 hours a week I mean for some people maybe but really it's about working smarter before reading this I was deep in the weeds of every task emails admin busy work this book just showed me how to automate how to Outsource how to focus on only high value moves and if you're always busy but not really making real progress this
 
book will change your mindset completely jump into that one for sure here we go book number four traction by Gino Wickman I still use this book every single day most businesses fail because they're a disorganized mess no systems no accountability that was me when I started out and that's how a lot of businesses start out traction fixes that I remember when I first started to grow my real estate business and my legal business at the same time along with the gyms and some other things I had no clear structure no direction and frankly
 
I was working my ass off but wasn't actually growing this book showed me how to implement the entrepreneurial operating system EOS and you can adopt a name for yourself like rais law operating system for me which is just a fancy way of saying here's how to actually run a business that doesn't depend on you doing everything yourself if you're stuck in the weeds this book is absolutely mandatory book number five The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven cubby success isn't luck it's built on habits and this book
 
lays them all out the biggest game changer for me be proactive and focus on what you can control not what you can't most people react to life and they wait for things to happen to them and to complain about them but wealthy people we make things happen this book helped me move from being reactive to strategic if you feel like life is happening to you instead of for you this book will completely change your mindset be sure to pick that one up read it every single year book number six the e- myth
 
Revisited by Michael Gerber if you're doing everything in your business then you don't own a business you own a job and that was me before this book I used to think that being an entrepreneur meant grinding 24/7 and sometimes we still do I still do but all I was doing back in the day was creating a high-paying high stress job for myself and that's not the point this book showed me why systematizing your business is the only way to truly scale once I implemented these systems I was able to step back work on the a big
 
picture and finally grow instead of just survive book number seven The Lean Startup by Eric rise most people wait way too long to launch they overthink they over plan they never execute this book teaches you the exact opposite launch first improve later I wasted so much time like many of us early on just trying to perfect things before putting them out there this book changed how I approach every every single business now I focus on launching fast testing and adapting if I read this earlier I would
 
have saved years maybe decades the best businesses don't come from perfect planning they come from Quick execution and constant learning book number eight How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale to Carnegie business is all about relationships and if you don't know how to communicate you're screwed this book taught me how to build connections negotiate better and influence people without being manipulative of course but if you're going to raise Capital you're going to close deals this book is an absolute
 
must read I apply these principles every single day they're simple in concept but they're harder to execute consistently whether it's working with investors Partners employees team members this book is the foundation for strong relationships in business and also in everyday life book number nine the 10x rule Grant Cardone you know he says a lot of controversial things some people give him Flack but this dude knows how to make money most people think too small not Grand this book forced me to build bigger execute at a higher level
 
because everything worth doing takes 10x more effort than you expect if you apply this mindset you're going to stop making excuses and you're going to start making big moves the most powerful lesson here to me average actions they lead to average results if you want to dominate in business and in life you have to push way far beyond what's reasonable that's what separates High performers like us from everyone else if you want success this book will force you to raise your standards always do 10x more and 10x
 
higher all right book number 10 who not how Dan Sullivan this one's incredible successful people don't ask how do I do this they ask who can do this for me who can help me with this this mindset shift completely changed how I run my businesses instead of wasting time learning everything myself I hire experts I ask for help and I let them execute at a higher level before this book I was stuck in the mindset of trying to figure out everything myself once I embrac the who not how principle I stopped being the bottleneck in my own
 
businesses but now I focus on finding the right help finding the best people to execute finding experts in their fields rather than trying to do everything myself so if you struggle with delegation this book is an absolute GameChanger book number 11 how Elrod Strikes Again The Miracle equation so this book it's simple right unwavering Faith plus extraordinary effort and I know that sounds a little kind of flu fluey and that's not really me and it might not be you either but look I mean I say that Mantra to myself every single
 
day it gets hard sometimes so if you don't believe success is inevitable and you're not willing to put in the work an insane amount of effort then you're never going to make it one of the biggest lessons from the book is that mindset alone it's not enough you have to back it up with absolute Relentless action you can't just hope for Success you have to put in the work consistently every single day no matter what no matter how you feel no matter what's going on no matter what obstacles arise this book will shift your perspective on
 
commitment and perseverance remember that saying preach it to yourself every day when gets hard all right book number 12 I told you it would be a surprise on the list I don't think this makes anyone's list for a business book but number 12 the five love languages by Gary Chapman you've all heard of it but let me explain a relationship book sure but business is all about relationships if you don't know how to connect with people you're never going to succeed at a high level this book taught me that
 
people communicate and they receive value in different ways whether it's clients it's Partners its employees knowing how someone feels appreciated will change how you do in your business and how successful you ultimately are for example some people value words about affirmation While others need tangible recognition once I started applying these principles in business and you keep it in your head for all conversations I became a better leader a better negotiator and a better connector if you want to improve your ability to
 
work with people which you will this book will give you an edge a relationship book yes but business is all about relationships remember that if you don't know how to connect with people you'll never succeed at a high level all right there there you go folks the 12 business books you need to Succeed in Business and honestly in life generally read those 12 put them on repeat read them every single year which book hit you the hardest drop a comment below I want to know which one resonated with you the most if you found this
 
valuable hit that like button or subscribe whatever you're watching this on and share it with someone who needs it these books absolutely change my life and they can do the same for you now go take action read those books apply those principles and let's get this money let's go [Music]
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
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https://www.instagram.com/p/DHZAmMtTXDA/
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq/status/1902426622608994373
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sethbradleyesq_wealthbuilding-moneymoves-businessbooks-acthttps://x.com/sethbradleyesq
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https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
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In this episode of the Mailbox Money Show, host Bronson Hill interviews Seth Bradley, an accomplished attorney and entrepreneur known for his expertise in both passive and active investing. Seth Bradley discusses the significant shifts in the real estate market post-COVID-19, including rising interest rates and the challenges passive investors face with underperforming deals. Seth Bradley shares his experiences with multifamily investments and emphasizes the importance of selecting the right financial structures, highlighting how his focus on fixed-rate loans has insulated his deals from the volatility often seen with adjustable-rate loans.
As the conversation progresses, Seth Bradley explores other investment avenues, including ventures in gyms, e-commerce, and oil and gas projects. Seth Bradley and Bronson Hill illustrate how innovation and technology, particularly artificial intelligence, can enhance investment decision-making and operational efficiency. Seth Bradley offers valuable insights into multifamily syndications, risk management, and leveraging technology to improve investment outcomes. The episode concludes with Seth Bradley’s perspectives on effective communication between investors and sponsors, and the critical importance of thorough due diligence documents in passive investing.
Links to listen and subscribe:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/seth-bradley-what-can-i-do-if-a-deal-goes-bad/id1580397502?i=1000698697087
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4pogVHik6rHwh0k5yFLs1U
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xrvBhGtS5w&t=396s
Bullet Point Highlights:
Diverse Entrepreneurial Background: Seth Bradley is not only an attorney but also a successful entrepreneur with experience in gyms and startups, adding depth to the authenticity of his investment strategies.
Impact of Rising Interest Rates: The podcast discusses how increasing interest rates have shifted the landscape of real estate investments, influencing cash flow and project viability.
Importance of Fixed-Rate Loans: Seth emphasizes the protective benefits of using fixed-rate loans in investments to buffer against economic shifts and rising rates.
Shifting Investment Focus: As traditional multifamily deals become tough, both Bronson and Seth explore alternative assets, including oil and gas, debt funds, and smaller multifamily properties.
Gym Ventures: Seth shares insights from operating gyms, illustrating how franchise businesses can provide a structured path to entrepreneurship with community support.
Navigating Passive Investing Challenges: The episode highlights the key steps passive investors should take when deals aren’t performing as expected, including reviewing existing legal agreements.
Leveraging Technology and AI: The discussion underscores the growing role of AI in analyzing investments and legal documents, showcasing how technology can enhance investment efficiency and accuracy.
Transcript:
hey guys this is Ken mroy and you are listening to the mailbox money show with Bronson Hill hello hello and thank you for joining the mailbox money show my name is Bronson Hill I'm very excited for this episode with Seth Bradley you're gonna really like him he's done a lot of things he's like the renaissance man like he has done uh passive investing he's done active investing he owns a couple gyms he's starting another one he's got a couple startups he does he's got all kinds of things speaking
 
very intelligently to a lot of different topics he also has a show called The passive income attorney actually also an attorney as well and puts together syndication paperwork so he does a lot of different things and so I always love talking to people that are doing many things because first of all inspires me that I'm not doing enough and then secondly um you know they'll speak very intelligently on kind of trends that are happening so he's talks about what what we're going to talk in this interview
 
about what happened over the last few years he's doing less real estate looking at some other things and just what do you do if a deal does not go well what are the steps you can take as an investor so I think you're really going to enjoy this we also get into Ai and some awesome other topics so let's jump in Seth welcome to the mailbox money show Bronson what's going on buddy good to see you again hey man we're both in Southern California I know we're not that far apart but you're in like the better part especially lately with all
 
the fires up in La recently uh you're in San Diego man I don't know anybody that says they don't love San Diego yeah man I mean there's no better place in the United States that's for sure I mean I've seen some some beautiful places around the world and I don't know San Diego still might beat it um I get a little bit used to it because I've been here for quite some time now but San Diego is really tough to beat yeah awesome man well I'm excited to have you here today I know you're an attorney you have your podcast called
 
the passive income attorney podcast and you also work with tri vest which helps investors and you have a lot you to say around uh diligence around deals going bad we've seen deals uh We've we've had a couple deals that have really struggled uh I've been an investor passively in deals some deals that have struggled people don't really talk about this as much and I think it's really important to talk about um but let's let's talk about kind of what's changed the last couple years interest rates have risen um obviously if you're a
 
multif family investor the deals maybe aren't as juicy as they were the projections are a little lower a a little little far between as far as you know deals that actually cash flow or deals that make as much sense but uh what have you seen the last couple years and how have you kind of shifted a little bit of your business and your investing for sure I mean it's been um it's been an experience right I think a lot of the past investors out there that are listening or if you're an operator or lead sponsor out there the same thing
 
I mean we've we've gone through a period of time starting I think back when Co hit in 2020 that was kind of the first dip in the market that we've we've seen in this kind of generation right like the jobs act well I I should say the previous dip was in you know 2008 2009 that was one cycle but that was before the jobs Act of 2012 so the jobs Act of 2012 is where some of these private Investments started being opened up to more people and more people like ourselves were able to get involved and start raising capital and and do deals
 
and you've just seen that market kind of exponentially grow since 2012 um so we haven't seen a downturn until Co hit in 20120 and that one was kind of weird right because it was just kind of a blip it wasn't because of the economy it was because of something that just you know nobody's going to be able to predict um but that's the first uh crack in the armor that we saw and then after that then we saw the interest rates go up in in 2020 towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 and that's what really
 
started um you know giving us this experience that I'll say that we're we're still kind of going through because the interest rates are still a little bit higher than what we've we've seen over the past years and we're we're seeing more deals go go bad right or or at least you know there maybe a capital call or or two or perhaps um you know some of your distributions if you're a passive investor might be on pause and these are things that we're just not used to seeing because we're just used to seeing over the past you know 10
 
years up till 2022 all the deals have just gone really really well so it's a surprise to us and it shouldn't be because you know it's it's cyclic but we we'll figure it out and you know you're just seeing these things that we've all been warned about and they're now coming to fruition yeah yeah it's interesting you know I think if you between 2010 and 2020 you know 2021 even if you just owned a multif family apartment you were a genius right because things were just only going up and to the right and and
 
then sudden like there's that quote by Warren Buffett says you can only tell who's been swimming naked when the tide goes out kind of thing the tide interest Rising the tide goes out it's like oh my gosh this isn't work in the way we planned it um and now you in your portfolio you guys have done very well you've had some some great you haven't done as many deals more recently but um your deals have done well is that because you did kind of fix interest rate or is just the markets you chose or I'd love to hear a little more about
 
that that's right I mean fixed interest rates to be honest were a huge thing um that that's one thing that we really pushed for in our deals and that's and that saved us a little bit when these interest rates started to r that protected us um you know you saw that those were the deals that got in trouble those those adjustable rates got people in trouble and you know there towards the end like let say 2021 22 it was really hard to make the deals start to like continue to work and get those returns that we promised those passive
 
investors without taking those adjustable rate loans so you know those folks that got in in 2021 2022 maybe the beginning of 2023 those deals had adjustable rate loans and that's where they got into some trouble yeah yeah it's interesting kind of how things have changed now it's interesting too there was um a time not even that you know just a few years ago that that real estate was Cash flowing pretty well especially multif family real estate and now it's pretty tough because you know you got rates are
 
higher uh cost you know the price maybe have come down a little bit but you got higher Insurance you got higher other costs other inflation things you know there's not a lot of cash flow so a lot of you know syndicators or multif family investors have kind of just stepped out or maybe they got pitched on a deal here and there so we we've shifted a little bit to do we still do some multif family in in specific situations but um we' switched to go really focus on oil and gas we're doing uh other types of
 
businesses like I mentioned we're buying this business that's a e-commerce business High cash flow and then there's also debt funds you know debt these days there are debt funds paying like Equity was paying with less risk than it was a few years ago right so if you can get not debt funds are the same there's some that are first position that are low leverage and things like that uh what are are there anything else that you're finding for cashow or that you're finding attractive right now as an
 
investor yeah I mean I think you got to just look a little bit deeper I mean there's still some decent multif family deals out there too and that's always going to be to me kind of like bread and butter right like that's something that we're always going to need it's always going to be um it's always going to be something that people are interested in um because we've all lived in apartments at some point in our lives and I think it's an easy thing to grasp mentally okay like I'm going to invest in a
 
multif family or apartment building because I've lived in one I know what it's like I know how they work people pay rent you collect you you know expenses that sort of thing um but it's it's a lot tougher to find those deals um so people have looked at other things so I've seen a lot of um you know debt funds like you said a lot of people pivoting to um you know even smaller multif Family Properties um you know before we were looking at like 100 200 250 unit properties um now I've seen a lot of people kind of Ratchet that down
 
a little bit and look for some better deals in in some smaller properties maybe in the 25 to 75 unit range range that sort of thing um I've seen people like get into mobile home parks and RV parks after cuz we saw that go quite up quite a bit during CO as well and then came rocketing back down um but now you can kind of see like where where it really sits like now you can see like what the value of that asset is so you can see that the you know what those what they really are without like that big spike for covid and those are
 
turning out to be some pretty good Investments to get involved in too yeah and I know um you know we talked about this before we started recording um you and your wife you guys also operate a business or you guys have a a gym a couple gyms that you operate tell us about that and it's that um I know you're sounds like you're spanning so it sounds like it's going well I need to pop into a gym I'm probably get my butt kicked if I pop in there and you g through the Seth Bradley workout there right so yeah man we have a we have a
 
couple of gyms right now we have one open in Oceanside this is in San Diego uh San Diego County one in Oceanside one in Poway getting ready to open up a third one in anas it's under the burn boot camp franchise fly FL so it's a franchise um and I got uh really interested in franchises for that and then I ended up buying into another franchise I ended up buying into a water restoration franchise called Al dry so we've got a few businesses going um but those gyms are great right like once we battled through again I hate to keep
 
bringing up Co but it keeps coming up um but we battled through Co we opened up right before that hit uh actually one week before it hit so then we had to shut it down and work out outside workout inside we had to do um on online workouts those sorts of things um had our lead trainer in our apartment recording videos and me and my wife were in the background doing the exercises um pretty insane what we had to go through but they're they're doing really well now and luckily my wife has taking over that business and she runs
 
the whole thing so I don't do anything she doesn't even want me involved anymore so it's fantastic it it's actually turned into passive income for me for you it's passive income right for her it's right it's it's Fitness income right but that's you know really a lot of people like um lifestyle businesses you know where you're like it's just I think it's just a cool thing to say I own a gym or own a restaurant or I own this thing I mean a lot of like really wealthy people be like oh yeah I own a
 
Vineyard or I own a I own a horse racing thing or something like that but is it is it I mean you don't have to get into specific numbers but is it pretty it's you're opening another one so it's pretty lucrative to do it it sounds like it's working out well the it's a boutique gy that does kind of boot camp type stuff and you have certain classes you go in and those have become super popular all over the us but especially in big metros like Southern California for sure and look I don't want to say
 
that it's easy because it's it's definitely not you have to have the right mindset you've got to be an entrepreneur you've got to be able to fight through the hard times but you know these these types of businesses they're they're kind of done for you to a certain extent they give you the marketing plan they give you the business plan they give you kind of the proforma that you should be aiming for um especially with a franchise there's there's dozens if not hundreds of other franchisees that are doing the exact
 
same thing you are so you any qu any question or any problem that you're going through they have already went through it or they're going through it so you can bounce ideas off of you know kind of similar to like a mastermind right something like that where you get involved with a few people and it's like oh how can I get around people that have the same problems as me in a franchise there's that's already built in and it's even more it's even more dialed in because these are very specific like
 
brand specific industry specific questions and problems that you can balance those ideas and have those questions answered by your your fellow franchisees um but as far as like profitability again it's great because you can you can predict it like the idea behind it you buy one you figure it out then you buy more and then you keep going you stack and stack and stack and that's how you really make a lot of money in franchises you hear people that own dozens or you know hundreds of Papa John and things like that like you need
 
to be able to stack them um but they're definitely profitable um and they're fun they're it's a fun business like you said it's fun to be able to say that you own a gym it's fun to like walk into your own place if it's a gym or a restaurant or whatever it is and you're the owner it just feels good right it's a little bit more um you know rewarding I should say than some of the other businesses that that we're involved in for me it's you know a law firm and um buying real estate and it's this is just
 
a little bit more rewarding just like being there just the presence and having a um you know having a a brick and mortar space it's pretty cool yeah know I love that it's really interesting you guys I didn't realize you guys are are really Ser serial entrepreneurs I you guys are really both as a couple um is that like tell me a little bit about that dynamic as a couple that you and your wife do that like how is that something you've more LED is it something she's done is it kind of like you just kind of stay in your lanes and
 
like because a lot of times one one spouse or partner will be really risk you know averse or one would be much more risk tolerant and so has that been just like a really you guys are both kind of willing to take risk and kind of move forward in that yeah I think we we both have a really good temperament for it as far as risk tolerance and for me personally that's that's interesting because I'm an attorney so typically attorneys are not risk tolerant um but I I am I have that trait and and she does too um we have certain
 
trust in each other to be able to handle and stay in our lanes um she especially for the gyms you know she's operations right now I handle finance and and Prof formas and those sorts of things and obviously the legal stuff that comes up and I'm the maintenance guy too of course but um but everything else like operations she does that and then when she knows that she needs me for these certain things she'll bring me in um we've explored trying to figure out some other businesses uh that we might be
 
able to get involved in together and I think you know having that experience in the gyms gives us a good idea of how it would work out with some others yeah as she ever teaching the class like if you're in the dogh house you got to take a boot camp with her and she'll be extra tough on you or something ah she's she's not a trainer luckily I would I would I would avoid those camps for sure I think that'd be pretty funny no I think it's great man I love how you've created that you know for yourself that you guys and of course
 
you know I think I've noticed this too a lot of uh there's a lot of people they'll have they'll be really excited about real estate they'll be really excited about investing and then you get one that's one spouse is very risk averse what what do you say to someone who guess their spouse is pretty risk averse and you know maybe they're concerned whether they're a passive investor or they're interested in doing business things are like this like how do how do they kind of get that person on board or what have you seen is kind
 
of work to kind of help them to kind of work forward with that move forward yeah I mean it's tough it's tough right like you have to you have to choose your significant other wisely and it's probably the biggest decision that you'll make in your life not only for personally but also in business because if you have someone that just can't get on board with what you're doing or doesn't understand what you're trying to do um and you don't mesh very well on that side of things it it makes things a lot more a lot more difficult right and
 
you see that all the time you see couples fighting about business and somebody's working too much and the other person's not working enough or those sorts of Dynamics um but I think a lot of it can be solved with education you know a lot of it is just kind of this other person doesn't know enough about the business or the investment or whatever it might be and they just need some education so they're not the person they're not like us every single day just immersed in this and getting on podcasts and you know
 
listening to podcasts and reading books and all this stuff about these Assets in these businesses so you have to keep that in mind like they need to they need to understand to a certain extent so they can get comfortable with it I mean that's you know when people are scared to make moves it's usually because they're just not educated enough to be able to to assess the risk and move forward or not now if they are educated enough and they do know enough about the asset and they still say look this is a
 
bad deal well then maybe maybe you should look at it again and make sure that it's not a not a bad deal but there there's definitely some you know give take there with personality types and how much risk that each person's comfortable with or not comfortable with yeah absolutely I think that's definitely I just I love when I see couples that are like really on the same page and are like yeah we're in this and you're you know you're doing it which is great and be both be active which is awesome um so let's talk a little bit
 
about um I guess you know kind of circle back to you know investing in deals you know as a passive investor um you know if if someone invests in a deal that doesn't go well um how to you know how should a passive investor respond to that or what are the things that you know someone can do if they're not getting the communication that they need I mean I know there's some legal things you can do but then it starts expensive and like what I guess what are some options as a passive investor let's say
 
your sponsor is having struggles or they're just not communicating is there some like what are the what are the what what can you do to try to get that to change yeah I mean this is why paperwork is so important like people don't want to deal with that and you know I'm an attorney so I'm on the front end all the time like telling you telling everybody hey like make sure we hash this out now like let's be have a a really transparent conversation let's figure out exactly what each part is getting
 
into and let's not like hold back at all you know a lot and some of this applies to passive investing some of it doesn't because you you know you have certain things that you can ask for certain things that you can't but be as transparent as possible upfront and with the paperwork and pay attention to what you sign and what you sign up for because at the end of the day when things start to go wrong that's what the fallback is the fallback is okay this person isn't communicating any longer or they're not doing the things that they
 
said vocally they're going to do what can I do and at that point that's when you have to look at the paperwork so if you have a contract and in this case it would be an operating agreement or a limited partnership agreement that you've signed or subscription agreement to you have to go back to that paperwork and look and sometimes they may have put in that paperwork for instance that they do agree to give you a quarterly report or maybe they agree to give you a an annual financial statement or maybe they
 
didn't I don't know it depends on what the paperwork says but that's the first step see what your rights are contractually and that's a good place to start because if you do have a contractual right that they have to give you a quarterly report or they have to give you annual financial statements or if you request it they have to give you certain Financial reports then that's the place to start and you say look I know things aren't going as well as they should be going I really want to get this thing back on track let's let's
 
start communicating but you know pursuing to the operating agreement I I need to see a quarterly report or I need to see this financial report um and put that in writing and writing can be just as simple as an email or text but get it in writing make sure that that communication is documented um not just verbally because if something does go wrong if if there is some sort of and this is unlikely but if there is some sort of fraud or gross negligence or anything like that going on at least you have that uh that written communication
 
between the parties that down the line you can be like look I asked for this five times I still haven't received it they said they would do this and then you can start saying okay at this point maybe we're not just talking about somebody not doing a great job or maybe we're not talking about the investment not going well as well as anticipated maybe now we're talking about some sort of negligence maybe now we're talking about somebody misrepresenting what they said they were going to do versus what
 
they do um but you need to have that in writing so that at the end of the day you can put that together um and and show it to whoever it might be your lawyer their lawyer or maybe a court yeah yeah it's interesting you know there's some new tools out there as well a lot of times these documents sometimes are 80 to 200 pages and there's a lot lot of you know legal Le and boilerplate stuff and just a lot of fine print and I found that one and I'd actually love to know your opinion on this but i' I've done this occasionally
 
where I'll take uh I'll take some some documents or ppms or marketing whatever I'll put them in chat GPT I'll just be like hey you know I'll start asking questions Hey what how does this work how does that work whatever and it'll kind of like go through and pull that out of there which is just kind of like a timesaver I just find for a lot of investors it's like I don't want to spend two hours reading this really you know thick language and I know you're an attorney so that's what you do and um
 
but I mean is that something that you've uh seen some people do or is it I know obviously things can be missed but it's it can kind of help you get to give you the gist of in this situation this happens or in this situation is that something that you kind of seen a little bit 100% and maybe not all attorneys would agree with this but I I encourage that I think it's perfectly fine like you've got to leverage technology and that technology is unbelievable it's unbelievable and it gets better every
 
single day like you just see a new iteration every couple of weeks now it's absolutely insane what it can do and you can certainly upload your PPM your operating agreement your subscription agreement into it and ask it questions now if it's something very nuanced it it won't it won't get to it if there's kind of like a lot of times there's like different Provisions that layer on top of each other it doesn't understand that yet it will at some point it'll be there and probably very very soon but a lot of
 
the questions you ask if they're nuanced um it won't understand it um so what I recommend is do that get a good high level overview you can also ask questions and then I would verify so like once it once it gives you an answer and it's something that's very important like you're like this is the answer that I was looking for ask it be like well what section did you pull this from and then get the section and then look it up yourself that particular section and verify that what it told you is actually
 
the answer yeah it's amazing the uh the tools we have I mean we really are in an an age where there's so much information everywhere but it's being able to access it quickly and it's like AI and some of these things can help with it and I don't think you know just a side note on AI I don't think it's that AI is going to be robots that's going to take over and kill us all or we're going to lose our jobs just to an AI bot or something but it's people using AI right that are are able to become a super employee or a
 
super business owner or super investor and really be able to get more information so I think it can be really powerful um what are uh what are some trends that you're kind of watching um I know actually I want you to talk about this too you're involved with a group called tribe vest which helps uh basically syndicators they have a portal and they can kind of have ways to be able to access uh certain deals and and and pass that information but what are what are also some Trends in relation what are some trends that you're seeing
 
as far as investing uh for Passive investors that are just things that can are good to watch or things that are helpful yeah I mean I think one really good thing is is what you you talked about already it's it's using Ai and and using software to make you a better investor so you can you like before you get this 200 Page PPM and you're like what what in the world do with this and maybe one out of a 100 investors will read that line for line if that and even if they could read it they probably don't understand it unless they they
 
happen to be a Securities attorney or some sort of transactional attorney they're not even going to get it um fun fact a PPM is actually supposed to be in non-legal ease it's supposed to be in in layman's terms that's the whole point of it is so that you can understand your investment in layman's terms but ppms have turned into you know a legal document so yeah even longer um but yeah I mean I think you can start leveraging Ai and software to just be a better investor and not just from you know
 
reading legal documents like we had mentioned earlier that's a good example of of you know when you're looking into an investment maybe put that PPM into chat gbt ask questions about the investment ask if there's any inconsistencies between the PPM and the operating agreement things like that um but you can also use it for underwriting and due diligence and things like that um I'm actually an adviser for a startup called brixley and we are working on kind of a due diligence type of process process where we're aggregating all the
 
due diligence documents we're putting them into a software and then you're able to evaluate the deal so you can evaluate that deal based on your buy box and those sorts of things and it's just it and things like that just change the game quickly right like before it just takes a lot of Manpower um a lot of hours and now it just takes minutes but you still have to have somebody skilled enough to prompt and skilled enough to ask the right questions and skilled enough to make sure that you're not believing the AI and it's not
 
hallucinating um that sort of thing because you've got to make sure that the information gives you is right because right now it does spit out some things that that don't make a lot of sense so you just gota gota be be very careful but people if you aren't leveraging AI in just your everyday life then you're you're getting left behind yeah yeah know you got a fact check on other stories of attorneys like I guess there was an attorney in New York that like just took his whole thing and put it into AI a chat jbt and it wasn't even
 
right it was like totally wrong and they got disbarred or something for doing that so it's obviously an investor the the risk is not going to be disbarred typically it's more you might lose your shorts or something so it's makeing sure you're doing it the right way yeah for sure yeah you gotta be careful you got to be careful but like I said it's getting better every single day like I I think in you know two years it's going to be unrecognizable in in five years we're going to have a humanoid robot in every home that we
 
have like yeah yeah it it really is changing so fast and that's where I think it is really important important to pay attention to technology to try new things if people are not like as a listener if you're if you haven't used chat GPT there's an app you can use for free there's the website get familiar with prompting which is just going in and just being commands I literally use it I'm going to Columbia we're recording this I'm going this week to Columbia and I want here's my nine days I'm going to
 
be here create an itinerary for me like literally created an itinerary based on my values what I want to do and and I can always like go off of that but it's like it's so helpful right it's amazing yeah it's such a time saer it's insane it's insane yeah it is it is uh well Seth I really appreciate you you being here today I just feel like you add so much value both as an investor a business owner an attorney um just love what you're creating with your content and uh can you just share how people can
 
follow your show and how they can hear about you and and some of the things that you're doing absolutely man best place to go would be Seth paaul bradley.com and that's where I have kind of all my social media links you'll have a link to raay law my Securities Law Firm as well as try best fun of funds in a box and the podcast as well awesome brother thanks for being here man all right thanks Bronson appreciate it all right I hope you enjoyed this interview with Seth I just I love the stuff at the
 
end there about AI if you you know you want to go back and Rel listen to that just using chat GPT in your life in your business to look at ppms and even as an attorney said yeah some attorneys don't like that because it will miss things but it's really a timesaver we use it all the time we use it all the time in our business I use it all the time in my personal life and it's just so helpful I literally it's kind of replace my Google search now because it's so much better and instead of we used to go spending
 
time on Google you spend 30 minutes researching something now it just kind of spit out the answer for you which is really great so I use it for health stuff for travel or business topics all kinds of different ideas just find it really really helpful so hopefully you got something out of this interview you enjoyed it if you have not en joined our investment Club you're not hearing about our amazing deals that we're doing right now and that we're really excited about so um if you want to check that out you
 
can check out the link in the uh show notes or the link below or you can go to Bronson equity.com and hit the join button we'll start a relationship with you set up a call with you and you can start hearing about our awesome upcoming deals so thank thank you for taking the time to educate yourself seriously it humbles me it excites me it gets me fired up because the best investment you make is in your own education we look forward to seeing you on the next episode you've been listening to the mailbox money podcast for more free
 
resources articles and videos go to Bronson equity.com there you can download your copy of the Special Report the single best investment strategy during and after a pandemic none of the information shared here is an offer to buy a specific investment and this is for education ational purposes only consult your financial legal and tax professionals and use your own Common Sense before making any investment decisions thanks for joining us and be sure to tune next time for more mailbox money [Music]
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xrvBhGtS5w&t=396s
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1762572444669041
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bronsonhill_when-deals-go-wrong-the-fallback-is-the-activity-7321649659108581377-87lt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAFY-6nMBbbX5J6KeuEtIMcA9tcRG4F_1ItE
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Bronson Hill’s Links:
https://bronsonequity.com/
https://www.instagram.com/bronsondavidhill/
https://www.instagram.com/bronsonequity/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronsonhill/
https://www.facebook.com/bronson.hill.37/
https://www.tiktok.com/@bronsonequity2020
https://open.spotify.com/show/7AQcShxvRMoD1U2zclQQVU

In this episode, Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman explore the world of vending machines as a business opportunity. Mike Hoffman shares his journey from a Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur in the vending industry, highlighting the evolution of vending technology and the potential for generating passive income. Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman discuss the critical importance of location, understanding demographics, and the scalability of vending routes. Mike Hoffman emphasizes the need for upfront work and learning before delegating tasks, while also addressing common misconceptions about passive income in the vending business.
Throughout the discussion, Seth Bradley and Mike Hoffman dive into broader aspects of entrepreneurship, including capital raising, the journey of self-discovery, the influences that shape business decisions, and the true definition of success. Seth Bradley highlights the importance of flexibility, discipline, and focus in achieving entrepreneurial goals, while both guests touch on financial milestones and the traits that set successful entrepreneurs apart.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/aNCkzBp_Mfg
Bullet Point Highlights:
Mike's journey from a classic Midwest farm boy to a successful entrepreneur.
The evolution of vending machines from traditional to smart technology.
Understanding the importance of location in the vending business.
The analogy of baseball levels to describe starting in vending.
Scaling up from single A to big leagues in vending routes.
The significance of demographics in product selection for vending machines.
The potential for passive income with proper systems in place.
The need for upfront work before achieving passivity in business.
Vending is not a get-rich-quick scheme; it requires dedication.
The future opportunities in the vending industry are expanding rapidly. Raising capital can dilute ownership but may be necessary for rapid growth.
Self-discovery often leads to unexpected career paths.
Influences in business can come from personal experiences rather than just mentors.
Success is often defined by the ability to prioritize family and flexibility.
Entrepreneurs work harder than in traditional jobs but gain flexibility.
Discipline is crucial for saying no to distractions.
Successful entrepreneurs often focus on niche markets.
High foot traffic locations are ideal for vending machines.
AI is transforming business operations and efficiency.
Networking and connections can lead to valuable opportunities.
Transcript:
Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:04.898)
Mike, what's going on buddy? Doing great brother, doing great. How about you?
 
Mike (00:06.748)
Don't worry,
 
Mike (00:11.664)
Good, I'm a little flustered. I usually have my mic set up over here, but I guess we just moved and it's not here today. I guess, yeah, new office and it's been a whole hot mess.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:19.822)
New office or what?
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:27.862)
Nice man, nice. I see you got the whiteboard cranking back there. Love to see that.
 
Mike (00:33.114)
Always. I love your background. That's sweet.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:38.03)
Thanks man, yeah, I'm on camera all the time so I like I need to just build this out instead of using like a green screen so Made the investment made it happen
 
Mike (00:44.86)
Totally.
 
Yeah, absolutely.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (00:49.442)
Have we met in person or not? I don't know if we've met at a Wealth Without Wall Street event or I couldn't tell. Okay. No, I did not go to Nashville last year.
 
Mike (00:58.478)
I don't think so. don't think you're... Were you in Nashville last year?
 
Mike (01:04.634)
No, okay. No, I don't think we've met in person. Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:08.256)
Okay, all good, man. All good. Well, cool. I'll just go over the format real quick. We'll do kind of a shorter recording. We're do like 30 minutes, something like in that range. And then we'll just kind of like break. And then I'll, want to record a couple of other quick segments where I call it Million Dollar Monday. I'm kind of asking you about how you made your first, last and next million. And then 1 % closer, which would just be kind of what separates you, what makes you the
 
top 1 % in your particular vertical. So we'll just kind of record those separately. Those will be real short, like five minutes or so.
 
Mike (01:44.924)
Okay, yeah, I'll follow your lead. All good.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:47.15)
Cool. Cool. Let's see. I think I already have this auto recording. So we're already recording. So I'll just jump right in.
 
Mike (01:55.377)
Okay.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (01:57.782)
Welcome to Raise the Bar Radio, hosted by yours truly Seth Bradley. We today we've got Mr. Passive, Mike Hoffman. Mike, welcome to the show.
 
Mike (02:08.189)
Thank you for having me fired up to be here.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:10.855)
Absolutely man, really happy to have you on. I know it's been a little bit of a trek here to get our schedules lined up, but really stoked to have you on today, man. I see you said you moved into a new office. You've got the whiteboard cranking, so love to see it.
 
Mike (02:25.372)
yeah, whiteboards are the only place I can get my thoughts down.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (02:29.399)
Yeah, man, it makes a difference when you actually write something rather than type it or even on a mirror board where you're doing it online. just there's something about physically writing something down.
 
Mike (02:41.328)
You know, I'm glad you said that because yesterday I flipped to Seattle for a quick work trip and I didn't have wifi and I literally had three pages of just, I, was so like the clarity of some of these kinds of bigger visions I have now from just being able to write for an hour on a flight was, I was like, man, I gotta do this more often.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:00.363)
Yeah, for sure. The key though is once you write it down, it just doesn't go into the trash or into a black hole somewhere where you never see it again. So that's kind of the disadvantage there. If you have it on your computer and you're taking notes or you have it on a mirror board, at least it's there to reference all the time. If you write it down on paper, sometimes, I've got my Raze Masters book right here for notes, but it's like, it might go into the abyss and I'll never look at it again. So you gotta be careful about that.
 
Mike (03:27.184)
Yeah, yeah, I need to check out the Miro boards. I've heard a lot of good things about them.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (03:31.467)
Yeah, yeah. Awesome, Mike. Well, listen, for our audience who doesn't know anything about you, maybe just tell them, you know, tell them a little bit about your background. Tell them about your your main business and we can take it from there.
 
Mike (03:43.354)
Yeah. So I think for those that don't know about me, I'm a classic Midwest farm boy started with a classic, you know, showing cattle at the county fair and all of that and had a lemonade stand growing up. And then my first job was actually at McDonald's, you know, thinking about the whole success of that business model. But when I was coaching and, out of college, I got my first rental and I was like, wow, this is crazy. making money without.
 
really much time involved. and then with my work in Silicon Valley, know, Seth, was classic Silicon Valley, you know, cutthroat job that, startup life and traveling three weeks out of the month. And I was on, I was in airports all the time. And was like, these vending machines I would run into at airports were just so archaic. And so I went down this path of like unattended retail and kind of the future of, of that. And that's really where I just see a huge opportunity right now.
 
And so it's kind of what led me into all these different income streams that I'm passionate about.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (04:49.431)
That's awesome, man. Well, let's dive into that a little bit deeper. me about these income streams. It centers around vending machines, right? But I'm sure there's a lot more to it. I'm sure there's a lot of different entry points for people. Maybe just kind of give us a general synopsis to start out.
 
Mike (05:06.78)
Yeah, so I think the big thing with, you know, if we're talking vending specifically as an income stream, you know, most people think of vending as the traditional machines where you enter in a code, you put your card on the machine and then a motor spirals down a Snickers bar or a soda and you go into the chute and grab it.
 
Nowadays, there's these smart machines that literally you just unlock the door, or even if you go into, land in the Vegas airport right at the bottom of the escalator where it says, welcome to Las Vegas, there's a 7-Eleven with gates and AI cameras, and there's no employees in the 7-Eleven. And it just tracks whatever you grab and to exit the gate, you have to pay for it. So like, there's just this huge market now where we just installed it in urgent care.
 
less than two months ago and we can do over the counter meds in that machine because it doesn't have to fit into a motor. It's just shelf space. You identify with the planogram with the AI cameras like, okay, Dayquil in this slot or Salad in this slot and then whatever they grab, gets charged to the person that pulls it from it.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (06:15.469)
That's interesting, man. Yeah, I mean, my initial thought too, was just like the traditional old vending machine where you're getting a candy bar or a cola out of there. But yeah, nowadays, now that you mentioned that, you see this more and more every single day where you've got these scanners, you've got kind of self-checkout, that sort of thing. So that's kind of, that expands that world and really opens it up to the future, right? Like it just really, that's what we're trying to get to, or at least we think we wanna get there, where we're kind of removing humans and...
 
kind of working with technologies and things like that.
 
Mike (06:49.488)
Yeah, and I think, you know, removing the whole human thing. mean, those machines still got to get stocked and you know, there's not robots running around doing that. But I just come back to, I was a Marriott guy when I was on the road all the time and I'd go to these grab and goes at a Marriott and grab a, the end of the night, I'd grab like a little wine or an ice cream sandwich. And I literally had to go wait in line at the check-in desk behind three people checking in just to tell them, Hey, put these on.
 
room charge and I was like if I had a checkout kiosk in that grab-and-go I could have just removed all the friction for this customer experience.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:27.772)
Right, 100%. Yeah, I mean, there's a place and time for it and there's more and more applications for it that just pop up every single day and you can kind of spot that in your life as you're just kind of moving through, whether you're checking into your hotel or whatever you're doing.
 
Mike (07:41.456)
Yeah, yeah. So that's just kind of what excites me today.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:45.973)
Yeah, yeah, so when a stranger asks you what you do just in the street, what do you tell them? Because I have a hard time answering that question sometimes too, but I'd love to hear what your answer is.
 
Mike (07:56.804)
Yeah, I would just say it depends on the day. You know, what do you do or what's your, you know, it's like at the golf course when you get paired up with a stranger and they're like, tell me about what you do for your career. And I just say, I'm a classic entrepreneur. And then I'm like, well, what do you do? And it's like, well, tell me about the day. You know, what fire are you putting out? Like today we just got the go ahead for five more urgent cares for our local route. But then, you know, we have a community of operators across the country that we help really build.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (07:57.933)
haha
 
Ha ha ha.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:09.879)
Yeah. Yeah.
 
Mike (08:25.616)
Vending empires and so we had a group call this morning. So literally, there's a lot of just, you know, it's classic entrepreneurial life. You never know what the day's script is gonna be.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (08:36.161)
Yeah, for sure. And you focus a lot on not only on your own business, but also teaching others, right? Teaching others how to kind of break into this business.
 
Mike (08:45.402)
Yeah, that's my passion, Seth. When I got into my first investment out of college was a $70,000 rental, you know, putting 20 % down or 14K and using an emergency fund. like my background in going to college was as a coach. like I knew I wanted to kind of take that mindset of like coaching people, you know, teach them how to fish. I don't want to catch all the fish myself. It's just not fulfilling that way. So that's really where my passion is.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (09:15.373)
Gotcha, gotcha. tell me about like, tell me about step one. I mean, how does somebody break into this business? Obviously your own personal business is probably very advanced. There's probably a lot more sophisticated investing strategies at this point and you've got different layers to it. But somebody just kind of starting out that said, hey, this sounds pretty interesting. This vending machine business sounds like it can be passive. How do you recommend that they get started?
 
Mike (09:40.57)
Yeah, so I'm always, I view like the whole vending scale as similar to Major League Baseball. You got your single A all the way up to the big leagues. And if you're just starting out, I always recommend like find a location where you can put a machine and just learn the process. Like to me, that's single A analogy. you know, that always starts with, people want to jump right to like, well, what type of machines do you recommend?
 
products, how do you price products? And the first question I'll always ask Seth is, well, what location is this machine going in? And they're like, well, I don't know yet. I was just going to buy one and put it in my garage to start. And it's like, no, you need to have the location first. So understanding that, is it a pet hospital? Is it an apartment? Is it a gym? Where is the foot traffic? And then you can cater to what's the best machine for that type of location.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:36.887)
Got it, got it. Now is this a kind of a rent, you rent the space to place the machine with that particular business or wherever you're gonna place it or how does that all come together?
 
Mike (10:47.644)
not typically, some people are kind of more advanced, like apartment complexes are used to the revenue share model. So they're going to ask for a piece of the pie for sure, for you to put the machine in their lobby. but like, you know, when we're talking urgent carers or even pet hospitals are viewing it as an amenity. And so we probably have, I don't even know how many machines now 75 now, and we, you know, less than half of those actually,
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (10:50.423)
Okay.
 
Mike (11:15.1)
us rent or ask for a revenue share to have them in there. So I never leave lead with that, but we'll do it if we need to get the location.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (11:23.989)
Interesting gotcha. So it's really a value add for wherever you're gonna place it and that's how most people or I guess most businesses would look at that and then you're able to capture that that space
 
Mike (11:27.366)
Mm-hmm.
 
Mike (11:34.236)
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, a great case study is we have a 25 employee roughing business here in Oregon. And you might think like, only 25 employees. It's not going to make that much money. Well, we do $1,200 a month. And the cool thing about this, Seth, is the CEO of this roughing company literally did napkin math on how much it costs for his employees to drive to the gas station during their 20 minute break. And then
 
How much they're paying for an energy drink at the gas station and then how much gas they're using with the roofing like the work trucks to get to and from the gas station So he's like I want to bring a smart machine into our warehouse Set the prices as half off so that four dollar monster only costs his rofers two dollars and then we invoice him the the business owner every month for the other 50 % and so he actually
 
Calculated as a cost savings not asking for money to rent the space
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (12:35.597)
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. I love the baseball analogy with the single A, double A, triple A, even into the big leagues here. know, a lot of the folks that listen to this are already kind of, you know, in the big leagues or maybe think about some capital behind them. Like how would they be able to jump right in, maybe skip single or double A or would they, or do you even suggest that? Do you suggest that they start, you know, small just to learn and then maybe invest some more capital into it to expand or can they jump right to the big leagues?
 
Mike (12:48.891)
Yeah.
 
Yeah.
 
Mike (13:03.966)
I think they can jump right to the big leagues. this is, I'm glad you brought this up because just listening to some of your episodes from the past, there's no doubt that you have people that could buy a route like a off biz buy sell today. And I think this is a prime opportunity. it's very similar to flipping a house. you, you know, there's a route in Chicago, I think it was for $1.1 million, you know, whatever negotiating terms or seller financing or, or what have you, got a lot of, your, your
 
audience that is experts in that. But the cool thing about these routes is they have the old school machines that have the motors and that are limited to, this type of machine, you can only fit a 12 ounce cannon. Well, guess what? The minute you buy that route, you swap out that machine with one of these micro markets or smart machines. Now you just went from selling a 12 ounce soda for $1.25 to now a 16 ounce monster for $4.50.
 
Well, you just bought that location based on its current revenue numbers and by swapping out that machine, you're going to two or three acts your revenue just at that location. And so it's truly just like a value play, a value upgrade, like flipping the house of, okay, there's a lot of deals right now of these routes being sold by baby boomers where it's like, they got the old school Pepsi machine. Doesn't have a credit card reader on it. They can't track inventory remotely via their cell phones. So
 
They're not keeping it stocked. Like all those types of things can really play in your favor as a buyer that just wants to get to the big leagues right away.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:37.651)
I love that. When you say buy a route, what are you really buying? Tell me about the contractual agreement behind that. What are you really buying there?
 
Mike (14:47.184)
You're just buying the locations and the equipment associated with it. So like this Chicago route, it's like, we have machines in 75 properties all across the Chicago suburbs. And they could be medical clinics. could be apartments. could be employee break rooms at businesses, but that's when you start diving into those locations. It's like, I have a snack machine and a soda machine here. Well, you swap that out with a micro market that now instead of.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (14:49.279)
Okay. Okay.
 
Mike (15:13.626)
that machine that'll only hold a small bag of Doritos that you charge two bucks, well now you get the movie size theater bags that you can really put in there in a micro market. Like naturally just that valuation of that route based on those 75 machines current revenue, I mean you're gonna be able to two or three X your revenue right by just swapping out those machines.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (15:35.959)
Wow, yeah, I love that analogy with real estate, right? It's just like a value add. It's like, how can I bring in more income from what already exists? Well, I need to upgrade or I need to put in some capital improvements, whatever you want to call it. Here's the vending machine upgrades or a different kind of system in there. And you get more income. And obviously that business in itself is going to be worth more in a higher multiple.
 
Mike (15:58.396)
Absolutely. mean, a great example of this is we had a machine in an apartment complex and it was your traditional machine with the motors and you have to enter in the code. Well, we could only put in four 12 ounce drinks and then chips. Well, we swapped that out with a micro market. Well, now that micro market, we literally put in bags of Tide Pods for laundry, like these big bags of Tide Pods. We'll sell those like hotcakes for 15 bucks. And our old machine,
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:25.281)
Yeah, let's say those aren't cheap.
 
Mike (16:27.246)
Yeah, our old machine Seth, it would take us to get to 15 bucks, we'd have to sell eight Snickers. That's one transaction.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:33.547)
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. How do you do an analysis kind of based on like what you think is gonna sell there, right? Like you're replacing, let's say a Dorito machine with Tide Pods, you know? So you have to individually go to each location and figure out what will work, what will sell.
 
Mike (16:47.738)
Yeah.
 
Mike (16:51.834)
It's all about demographic. Absolutely. So, you know, we have, we have, we have a micro market and a manufacturing plant that's, it's a pumpkin farm and there's a ton of Hispanic workers. So we do a lot of like spicy foods, a lot of spicy chips. do, we do a ton of, mean, the sugar or sorry, the glass bottle cokes. They do, they love their pastries.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (16:53.431)
Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:06.349)
Yeah.
 
Mike (17:15.868)
So we just doubled down on the demographics. So yesterday I was filming at one of our micro markets that's in a gym and they crushed the Fairlife protein shakes, like the more modern protein shakes, but they won't touch muscle milk. So we're literally taking out one row of muscle milk just to add an extra row of Fairlife shakes. So you're constantly just catering to the demographics and what's selling.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (17:40.632)
Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I mean, this is literally just like real estate, right? Like you go and you find a good market. You're talking about demographics, right? Find the market, see what they want, see how much you can upgrade, how you can upgrade. If it's an apartment, it's a unit. If it's here, it's the product that you're selling and the type of machine, or maybe it's a mini market. A lot of things to kind of tie your understanding to here.
 
Mike (17:45.926)
Yeah.
 
Mike (18:05.904)
Yeah, absolutely.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (18:07.615)
Yeah, awesome, man. Awesome, Where are you at in your business? Like what, you know, what are the big leagues looking like right now? You know, what are you doing to expand your business, raising the bar in your business?
 
Mike (18:18.692)
Yeah, I'm going after that's a really good question. I'm going after kind of these newer markets and we're kind of past that point of like, okay, let's pilot in this location. For example, that urgent care, we didn't know if it was going to be a good location two months ago when we installed. Well now it's already crushing it. Well, there's six other urgent cares in town and we just got to go ahead on five of those six. So like for me, it's doubling down on our current proof points of where.
 
okay, we know that manufacturing plant, the pumpkin farm does really well. So let's start getting intros to all their, manufacturers of the products they need to grow pumpkin. know, like we're just doubling down on scaling because now we have the operational blueprint to really just kind of to go after it.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:03.917)
Gotcha, gotcha. Tell me about how passive this can really be, right? So I used to have, before we switched over to the new brand, Raise the Bar podcast, it was the Passive Income Attorney podcast, right? I was really focused on passive investments, focused on bringing in passive investors into my real estate deals, things like that. And I think that word passive gets thrown around quite a bit, right? And sometimes it's abused because people get into things that are not truly passive.
 
Mike (19:18.427)
Yeah.
 
Mike (19:28.784)
Mm-hmm.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (19:33.517)
What's your take on that as it relates to the vending business?
 
Mike (19:38.49)
Yeah, so I think as far as with the vending business, there's clearly upfront leg work that needs to be done, whether that's finding locations or any of those things. So I have a route that is here in Oregon, and then we bought a route last year in Illinois and have scaled that route. I spend 30 minutes a week on each route now. that these urgent cares and stuff, like we have an operator that's running the whole route.
 
Here's the problem, Seth. It's like people are so scared to build systems to ultimately systemize things or they're too cheap to hire help. And I'm the opposite. like, you know, kind of like Dan Martell's buy back your time. Like I have like a leverage calculator and like I constantly think about is this worth my time? Cause as you know, you're busier than me. Like it's so limited.
 
for me, my routes, I would consider them passive, like one hour a week is, is nothing in my mind. But as far as like, you know, I'm, I'm also a passive investor on, we're building a, an oil loop station in Florida and I sent my money a year ago to, to my, active investor and I haven't talked to him since. Like that's actually truly probably passive now, you know, I'm not doing anything, but there's, there's different levels to that. And I'm a huge believer like.
 
don't delegate something until you know what you're delegating. So people that want to start with the vending routes, sure, if you want to buy a route that already has an operator, that's one thing. but these, if you're starting a vending route for your kid or for your stay at home wife or whatever, as a side hustle, like get in the weeds and install that first machine. So when you hire help to take over the route, you know what you're delegating.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:09.773)
Mm-hmm.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (21:27.021)
Yeah, that's key. That's key. And you you described just like any other business, right? I think that's kind of where people get themselves into trouble. That sometimes they get sold the dream that is truly passive. And eventually it can be. I mean, you're talking about an hour a week. To me, that's pretty damn passive, right? But you know, upfront, you you've got to learn the business. You've got to know what you're getting yourself into. Like you said, you've got to learn before you delegate so that you know what you're delegating.
 
There is going to be some upfront work and then as you're able to kind of delegate and learn Then you can make it more and more passive as you go
 
Mike (22:00.88)
Yeah, I mean, it's no different than what's the same when people tell you that they're busy. I mean, you're just not a priority. Like that's a fact. you're not. People say it's the same thing when people come to me and they're like, I'm so busy. It's like, okay, well let me, let me see your schedule. Where are you spending your time? You know, it's like when people are like, I can't lose weight. Okay, well let me see your food log. What did you eat yesterday? Did you have ice cream? Like this is like the same kind of thing. That's where passive I think has been really abused.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:16.097)
Yeah. Yep.
 
Mike (22:29.638)
To me, the bigger issue is like, vending is not get rich quick. And so like, if you're expecting to leave your nine to five tomorrow and vending is going to make up for that in one day, like that's not going to
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:41.089)
Right, Makes sense. Speaking of passive, do you raise capital or do you have any kind of a fund or have you put together a fund for something like this?
 
Mike (22:51.48)
We haven't put together a fun, we're definitely buying routes is definitely becoming more and more intriguing. And I know there's some PE players starting to get into the vending game, but it's something we've been definitely considering and on our radar of do we want to.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (22:58.541)
Mm-hmm.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:10.231)
Gotcha. Cool. I mean, you brought in money partners for some of those routes yet, or is that still something you're exploring too?
 
Mike (23:18.168)
No, I think it's just something we're thinking about. mean, what do you recommend?
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (23:21.089)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd recommend I mean, it depends, right? Like I'm I'm scared to turn you by trade, but I don't like to say you should always raise capital no matter what. Right. Like you've been able to scale your business as you have and grown it to where it is without bringing outside capital. It sounds which is great because you own 100 percent or with whatever business partners you might have. You know, when you start raising capital, you're giving a large chunk of that piece away, not necessarily your whole company. But if you're buying
 
you know, a set of routes or that sort of thing. You you're gonna give a big piece away to those past investors if you're starting a fund or even if it's up. Even a single asset syndication here for one of these, you know, these routes, you could put it together that way. You know, it's just something to consider. But a lot of times when people are looking to scale fast, right, if they wanna grow exponentially, you've gotta use other people's money to get there or hit the lottery.
 
Mike (24:08.294)
Mm.
 
Mike (24:15.856)
Absolutely, no, agree. That's spot-on and I actually before you know the Silicon Valley company That I was part of we had a we went through probably series a B C D C ground
 
Let's just say we weren't very fiscally responsible. So I come from the, you know, it's like the ex-girlfriend example. I don't want to just start taking everyone's money.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (24:42.413)
Yeah, yeah, that tends to happen with some startups, right? Like before you get funding, you're super frugal because it's your money and every single dollar counts. And you're like, I don't want to pay, you if it's software, you don't want to pay the software engineers. I'm going to out, you know, put it, you know, hire Indian engineers, that sort of thing. And then once you get a few million bucks that you raised in that seed round, then it just goes and you're like, whoa, wait a minute, let's hire 20 people. You know, it's you got to be careful about that.
 
Mike (25:05.606)
Yeah
 
Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great take on it.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:11.245)
Yeah, it's, yeah. It's a question I love to ask and I think it's about time for that. So, in a parallel universe, tell me about a different version of you. So a different but likely version, right? Like, for example, for me, I went to med school for a year and a half and then I dropped out and I ended up becoming an attorney. So that was like a big turning point, right? So I could have easily at some point just said screw it and became a doctor and that would have been a totally different route than I'm going down right now.
 
What's an example of something like that for you?
 
Mike (25:42.524)
Wait, are you being serious about that? I took the MCAT too. I got into med school and then I, yeah, I was pretty mad in school. And then the more I learned about exercise science, I was like, organic chemistry is not fun.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:44.321)
Yeah, totally.
 
yeah? There you go.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (25:57.39)
It is not fun. I did not love that. I majored in exercise physiology and then I ended up switching to biology because it was just a little bit of an easier route to get my degree and go into med school and I went for a year and a half and then I dropped out because I absolutely hated it. I knew I didn't want to do it. I was just more attracted to business and that sort of thing.
 
Mike (26:16.346)
Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome. parallel universe. I, that's a really good question. I don't know. I, kinda, I have two kids under three and the other side of me wishes I would have traveled more.
 
you know, I mean, we'll get there hopefully when they get out of high school and someday. But right now I just think there's so many different cultural things and ways to skin the cat. And it's just fascinating to learn some of those things.
 
Mike (26:55.352)
yourself in those cultures.
 
go to different cultures and really like understand how they did things for a time, a period of time to really just learn their thinking.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:07.777)
Yeah, I love that man. I had a similar experience of what you're describing. I didn't travel abroad really other than like, you know, Canada and Mexico until I studied abroad in Barcelona during law school and I got to stay there for a couple of months. So you actually had some time. It wasn't like you're just visiting for a week or a weekend or anything like that. You got to kind of live there right for a couple of months and it just totally changed my, you know, my outlook on life and just the way that you see things like I feel like we're in the US and we just think
 
Mike (27:19.627)
Seth Bradley, Esq. (27:37.76)
US is number one and there's only one way to do things the way that we do things that kind of attitude. And then when you go to Western Europe and you see that culture and you drive or get on a train, it's like an hour away and you're in a totally different culture and they're doing it a certain way as well and it's working. You just see that other people are doing things differently and still being successful at it, still having a thriving culture and it's just awesome to see.
 
Mike (28:03.312)
Yeah, absolutely.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (28:06.251)
Yeah. Tell me about some major influences in your life. What turned you or got you into that, the vending business? It's not one of those typical things. mean, I know you're in the education business, so you're kind of really spreading the word about this type of business. But I would say when you started, there might not have been a mastermind or educational courses around this. mean, how did you kind of get drawn into that? Were there any particular people or influences that brought you in?
 
Mike (28:29.308)
you
 
Mike (28:36.188)
Yeah. So the, biggest influence for me to get into vending, uh, wasn't actually a person. It was actually, was, um, I had landed, I was coming back from the Pentagon from a trip back to the Bay for the startup we were talking about. And I was in the Denver airport and 11 PM, you know, our flight was delayed. And then they're like, Hey, you have to stay in the airport tonight. The pilot went over their hours for the day, blah, blah, blah. So I went to a vending machine and I remember buying a bottle of water.
 
I think it costs like at the time three bucks or something. I knew that bottle of water cost 20 cents at Costco. And I was like, there is someone that's at home with their kids right now making money off me and they're not even at this mission. Like the machine is doing the work. So I had like an aha moment of like, what are my true priorities in life? And like, why am I chasing this cutthroat startup from.
 
Palo Alto and trying to make it when reality was my priorities are freedom to spend more time with my family. So that's really kind of what led me into this path of starting a vending machine side hustle to keep our lifestyle as we had kids. We wanted to have a nanny and we wanted to be able to still go on dates and things like that as a couple with my wife. So that's really kind of my family and just like...
 
having the freedom to do things. Like that's what I'm really passionate about.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (29:59.084)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, building on that, and you may have already answered that, but what does success look like for you?
 
Mike (30:01.766)
next
 
Mike (30:06.268)
an empty calendar.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:08.621)
Good luck with that. Good luck with that.
 
Mike (30:11.516)
Oh man, I was gonna say, how do we crack that code? No, yeah. No, but I think success to me is doing things like picking up my daughter at three and even being able to say no to the things that aren't gonna get you to where you need, like the discipline piece of this too.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:15.708)
man.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (30:33.995)
Yeah, yeah, mean, you know, for me, it's kind of similar, right? It's not going to be able to empty that calendar. Not yet, at least maybe here in the future. But for now, it's pretty filled. But it is it's flexible, right? Like us as entrepreneurs, you know, we probably work more than we ever worked when we were in our W-2s. But at the same time, it's you know, we're working in our own business for ourselves, for our families. And we have the
 
Flexibility, a lot of people will say the freedom, right? But we have the flexibility to move things around. And if you want to pick your kids up at school at three, or you do want to take a weekend off, or something comes up in your schedule, you have the flexibility to do that. Whereas if you're kind of slaving away at the nine to five, you can't really do it.
 
Mike (31:04.486)
Yeah. Yeah.
 
Mike (31:20.198)
Yeah, that's spot on. mean, I just wrote that down, but flexibility is, cause you're right. When you started becoming an entrepreneur, this is what I tell people all the time when they want to get a venting around is like running your own business. You are going to work harder than you do for your boss currently at your W-2. Like you have to do payroll. You have to do, like you gotta like make sure there's money to actually do pay, you know, like all those things that you just don't even think about when you have a W-2. It's like, today's
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:39.543)
Yeah
 
Mike (31:48.89)
You know, this Friday I get paid. Well, when you run a business, mean, that money's got to come from somewhere.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (31:51.905)
Yeah
 
Right, yeah, 100%, man, 100%. All right, Mike, we're gonna wrap it up. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Tell the listeners where they can find out more about you.
 
Mike (32:05.286)
Yeah, so thanks for having me. This has been great. I have free content all over the place. can find me on the classic Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, but I also have vendingpreneurs.com is where we help people that are more interested in actually the vending stuff. But I've been really trying to double down on YouTube lately because there's just a lot of content and you can't get it off a one minute reel.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:32.417)
Love it, man. All right, Mike, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show.
 
Mike (32:35.91)
Thanks for having me.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:37.227)
Hi brother. Alright man, got a couple more questions for you. We do like a quick, kind of do the full podcast episode and then I'll just do kind of a quick episode that'll follow up on a Monday and then another one on a Friday. Cool.
 
Mike (32:55.814)
See you.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (32:59.693)
We out here.
 
Welcome to Million Dollar Mondays, how to make, keep, and scale a million dollars. Mike is a super successful entrepreneur in the vending machine business and beyond. Tell us, how did you make your first million dollars?
 
Mike (33:20.922)
Yeah, Seth. It was probably actually through real estate and just getting a little bit kind of lucky with timing with COVID and short-term rentals and some of that. But yeah, that's probably how I got the first million.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:25.229)
Mm.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:37.079)
Gotcha, cool. Yeah, real estate usually plays a role in the everybody's strategy down the line, whether they're in that primary business or not, whether they start out there or they end up there, real estate usually plays a part. How'd you make your last million?
 
Mike (33:53.956)
Yeah, that's a good question because it's completely different than real estate, but it's actually been vending machines. So that's been kind of fun. just, you you talk about product market fit whenever you're an entrepreneur with a business. And that was just kind of the perfect storm right now of traditional vending really kind of being outdated. And we found a product market fit with it.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (33:57.57)
Right. Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:16.215)
Gotcha. Cool. that was from, was this maybe mostly attributed to kind of buying those routes, those larger routes?
 
Mike (34:23.32)
Exactly. Yeah. Buying old school routes and really kind of flipping them like a house with modern micro markets charging, with different products and what would fit in a vending machine, like more of the unorthodox, you know, toilet paper and tide pods and things that wouldn't fit in a traditional vending machine. I mean, we'll sell $35 bottles of shampoo in these micro markets. So just kind of, go and add it in a different way.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (34:49.857)
Yeah, and then with the aging population, there's gotta be more and more of these things popping up. So there should be more opportunity for people to get involved or for people like yourself to just snag everything, right?
 
Mike (35:01.102)
Yeah, I think there's no chance I could snag everything, not even just in this town alone that I'm currently in. I mean, machines are getting cheaper, the technology is getting way better with AI. And nowadays, it's not what fits in a vending machine motor. It's okay, what's shelf space? if it's a bottle of shampoo or a glass Coke, it doesn't matter because it's not just getting thrown down the chute of a traditional machine.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:05.387)
Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (35:27.521)
Makes sense, makes sense. Last, how are you planning on making your next million dollars?
 
Mike (35:34.3)
I think probably with AI, we're doing a lot of interesting stuff with helping people scale their, their vending routes. that is applicable to any, small business. And so I'm really intrigued. Just every time I go down a rabbit hole with some new AI tool, I feel like there's another better one that just came right behind it. So I just think it's kind of that time where you can really get ahead by just learning.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:06.209)
Yeah, totally makes sense. mean people that are not paying attention to AI whether it's simply using chat GPT instead of Google search are getting left behind quickly because it's just advancing so fast. I can't even imagine what this world's gonna look like five years from now the way that things are moving.
 
Mike (36:23.132)
It's crazy. Three years ago when I was working for a tech company selling software into the government, I would have to work with three secretaries to schedule a meeting with the general to sell their software. Now my EA is literally an AI bot and everyone that's scheduling time on my calendar, they don't even know they're talking to a non-human, which is pretty
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (36:43.479)
Yeah, 100%. We're gonna, I predicted within five years, everybody's gonna have a humanoid robot in their home with AI instilled and they're gonna be doing physical things for us at our homes. Yeah. Yep. Yep. 100%. Awesome, All right, moving on to the next one.
 
Mike (36:50.181)
Yeah!
 
Mike (36:57.917)
I hope so. I hope they can go to Costco get all our groceries do our do our laundry The dishes
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:11.501)
You're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do, Mike. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field?
 
Mike (37:19.056)
Ooh, that's a good question, Seth. I think it's just discipline, know, discipline and focus. One of the hardest things is being able to say no with the things that don't align. And when I was growing up, I had a quote that has really stuck with me. That's like, it's better to be respected than liked. And I think that really resonates. Like naturally as a human, you want to be liked and help people, but the 1 % are really good at saying no.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:47.649)
Yeah, I love that man. That's a great answer. Kind of building on that, what do you think the number one attribute is that makes a successful entrepreneur?
 
Mike (37:57.468)
probably focus. Yeah. Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (37:59.212)
Yeah, focus. Yep. The one thing, right? The one thing.
 
Mike (38:04.186)
Yep. That's why you come back to like the most successful entrepreneurs. They always niche down and they niche down because they just, got hyper-focused. Like this is kind of why for me, you know, I started this passive Mr. Passive on social media before I even got into Vendi. Well, now everyone's like, well, how passive is Vendi? And well, it's like, what's really interesting is I was posting all these different, what I thought passive income streams in the time, but everyone, 95 % of the questions I got about
 
Airbnbs are all my different investments was about bending. So I just niche down on, on bending and I just looked back on that and I was like, it really forced me to focus.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (38:43.263)
Awesome, awesome. What's one thing someone could do today to get 1 % closer to success in the vending machine business if they are really interested in learning more?
 
Mike (38:53.892)
tap into your connections and find a location that has high foot traffic, whether that's a friend that works at an urgent care, a sister that lives at an apartment. You know, you take your kid to that gymnastics studio that has a ton of foot traffic between 4 PM and 8 PM. Like all those locations are prime locations to put one of these modern smart machines in. so, tapping into your connections, well, you know,
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:24.567)
Love that man. Awesome. All right, Mike, I appreciate it, brother. We'll to meet in person sometime,
 
Mike (39:30.574)
I would love to. Where are you based, Seth?
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:31.789)
I'm in San Diego, where you at?
 
Mike (39:34.78)
I am in Eugene. Yeah, Oregon. I'll come down your way though.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (39:37.39)
Cool We're planning on doing yeah, we're planning on doing so me and my wife we have a Sprinter van and Last May we did we did going back to the flexibility piece, right? We did 32 days in the van up through Wyoming Montana and then into like Into Canada and they're like Banff and Jasper and all the way up to Jasper and then we circled back on the west coast Through Vancouver and then down back to San Diego Yeah
 
Mike (40:05.52)
What?
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:06.829)
Pretty wild, pretty awesome. And the reason I brought that up is this year we're gonna do shorter trip. We're probably gonna do two, maybe three weeks at the most, but we're gonna do kind of the Pacific Northwest. So Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver and all those parks and stuff up there.
 
Mike (40:17.254)
Yeah.
 
Mike (40:21.744)
Yeah, you definitely have a, have you been to Bend before? Bend is like my, that whole area, Central Oregon is, and even Idaho, like all those kind of, yeah. That's awesome. Please let me know when you're up this way. I mean, I'll come meet you wherever. That'd be amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:24.641)
Yeah, yeah I have.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:38.861)
Sure man grab a coffee or beer. I appreciate it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah all right brother great to meet you and I will send the information on when this is gonna get released and give you you materials and all that stuff so we can collaborate on social media
 
Mike (40:51.964)
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Is a lot of your audience, like passive investors?
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (40:58.593)
So most of that, so now I'm rebranding. I rebranded because I'm gonna be speaking more towards like active entrepreneurs, Active entrepreneurs, people raising capital, that sort of thing. Whereas before it was based on passive investors and people really focused on attorneys. So I'm an attorney and I was raising capital from attorneys for my real estate deals. Now I'm really more into selling shovels. I'm scaling my law firm. I'm chief legal officer for Tribest, which is, we've got a fund to fund.
 
Mike (41:20.262)
Mm-hmm.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:28.085)
legal product there as well. So we're really trying to bring in active, active entrepreneurs and people raising capital.
 
Mike (41:29.777)
Yeah.
 
Mike (41:36.572)
Okay, because I got that, I was just thinking through when we talking about that oil development project, that could be a good, the guy that runs that fund could be a good interview for you. Just thinking through your audience, because he's always looking for investors into his fund and like these oil lubs are just crushing it.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:49.901)
Cool. Yeah.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (41:58.464)
Yeah, cool. Who is it? Just, I don't know if I know him or not.
 
Mike (42:02.183)
Um, Robert Durkey, he's out of Florida. has, his problem is he's sitting on a gold mine that has no, like he's old school, doesn't know social media, any of that. So that's why I think he'd be perfect for you. Cause I think you could help him and he could definitely help you with some kickback. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we meet soon. Okay. See you Seth. Bye.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:05.645)
I don't think I know. I don't think I know.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:13.889)
Yeah. Gotcha.
 
Seth Bradley, Esq. (42:20.705)
Cool, okay, sounds good man. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction.
 
Yeah, all right brother. Talk soon. See ya.
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Mike Hoffman’s Links:
https://www.instagram.com/mikehoffmannofficial/
https://x.com/mrpassive_?lang=en
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedhoffmann/
https://www.tiktok.com/@mr.passive

Title: The Hidden Cost of "Family & Friends" Capital and How to Avoid It with Chris Salerno
In this episode, host Chris Salerno and Seth Bradley, an experienced SEC attorney with a diverse and inspiring background. Seth Bradley shares his unique journey from starting out as a nightclub promoter to becoming a successful attorney specializing in securities law. The conversation dives deep into Seth Bradley’s personal story, exploring how his upbringing in West Virginia shaped his views on success, risk-taking, and accountability.
Seth Bradley emphasizes the importance of hard work, resilience, and refusing to make excuses, reinforcing his belief that anyone can achieve success regardless of their starting point in life. Together, Chris Salerno and Seth Bradley discuss the realities of today’s U.S. economic climate, particularly in California, and the evolving landscape of real estate investing under changing securities regulations. They also share valuable insights on how entrepreneurs should approach risk and adapt to shifting market conditions.
The dialogue transitions into a discussion of fitness and balance, as Seth Bradley talks about how he and his wife manage their Burn Boot Camp franchises while navigating the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the conversation concludes, Seth Bradley reflects on the changing dynamics of real estate, the critical importance of investor communication, and the need for ongoing education in uncertain economic times.
Links to listen and subscribe:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fund-it-scale-it-close-it-unlocking-real-estate-success/id1760606484?i=1000680833837
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8RiGLlZMA&t=2732s
Bullet Point Highlights:
Seth’s Early Journey: Seth was adopted from South Korea and raised in rural West Virginia, leading to his realization of hard work and accountability.
Nightlife Promotions: Before becoming an attorney, Seth thrived as a nightclub promoter in Los Angeles, reinforcing his skills in sales and networking.
Law School Transition: After dropping out of medical school, Seth shifted focus from medicine to business and law, finding success in both fields.
Importance of SEC Compliance: The conversation highlights common mistakes investors make regarding securities regulations and emphasizes how crucial proper legal guidance is in real estate.
Pandemic Pivot: Seth and his wife managed to keep their fitness business afloat during COVID-19 by pivoting to online workouts, showcasing resilience and adaptability.
Investor Communication: Both host and guest stress the significance of maintaining clear and consistent communication with investors, particularly in a volatile economic climate.
Future of Real Estate: Discussion around California’s real estate laws, particularly the push for accessory dwelling units (ADUs), presents new opportunities for investment.
Transcript:
it's something there you can make an excuse about and that's the issue about today's society is that everyone wants excuses we mentally uh wired to have negativity in our life I actually started promoting for nightclubs you were a promoter I was a promoter for nightclub life is The Hunger Games business is The Hunger Games the space that you and I are in private Equity it's the Hunger Games my knowledge number one thing SEC really gets you on as misrepresentation welcome to the crystalo show your goto for real estate
 
business health Health and Family Insight I'm Chris CNO CEO of QC Capital each episode we explore the latest trends and expert advice from industry leaders whether you're an investor entrepreneur or seeking balance this show provides an inspiration you need join us in elevate your game on the Chris alno show welcome to the chriso show I'm your host Chris alno very excited to have a friend of mine we've known each other for what five six years now think so man time flies uh when you're having fun uh Seth on here SEC
 
attorney doing a bunch of things excited to have him on here a wealth of knowledge Seth thanks so much for joining us dude appreciate you having me on appreciate you reaching out and uh inviting me over for the show most definitely and I'm glad it happened when it did because you're in town you're you're you live out in the beautiful I would say you guys have great weather and great In-N-Out Burger your tax and politics suck but California which is beautiful weather out there you happen to be in Charlotte for Fitness which
 
we'll touch on here in a second um but I'm glad we were able to make this work absolutely man yeah good timing really good so let's let's give everyone a little background about yourself all the way from you know childhood you know talk to us about that sure man yeah and I think it helps build the story U I'm adopted so I was born in South Korea and adopted a 3 months old and then by two wonderful people in West Virginia rural West Virginia that's different so you know I'm the only Asian in inal West
 
Virginia yeah so I went to high school with like 18800 kids country country Moon shiners yes for sure for sure good people I love West Virginia love it I love Snowshoe Snowshoe is really good great underrated best best on the East Co or best close to North Carolina I would say unless you get way up North but yeah North Carolina you know anything close snow Sho is where it's at yeah yeah I love it but uh yeah man grew up in Royal West Virginia so wasn't really exposed to entrepreneurship or owning real estate or anything like that
 
my parents are both Blue Collar uh my dad was a is a coal miner was a Miner is retired now my mom is a grade school teacher so you know I didn't come from are they still in West Virginia yes they are okay they're frequent trips back there you go there you go yeah so wasn't exposed to that stuff so it was all about kind of getting the best job that you could possibly get right talk talk to us about that mentality you were young what age did you come over to us three months three oh three months month
 
so you didn't even spend time in in South Korea you don't even know of not at all are you curious now you know with you being adopted anything anything about you know where you came from anything like that actually not man you know I I I think a lot of uh adoptees struggle with that yeah um I actually joined a Facebook group one time like with Korean adops and there's like thousands of them in there and I was thinking I'm going to gain some insight from this and but it was like No And it was a lot of uh you know to be blunt a
 
lot of whining in my mind a lot of crying right I'm about accountability and just going out there and getting it done and you know it's just about you know a lot of I say this all the time you are you can't control the cards you are dealt you can only control how you deal them sure you know you unfor you know unfortunately you it's a great thing it's not unfortunate it's fortunately you were adopted at three months you couldn't control that you couldn't control being born in South Korea and being adopted but you have to
 
control the cards you were dealt and you've done a phenomenal job you're a badass attorney you know phenomenal job with the cards you were dealt um but I can definitely see being in those type of groups you're going to get a lot of whining and moaning yeah I mean I I think it's you know it's a couple it's it's a couple things right I mean some people have a reason to to quote unquote whine and mo right you know they're they're dealt a bad hand but again like you said you've got to you've got to
 
play the cards you're dealt right and do the best you can with it and I think that if you are adopted it's easy to go and blame it on that it's it's an easy crutch to lean it's an excuse it's it's something there you can make an excuse about and and and that's the issue about today's society is that everyone wants excuses where mentally uh wired to have negativity in our life and so they're going to make an excuse oh I'm not successful because of this because of this that's a lie you are highly
 
successful and attorney a beautiful wife doing great things in business and in the real estate industry so you are proof that you can get it done you just have to work hard yeah you just have to work hard you can't blame shift I like to call it you can't blame it on you know the cards you were dealt or you know the things that uh may have happened to you or the situations you're in you've got to just move forward and do the best that you can so dad was a coal miner y mom was a a school teacher what made you want to say hey I'm G to
 
go into law school and be an attorney yeah it it was a little bit uh a little bit more of a story behind that first of all I went into uh medicine so I wanted to be a doctor all right um well I wouldn't say I wanted to be a doctor it was more like what's the best job that I can get with the mindset that I had my mindset was you know W2 worker type of mindset right like not entrepreneurial not don't take risk and it was and I you know academically it was pretty easy for me so it was just okay what's the best
 
job you can get is probably being a doctor right like that's kind of the highest calling um and I actually went to med school for a year and a half really yeah and then I dropped out halfway through my second year I literally just got up in the middle of class walked out and said I've I've had it I oh my goodness so I went Premed biology yeah I went Premed biology chemistry and biology whoop my butt so I said okay I'm going to business entrepreneurship switch business entrepreneurship and I said maybe it
 
wasn't chemistry and biology it was just College in general so I dropped out of college um but you so you got to med school and you're like okay I'm done with this Y and then what yep um honestly that was a turning point in my life I didn't know what I wanted to do right like I committed a a large portion of my life to you know schooling schooling taking the MCAT getting into med school finishing that's not easy either Med school's hard very hard very hard but I've always had an interest in business and real estate just kind of in
 
the background like I just always had an interest in it um didn't really know how to act on it at the time um so I actually just started enrolling in business classes like immediately just and ended up getting a minor in business for the rest of that year so I I in undergrad classes um and then I started up my MBA actually the following year so got my MBA and then I decided to take it the next step and go ahead and get my law degree because I was still in that same mindset it was like you know this
 
isn't enough I didn't really know anything about starting a business or anything like that and I just felt like I hadn't done enough so I went ahead and went to went to law school and at that point I did decide I was like look I'm going to I'm going to finish this whether it's the right thing or not um and I was very successful at it I finished towards the top of my class dedicated you know the time and effort it needed um and did really well so love that love that and so getting in what made you want to move out to California
 
number one on a win man so dropped out of med school kind of took those business classes just trying to figure out what I wanted to to do next on the other side of the world I'm in West Virginia still at this point yeah in West Virginia trying to figure it out and I just knew I needed to get out of there I needed to see more I needed to get out of West Virginia you know it was it was a tough conversation to have right like all my family and friends are there um you know I just dropped out of medical school so now they're like what
 
the hell is this kid doing you know what I mean like dropping out of med school but they've always been supportive always been supportive always been supportive they never like pushed me into medicine or anything like that and then when I dropped out you know they're still staying supportive but I'm sure in the background they're thinking what the hell are you doing uhoh yeah and then I just decided to up and leave and move to Los Angeles out of nowhere unbelievable unbelievable so you moved out to Los
 
Angeles yep how was that well I partied for a little bit yeah for a little bit they they know how to party out yeah for a little bit I didn't know what I was going to do I was enrolled um getting my NBA at the time uh mostly online um at Arizona State um so I kept the education going but at the same time I'm in La I'm in a new city I actually started promoting for nightclubs you were a promoter I was a promoter for nightclub for a little over a year in Los Angeles um before I decided hey I got to get my
 
[ __ ] together well I mean you'll definitely meet a lot of women doing that for sure you get paid basically per head on how many women you bring in the club oh yeah you've got a bottle or two waiting for you every single night y it's actually a pretty nice little lifestyle for somebody in their 20s oh yeah most I I believe it if you want you know if you want to get some experience get out there it's best you can meet a lot of women too yeah and it's a good like uh it's kind of a sales experience
 
be honest with you you're just for you're like hey I'm getting paid $10 ahead to bring beautiful women to this club I got to go out there and just talk to everybody literally just going out there talking hey you got this come to this club tonight we've got bottles all this kind of stuff and you know wow unbelievable unbelievable so from there you were like okay I got to get my [ __ ] together yeah had to get my [ __ ] together obviously you know I'm still getting educated in back getting my NBA
 
still kind of keeping the education going oh yeah um but I decided hey I'm going to go to law school so started applying to law schools um ended up getting accepted to a number of ones and I I narrowed it down to USD in San Diego because I wanted to stay in Southern California because I loved it um but I knew I didn't want to be in La so got out of La went down to San Diego because I had visited there a couple times and I just loved it it's just more of a laid-back attitude people were a lot more genuine just a place that I could
 
see s down at compared to La it's just you know it it it's kind of doggy dog there most oh it is it's a hunger life is The Hunger Games business is The Hunger Games the space that you are you and I are in private Equity it's the Hunger Games yeah you know and and you have to have that mentality you have to be able to survive yeah at the end of the day so from there you're like okay law school it is yep and then you get into law school well in law school or but even prior to that there's so many
 
different levels of law you can practice yeah what made you you know pick SEC and prior to that did you have any other interest in different type of law yeah I mean generally speaking I want I knew I wanted to get into transactional law I didn't want to be a litigator that's for sure um I was interested in business interested in doing deals those sorts of things so I started out actually at a at a pretty big Law Firm step tone Johnson and ended up doing both real estate and corporate I think that's when we first
 
met it might have been yeah yeah when when you were cuz they were out what in San Diego or no actually I moved back to West Virginia for that job oh did you okay maybe maybe you maybe you were just finishing there when we met yeah well actually I think we met when I was in probably when I was in Charlotte because I moved to Charlotte for another big Law Firm I think so but anyways yeah so I started kind of more general transactional practice with real estate and corporate and then as I kind of got
 
more mature and more experienced I started focusing more on the security side nice nice do you you enjoy security side for sure for sure the security side is it it feels a lot more sophisticated um I like the people that I work with in that field a little bit more um but I still have a passion for Real Estate like I still love real estate so even though I'm a Securities attorney it's largely focused on real estate yeah so let's talk about that you know for those individuals that may not know what a
 
security is most will know what a security is let's talk about that and let's talk about you know the the day-to-day what does a Security attorneys really look like sure sure I mean the easy way to put it for a security because because people kind of miss understand it but if you have passive investors involved at all anywhere anywhere any even if it's one you probably even if it's an LLC yeah you're probably dealing with a security and you're dealing with the SEC regulations and you need a Securities
 
attorney to advise you because there are lots of things to navigate that you're probably not aware of and that your real estate attorney probably doesn't have the knowledge or know how to to deal with mostely and I see that mistake being made quite a bit oh yeah no I I see that on social media all the time for sure all the time on social media and it comes down to even with words you say like you have to be very very careful you're not misleading whatsoever what do you find uh the most common maybe mistake syndicators or fund
 
managers do in the syndication world yeah I mean I think the most common mistake is just not even realizing that they're under the Securities regime right like they're just like oh well I'm just raising some you know I'm getting some investors from family friends and they think because it's family and friends maybe that it's okay but it's not it doesn't it doesn't matter who they are it doesn't matter if it's your your family or friends or you know stranger off the streets you're dealing with Securities yeah and that and you
 
have to deal with those Securities regulations to come along with it so I I think just not knowing yeah that or maybe kind of turning a blind cheek to it is is more like it I think people nowadays have a pretty good idea of because it is kind of out there now right everyone's on social media they're all talking about it the biggest thing too is is you don't want to not know and you don't want to turn that cheek because um something to know is that SEC has unlimited money and they will milk you dry so you might as well spend the
 
money ahead of time find you a good SEC attorney like Seth you know to make sure that they don't milk you dry because they will milk you dry and they'll throw you in a little white little 4x6 cell and it's not going to be fun if you didn't know they can print money yeah so so if you're you're going up against someone who can print money and you necessarily can't print like they can print exactly you know so you got to be careful and that's not to mention the state Commissioners too so you've got the SEC to deal with as
 
well as the state Securities commissioner which people don't people don't realize that there's a federal and a state level too and and it's super important to understand what state you're doing business in and what state your investors are coming from and and super important to understand at a state and federal level yeah yeah and it's a you know and if something happens it's a full-blown investigation I mean it's just like a subpoena or you maybe you will get subpoenaed uh but they're asking for everything you they're asking
 
for texts they're asking for emails asking for phone logs they're asking and give it give it to them like don't even because if you don't they're going to get it they're going to find it yeah I mean they're just going to subpoena you on it and the judge is going to make you do it or they'll throw you in jail so no matter what give it to them and then address every single situation you know or issue that they bring up that I I think it's it's super important we just talked about this on the other podcast
 
is be transparent yeah you know be transparent because if not they're again they have unlimited Capital absolutely you know they're going to come and get you no matter what and and if and if being transparent makes you nervous then maybe think about the way you're doing business right oh yeah I mean you should be able to be transparent and and just like I said on the other podcast big investor that we had or a big investor that we interviewed on the other podcast and I said you know during 2023 as you
 
know uh interest rates spiked you know little bit yeah just a little bit and a lot of syndicators were not transparent a lot of them went ghost a lot of them were let like screw this I'm done and we double down we went from monthly communication to bi-weekly communication which is a lot more on our team but we did it to overc communicate we didn't have to cuz our SEC doc said just once a month we could have just stick it once a month but we decided to double down yeah and and that right there overc
 
communicating saying hey this is what's going on it's out of our control but this is what we're doing to make sure we can control this you know I think is super important when you're a syndicator fund manager you name it when you're dealing and having investors involved 100% man 100% And you you are able to control the narrative that way too right like if the the past investors is sitting there and they're reading the headlines and they're seeing the interest rate Spike and they're hearing about multifam going down the tubes and
 
all this stuff and that's not necessarily true not all those things are true it could be Market specific deal specific those things but if you're not in constant communication with them letting them know hey this is what's going on with this deal maybe this deal is going great maybe this one's not going as well well here's what we're doing to fix it it it goes a long ways 100% their trust you're going to have an upset investor you know you are if you have you know 20 50 100 investors one's going to be upset and if you ever got
 
audited you can all you can go back and say look at all of our communication right like read through all of our communication we were transparent about everything they're going to look back and be like okay it's this a pissed off investor yeah you for sure for sure and it's super like communication is the biggest uh I think thing that is lost in% capital and also you know being being transparent with the communication because number one from my knowledge number one thing SEC really gets you on is misrepresentation absolutely you know
 
and if you're not being transparent on it with everything on there boom it it will be a very ugly day for you for sure be transparent you know obviously the things that you leave out as well like if there are key material things that you're leaving out and then you've you've disclosed all these things let's say down the line to the SEC or State commissioner like what in the world this doesn't sound like you're representing this deal like it really was at this time and maybe they're going back and
 
looking at your records looking your financial statements and seeing how that deal was going it wasn't going great it was going terrible Y and you're saying that everything is great well um that's not being transparent right you know you're not communicating that with the investors right yeah no I think that's super important H you know what have you seen you know over 2023 dealing with you know Securities talking with other fund managers things like that what have you seen you know during last year with
 
interest rate hikes man it it there was a little bit of blood in streets right you know a lot of these deals um that had shortterm loans that had um you know the the variable loan rates um struggled yeah a lot of people that caps they didn't get rate Caps or the or the cap expired yeah or their cap expired and they didn't have enough money in reserves to buy an extension on the cap you know and and that was huge that was huge thinkk one of our deals uh had 202 for or excuse me uh 2024 expiration and
 
we bought uh end or beginning of 2023 end of 2022 rate cap to Extended 2025 and I'm so glad we did it yeah you know it was perfect timing because that same rate cap would have been a million and we only spent like 400,000 yeah yeah for sure yeah so you're seeing a little bit of blood in the streets um you know I think right now what's happening banks are allowing for some uh leniency with their loans they don't they don't want to have the property absolutely and it looks it looks terrible if they do have
 
the property on their balance sheet plus I think they the this go around cuz oh0 wait the first thing they said is we're going to foreclose on everyone we're taking everyone's property then they realize well [ __ ] I got a ton of property and no one wants to buy it yeah you know so I think they've learned their lesson and now they are like okay we don't want to forclosed because no one's going to buy it and if they do buy it we're still going to take a huge loss so let's go ahead and see what we can do
 
to work things out you know if the property's really really not bad let's see what we can do to work things out because it will rebound it's coming back back around yeah but I do think you know we're kicking the can down the road they're giving extensions those sorts of things and we're all banking that the interest rates are going to go down at some point right so we're hoping for that um I think that they will I think we're going to see one before the election yeah it I think we're going to see a quarter point before the election
 
I think I think some politics have gotten into drone Pal's head no way yeah I know right no way couldn't I I think they I think they had a nice little cigar dinner or something and and I think they got in his head so I think you'll see one before the election of this year I agree I agree yeah you know it's it's going to be a wild election too not wanting to dive deep into politics but it's definitely going to be a wild one uh talk to us about you know the the California lifestyle what are you what are you doing right now you you
 
also your wife beautiful wife has a great business you guys are running that's why you're here in Charlotte talk to us a little bit about that and why you guys got into that too yeah so we uh started uh we bought two burn boot camp franchises so uh my wife luckily runs those helped her get them off the ground and now she's crushing it so letting her run with those and uh they're going really really well um lifestyle in California you can't beat it man I mean San Diego is unbelievable oh it's beautiful down there the weather
 
everything kind of like how you said earlier in the show I mean if you if you can afford to live there one because it is really expensive oh I know and if you can deal with the politics then there's no better place in the United States for sure really there's not you know I just wish they had better politics over there um but yeah the weather out there is so beautiful you really can't beat it you can't beat it you know let's talk about health because you guys own those burn boot camps they're huge in Charlotte um
 
their headquarters here in Charlotte that's where it was founded um and tell us a little bit about what burn boot camp is and then also I'm going to want you to touch on like how are you optimizing your health to to be the phenomenal husband that you are to operate you know businesses and getting involved in real estate talk to us about that sure man yeah burn boot camp it's a boutique Fitness franchise um you know it's it's Boot Camp style workouts workouts the same um it's incredible and and it's focused on women it's focused
 
on empowering inspiring so if you're a single man you should go absolutely absolutely I will say I've been taking up hot yoga lately Hot Yoga is good and for those single men out there go to hot yoga just saying there we go yeah Gym's not a bad place to pick up women yeah plus the great thing too is that there's no filters you can't have filters at the gym and more than likely they're not going there with makeup on so it's it's a good place to filter out women you want there you go a little different than the apps right yeah I
 
know so so it's geared more towards women it is geared towards more towards women um but it I work out there every day I mean that's where I work out now like that's that's what I do I love the total body workouts I love the total body workouts you go in like an orange theory you go in one hour boom you're done you're going about your day exactly hour in and out of there and for guys like us that have a million things to do like it's unbeatable and I want somebody telling me what to do I was just going
 
to say that I don't want and I I work out by myself now and it's so much easier showing up tell me to shut up go do this do that get it done boom okay I'm all about my day you know tell me what to do right just tell me what to do I I will I will tell you I've been to the gym and there's been times I've had business on my mind that I'm like wait okay so I'm at the gym what do I need to do like you're sitting like a 24-hour fitness or or yeah something like I work out at lifetime I live right behind it
 
and I walk in there sometimes because of my long days and I'm like [ __ ] what do I want to do today like I because my mind is business business business it's so much easier showing up having someone said hey we got all these set workouts you're going to knock these out and be done they make they make you focus on the workout at that point instead of you know business or whatever listen to a podcast or something what got you guys interested in opening up one of those I hope you're enjoying today's episode
 
just a quick reminder to make sure you never miss an episode stay connected with us by following us on social media platforms Instagram Twitter threads Tik Tok at Chris saloor and don't forget to subscribe to YouTube to catch the video versions of our episode you'll get exclusive content behindth scenes footage and much more head over to YouTube chrisoro now and hit the Subscribe button stay tuned because we've got more great content coming right after this actually cuz my wife worked out at one
 
here in Charlotte really so she was working out at one she was working out at one here in Charlotte and then we moved back to the West Coast cuz I took a job here in Charlotte for a little bit then we moved back to the West Coast and I was look looking to start a business I was looking for something recession resistant outside of real estates I was already investing in real estate but looking for a business outside of real estate I looked at liquor stores I looked at laundromats um and then she
 
turned me on to burn boot camp which is not recession resistance let's put it that way but at the same time they're really good salesman look like a great business model turned out to be awesome although oh most definitely yeah circumstances weren't great we opened two weeks before Co hit oo but talk to us about that you know opening a and we all know California they they lock down like oh yeah they lock down you can't even go get your mail out of your house um talk to us about that opening up a
 
business right before covid and being in California where you know they were basically Nazis out there yeah for sure I mean we opened up two weeks in um and we didn't have any paying members because we were all on uh they were all on like a free membership TR one yeah so then we had to shut it down we had to move inside we had to move outside we did online workouts every single day uh pivoted yeah we pivoted we did whatever we had to do to keep the lights on wow um so literally our lead trainer and
 
business partner was in our apartment leading online workouts and me and my wife Alison are in the background like like a yeah like a music workout video Yeah in the backgound but it did keep us in shape during Co cuz we worked out every single day because we had to make those videos you had to yeah but it was I mean it was ridiculous out in California man they shut down the beaches they shut down the water you weren't allowed to be in in the ocean what you weren't allowed to be in the ocean cuz they said it got transmitted
 
through the water at one point so are you serious so they kicked the Surfers out of the water and you kick the Surfers out of the water in San Diego you're you got some pissed off people you got a big problem but there are like all these you know Instagram videos the cops chasing Surfers down the beach and the guy just dropping his surfboard and running it was it transmitted through the water yeah insane but that's new heard that inside outside online inside outside eventually we we blacked out our
 
windows so you couldn't see in it because we got we got actually attacked by U an Instagram person that ended up going viral because he said hey you're the reason that we're the the disease is spreading because of businesses like yours and they filmed us from the outside into the windows and it went viral no way and it went viral and then finally we we ended up blacking out the windows and just stayed open cuz there's at that point it was like either Do Your Own Thing yeah and stay open oh yeah or
 
we're going out of business yeah you got to shut shop and this is a venture you just opened up no one knew Co is coming and all a sudden Co boom co comes and wow so you bled out the windows and you said hey we're just going to do it it's like a Speak Easy now yeah you guys want to work out we called it that at one point really speak easy easy workout like underground workouts underground haircuts there all kinds of that stuff going on it was insane that's W if you just have to think about that that's
 
just wild yeah like you know just for your basic necessities to stay in shape and things like that turns out if you got sunshine and you worked out you were a little bit more immune to the disease oh really yeah interesting interesting wow and you weren't locked in doors and you weren't allowed to work out yeah well problems wow I think we can go on a rabbit hole about that damn I'm not a big fan of I will say I do think there's another one going to be coming you know I think there's another pandemic that
 
will be coming um because of what happened with the first one so let's see uh let's just see what happens let's see if we handle it better this time uh we shall see it depends on whose's President I I think that's that's true yeah um definitely depends on them so you guys now you know past covid everyone's now out and about in California everything's been lifted and now those are up and running are those are the only ones really on the west coast right or um I think there are let's see two four five I think there's
 
six in California right now six now yeah cuz like you said it was based in Charlotte mainly east coast yeah yeah I think there's about 400 locations open now very cool um actually I think they're approaching 500 locations now yeah um so it's expanding pretty quickly at this point you know Fitness franchises have have rebounded completely from Co at this point oh my God yeah I think I think the fitness industry and I'm seeing it more and more people are taking it a lot more serious yeah they're they're watching what they
 
eat and I I said this multiple times with my son he's four and a half uh he watches what um or I make sure whatever I give him I watch very closely goldfish now and if you look and I swear this is brand new if you look at any ingredients now it says bio oh what is what's it say bio biograde or bio bio bioengineered food so it says it's been bioengineered the food that's been in there yeah so if you look go next time you go to the grocery store look at the ingredients and now it says it in bold you can pick up some gold Vision it says
 
bioengineered chemicals hm in the food interesting it's wild even her Pedialite had it said bioengineered chemicals now I swear that just popped up you know in one of these crazy bills cuz I've never ever seen it say bioengineered food on there uh and I steer very far away from it I'm big on those factors Factor meals now okay I have you heard of those I have y so I get those now once a week it's like 141 bucks uh lunch and dinner CU I don't eat breakfast so lunch and dinner 141 bucks and I'm thinking in my
 
head well if you and I went out to dinner it'd be about a 100 bucks right now so I get uh 14 meals per week lunch and dinner for 141 bucks I'm like I can't beat that yeah like that's good I throw them in the microwave 2 minutes boom done yeah we do pre-made meals all the time but we switch like we've done Factor before bur boot Camp's actually coming out with some in the fall we we got the test drive and they're actually pretty delicious cuz yeah we're pretty picky about these types of meals you
 
have to be but they're actually really good are they so they're coming out they're coming out with their own branding yep oo that'll be exciting and that is that's not just for boot camp people that's for everyone yeah you can just get on the app and order them this fall I believe really oh I'm going to have to switch it up and try man they're good but especially with pring these days it makes sense plus how busy you and I are yeah I mean so are you meal prepping or are you using these type of things my wife does some meal prepping
 
on Sunday got to love her yeah that's basically it every once in a while I volunteer to grill out but man it's it's it's a Time suck right like it to feed yourself at home like it sounds even going out you know for a lunch meeting it's like two hours like I have to block two hours off on my day for a lunch meeting yeah yeah I mean trying to cook an individual meal every single night let alone like lunch as well and even and then you got to clean all that Tak in just takes so much time we we don't
 
have time for it no I I I don't either that's why I start a factor where I throw it in 2 minutes boom I eat it and I'm done and I'm like well I threw it away boom no cleaning done I love it I love it so you guys are doing great things with the bur boot camp out there what do you what are you seeing uh let's go back to the real estate market what are you seeing in the near future I know we talk about interest rates lowering you know what are you seeing what are you doing right now in the real estate
 
market as well yeah um currently a fund manager for $20 million fund it's an Adu Fund in California so we're doing basically in California just like everything else difficult to do anything right like the government's got their handed and everything oh my God so very difficult to get any kind of construction done off the ground it's mind bogling we're buying a car wash and Cape car right now and it's finished yeah well they came out for the co they don't like the garage doors and so now we have to order new or the the seller
 
we're buying it from the seller seller has to now order new garage doors it won't be here till end of October and I'm like like seriously the garage doors will only be down between 9:00 at night and and 7 in the morning like it's middle the night no one's going to even look at them yeah like and you want these fancy garage like come on really yeah you know so and I can't imagine out in California yeah and if you get the coastal commission involved it takes literally years and years to do any so
 
anyways the reason I brought that up is because the adus accessory dwelling units they actually have a bill in California that they past and they basically just FastTrack those types of developments so if you want to add they they view it as a a solution to housing so the lack of housing yeah um so they let you build on uh turn your single family property into a duplex or even build duplex on the on the property if you have a big enough lot um so you can turn one units into four and rent the back out or rent them all out yep
 
exactly so it's a it's a quick way to get the construction approved get it done I don't know how long this wind is going to be open so you guys taking advantage so we're taking advantage of it right now love that love that and is your main focus down there in that San Diego Market um it's actually Riverside County okay yeah where and where I'm Riverside county is is East just East adjacent of Los Angeles County okay right so a little cheaper housing so it makes a little bit more sense when you get closer to the coast it stops making
 
a lot of sense you got to go for some more creative Place cheaper like 5 million probably yeah yeah yeah just a little $5 million 5 million um but but cheaper housing there so you guys are finding opportunity now is that bill all for California where you can for all California and then the local um you know counties and municipalities can kind of change that and you they can't make it any more restrictive but they can make it even less restrictive okay good and so are you uh are you guys doing long-term rentals there are you
 
doing short-term like airbnbs um semi longterm right so we're putting in a 10-year fund so you know we're getting we're buying the property we're renovating it putting ad used on the properties and then renting them for a few years and then unloading them towards the back end of the the fund I love love that and with these you're all buying them in the same area yeah yeah Riverside County generally I mean it's you know spread across how are you guys finding good deals in this market you know it's so hard multif family no you
 
name it any any type of real estate there's always a huge disc connect between a seller and a buyer how are you guys finding good deals right now uh my business partners man like I you know I'm handling legal I'm working with some Capital I'm I'm advising on on raising Capital those sorts of things um but my business partners are real estate brokers and they' been doing uh this type of thing identifying properties that are perfect for adus um for a number of years at this point so they're they're the main source they they get
 
first look I love I love that how how is it finding you know great business partners you know it's just like a marriage you you got to test it out you got to see how it is because a Business Partnership is like a marriage how is it you know and how did you guys link up yeah um networking event so I met I met these bus business partners actually at a wealth without Wall Street event that I was speaking at nice yeah yeah so I met them hit it off with them I think the first I've been in Good and Bad
 
Business Partnership relationships yeah I I think you you have to go through bad ones you do because if if you don't go through bad ones you don't know what what can happen to you and I would rather go through bad ones early on to make sure that when if we went into business we have the right contract the right verbage all of that in place because at the end of the day again just like if you would get married you're signing a contract to your wife you know in most circumstances I highly recommend
 
sign a prup I'm not a big fan I don't believe in marriage uh but a Business Partnership is a marriage yeah you know it is it is and building off of that like you have to like the person I think that you're going into oh 100% you have to hang out with them like you you have to be very cold cordial you know talk you guys have to like the same things if you just like a relationship if you guys don't like the same things if you don't like if one party likes working out the other one doesn't other one doesn't eat
 
healthy the other one eats healthy like it's just not going to work out it's not not not a long-term Business Partnership right like it can't just be transaction maybe shortterm really quick turnaround time but if it's going to be a long-term Business Partnership you got to like that person you generally like him you're like hey I I like this dude I'll go have a beer with him this is great this is I'll travel with him my business partner we travel around the world together we hang out together we go to
 
the same events together we like the same things you know it's it's amazing that's super important part because I think communication back to communication is huge right like and if you don't like that person it's going to feel forced and awkward and kind of going over a hump to try to communicate with them and that's the key you got to stay transparent you got to communicate because again if you have that separation you're not communicating you're not transparent who knows what the other person is doing at that point
 
oh agreed agreed most definitely I mean my business partner we talk about 20 20 25 times a day yeah and it's and most of it's business but other thing is personal hey how's the family doing how the kids doing you know anything going on blah blah blah but it's super important to also let your business partner know what's going on with you personally I think that's I think that's important as well because if if you're going through you know knock on wood you know something with your marriage I need
 
to know that I feel you know even if it's getting a little rough I need you to say hey you know my marriage is getting a little rough because I need to know okay if you're not here at business 100% I'm going to step up 120% to make sure that we're still good you know I think that's important AB for sure for sure and we do that even with like our team so with bur boot camp with some other businesses that we have we have leadership meetings and we make sure that everyone sh kind of personal things
 
what's going on keeping that transparent relationship up because it's it's important it affects um your personal life affects your business life as much as you don't wanted to most definitely no you're spot on there so I always say not all not all chefs not all chefs should own the restaurant not all attorneys should own their own practice you know what has really helped you to really own your own business and and you know go through the trial and errors and things like that to you know survive Co
 
to to run a successful you know Law Firm things like that yeah I mean I think one of the key things for entrepreneurs and people starting businesses you got to be a little bit crazy right you got to be a little bit crazy you got to be willing to take risks right you got to assess risks and and take them you can't be afraid to to just go out there and take action and do it um I think that attorneys on the other hand are trained not to take risks right they are trained to assess the risks but they're really
 
leaning to risk averse risers really leaning towards no whereas an entrepreneur is leaning towards yes yes so I think that I strike a really good balance between those two that's good um and I think that's what allows me to be an attorney at heart but then you know also be an entrepreneur and take risks and I think that's what my business partners appreciate as well I love that um I figure out how can we do it rather than can we do it right like that most attorneys will be like well we can't do it because of this or I advise
 
you not to do it because of that I will say look we can do it here's how yep right and here are the risks oh most definitely now you as the business partner if you're my partner we need to decide is it worth it or not yeah right cuz there's there's always risk involved so do you want to take no matter what you do there is risk you just have to make sure you take the calculated risk that's right you know and sometimes you may think it's calculated at that point in the moment and it turns out to not be
 
right so you have to have the ability to Pivot very quickly like you guys did with Co you have to have that ability to handle that stress and handle that pressure so you can power through for sure absolutely yeah no I love that where do you see you you think you know where do you see yourself uh you know growing uh triest you know where where do you see yourself with that and on to the Future yeah so I joined tribe vest of July of last year nice so it's been about um been about one year and we have
 
really developed um you know this this fund of Fund in a box right like you've probably heard about how the market is really shifting from the cgp model right to fun of funds because the is kind of you know they kind of started investigating people and you know these folks that had these cgps that were just raising capital and not doing anything else which everyone knows you're not supposed to do but everybody does it anyways yep um started looking for another solution and the fund the funds model has always been it is the solution
 
it's always been the solution it's not a new thing it's just a more you just people didn't know of it at the time at a high level yeah and and honestly it it's more complicated it's more expensive it's more expensive and there's just you know a lot more things to go into it so people just took the easy route did theot quote CP rout and and it you know I guess I'll say that it worked up until this point right like I guess you could say you got away with it or what have you um but the market is is
 
is Shifting or has shifted to the co or to the fun everything is fun to funs now that's all I'm seeing is fund to funds models training programs you know and fund to funds things like that you know it's definitely questionable I think as an investor I would ask if if I'm talking to a sponsor hey are you the lead sponsor or you a fun of funds because in in my eyes you're paying double fees you know to get into those opportunities don't get me wrong people need to make money people are giving you
 
great opportunities to invest and build your Capital um but there's definitely questions I feel like definitely needs to be involved yeah I mean there's always questions right I mean even when everyone was using the CP model it's like well who's actually the operating partner who's the lead sponsor who's actually going to execute the business plan after we closing this property and I think a lot of cgps were kind of masquerading as the operating partner like hey this is my deal I found the property I'm going to be doing this
 
executing this business plan in reality there's a lead sponsor who found the deal who's signing the loan documents who's going to execute the business plan and sometimes there passive investors don't even know they don't even know and and fund manager like you said kind of same it's the same thing right the fund manager should not be representing that they're the operating partner Som or anything like that um I know at tribe vest we we really emphasize that because the the vehicle that we use is an SPV
 
fund of fund where the the fund of fund is designed only to invest in one specific deal so we're not it's not a discretionary fund where you can do whatever we can do whereever whatever you want invest you know multiple deals or anything it is one deal so you're really just serving as a conduit uh to invest in a Target deal so it's very clear to the pive investors very spe specific if you invest in this fund of fund all your capital is going into this deal and we disclose those deal documents as well so those offering
 
documents are an exhibit to the fund of fund offering documents most definitely no I think that's super important and we have a fund that we've put together for car washes and before we really truly launch the fund we have we have those deals locked under and we're like look these are the deals we may add some more deals but these are the specific deals that we are buying and that the capital is going into yeah yep yeah for I think that's super important so you guys are really taking advantage of this
 
opportunity out in California um you see it definitely growing you know with your guys's portfolio out there oh for sure for sure I mean the fun to funds model we we've made it affordable right so the the problems with it were that it's complicated it's expensive those are the two B two biggest things you've got to get your if you're a fund manager who used to be a cgp depending on the lead sponsor to do everything for you now you've got to do all those things yeah accounting you know all bookkeeping all
 
of that you got to open a business banking account you got to form your LLC you've got to find a Securities attorney you've got to find a CPA you've got to manage your investors you got to find a platform all those things that the lead sponsor usually does yeah and then you're going to have to pay depending on the attorney you know anywhere from 15 to 30,000 absolutely uh you know on average some are even 50,000 from what I hear but normally the head attorney who's running the whole syndication will
 
have a deal where you can do a fund of funds at a cheaper amount but it's going to cost maybe 15 20,000 for you as a fund manager to open up your own fund right and you know that some CPS former CPS can't really raise Capital right like they own a deal and they say hey I can raise a million bucks easy and then they come up with 100,000 bucks or zero yeah right so if you do that with a fund of funds well now you an attorney 15,000 bucks or 25,000 bucks and you didn't raise any Capital you're screwed that's
 
a lot of money out of your pocket when you weren't able to get paid on that deal yep um but what we've done at triest is combined all all those things together love that we you with triest it's a fun to fun in a box it's basically done for you kind of a done for you program you know you you get your k1s we open your business banking account we form your LLC we do your offering documents we on board your investors so we send out electronic signatures of the offering documents quote unquote hurting the cats right
 
getting getting them to wire their funds basically taking the place of an investor relation which I will tell you I love our investors that will sign and wire right then and there but we do have those sum that will sign and then the wire is like pulling teeth and it comes to a point where I'm like look like I feel like I'm stepping my boundaries by keep asking you hey why are your Capital we need you know it's very difficult sometimes yeah it is it is and I can feel for him a little bit especially the first time
 
around ,000 bucks you're like whoa this is crazy wiring to a stranger or somebody you might have just had a couple of contacts you know we we advertise heavily on social media we only accept accredited investors as a 506c so we can advertise we advertise heavily on social media um I don't actually to be honest with you I don't think I've ever done a 506b that's awesome that's a great that's place to play I always6 coun people to do five sixc and only accept credit investors that's going to keep you safe yeah 100% you know and
 
it's it's a lot easier um but yeah you know I think it's it's super important to go that route and even with those new investors I definitely understand you know 50 200 300 you know 500,000 is a lot of capital from someone you you met on social media that's why you ask the right questions that's why you get references you understand the business model business strategy and at the end of the day though you have to take a risk you have to take a risk and a leite got the trigger and just do it yep got
 
to take action I love that you guys are doing that all inone I think that's huge yeah yeah and going back to to pricing man you the last Law Firm that I worked at huge Law Firm top three law firm in the world we charged $75,000 you bullsh out of the gate for a set of s now this was at the lead sponsor level but a lead sponsor documents and that's just for the initial drafts and then it's charged per hour no way yeah get started just to get started people don't realize how expensive creting a fund is it's
 
expensive yeah yeah and then some people you know there are you know these Boutique firms I mean even my Boutique firm we do it at a much lower cost and people are like whoa that's so expensive because they just haven't seen it I'm like you have no idea how expensive it actually can be oh I know do you do you see yourself uh going into any other practice of law oh I don't think so secur is where it's at man I mean I've I'm a fund manager I've syndicated deals myself as a lead sponsor you know I've
 
worked as a Securities attorney now for a number of years so it's it's kind of where my interest and my legal practice have kind of combined how do how do you keep up with your energy and your mindset your your your high energy your great mindset how do you keep up with that and cultivate that man I think you know we kind of touched on it before but we didn't quite get around to it it a lot of it is just trying to take care of yourself staying healthy man getting sleep that's super important right I
 
think a lot of entrepreneurs run themselves into the ground and they don't sleep man I don't care what time I get to bed I'm sleeping 7 hours so I I set my alarm clock for 7 hours after I really you do that after I lay down interesting I'm complete opposite oh yeah uh no matter what time I go to bed I wake up at 6:00 a.m. no matter what time uh Stephanie can tell you I'll send her emails at 3:00 4 a.m. in the morning you might get 2 hours might get 10 hours yep no never 10 no never o never over
 
seven okay I can't get over seven hours yeah I if I get over seven hours I feel joggy I feel like I've slept I've wasted my day um even on Saturdays and Sundays I will wake up boom and you know if whoever's in the my girl who's in the bed I'm in in my office at the home working you know at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday that's how I'm wired if we get home at 1:00 from an evening you know out with friends which I rarely do 6:00 a.m. I'm up ready to go that's awesome man that's awesome and I think what helps you know I don't drink yeah don't
 
drink alcohol I don't care to um you know I drink water I drink too much lattes yeah uh but uh but yeah don't drank alcohol and I think that's helped tremendously sure not being in my system yeah that there's a huge movement now right towards not drinking my what's this new there's this new uh drink everyone's getting it's uh it's not it's we all know a virgin drink meaning no alcohol but a mocktail oh yeah every I'm hearing this everywhere everyone's just saying they're getting mocktails cuz they don't want to drink it there's like
 
mocktail bars there are I think there's some in Charlotte that are mocktail bars and they don't serve any alcohol at all um and I think a lot of people again I don't know if it was Co or whatever but a lot of people are very conscious with their health they're watching what they eat even you know with go again going to these grocery stores next time you go to the grocery store look at that this is bio-engineered chemicals you know a lot of people are watching that in what they're putting into their system for
 
sure for sure people are much more aware of it I mean I I'm a drinker I do drink which is fine yeah but I do I you know I did dry January and honestly you can just you can tell I mean you're poisoning your body with alcohol I think at this point everybody understands that they realize that and they choose either to do it or not but is poison to your body I mean that's what at the end of the day it is and for me personally I don't I don't care to wake up feeling you know joggy or anything like that I
 
care to wake up feeling great you know thriving and ready to go but alcohol does do that alcohol will do that to you and you'll definitely see the the weight I mean my lattes I see my lattes at my lower stomach and I'm like I got to do more ABS got to eat healthier got to drink the black coffee man I do so I drink the black coffee but when I'm out and about I'll stop and get a latte I I don't know I love I just love these lattes yeah I drink a ton of coffee so but mostly black coffee at home I I'll
 
make black coffee 100% at home black coffee but if I'm out and about traveling or something like that I'm like got to give me a latte yeah for sure but yeah man I mean it's it's staying healthy you got to keep yourself healthy to be able to perform mentally yeah you have to you have to these days especially with all this bioengineered you know chemicals all this type of food out there that is just unhealthy for you you have to really watch what you eat for sure for sure you got to get that work out in I mean if I'm not working if
 
I don't work out for like 2 days in a row I'm going I'm going like stir crazy oh I am too I am too I work out every single day and even if I can't get a full like hard workout in I'm like okay I'm going to walk around the block like I'm going to and I and I now have a tread meal under my desk where I'm like I'm going to at least walk one mile because I know I can't get a full workout in at the gym today so I'm at least going to walk one mile because I I have to keep my body doing something for sure there's something about it it just
 
clears your mind out right like it just it gives you Clarity by working out when when you don't work out for a couple of days man it's just like fog just I just feel foggy it no 100% you don't feel sharp I'm a big I'm a big fan of the sauna and the steam room yeah I love a nice sauna in the steam room I I do it before I work out and after I work out and I can stay in there for 30 minutes each like I love it in there um but I I think you know adopting that I'm looking into that red light therapy I don't know
 
if you've looked into it I've heard of it I've seen it but I haven't done a ton of research on it yet I've done some research on it I'm doing more on it though I don't know enough to be dangerous but I'm it's definitely everything I'm reading is very highly beneficial you get that like built into the sauna right I've SE if you get the home Sona too see I'm I'm bougie I work on a lifetime uh they don't have it there um but uh hopefully they do soon um but yeah you can get one of those home saas that also have the red light
 
therapy in it yeah yeah yeah I think I think that's huge um from what I've done with research is very beneficial for your body there you go let me know let me know what you what you find out I will I'll definitely let you know on that so I love what you guys are doing out in La you know really maximizing what that current law is out there do you see yourself you know you guys possibly getting into the multif family space of large multif family because I know that's what when you and I first met we
 
we were doing that all that you see yourself going back into that route sure man I mean when the market makes sense and I'm not saying it doesn't make sense but I I don't have a fully build out team right that that's able to find and identify great deals and that takes that takes a lot takes time effort all that exactly so I don't have that fully built out team but when it makes sense to partner with somebody that does have that team and I like the deal certainly certainly no I I don't I don't blame you
 
I think right now there's still a huge disconnect um I will have to agree with Grant cordone on this is that um I watched a video and he said um right now it's going to be very difficult to put push rents which I've said before and I agree with uh he's given a timeline about 2026 and then uh from there he feels that rents are going to Skyrocket substanti I you know right now it's going be very difficult push R you're not going to be able to for a good couple years so how are you undering you know back in the
 
day right after covid with the c rate compression everyone's underwriting four five 7% rent growth you know every single year and it's like you can't do that now and that's when I I saw the really the writing on the wall um and then from there you know if if that it's going to be like that for the next couple years till 2026 you know after that is it going to spike or is it not you know there's going to be a lot of Supply coming on the market how how what's it going to look like you know it's unpredictable man it's tough
 
anybody that tells you that they know the answer they they don't know they might be taking a good guess but they don't know they don't know I think you're going to see a lot of people switch asset classes like we did you know we're in the car War sector we're going to stay in the car War sector um you know will we get into Hospitality or retail here in Charlotte I mean I'd be dumb not to get into retail here in Charlotte or Hospitality we all know Charlotte's booming um it's a wild City so you getting our hands on great
 
property great real estate it may make sense yeah you you got to stay Nimble you got to stay Nimble you you can't just uh you can't just stay in one vertical one industry one asset type just because that's you know what you've done in the past corre that might not make sense right now today's market I think we saw a lot of sponsors in 2023 get into that situation where uh you know they were all in multif family and they couldn't pivot as fast enough and now they all have coaching programs or they're all doing something
 
you know because they have to keep the lights on at the end of the day acquisition feeds to keep the lights on and the employees in the office yeah yeah I think they got I think a lot of folks felt pressured to stay in multif family because they've always preached it right they preached to their investors multifam is it like that this is the the thing the only thing right and now they're going to go and oh what if I pivot and say that you know car washes or something they had a they had trouble
 
kind of changing their message but in in all honesty you know that's fine you can change your message you can change your M data is always coming to us every single second we got these cell phones that are pushing data to us and if you find data that's valuable enough to make a pivot do it right you know that's what we did we said look multif family doesn't make sense it's not going to make sense for the next three to four years in our opinion it's going to be very difficult to push rents so if you
 
want cash flow you come invest with us with our multi or our car washes they are high cash flow and great thing they're also High tax benefits so if you want High cash flow and high tax benefits come invest in in our car washes but multif family doesn't make sense right now you know we say all time with adus we're like look there's a very small window we think here in California where we can maximize the value of these single family properties that are on a decent sized lot and we can crotch it in
 
this but we and and this is the way to go instead of multif family right now because the market is different 100% it's different for 4 years ago nothing has changed right four years ago multif family was right and it has been but now it might not be most definitely and I think it's super important to keep your investors well educated ahead of time because you're going to raise and we don't get me wrong we have investors that have been with us for all six years of since we've had the company and some
 
of them are like hey it's a new asset class we want to see how you do yeah you know then we have someone's like hey we've been with you six years here take it we know you're going to do good exactly you know so they're all going to have a different appetite and it's just very important to keep them well educated and it goes back communication communicate with them not only you're communicating with them on the deals that you have but communicate with them with what your company's doing you know
 
what you're pivoting to what you're seeing in the market we went from monthly updates to all of our investor base not just uh or so all of our sites we do bi-weekly but with uh our all of our investors that are in our database we now do every Saturday at 12 o'clock you get our Saturday edition of our weekly update yeah so we're updating you on a weekly basis now on just general stuff what's going on the market what are we seeing what are we reading you know everything so you can be well adversed and and knowledgeable about the
 
space yeah for sure and I think in this environment it makes sense right CU it's it's a lot more unpredictable now especially during an election year than it was let's say a few years ago when everything's just through the roof everything's just going up you can you can tell me today what it's going to be next week and next month guess what everything's going up everything's fine but now it's like Bitcoin you don't know right now it's different yeah every single day is a new day you don't know what's going to happen yeah and it's and
 
it's super important cuz we have a crazy election coming up especially with the events that have occurred you know with both sides of the party we have a crazy election coming up so you know it's also going to create a crazy Market environment like I said I think pow's going to drop rates quarter a point before the election happens I think so um and and you know one part is going to say look they're doing the job you know and uh so I think it's going to be a wild election I think wildest election
 
we've ever seen but I think it's also important to go out there and whoever you want to vote for go vote you know I think that's super important because that will dictate how the economy is going to be uh situated in 2025 and Beyond yeah agreed agreed so Seth wealth of knowledge I love what you guys are doing in California um when you get back out here I know you only get back out here about once a year but when you get back out here let's have you back on the podcast to hear what you guys you know
 
have accomplished out there in the California Market with that very Niche uh opportunity that you're seeing that the government's allowing so I love what you guys are doing out there let's stay in touch I really enjoyed you coming on absolutely man appreciate by brother thank you for tuning in to the chrisner show we hope you enjoyed today's episode and gained valuable insight to help you along your journey don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform if you have
 
any questions or topics that you would like to cover feel free to reach out directly to me shoot me a message on Instagram at chrisoro uncore until next time keep pushing forward and stay inspired
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8RiGLlZMA&t=2732s
https://www.instagram.com/p/DE2qgrkTWCJ/
https://www.instagram.com/chris_salerno_/
https://www.facebook.com/qccapitalgroup/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/qc-capital/
https://www.facebook.com/chris.salerno/
https://www.threads.com/@chris_saerno_?xmt=AQF0aeyEZLe6NARr-e497ZYNtYK2VL_qriOgoDgSzUhsoa8
https://www.linkedin.com/in/salernochris/https://qccapitalgroup.com/
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en

Title: Million Dollar Monday - Joe Fairless
In this episode, Seth Bradley and Joe Fairless, Joe Fairless reveals that he made both his first and last million dollars through apartment deal exits. Although Joe Fairless lost his first million on his very first deal, his net worth eventually surpassed one million dollars after exiting his seventh or eighth apartment investment. Joe Fairless emphasizes the power of maintaining a singular focus on multifamily investing as the foundation of his continued success, reinforcing his well-known mantra that “riches are in the niches.”
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/WmNK-UcCUa4
Bullet Point Highlights:
First and last million came from apartment deal exits
Lost his first million on his very first deal
Reached $1 million net worth after the seventh or eighth deal
Focused entirely on multifamily apartment investing
Believes in the philosophy: "Riches are in the niches"
Plans to continue scaling by sticking with apartment deals
Transcript:
Joe Fairless (00:00.11)
So how did you make your first million dollars?
 
Same way I made my last one. So spoiler alert, it's selling when a deal exited. was probably like the seventh or eighth deal. One million dollars on one transaction, right? Is that true?
 
It's a million dollars in your net worth.
 
So...
 
What puts you over the edge there? How did you grow that first million?
 
Seth Bradley (00:29.962)
I lost my first million before I ever came across it. That was on the very first deal. It would probably be through an exit of a deal.
 
Sure, yeah and I'll bet it's probably similar. mean how are you gonna, how are you planning on making your next million dollars? Same thing, the apartments. All about apartments man, I love it. Singular focus, that's where it's at. mean, riches are in the niches.
 
same thing.
 
Seth Bradley (00:57.775)
Yep.
Yup. Yup. Awesome
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Joe Fairless’s Links:
https://www.facebook.com/imjoefairless
https://x.com/joefairless
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joefairless/
https://ashcroftcapital.com/our-team/joe-fairless/
https://www.instagram.com/besteverpodcast/?hl=en

Title: The 1% Closer - Joe Fairless
In this episode, Joe Fairless emphasizes that what sets him apart from others is consistently doing what he says he will do, both to others and to himself. Joe Fairless focuses on character over reputation, believing that who you are when no one is watching matters far more than how others perceive you. He explains that true discipline and integrity are measured by keeping promises to yourself, whether it’s finishing a solo run, sticking to a commitment, or getting up with your alarm when you said you would. Joe Fairless reminds listeners that real success begins with accountability and the quiet moments when no one else is watching.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/X5Vqd1AifiE
Bullet Point Highlights:
Stands out by consistently doing what they say they'll do
Focuses on character, not reputation — character is who you are when no one’s watching
Values self-discipline and holding personal promises
Examples include finishing personal challenges and getting up with the alarm
Belief: integrity is shown in how you act when no one else is holding you accountable
Transcript:
Alright, you're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do. What is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field?
 
I do what I say I'm gonna do and sadly that separates me from a lot of people, not all people. That's a big focus of mine. And it's not about my... I recently read something that resonated and that was don't focus on your reputation, focus on your character. A reputation is such a vanity metric but the character is who you are when no one's looking and being proud of who you are and that's vital to me.
 
Yeah, and it's not just saying what you're going to do to other people, but also with yourself, right? To yourself.
 
Good point. Yeah, I'm on those runs and I can just stop whenever I want, but I'll know. I'll know I didn't go through this made up finish line that I had predetermined in my head. And there's something to be said there. I'm glad you brought that up.
 
For sure. Yeah, that's the key, right? It's not just when somebody, when it's dependent on somebody else or somebody else is watching. It's, you know, what do you do when nobody's watching and what do you do when it's just a promise to yourself? Do you follow through? Do you keep those promises? Things as easy as, when you set your alarm in the morning and you wake up, do you get up or do hit the snooze button? Like you made a promise to yourself the night before to wake up and get up when that alarm goes off. Do you keep that promise?
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
Joe Fairless’s Links:
https://www.facebook.com/imjoefairless
https://x.com/joefairless
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joefairless/
https://ashcroftcapital.com/our-team/joe-fairless/
https://www.instagram.com/besteverpodcast/?hl=en

Title: Why the W-2 Grind Will Never Make You Wealthy with Jamie Bateman
In this episode, Jamie Bateman shares his inspiring journey from being a competitive athlete and military officer to becoming a successful entrepreneur in real estate and mortgage note investing. Jamie Bateman emphasizes the importance of discipline, teamwork, and taking ownership of one’s financial situation to achieve lasting success.
Throughout the conversation, Jamie Bateman discusses his transition from a W2 job to entrepreneurship, explaining how he leveraged his experiences and strengths to build multiple streams of income. Jamie Bateman offers valuable insights into his current business model centered around mortgage note investing, explaining the key differences between performing and non-performing notes, and describing both the challenges and opportunities within this specialized field.
The discussion with Jamie Bateman also underscores the importance of long-term planning, continuous learning, and maintaining discipline as the foundation for achieving true financial freedom and flexibility in life.
Links to Listen and Subscribe:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-military-officer-to-mortgage-note-master-one-mans/id1618672867?i=1000643495099
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nU0TtMAFc
Bullet Point Highlights:
Athlete to Entrepreneur: Jamie shares how his background in competitive sports instilled a sense of discipline and teamwork.
Financial Ownership: Jamie discusses the importance of taking ownership of your financial situation and actively seeking improvement.
W2 Quitter: The transition from a stable government job to entrepreneurship reflects Jamie’s journey of self-discovery and ambition.
Mortgage Note Investing: Jamie provides insights into both performing and non-performing notes, illustrating how to generate passive income through debt investing.
Value of Networking: He emphasizes the necessity of building a strong network for finding investment opportunities in mortgage notes.
Continuous Learning: Jamie advocates for lifelong learning, suggesting that successful people always seek new knowledge and skills.
Long-Term Vision: He stresses the importance of setting long-term goals and reverse planning to maintain focus on achieving one’s aspirations.
Transcript:
Jamie what's going on brother welcome to the show thanks Seth this is this is awesome um I'm excited to be here and I'm hoping to add some value absolutely man third time's a charm we've been trying to get this scheduled after I was on your show which was fantastic had a really good time uh on that show and I think it turned out pretty good so I know we're gonna absolutely we're gonna deliver on this one as well yeah we're GNA try to try to I'll try to do as good a job as you did so yeah that was that
 
was uh yeah no I that was a very very good episode from adversity to abundance I would highly recommend your your listeners check that one out to your episode on that show so thanks for thanks for doing that absolutely man you're an incredible interviewer I've I've that's the only uh I've been on dozens of podcasts and you know you pulled out a lot of things for me that I've I've never talked about on the air so it's pretty pretty awesome pretty awesome show man appreciate that cool man well let's just jump right into your
 
background man what's your story um take it back as far as you'd like to brother yeah um man uh I'd like to think that life has phases so I've had a few different phases in in my life um you I come from a a large uh family I'm I'm the oldest of seven kids and we always had a competitive uh background as far as team sports and things like that so um I played lacrosse in college that was always a foundational piece of of uh my life and just kind of I think from there learned how to be a part of something
 
bigger than myself and how to work toward a common goal with a with a team so that's been something that's been a a kind of a thread through my life and then um got married and uh joined the military and um actually joined the military technically before I got married but seemed like I got married and then ran off and and uh ran away from my wife but it's not exactly what happened but uh joined the military was an officer in the in the US Army did I did miss my first three wedding anniversaries through deployment and
 
things like that um and again it was a matter of trying to be plugged into something you know to serve and be a part of something bigger than myself and trying to trying to add value like I think we all we all want to do um I've obviously glossed over a lot of lot of details but those were uh a couple of inflection points I guess if you will um like you like to talk about I know um and so my military career transitioned into uh a a career with the Department of Defense as a civilian and um did 14
 
years as a civilian with DOD at Fort me and the first half so the first seven for all you math whizzes out there uh was full-time and then the second half the second seven years was part-time and that seven years is when I was really building my businesses which are largely um real estate investing and mortgage node investing Focus so we can get into the details there and then in 2022 I ended up quitting my job and and um now I have a few different small businesses that I run and like you Seth I've got a got a
 
lot of different things that I'm juggling and uh you know so but yeah I love talking about taking ownership of of your financial situation and taking ownership of your your life really and um I know that you and I have that comment so yeah that's a that's a high level overview of my background awesome man I appreciate that that there's a lot to unpack there you know going back to you know playing sports all the way up to the Collegiate level that's incredible I always like to to think even playing like poporn or football
 
back in the day you need a way to instill discipline in yourself and I I that's kind of the the oldest memory I can think of where it was hard right like it was like you've got a coach screaming at you like back in the day it's like you know they wouldn't give you water unless you like you know for like an hour which I don't think they do that anymore now but you know you had to earn that drink of water and and all those sorts of things but you you really learned what it's like to to work hard and you really learned what discipline
 
was all about and I would say that and you can you can expand on this but yeah I would say that you know being in the military yourself that takes it to a whole new level right it's like you you you got that from Sports you got that from the military yeah definitely I mean obviously they're very different in a lot of ways but that is certainly a common theme is is being disciplined and um and people people shy away from that word um because it just sounds like work or or no fun and no flexibility but I found that having
 
discipline in your life ends up adding more freedom in a sense um because you kind of have your foundational pieces set in stone you don't have to think about those and so um yeah regarding team sports it's it's really a matter of um you know everyone doing their part right and so there's a level of individual discipline and um and then just and then also just kind of putting the putting the group ahead of yourself um obviously the you know you want individual there's nothing wrong with individual accolades and I I was
 
certainly uh chasing you know those individual accolades it's not something I shied away from I was you know I definitely was wrapped up in trying to be an All-American and um that kind of thing and and did get that a couple of times you know but it at the end of the day nobody really cares about that and um the way I viewed it was if I was doing my part and I got those you know if I was scoring goals in Lacrosse as an example that means I'm contributing to you know to the team right and so there's obviously a fine
 
line there but of going too far either way um but yeah that discipline is critical you know even C I played at a high level in college and and there was year round you're training you're you're uh you're into it it was a division three school but it but the reality was we worked just as hard as any any D1 program and um yeah it's it's a these are skills that have paid off and are absolutely transferable to the rest of of life for sure yeah I think you've got to get those those intangible things you've got to develop
 
them somewhere along the way whatever whatever that is if that's Sports the military or you know from your parents I mean you can get it from different places but you definitely need it I mean you know we're in different stages of our life at this point we're talking about a lot we like talk about freedom and flexibility and fun um to try to get away from kind of the W2 uh mindset but in order to achieve Freedom flexibility and fun in a successful way you had you have to be disciplined to be able to get
 
there you you had to have done something successfully to be able to get there or maybe what separates you from you know the guy living in a van down by the river right like that guy that guy has Freedom flexibility um I don't know about fun maybe fun but yeah but you know it's it's a different obviously it's a it's a different outcome yeah and I I I still I think I still need you know I still use a lot of discipline today it's still still required but it's I guess I guess it's self-imposed and um you know I just love
 
love having that flexibility and that freedom um that comes along with being an entrepreneur so yeah it's been a central piece to my success for sure um but I I I still I don't think it ever you know goes away I just get to pick and choose what you know what discipline I want to kind of enforce on myself I guess um so yeah absolutely and and and as you said I the military was a huge part of that for me as well I mean that's a different kind of different kind of discipline and different kind of teamwork and different you know if you
 
lose a lacrosse game okay you lost the lacrosse game but military the stakes are a little higher um so maybe certain things are more important attention to detail are crit is critical and um but at the end of the day it's yeah it's that the same principles apply across both I I guess sectors if you will for sure for sure so let's dive into that that transition you started working kind of part-time there for seven years so that seems like a transitional period how are you able to progress from you
 
know that W2 and what what I've heard you say is call yourself a W2 quitter and I love that um you know how were you able to progress from a W2 person to a W2 quitter what enabled you to do that and what that transition looked like I mean you know I do remember in 2015 probably a little bit maybe maybe say 2014 but I just you get you know I had a wife and two kids and I had the commute the long commute that I I know a lot of people can identify with so um it it just was Groundhog Day it was the same
 
thing over and over and over and that's not me sitting here complaining about my family or having a having the opportunity to work um but after a while it gets old let's just be real right so it's like you're sitting in traffic and I just you start looking at you know I was I worked for the government and you look around you say who okay who's sort of ahead of me on this like you like I I think you probably mentioned on our on your your show on my my show your episode um you look around to the people
 
who are more kind of Al further along the path than you you say do you want to be that person is that the life you want and man I did not want that and um it just just having that just super long-term just you know the pot at the end of the rainbow I guess uh nothing driving me in the in the interum man it was it was just it was brutal so I probably did a little woes me for a little bit there a little victim mentality for a bit but then you start to realize like okay if you don't take ownership of your own life no one's
 
going to right so no one's going to come in and do this for you so I'm not sure what truly you know created the change in my mindset but my mindset absolutely started to change and I just made a shift and I and I stopped watching cable news I stopped uh just you know stopped paying attention to all the things that I can't control and I couldn't control back then and and started saying no what do I have what are my strengths who is in my who's back to the team thing who's on my team who's you know who's in my
 
network that I can add value to and who can add value to me so I started looking around and um you know my father was a realtor for many years my brother was a loan officer I we had uh one rental property at the time and so and IID worked at a I didn't mention I worked at a title company and I worked for a mortgage broker before as well briefly so I had this experience that a lot of people don't have and that's you know that that doesn't mean I'm better than anyone it just means these are my strengths so let's point to that and
 
let's use that so I started really being intentional about focusing on my strengths and my assets that I had in my life right and then another asset that I used to see as a liability was the time in the car so I started listening to podcasts oh you know and and then it turned into wait I don't even want to go into work yet because this this podcast episode is amazing and I'm learning so much you know Bigger Pockets and all the other real estate podcasts and different investing podcasts and um started using
 
that mental bandwidth instead of focusing on National media stories that I have zero influence over uh here's something that I can actually take action on and so um in mid 2015 uh I I I went part-time and and just so happens that at uh DOD it's one of the few agencies in the in the federal government where you can go part-time and still keep your benefits so I still had health insurance for my family you know most people don't have that option necessarily but oh oh well I did so that's what I did and and um you
 
know that's uh again decided decided to start building my my other streams of income outside of my W2 um had my circumstances been different if I was single I probably would have just quit the whole thing right but I was able to have that kind of laded approach I guess or tiered approach to kind of ripping off the Band-Aid yeah yeah no that that that's awesome I love just the idea of of taking ownership of your your life right like everybody has those moments where they're feeling sorry fors um but but the successful people they
 
don't sit there and stay in that that mindset they they move on they you're going to be there sometimes but you've got to get out of and you got to say okay what what can I control what can I change and you don't say you don't give other people the power to control you and your mindset and how you feel about your life right like that's that's that's the thing like if if you if you're constantly blaming someone else or saying this happened to me rather what can I do to get myself out of it then you're going to be stuck there
 
forever you're you're going to be you're going to be spinning your wheels forever um and a lot of that I think helps because you said you don't listen you don't watch the news I don't either it's a waste of time what control what does that do for us it's if I do watch it I literally do it for entertainment and you look at it as an entertain I look at it like I'm watching sports almost absolutely I I look at it like this is funny like I can you know what I mean you kind of analyze like this is funny
 
this guyy saying this in a debate this guy's saying that it's not taking it as fact and news and this is how I should live my life because of what they're saying absolutely and it's not to say that none of these topics are you know important right I mean right Glo Global you know war or I mean politics poverty global warming whatever that's all very important but I have zero control over it almost zero right and then um you know the other thing is fear sells and that's that's what they're selling and so doesn't mean that every
 
story is invented and it's all fake fake news but it it just doesn't serve me and so I'd rather focus on you know go ground up and kind of uh you just I see it in people maybe older people in my own life now who maybe are retired and and they watch the news all day and it's like they won't travel because they saw a news story that the airports are packed or something and you know it's I'm sure that story was was accurate right but it but the but the news can filter out and and you end up only focusing on the negative really and
 
it just didn't serve me so yeah um during that La the second seven years I was able to build out my wife and I were doing single family real estate investing and doing a lot of the Burr method that maybe some of your your audience is familiar with uh um and so kind of putting that Capital back into the the rental property um machine and expanding our portfolio um and then eventually last year Well in in 2018 I made the pivot I kept the rental properties but made a pivot to also add on mortgage not
 
investing and that's been my primary focus as of late um and uh if you want I can tell the story quickly about how I actually quit my job in 2022 I I think it's kind of kind of a funny one absolutely let's do it all right so um I uh so two years ago uh I was playing bad mitton and um I'd been doing now mind you I used to be like tough you know athlete and like I did you know did Jiu-Jitsu for three years right up before this and you know used to lift Waits a lot and still do it here and there but you know I think I'm tough
 
right and uh ruptured my achilles playing bad mitton so that's an ego blow uh to add on to the physical pain that you know especially with the recovery so I ruptured my achilles a little over two years ago today and um I was out of work it was my right right foot and the reason I bring this up is not for sympathy but um to say you know I couldn't drive for three months so I actually yeah and I had tons of leave from from work and by this time I was tired really tired of my I was pretty much checked out like I think you you
 
might have been at your uh your big law uh job but um that's right I was I was checked out I mean I I wasn't the best employee at this point and so I took as much leave as I as I could you know reasonably right and so but couldn't drive and so I was out for three months and I come back so come back into work and I'd had discussions with my wife about about leaving it was just a matter of of when not if um I can tell you truthfully had no idea that I was going to quit this day but I came back in from
 
having been out for three months mind you no one gave me a call no one from work no one from my management gave me a call the entire three months I was out other than to say to ask me are you vaccinated because you have to be vaccinated to be to get inside the building now I don't want this to turn into some controversial vaccine discussion or get your your podcast banned from something but um yes I'd been vaccinated to to answer the question but no one asked me how's your how's your recovery going like how what
 
do you you know how's your life you know what's it's just are you vaccinated you need to get that shot before you come in okay great thanks I really feel welcome here so I'm already just you know you know what screw this place right um come back in and just go to my desk and this is this is an office space kind of thing where I go to my desk and there's some there's an a force kid at my desk and long story short they' kind of move me somewhere else without telling me I can't find my desk I finally find it
 
it's got a box with my name on it with you know monitors sideways and all and clearly not a functioning uh desk and um you know office space so I literally quit that day and I just say that it's just like I knew 100% I was done I my wife didn't know I was I quit but I I quit that day still worked for another month or two but I I was there was no question zero question in my mind I'm done with this place so uh that was March of 2022 and ever since then I've just focused on building out my businesses and having
 
looked back that's awesome sometimes you just know right like sometimes it's time you just knew I I love that story man for me it was a little bit you already know the story but you know for me it was a little bit more of someone else's decision I got fired I mean and men that you know you you weren't the best employee at that point correct you know I knew the same thing and it's great to have awareness and perspective and kind of looking back now you're like I would have done the same thing like this guy
 
doesn't want to be here his output isn't what it should be like nope he's got he's got to go I mean he's not he's not the best employee and and as a you know as a business owner now I can you know I have really good perspective of that and and seeing that and they did they were doing me a favor by being like hey like your heart's not in it is it and I'm like no it's not it's not yeah yeah the reality is for me it's really hard to work you know when once you go part-time I mean I knew I was casting a vote
 
against my career progression there so as soon as I went part-time in 2015 I wasn't saying I'm in this for the Long Haul guys this is this is my focus you know it's the writing's somewhat on the wall looking back it's almost surprising I lasted as long as I did um but so yeah uh haven't looked back and just love love the entrepreneurial you know day-to-day and freedom that you alluded to and and just the multiple streams of income and certainly has its challenges I I probably work harder now than ever
 
than I ever have um but it's by choice right so I love it exactly same here man I mean it's you know my my days are long I mean I I get up way before I used to get up when I when I had a 95 I worked past when I would have worked a 9 to-5 and it definitely more hours but when you're doing it for yourself and you're doing it because you're working towards something that you believe in yeah it doesn't feel like it's you're putting that much time in definitely I I wake up early a lot of days it's not not on
 
purpose it's because I'm just excited to get Kracken so yeah yeah absolutely yeah well let's let's kind of get into your current business I know you you had mentioned that you focused on your strengths and your assets um and you know I think it's important I'll just I'll just say it's important to take an inventory of what your strengths are when you're kind of considering going into something else um because a lot of our listeners are attorneys they're doctors folks like that they kind of feel like maybe they're they're pigeon
 
hold right like well if I'm not an attorney what the hell else can I do right like I don't know anything about real estate investing or node investing or starting a business or anything like that but if you really take a step back you you probably have a lot of skills that you've learned and honed in your career that you can use for something else moving forward and that was that's what you were able to do definitely and one thing I'd say is that um you know one thing that's always comforting for
 
me is nobody knows everything right so you can always find somebody who knows more than you in a certain area um you know there's one quote about every man is my Superior in in in something right so um basically it gets me a lot of comfort to know like just because an attorney listening to your show knows way more than I do about a particular topic and probably many many other topics that doesn't mean I'm less of a person or you know I don't know more than that attorney does in another area so it's
 
okay I'm never going to know everything there are other people who've already figured it out so um you know that's that's always comforting to me is and when I say look to your strength it's also looking to the people in your network who know and can help you get to where you want to go um so yeah I mean so many things we take for granted that we do know and um you know example when I started working at a title company fresh out of college because it was my first real job and it paid you know a a
 
salary um I realized quickly how little I knew about title insurance settlements you know just just basic stuff now looking back pretty basic stuff but you don't know that unless you work for a title company or you're heavily involved in this you don't you're not trained in that in school typically right so you know you forget and so your your listener out there the the attorney the doctor I guarantee they have a lot of life experience not just from their professional world but just life experience that that they shouldn't take
 
for granted and the fact that you can go through law school and then be you know Be an Effective attorney or go through medical school and Be an Effective doctor that that means you you can learn things right and so again I go back to life has Seasons I mean you've shown that in your own story Seth like you know um it's uh it doesn't mean just because I started a certain business doesn't mean that's going to be what I'm going to be doing for the next 20 years or just because I'm an attorney now
 
doesn't mean that's what I have to do for the rest of my life so we always have options I mean you might look back and wish you'd done something differently or something but you only have one chance at this and so you know you just make the most of it and and just keep I think keep learning constantly um is critical I I just hired a business coach we've had one call um but one of his motos is um you know one of his sayings is that he's always he's in permanent beta so he's always changing always improving he's always
 
growing so I'm trying to trying to implement that as well yeah I love that permanent beta I haven't heard that before but I like that I like that phrase like that phrase um so tell me about your current business tell me about mortgage node investing start with the basics um sure what is it yeah so and and I'll try to keep it uh there's so much to it but again none of it is difficult it's just a lot of moving parts and you've got to you know it takes time to learn um we buy debt so we buy a mortgage note
 
and that could be performing or non-performing the the real highlevel version is is um a performing note is kind of like a a long-term Buy and Hold rental property but you're buying the debt and becoming the lender becoming the bank if you will um and so you're buying that performing note for cash flow so I buy a performing note the barer now pays me through a loan servicer and I get monthly payments so that's a great way to go the the problem with that is you can't really add value to that asset very well you're kind of
 
it is what it is and in fact with mortgage notes the value actually goes down over time generally speaking because the principal balance goes down so it's just it's worth less than you know than uh you know than it would than it was when you bought it then on the other side the non-performing side of things we buy those uh as well and those are more like a Fix and Flip property so um although we're still buying the debt we're not buying the property but there's a chance to add value There's an opportunity to buy distressed asset and
 
add value to that asset and then sell that that non-performing note either well I should say sell that asset whether that's as a rep performing note or as uh through the the real estate itself there there are a few different ways you can exit a non-performing uh note deal and but but back to your kind of one of the the themes um thus far one of the reasons I got into specifically that space was that I understood the real estate space so I understood the single family residential real estate space so it wasn't a huge
 
leap for me to go from owning the property to now owning the debt on that property whereas it would have been a lot bigger leap for me to say oh I want to start buying distressed you know multif family debt um which I know you could probably help me understand better but that you know it's like incremental progress and and and change isn't that scary so I kind of expanded my um you know toolbox if you will and got into the mortgage note space so we have a couple of note funds one is open um currently and they're they're they're
 
all for accredited investors um and uh the the income fund that's open pays a monthly uh aims to pay a a monthly uh per referred return I know you and a lot of your listeners are attorneys so I got to hold the line here and uh so the fund is structured to pay uh to aim to pay a a monthly return uh of 8% it's not a there's no growth in that fund it's literally a cash flow play and um diversification play you're putting your your capital in we buy assets across the country we we've bought notes in in probably 25 States at this point
 
um and so the investment is Diversified across Geographic areas across borrower types and um you know we buy for a certain yield we take a small management fee and then we um ideally uh pay a pay the preferred return that we're aiming for to our to our investors yeah nice 506c you're able to talk about it it's uh ACC credit investors only just want to throw that out there um so yeah I mean so just going back to the basics a little bit and we'll get back into the fund like how do you how do you even
 
find these things I mean how do you get started how do you find these things so I mean that is an ongoing challenge I'm not going to lie to you that's one of the the things that truthfully a a passive investor who doesn't have time to to develop the network to go find these assets they're just not going to have success um you know they might here and there but it takes time it's a it's a word of mouth industry just like real estate itself is and um so we've built out a network of of Sellers and you know that could
 
be quite honestly I I've never had luck buying directly from Banks it's really either a larger uh mortgage note fund that's closing so it might be a three-year fund and then they've got to they've got to liquidate they've got to figure out how to sell off what to do with these assets um and so that's a great opportunity to buy is just a fund that's closing or somebody a note investor who's getting out of note investing or they've had a life change or something um you know where they just uh there's an opportunity to buy from
 
them as well um and so there there are other you know I guess we buy from hedge funds note investors other note funds um those are there are also note Brokers as well out there um there are also some online exchanges like paper stack and a couple of others that you can go and I've bought and sold on on paper stack and other exchanges as well um and you know you can you can find assets there um but at the end of the day we have our list that we list of people that we work with regularly and I would say one thing
 
is that doing due diligence on a note seller is just as important as uh due diligence on the assets that they're selling and so it's it's taken some work and it's it's a work in progress always um but it is the million-dollar question is where do you where do you find these assets yeah so that's that's the hard part right that finding these assets is the hard part um have you ever had to foreclose on on any of these notes and actually acquire the property and I guess a followup question is do you ever
 
look at a non-performing note like hey I actually want to own that property great questions yeah great questions um to be clear we're not trying to kick people you know Grandma out on onto the street or anything like that um you know that's not our our goal typically well that's never our goal but we're never trying to kick someone out of their home um but the reality is some people honestly need a little bit of a kick in the pants and often times that's not really the best them staying in the house is not often
 
The best scenario for them I know that might sound sound harsh but at the end of the day if someone can't afford to live somewhere sometimes these people are living in squal and they really need a change of of environment um to answer your question about do we target the property yes sometimes we do in fact we just closed on two they're called uh heckum loans or reverse mortgages where the borrowers are deceased the property is underwater meaning you know the the loan amount is high greater than the
 
property value and it should be a quick exit through the property so HUD will sell off these uh big pool of of reverse mortgages and we were able to purchase two of them very recently it's a vacant property you're not doing an eviction borrower is deceased you've got to work through the airs or or foreclosure um and get and exit the property that way um if your listener wants to go to my website I've got a really good um it's a Jacksonville blog post I've got a couple of blog posts about this deal I still hold this rental
 
today and it was a non-performing note that we purchased a few years ago and um I had no intention of exiting through the property or holding holding the the property as a rental property but uh running the numbers it just was too good to to let go and so long story but we we uh you know ended up doing a deed in Lee of foreclosure actually in this case and got the property back and now it's a long-term Buy and Hold property for my own rental uh portfolio yeah that makes sense that makes sense there's there's always
 
multiple ways to look at an investment right um but it does sound you know is not something that that I've executed on myself but it sounds like this is an active business right and that's why you've put together an income fund for people that want to get involved passively um because as as everybody knows there's active Investments there's passive Investments if you're going to do something active maybe your returns are going to be a little bit better but you're going to give up a lot of time and effort to to get those returns
 
um so if you want to go to the passive side if you if you're still full-time in your career you're you're a full-time doctor or lawyer or or whatever you are you know these passive Investments are the way to go without having to know every single detail about a new business yeah and I don't know if you can see this but I I wore this specifically for your for this show there it is there it is passive income um you're absolutely right you know these gurus some of the some of the node investing gurus out
 
there will try to sell you know notes as passive um we have another blog post that talks about uh just the it's a spectrum there's active and passive on either end but at the end of the day if you're gonna node investing in my world is very very active and we have a non-performing note fund that's considerably more active than the Performing note fund so um you're dealing with foreclosures bankruptcies deed and L tracking delinquent property taxes do I have to physically go anywhere no but it is not passive um but
 
that's why we offer the passive investment to for you know people who like you said have maybe more Capital than time or energy and they want to put that Capital to work that's right there there are certain gurus out there that you know whatever it is that they are pitching it's they they tend to always pitch it as as passive even though it is an active business whether that's ma money yeah whether that's a mortgage note or I mean people pitch Airbnb short-term rentals as passive they're like well you can delegate this and you
 
can you know you can automate that and there's software for all these things but you still got to put all that stuff together you've still got to monitor all those things you you've still got to you still got to oversee all these different aspects of a business and that's what it is it's a business that you're running and it's not passive like it's not it's not and and it is on a spectrum some things are more passive than others but when you're inves in you know as a passive investor into some sort of a
 
fund or a syndication that's really leaning really far into the the passive side absolutely 100% and I and I'm as you are Seth I'm I'm I'm I I assume you are I know you're an active investor but I I do have passive Investments myself in other other funds other note funds and and my own my own note funds as well and so nothing wrong with doing both but I would say you need to be careful about you know you got to make a decision at some point do you want to scale this thing and and make this really a
 
business or do you do you are you satisfied with potentially a little bit lower return and you are giving up some control but much you know much fewer headaches and just a lot less work right right yeah and a lot of you know a lot of the listeners are high income earning professionals so they've already dedic put a lot of time and effort into being able ble to earn this much money from their W2 and absolutely that's probably your best bet to be honest with you I've been there I was in those shoes you're
 
probably better off putting your head down like let's grind for a few years let's let's not spend every single dollar that we make on all the new stuff on a on a new car every two years or every year in a bigger house that you don't need like let's set aside some of that and invest it passively and then maybe one of those will stick maybe one of those passive investments will be a mortgage note fund where you're like man I kind like this business like I like the sound of it I've learned about it
 
and then you start maybe progressing on the active side and maybe that takes over and and you want to get into that as a as a business as an entrepreneur but um a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water is to become a passive investor um that's the way that I did it into you know multif family syndications I invested passively in a number of deals first and kind of learned about it learned the ropes and I'm like I can do this and then that's when I made the transition yeah definitely it's it
 
really comes down to what you what your goals are and what your situation is for sure I I'll say I was too passive initially when I went into notes um because personally I just don't you're you're you were probably a little better student Seth not that I was a bad student but you know I I invest unless I'm actively in investing you know I'm just not going to learn a lot so the reality is yeah it's fine to learn about the asset class you definitely should learn about the operator for sure if you're putting Capital with them but
 
you're not going to once you're getting your checks and your dispersements you're not going to probably learn a whole lot about how to do that on the active side and so that's what we're here for yeah yeah it's more of like a spark of an interest right like may you already have that spark and then you invest passively then you're like okay well now I'm invested like let me learn about this you have to you have to actively go out there and educate yourself and network and talk to people that are in the business definitely 100
 
per. all right man before we jump into the Freedom Four you have one last gold nugget for our listeners oh man um I would say within when it comes to investing um you know take the long-term view um don't chase immediate returns um you know I do think just yeah it's certainly we all want to make a million dollars tomorrow but I think it's it's play the long game when it comes to investing I think that's critical love that man all right let's jump into the Freedom Four what's the best thing you do to keep your mind body
 
healthy yeah I mean one thing that I instituted this year actually um is breath work and it's um you know it's so it takes 10 minutes um and per day for me at least and it's been phenomenal and it's something that quite honestly as a as a you know athlete back in the day or even in the military I would have scoffed at something like this to be honest with you because it's just you know it's not manly or whatever it's like it is phenomenal so uh breath work I mean I do other things for sure but that's certainly this year it's been a
 
game Cher for me I just feel like it resets my central nervous system and it just gets me focused and uh I know there are other physiological benefits that you can ask uh Dr Andrew huberman or somebody else about cool I have to look into that actually have I mean obviously everybody talks about it's a Hot Topic I haven't gotten into it I haven't gotten into that plus like the cold plunges and that sort of thing um but I really want to explore that a little bit I don't know how much you can cut this out if we
 
don't have time but I had a I'm just going to be be open about this I just had a you know in late December I got a viral infection like a neuro virus and then I had I had a what I think was a pretty severe panic attack and it was super scary and so that's why I started uh doing this and somebody on my team actually sent me a a I guess we'll call it an implement or a tool that uh I use for the breath work it's BL there's a Bluetooth connection to your phone and it's pretty cool so it's structured and
 
back to that discipline right but um yeah so it's there was a reason I started doing it and um it's it's so accessible five to 10 minutes a day you can start doing it so yeah very cool highly recommend cool thanks for sharing that man um with all your success what is one limiting belief that you've crushed along the way and how did you get past it um I think just uh you know being afraid to you know that you have to be perfect right so um I used to be an editor back in the day and so many things would just not get done
 
or not get completed within our team our organization um because it had to be perfect and and it's like I think as I've progressed into more of the entrepreneurial lifestyle and and uh it's just it's not a it's not an option anymore um so um yeah I think just taking action has kind of overcome that limiting belief of of of chasing Perfection yeah yeah I can I can I can agree with you there done not perfect um as you know my background as an attorney I mean we're we're paid to be perfect like we can't make mistakes especially
 
in contracts and the way that we write things but when you kind of make that transition over to being an entrepreneur there's too much there's too much to to be to be perfect you got you just got to get it done good enough absolutely good enough has to you have to be open um willing to accept that for sure y what's one actionable step our listeners can do right now to start creating more freedom so I'll use the military here you can um which is where I learned U kind of reverse backwards planning reverse
 
planning so literally just and I'm not going to tell you I'm perfect at this um but you know think about what create a vivid vision for your life in in the next three to five years pick a pick three years out from today and what do you want your life to look like and then backwards plan and now I'm not saying you need to plan every minute of every day but you can be that will that will increase the urgency uh sense of urgency in your life and the intentionality of every every hour and every day because you realize this is
 
doable but I got to take ownership of of my current situation if I want this to be the reality in three years so I would say create a vivid vision and and kind of reverse or backwards plan to get there perfect perfect last but not least how has passive income made your life better yeah I mean I think in multiple ways but a big one that stands out is is giving me I guess we'll call it margin um to take some more risks on the entrepreneurial side and because I do have alternative sources of income
 
passive income um it's allowed me that kind of mental and financial bandwidth or margin to maybe invest in a company that even if it doesn't per go perfectly it doesn't go well it's not profitable that's okay I still have that cushion um for for me and my family so that's yeah it's a huge it's been a huge factor in that regard yeah absolutely Game Changer man it just changes your mindset changes your life in so many ways uh Jamie this has been incredible dude you've got so much great content to to share in your
 
brain man you got to get it out there um I know you've got an awesome podcast that I was on adversity to abundance everybody should check that out um other than that Jamie where else can people find out more about you yeah just two things I'll mention very quickly uh literally got my book delivered today like an hour before I hopped on here it's uh from adversity to abundance it is based on the podcast so I encourage your listener to check that out from adversity to abundance is the book that's out and then Labrador
 
lending.com l b r a d o r.com is where you can check us out all right man awesome I'll drop all that in the show notes thanks again for coming on brother thanks for having me Seth this has been great
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6nU0TtMAFc
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2sKtrAPX50/
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid029mGsZgw2DFvrvFV6QPkwf2U2ewUxCGoRmnjGvuBicaWmM9oHWbemP7NCVFFXz8jxl&id=100089126144055
 
Seth Bradley’s Links:
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
 
Jamie Bateman’s Links:
https://x.com/batemanjames
https://www.facebook.com/batemanjames
https://www.threads.com/@batemanjames11?
https://www.instagram.com/batemanjames11/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-bateman-5359a811/
https://labradorlending.com/about/

In this episode, Seth Bradley breaks down the financial landscape following the 2024 election, focusing on what to expect under Donald Trump’s anticipated presidency. Seth Bradley shares an optimistic outlook on how Trump’s return could stimulate the U.S. economy, creating new wealth-building opportunities in real estate, private equity, and emerging markets. Throughout the discussion, Seth Bradley explains key strategies for taking advantage of Trump’s pro-business agenda, including deregulation, tax incentives, and renewed support for American manufacturing.
Seth Bradley also highlights the importance of proactive investing in high-potential sectors such as real estate, capital raising, and cryptocurrencies to capitalize on the upcoming economic shift. By emphasizing increased investment activity, network-building, and leveraging favorable regulations, Seth Bradley provides a clear roadmap for maximizing returns while managing risks in this evolving financial environment.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFD3v9ERpNI&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=3\
Bullet Point Highlights:
Pro-Business Environment: Trump’s presidency is expected to create a pro-business atmosphere with decreased government intervention.
Deregulation and Opportunities: Anticipated deregulation will likely open up new financial avenues and incentivize investment in real estate.
Real Estate Boom: A predicted resurgence in real estate investment is positioned as one of the most lucrative opportunities during Trump’s term.
Capital Raising Simplified: Reduced scrutiny on capital raising will facilitate more investment opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors.
Tax Benefits Forecast: The return of substantial tax incentives, including retroactive bonus depreciation, will benefit real estate investors significantly.
Crypto as a Key Component: The speaker notes the potential for increased investment in cryptocurrencies, positioning it as an essential part of modern investment strategies.
Building a Network: Emphasis on establishing a strong investor network preemptively to capitalize on emerging opportunities in the evolving economic landscape.
Transcript:
(Seth Bradley)
the election is over and guess what you're still not wealthy and you're still not in Nazi Germany but Donald Trump is about to make a lot of people rich and I plan on being one of them if you're smart you will too whether you love him or you hate him there's one thing you can't deny when he's in office the economy moves money shifts New Opportunities open up and old ones disappear and if you know where to look you can set yourself up to win big in 25 so I'm going to break down exactly how I plan to capitalize on Trump's return
 
from real estate investing to Capital raising to attx strategies so you can get ahead of the game and build some serious wealth let's get into it all right let's start with the big picture if Trump is in office this is what you can expect deregulation and business growth Trump has always been Pro business pro- entrepreneur and anti-g a that means less government interference fewer roadblocks for businesses and a pro capitalist environment expect them to cut funding to agencies like the SEC the IRS and
 
other regulatory bodies that slow down investment and deal making so also expect more tax incentives for small businesses investors and real estate developers and of course tariffs right America First manufacturing Trump has made it very clear he's bringing Manufacturing back to the US expect tffs on China Mexico and other foreign producers forcing companies to reinvest in American infrastructure factories and real estate so what does that mean that means more demand for industrial real estate warehouses and Logistics hubs
 
right here in the US and guess who's already looking at those opportunities this guy next think about stock market volatility private Market opportunity things like that the stock market will always be a roller coaster investors will Panic foreign economies will overreact to tariffs and our economy will overreact to Mean Tweets but the real money it's going to be in the private markets real estate funds direct Investments small businesses smart investors will pull money out of the stock market and put it into hard assets
 
and that's where the real opportunity is let's talk specifics next now that we know what's coming let's talk about where the money is moving and how I'm going to capitalize number one of course real estate real estate is about to explode again Trump is a real estate guy he's going to bring back policies to favor investors I'm calling it now 100% bonus depreciation is coming back and it'll be retroactive that means massive tax writeoffs for Real Estate Investors making syndication funds and Commercial properties even
 
more attractive Trump will push for more opportunity zones making it easier to defer and reduce capital gains taxes by investing in you know it real estate and we're going to see lower regulation which means easier development faster approvals and more investor-friendly lending so what am I doing doubling down on multif family things like self storage and especially industrial real estate also raising Capital raising Capital aggressively to get in before the next wave of incentives positioning myself to capitalize on tax advantages
 
while everyone else plays catchup that's the key start thinking about your real estate play now number two raising Capital will be easier than ever under Trump trump will likely gut the sec's budget of course he's already doing it now which means less scrutiny on private Capital raising more capital is going to flow into the private Equity markets syndications and alternative assets fewer restrictions on fundraising advertising and deal structuring those sorts of things and institutional investors will reallocate big money to
 
private markets as the economy shifts so what am I doing specifically scaling up my Capital raising strategies for these syndications for funds for fun to funds using especially 506c offerings to publicly Market deals and attract accredited investors and positioning funds to take in institutional Capital that's going to be fleeing the stock market and that volatility and getting into the private markets and number three a lot of people hate him for this but it's true and it's going to happen happen the rich get richer so you better
 
play the game to win Trump won so expect major tax cuts for businesses and investors in a pro capitalism Market expect lower corporate tax rates more deductions for business owners and a friendlier tax code for those who actually know how to use it he'll defund the IRS and possibly eliminate it all together we'll see he's talked about the external Revenue Service replacing it we'll see but anyways less audits less enforce less aggressiveness from the IRS if it even exists anymore this will favor
 
business owners investors in high net worth individuals so what am I doing structuring my investments to take full advantage of bonus depreciation and tax loopholes using cost segregation studies to maximize tax deductions on real estate and remember it's highly likely predicting it now 100% bonus depreciation will be restored and on top of that be retroactive to the previous few years so I'll be advising High net worth investors on how to legally keep more of their money number four investing in
 
crypto and Bitcoin Trump is pro crypto and creating massive tax shelters and deregulating this will be the perfect storm for another crypto Bull Run so start setting some money aside for crypto it's got to be part of your portfolio get educated make sure you know what you're doing invest wisely and again make it a major part of your portfolio moving forward and if you're still playing by the old rules W2 income stock market Investments zero tax strategy you're going to get left behind that's all all right so here's what I'm
 
doing right now to prepare number one stacking up capital for real estate deals before these policies actually shift number two building a bigger investor Network because when the floodgates open it's going to be too late I've got to be ready I've got to build that Network number three structuring my business entities to take full advantage of tax benefits number four focusing on Industrial real estate and always multif family as well because if Trump brings back us manufacturing that's where the
 
Gold Rush will be number five using my legal and investment expertise to help investors navigate and win in this new economy huge help you guys out along the way number six investing in Bitcoin and crypto crypto As Trump is pro crypto and creating massive tax shelters deregulating is going to be huge look guys this is not about politics it's about understanding how money moves and positioning yourself now ahead of time to get ahead of the curve so here's the deal you can either sit back you can let
 
this opportunity pass you can let everybody catch up you can sit on the sidelines and let things happen let it pass you by or you can get in the game right now if you're serious about raising capital Capital investing in real estate and multiplying more of your money in 2025 let's talk drop a comment hit that subscribe button and follow along because I'm going to be breaking down exactly how to play this game in real time let's go get it
 
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFD3v9ERpNI&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=3
 
https://www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq/posts/pfbid0YM2q1WNHabhysUrF6eSRyeGFHErEFG88pFgxsjQjgxcuXpBMwndSRXJkVYUR4APal
 
https://www.instagram.com/p/DGBUz4uzg-m/
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq/status/1890086851630997992
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sethbradleyesq_trumpeffect-donaldtrump-wealthbuilding-activity-7295852153070333952-p_px?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAKVay0BMf-qnL2v6W-30PvVRZnCs0eCFQU
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.instagram.com/sethbradleyesq/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbradleyesq/
https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
 

In this episode of the Funds on Fire podcast, host Devin Robinson interviews Seth Bradley, a seasoned SEC attorney and long-time friend. Together, Devin Robinson and Seth Bradley share powerful insights into the world of capital raising, investment funds, and legal compliance.
Seth Bradley discusses his extensive experience as an SEC attorney, highlighting the key legal frameworks that govern fund formation and capital raising. Devin Robinson reflects on his own background in raising millions for real estate ventures, and with Seth Bradley, explores the value of maintaining compliance with SEC regulations when sourcing investor capital.
Throughout the episode, Seth Bradley clarifies common misconceptions surrounding securities law and emphasizes the importance of investor education, particularly for those involved in passive investments and syndications. He also offers actionable advice on launching investment funds, collaborating with experienced SEC attorneys, and navigating the evolving trends in alternative investments amid changing market conditions.
Seth Bradley concludes by stressing the importance of diversity in investment management and the need for entrepreneurs from all backgrounds to gain access to financial education that empowers them to raise capital, scale their ventures, and build sustainable wealth.
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-w_w6WAUVw
Bullet Point Highlights:
Capital Raising Insights: Devin Robinson shares his journey in successfully raising millions for investment projects.
Legal Compliance Importance: Seth Bradley emphasizes the significance of understanding SEC regulations to avoid legal troubles in fund management.
Fund Management Strategies: Discussion on navigating funds, from 506(b) to 506© offerings, providing clarity on compliance requirements.
Education Gaps: The necessity for education in the finance and investment space is underscored, highlighting the lack of resources for aspiring fund managers.
Diversity in Investment: Recognition of the disparity in investment opportunities for minorities and the importance of fostering diversity in fund management.
Trends in Capital Raising: A shift towards fund-of-funds structures and other innovative investment vehicles as alternatives to traditional capital raising models.
Confidence Building: Advice encouraging newcomers in investment to be confident and educated, asserting their place in the industry.
Transcript:
raised tens of millions of dollars myself as well as um you know we purchased just in 2022 Alone um I was a GP on over $120 Million worth of commercial assets we don't want to say anything that might get us into trouble you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur first so I'm out there to to educate it started going down you started seeing some people get in trouble but all along the way on that rise up he's suing anybody because they've been getting their returns and they've been everybody's been crushing it and even if
 
you're a terrible operator you've still been crushing it because the market saved you and nobody's getting sued so it's all good until it's not welcome to funds on fire the podcast that ignites The Passion of investment funds in capital raising here we turn the complexities of fund management into clear actionable steps that drive results I've invested into diverse real estate across the United States and managed thriving funds and I'm committed to transforming lives through the vehicle of investment funds and helping
 
others to do the same join me as we document the Journey of scaling businesses raising capital and impacting tens of thousands of people around the world my name is Devin Robinson and welcome to funds on fire on this episode of the podcast I actually interview Seth Bradley who is an SEC attorney and has become a really good friend of mine so him and I met a couple years back at raay Fest and which is we're part of a mastermind for Capital raising and fun launching and then both of us as we've become friends
 
as we did this podcast interview gosh a couple of months ago and then now I've launched the podcast and even since then this is pretty cool him and I have actually started a partnership on um on helping people to launch uh manage scale and raise capital for investment funds and it's something really cool so you'll hear more about that later but it's really cool that it started uh with this podcast we both are very like-minded people we both have very similar goals and desires especially when it comes to
 
Capital raising and the access to information with when it comes to that and for other people to be able to learn how to um honestly be able to launch and scale an investment fund and there are so many people that have the ability to do it have the um the skills and the knowledge to do it but don't have the opportunity to do it or honestly just think it's too hard to do and so I'm so excited because partnering with somebody like Seth is incredible he's a guy who has helped hundreds of people to launch
 
and manage their funds or would just really launch their funds he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and invested into hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate himself and so to be able to partner with him on something like this is really really awesome so I'm excited for that as we talked through his journey talk through all the things as we go through his progression from just being a real estate attorney to then an SEC attorney that goes and helps people to launch and manage funds his involvement
 
in that some of the things he's doing and honestly it's going to be a really good conversation for you all to hear how to stay compliant how to make sure that you guys are raising Capital appropriately how to make sure that you guys aren't going to get in trouble with the SEC because of how you guys are raising Capital so excited for this really pumped for this episode just thought I'd give you a little preface before we dive in you are going to want to listen to this cuz he is awesome and I'm excited so thank you so much enjoy
 
the episode all right what's up and welcome to this episode of funds on fire I I love this uh because today we have a friend of mine Seth Seth we go back I don't know like at this point I feel like it's like two years now or a year and a half what we met at Ray's Fest a while ago and I'll tell you I was super impressed by this dude because we met we met at a bar we were like at this event we had guess us that's right that's exactly right we were at this event for Ray Fest and like I'd gone downstairs he was
 
chilling I was chilling we started talking and I was like I like this dude because one he's not like the typical like white dude that's here he's all tatted up he's really cool and then I realized he's by far the smartest in the room and I was like yo Seth is the man so Seth I would love for people to tell or for you to tell people like who you are and what you do I've enjoyed keeping up with you over the years content you're putting out is incredible and so if you haven't give this man a follow
 
ESP if you want to stay compliant with funds and the legal aspect of it cuz he's doing some really awesome stuff and I love how just like fit you and your Wi-Fi that's pretty cool too so I respect that too so Seth like tell people who you are where you're from what do you do cuz I think it's going to be important for people to know you all right man Deon I appreciate that intro brother yeah it was it was great meeting you back in the day now we've kind of followed each other on social media and
 
kept in contact and loved it love it man love it but I'm I'm a Securities attorney so anytime you're raising capital from passive investors you can get me involved I've got I've got the pedigree I worked in big law for seven years before starting my own Boutique Law Firm I think what people like the most about working with me is that I actually come from the business side as well so I'm a syndicator and a fund manager myself so um you know I've raised tens of millions of dollars myself as well as um you know we
 
purchased just in 2022 Alone um I was a GP on over $120 Million worth of commercial assets so you know I come from not just the legal side but also the business side and I look at every single deal like you know whether I'm you know actually an equity holder or I am just the vendor as the Securities attorney I look at the deal like hey how are we going to get this thing done right a lot of attorneys kind of get in the way um I don't want to get in the way I I will tell you what the risks are what your liabilities are what you might
 
be opening yourself up to what the gray areas are but at the end of the day you're the business person and you're the entrepreneur so you make the decisions based on the information that I give you so I'm I'm there to help you you get the deal done that's cool man cuz like I know man there's a lot of misconceptions about funds and so one I can tell you I really appreciate I really appreciate you because I have had some not so great SEC attorneys that I was not a big fan of then I've had some good ones and so I'm thankful for it and
 
so when it comes to that uh we're going to we're going to talk about compliance because that's super important but we'll also talk about uh because I I I guess so I'm in another Mastermind I think I was going to bring this up a little bit later but I'll bring it up now and I want to talk about the importance of finding a good attorney because like I I'm in a different Mastermind and it's more of an operators based Mastermind like how to a lot of single family things and I I talk to people and I'm like and because I'm
 
going to set the groundwork for this podcast but I talk to people and they're like oh yeah I've got some friends they've let me borrow some of their money and I'm just using that money and I'm like oh hold on uh what do you mean and so I talked to like I mean I can't tell you the last po I was there two months ago three people told me this said three people and so they were like they were like yeah so I have an LLC and they wire the money into my LLC account it's like three or four friends they
 
wire this money into my LLC account and then I use it and I give them a return and I'm like you need to call an attorney right now because you are literally violating Securities Law like you you you are and they're like wait wait wait okay but but what if what if they they say we we sign up you know a promisory note they put it in here and I'm like security and then they're like okay but what if that the the the people hold it an escrow our attorney is holding an escrow I'm like security and so like just to even like set the
 
groundwork what is like what what is a security and and and what do you see most often when people come to you and they're looking for an attorney and they're like hey I'm doing this is this legal and you're like no that's not legal but what do you see like what is the security and what is the misconception or the mistake that you see a lot of people make when they come to you yeah I mean you just said it so the number one problem or the the biggest problem I see every single day is just the lack of knowledge like
 
people just don't know and there's there's maybe a fine line there between not knowing and not caring enough to know right exactly you're like I know I'm doing something here and I don't care to look into it a little bit further to figure it out but that's but that's really what it comes down to is just not having the knowledge because you think like you know I'm just going to you know me and this guy are going to partner he's going to give me all this money and they're not going to do anything and they're going to they're
 
going to expect a return on their investment and all that kind of stuff and it's all good but it's not you're getting yourself into into issues you know to define a security in a in layman's terms I like to just say look if you've got a passive investor involved in your deal and they're expecting a return on their money and on the actions that you're taking as the active participant then that's a security and that that's it like if if you have a passive investor meaning they're not you know making decisions
 
they're not managing they're not helping you out on the active side that's a passive investor and you're probably dealing with the security right and this is what I think separates like syndication from the fund right so like if you have a syndication and then you have somebody who is brings the capital typically they're making some of the decisions which makes them a little bit more active so then it's not in that sense of violating that Securities laws if it's just either like one person or even a couple a group that's actually
 
making decisions on that and I guess that's not the main differentiator between a syndication and and a fund but I think that's where people get confused is the passive part of things that's right that's right it's the passive part of it right like you have people that come in whether it's a syndication or a fund if if they have um some sort of managerial rights or meaningful voting rights because you'll see if you if you invest passively in a deal and you read through the PPM and the operating
 
agreement you'll see that you really don't have any rights to make any sort of decisions there might be some convoluted way that you might be able to get the manager out if a b c d and f happens but probably not so you'll see that you're really passive right and if you're passive then that's a security that you're dealing with you're investing into security cool that's cool and I appreciate us understanding that groundwork because I want people to listen to this I want people in my Mastermind to listen to this I want
 
people to just hear and understand that more often times like more than you think there are people clearly violating SEC like security law and so I just want to make sure that people are compliant and this is like you mentioned it earlier and I think that's really important is just the lack of Education side of things and you and I talk about that we talked about this before this of like really there's only like two main Educators in this space that are doing this and unless you know those two you
 
run the risk of not really being honestly educated enough to run a fund unless you have the self-education side of these and so I love like what you're doing and the content you're putting out especially from a Securities attorney aspect to be able to help that what what have you seen has been like the main sources of Education because even just like outside of what I do outside of what you do uh are there other sources of Education since you've been in this space longer than me that people can go to to gain more
 
information about what it looks like to raise a fund or uh or even start looking in that direction yeah dude it's tough out there right like you just you just said it and I I'll just name him I mean Hunter Thompson has some really good content that he puts out love Hunter super intelligent guy great stuff it's about raising Capital 4 real estate specifically which is great for the for your audience um and then Bridger Pennington of course um his is a little bit not necessarily real estate related
 
more in the private Equity space but also real estate sometimes and those are really the only two guys that are putting out content um typically before them you're really getting your education from your securities attorney that you engage with you know that can you know they're going to give you legal advice they're not going to give you kind of like you know they they'll review your marketing materials and things like that to tell you hey this is compliant this is not maybe this is what you should do this is what you shouldn't
 
do but there's not really anything comprehensive out there where you put the whole package together when you're really trying to start a capital raising business other than those two guys right now so you know there's a lot of room in that space for people to to step in and do it and and also you know Securities attorneys if you look I mean there's only a few of us putting out any kind of content cuz you know as an attorney most most of us are pretty conservative we don't want to put ourselves out there we
 
don't want to say anything that might get us into trouble you know I'm I'm an entrepreneur first so I'm out there to to educate and that's what I was going to ask so for you man just like a little bit about your journey because like it's not every day that you meet a a Securities attorney now granted we are at a fund event so then like of course you're going to run into a Securities attorney but like honestly you you I feel like and this is kind of cool I feel like me and you don't fit the molds
 
of our role like for like we're tatted like you know like you know I'm saying we're tatted we're a little bit more laid-back I got I think I posted this the other day I graduated college with a 2.3 GPA like I I just am not very qualified of what you would put the normal qual qualifications of a fund manager would be but for you like for you how did you get started and like what Drew you to Securities Law cuz it's a very specific Niche to be in for sure yeah and I really got started in real estate law so I was always drawn to real
 
estate I just knew it was a great investment I've just like intrinsically loved real estate I don't know what it was like even when I was in undergrad I was like man it would be so great to own these tow houses that I'm living in like things like that I've just always been attracted to it and investing in it so I started investing in it myself I started out doing real estate transactional law oh cool from that from that perspective and then I realized that you know raising Capital was a little bit more
 
sophisticated I I like that aspect better and I started gravitating towards that and got into Securities Law and and again at the same time as I was doing that I was also starting to Syndicate my own deal so um pretty interesting that I got kind of the legal side got the business side going at the same time so it gave me really good perspective that's cool so you talked about your journey a little bit I love like diving into that Journey because you you said that you you were in on some of your own
 
deals so you started as real estate attorney chop that like started doing that were you like a closing attorney yeah yeah okay so like a closing attorney uh and then started did you get to a point where you're like yo I see all this money that people are making I kind of want to do that is that how it like switched into you becoming an active investor into real estate uh yeah somewhat man I mean I took kind of the traditional route of real estate investing I read Rich Dad Poor Dad I started listening to Big Pockets the
 
purple Bible you know it man what it is um yeah did all that and house hacked into a duplex I mean that was my first property started fixing and flipping a few few property still own some single family those sorts of things um and then you're San Diego right I'm in San Diego yeah but I'm originally from West Virginia West Virginia West by God Virginia that's right all right I mean like I feel like if you I feel like if you're from there you would say something like that that does make sense that does make that's the say that's
 
what we say West by God Virginia no I don't know anything about V West Virginia but now but now I do so now do you own some of your properties in in very two very different markets West Virginia or San Diego is that like where you own them or are you in other markets they're all over the place so like we invested I lived in Charlotte for a little bit like you know so own a couple properties there own a property in West Virginia that duplex that I was telling you about cuz I moved there for a job really you know California is
 
tough like to make anything cash flow there's some Adu opportunities right now for that but really just own the house that I live in then I have a condo that I rent out up in Orange County and that's about it but the other ones are all kind of all over the place like we invested in Cleveland for a little bit as well oh yeah some multi family stuff in Cleveland that that was kind of in the single family phase but as far as like the multif family the retail a lot of that was like in the midwest um in
 
the in the um in the sun sun Bel area so all over the place and we did like industrial we did retail we did multif family um all all sorts of stuff man on the commercial side and it's good to know that background for you like not that background but like you had the ability to understand and how to structure some of those deals um and so I'd love to I'd love to talk about the structure of funds a little bit because this is sure I'm going to as the question that I think like everybody wants to ask an SEC attorney about the
 
difference between a 506b and a 506c and then what constitutes like having that pre-existing relationship right because like if you have a 506b or a 506c there's certain stipulations but those are the two most common right like 90% of funds are 506 BS or 506 C's and so and if I'm wrong just just let me know but I believe that's like the statistic and and with those what constitutes the differences and then the pre-existing relationship part is one that a lot of people have questions about for sure man
 
yeah you're spot on so far I mean 506b I like to Remember by buddy so it's typically going to be a buddy right like yeah you have to have so the rule isn't that you have to have a pre-existing substantive relationship the rule is you're not allowed to solicit or advertise that's the rule and the way that you show that is by having a pre-existing substantive relationship with those investors so that that's a little bit of a Nuance there the rule is really you can't or advertised you can't go on Facebook and talk about it you
 
can't take out Google ads and and put it out there you can't even talk about it really to strangers and invite them into your deals you have to have that pre-existing substantive relationship because otherwise think about it well how would they know about your deal if you didn't right like that's that's kind of the the mindset there so yeah be but the the advantage there of course is that you're allowed to bring in 35 non-accredited investors so that's why people go with the 506b route number one
 
you can bring in a limited number of non-accredited investors uh number two there's there's less requirements for you as the uh fund manager or the syndicator the capital raiser on proving if they're accredited or not because they just self-certify so those are really the two big reasons you would choose a 506b versus a 506c which you can remember that by community so it's a bigger pool of people all right it's 506c for Community those folks when you have that exemption then you can go out there to your community you can solicit
 
you can advertise you can put it on Facebook you can put it out there in your m mind you go speak on stage and say hey guys come invest in my deal you can do whatever you want really it gives you the freedom to operate and not feel like oh am I doing something wrong but obviously the big thing there is accredited investors only so if you choose that 6C exemption you're only allowed to bring in accredited investors and they're all you're also going to have to take reasonable steps to verify that and that's typically through uh a
 
third party vendor or through that Investor's attorney or uh CPA that's going to write them a letter that says that they're qualified yeah which typically and you and not typically but like this is why you see even older more established funds go with a B because it's easier to just bring them in so they don't have to do all that stuff yeah what you see is they'll do a 506b but they won't allow uh non accredited investors in so it'll be 506b but only allow accredited investors so that they don't have to they don't they can
 
self-certify yeah which is makes it just a whole lot easier of paperwork standpoint so then uh that's which is really really interesting so for for me and I'm actually I'm going to just dive in a little bit deeper because there's so much gray here and like you can it's fine if you don't bring any like Clarity to the situation but there's so much gray here because I hear people that are like all right now when you meet that person add it to your calendar that you met that person and then you could talk
 
to them three weeks later and then like then you could pitch your fun to them and then like then now you're showing the SEC that it's a a pre-existing relationship and then it's like well where the heck is the line if there isn't even a line and then it's like then then what do they what is the expect me to do you know like if somebody introduces me to somebody how the heck do I make sure that I'm compliant in that in that relationship that we have if I know that they even come into the relationship interested in
 
what I'm doing I want to take a quick second to talk to you guys about something that could completely change the game for you if you're serious about launching and scaling an investment fund if you've ever wanted to start a real estate fund private Equity Fund or syndication but didn't know where to start this is for you fund Founders is giving you free access to foundations 101 a step-by-step course designed to help you to structure your fund the right way so you stay SEC compliant raise Capital like a pro even if you
 
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start again that's funds onf fire.com Founders or click the link in the notes now let's get back to the show yeah uh pre-existing uh actually just means pre-existing the offering so pre-existing your syndication pre-existing your fund so that makes it a little bit difficult when you've got let's say an evergreen fund right it's like well you got that offering open forever right so you can't even bring anybody in after you've opened it um that you don't already know but there is a there is a kind of a loophole I'll
 
call it it's not really a loophole it's it's actually a regulation but you can actually convert um a 506b to a 506c now you didn't used to be able to do that but I think that pass um maybe like two or three years ago where you can convert the 506b to the 506c now you can't go back after that but once you make that conversion you know get all your 506b investors in if you want to fill that 35 non accredited pool and then convert it to a see you can do that and then you can go out you can solc it you can
 
advertise you can talk about it you can bring in strangers yeah now that's really interesting too well and I do know that I think you just have to close subscription for like 24 hours right or something like that and then you can open back up you really just have yeah there's not really a Time requirement you'll hear something you you'll hear where there's like a cooling off period and they'll say 30 days 60 days but it really just comes down to closing that first offering because it's separate
 
that 506 B exemption offering and then opening that new C offering and just to be safe because again we're dealing with Securities it's always gray maybe give it that 30 days to cool off and then open up that 506c and then you're good to go and you have to refile like a form D and everything like that you do okay you do okay cool I wonder if you're your blue skies you can use the same documents but You' need a new form D yeah okay cool all right very interesting so that's cool to know too so I use a platform and I think we've
 
talked about it briefly called aester and I'm a big fan because it's a customizable fund they actually don't I think because of the nature of the customizable fund they actually said that I can't close down my be and open back up as a c just by nature of that type of fund and I thought that was really interesting and I know you and I have talked about potentially chopping up like what the heck is the I I think I sent you the stuff for it I can't remember but uh yeah I think so yeah talking about that customizable fund
 
because it sounds like um you know there's different fund models there's um there are the reg d506 B and C's there's reg CF reg A's and then you also run into like syndications and then you have fun of funds right and so it sounds like and for you you've kind of done all of them I think oh yeah but right now you're really focused on one major one right is that what you like so the fund that you currently operate and you're running uh I'd love to hear a little bit more about that yeah for sure so just to
 
comment on the the aester fund you know it's it's a kind of a new product right the customizable fund it's pretty new it hasn't really been tested on the legal side quite yet it's pretty complicated right like complicated from well what it spits out is simple right they say Hey you create this Evergreen fund and then you get you know each investor only gets 1 K1 even though they might be invested across a bunch of deals things like that which is great um but you lose that flexibility so I don't know the the
 
intricacies of it but you know you can imagine you've got this this customizable fund that's invested in let's say 10 different other deals or whatever and some of them it's acting as a fun of fund some of them it's acting as u a lead sponsor or all these different things so trying to convert that to a 506b from a or 506b to a 506c I can see where you can run into some complications there it might not be possible yeah and I think so because the structure sorry the structure of it they tell me what makes it customizable is
 
the fact that like our investors can log in and I don't actually like I have an overarching PPM they log in and they choose the their investment that they want to I'm not telling them the investment that they have to like invest into they read the deal disclosures and decide decide that that's what they want where they want to allocate their money to which allows for for the customizability of this type of model so I think like that's where converting it to a c would be yeah what you're saying for sure y that's that's kind of the
 
defining I guess piece of that customizable fund is that investor actually gets to pick and choose within your fund that you created where they invest um and that actually I can see where that why they do that I mean it's a it's a great concept but also that keeps you from actually making any decisions as the fund manager so that keeps you out of some certain regulations I'm like hey this is what we offer yep you can look at the deal disclosures and decide on where you want but like they could and this is like one
 
of the things that they like is I can say oh you could you could essentially diversify your portfolio within one fund because you could choose this one this one this one this one but you choose how much you want to go into there so that's that is a very interesting model and so that's really cool um or like yeah the investor chooses it yep the investor chooses it and yeah and and I'll you know that contrast to what you're alluding to which is an SPV fund of fund so that's what we do over at tribe vest
 
in full disclosure I'm Chief legal officer and a and a shareholder of tribe vest um so I'm a little bit biased and aester is you know we don't like to call him a competitor honestly they do fund of funds and we do fund of funds is like the overarching product but it's completely different you know one situation which why I brought it up it's the only reason why I brought it up because I'm excited to dive into tribe vest and what you guys offer um because this is not a pitch for tribe vest and like I didn't even know about I did know
 
I've heard of trivest but didn't even know you were a part of it before this podcast but I love hearing what you're a part of and that's why I want to dive into that a little bit because I think it's cool yeah and I like it it it might be a good to kind of lay it out right you've got these customizable fun of funds out there avor is really the only one offering them there's a couple other uh groups out there that are going to be offering them soon you can actually go to a Securities attorney and they can
 
put it together for you as well um and yeah and then you've got the SPV fun of fund again you can go through triest or you can SPV just for clarity special right special purpose vehicle or single purpose vehicle kind of either either one really applies then you've got your typical discretionary fund which you would go directly to a Securities attorney and that's where you're actually making some decisions you're saying okay I'm going to raise 10 million bucks and I'm going to invest in Deal one two three four five six seven
 
eight um and you're kind of making those decisions and there's a lot of rules and regulations that you've got to abide by to be able to do that without a license but anyways back to the SPV the single-purpose vehicle instead of a customizable fund where you know the investor is making the decision and you as the fund manager in you know you make all these different things Avail all these different Investments available the SPV is designed as a single purpose vehicle to invest in one single deal so
 
if there's a Target deal let's say a 200 unit multif family property in San Antonio um we're going to spin up an SPV for you to invest as a passive investor into that Target deal and that's it it's super simple it's super contained it's not complicated it it just keeps everything compartmentalized both from an asset protection standpoint and from visibility right you're going to know as the fund manager and as the investor exactly what you're investing in what you're how you're going to get paid what
 
your projective returns are and it doesn't really get mudded by other Investments and this is what I CU I've talked to other SEC attorneys and they've talked about it's funny they've talked about how rare what I've done so I've like maxed out my 506b on a my first fund being a blind fund and they were like that's super rare because you're saying hey just trust me but what you guys are saying what you're doing is saying hey this is the specific and that makes it a lot easier to raise Capital because like you said ton more
 
transparency they know what they're investing into and so for people starting out that's probably the route that they want to start with is something where they can bring transparency and then the investors that they're coming in know exactly what they're investing into that's right de yeah what you did Devon was incredible like it's really difficult to do most people don't start there they can't start there they don't have the ability to um to be able to build that up that level of trust and track record prior to
 
you launching the fund that's why you're able to do it but most people can't do it most people have to get their first few in the door by showing the investors hey this is the exact deal that you're going to invest in and you're getting you're going to be a part of and they can do their own due diligence and underwriting and those sorts of things and they're say oh yes I believe in that property or that deal and I also believe in you as the the fund manager or the syndicator and it's easier to raise
 
Capital that way as opposed to a blind pool fund where it's like hey just give me your money and we're going to invest in something that looks like this and yeah exactly exactly so I actually I want to dive into more into tribe vests cuz like so where does the benefit come in because like somebody can just go and get with an SEC attorney and create their own SPV and and kind of go that route but where's the benefit of somebody coming in and working with tribe vest like why I mean honestly like I please I like tell me like why have
 
you invested into it why do you believe in it so much and then yeah tell me a little bit more about it man yeah because it it just makes everything super simple and super contained and we handle everything so if you go to an SEC attorney like myself I'm going to come in and I'm going to I'm going to draft your offering documents I'm going to file your exemptions do your blue sky filings and that's it and I I'm going to wipe my hands of it and I'll say you know good luck you know more than that I'll help you out of yeah exactly I'm
 
going to charge you a lot of money I'm going to charge you at least 25k right Tri vest includes everything that you could possibly imagine so all these different parts that you would have to put together as a capital aggregator TR vest handles so that includes not just the offering documents the legal stuff the filing of the exemptions and the blue sky filings but we're going to file for your entity we're going to get your EIN we're going to be your registered agent we are going to uh onboard your
 
investors so we're going to act like an like an investor relations person on your team so all you do is send us your list of investors and we start reaching out we send them the docs we walk them through how to sign and get them through the signing ceremony we hound them or we call it hurting the cats to get them to actually fund the deal cuz sometimes people get cold feet so bug the hell out of them yep bug the hell out of them until they make that wire we do all that we do the uh the accounting in your k1s
 
we configure your cap table very cool we do your distributions we open your business banking account we do uh everything on the back end uh we've got the investor dashboard or investor portal that you can use which alone is you know you're going to pay $500 a month at minimum for that by itself so it it's incredible and we do it at an incredible price and I mean we're not we're very transparent about that it's $5,000 upfront and then $2,000 a year annually and that comes with docs and everything that comes with docks and
 
everything there's just you can't be beat I mean it literally can't be beat and the other thing is the speed so as soon as you sign the greenl docks which is basically just like hey you agree to the services that we're going to provide we will have you raising capital in five business days no way man that's really cool that's fantastic if you come to to me if you come to me as a security attorney I've got that hat on you know we're not doing in 5 days I'll tell you that now how much education do you help
 
with because I tell people all the time like here's the questions you should have beforehand because your SEC like your attorney will be the most expensive education you have ever paid for if you don't have that information beforehand so like what what type of because they'll charge you like if you don't know if you want a 506b or 506 C you don't know if you if you want your waterfall this way if you want this and you're just asking questions they're going to charge you by the hour to ask those questions and so for you like how
 
much help do you guys help for people who are like I've never started a fund I'm really looking forward to starting this but I don't know where to go what does that look like for you guys yeah I mean for tribe vest we're putting together some modules actually right now we're going to roll them out literally before the end of the year which will be fantastic because we're going to share that with with the world you're going to be able to self-educate on what is a fun to fund how does that look like in the
 
fundraising ecosystem like you know what is a preferred return what is the profits what kind of fees can you charge all kind of the nuts and bolts that you need to know we're going to have that out there so soon enough that'll be available to the public and that'll be a huge value ad and huge help for us as well because we don't have to educate one-on-one anymore as a Securities attorney I I will advise on people I mean I'm I'm happy I'm I'm more of a mentor and a coach when it comes to that sort of stuff and I'll I'll be like look
 
attorney hat off right now I'm going to tell you this and here's kind of your gray area and that sort of thing so you know I I I think I get into those sorts of things a little bit more than most attorneys will um but if you go to like a a large Law Firm or even a regional Law Firm they're they're going to charge you per hour and that's going to be anywhere between you know $400 to $1,500 an hour yeah there's no doubt there's there's no doubt so and this is really interesting because one of the questions
 
that I had just going into this um and not even knowing about uh the not even knowing about tribe vest and and all of that is what have you seen as far as like trends that you're seeing in the industry right now because Trends seem to be changing one just even I I'm a disruptor you're it seems like you're a disruptor of Industries and we're trying to disrupt this huge investment fund industry um but it seems like there's being like there's different type of offerings there different structures there's different
 
things that people are doing what are some of the trends that you're seeing that people are kind of pressing against or starting in as far as funds as a whole you seeing that being the case of being become more common yeah I mean so like biggest picture right is trying to get these types of alternative Investments to the masses because most wealthy people even rich people whatever you want to call them that have some Expendable income that want to invest the only thing they know are 401ks stock market mutual funds
 
and those sorts of things and they we just need to get that out there and I think you're seeing a trend towards that I think bringing in more people that want to raise capital and start a capital raising business is how you do it right because they've already got their built-in networks and then those networks know other people and and it kind of spiderwebs out from there so that's that's kind of the biggest picture trend is just trying to see well we're seeing you know alternative investments just become more available
 
to the masses second you're seeing the industry go away from the CP model which I like to say the cgp model is dead and you're seeing people turn to the fun of funds route yeah because the cgp model has just been abused if you do it the right way if you're actually an active partner and you're actually participating in the meetings and and decid on Asset Management typee decisions then all good that's how it's supposed to be but when you're just raising capital and not doing anything else that's when the CP model gets
 
abused and it's not just oh well you shouldn't do that it's illegal it's plain and simple illegal so that was like the conversation I'm telling you when um I was having the conversation with that guy at my at my Mastermind and he was like we're doing this and I go like stop and he's like haa and I go no no it's illegal and he's like oh haha and I'm like no no like prison illegal and they I feel like just people don't understand the severity because they feel like what's wrong with it it's not that bad and it's like no no it's
 
illegal yeah and you know that this is just what happens right like you just kind of everybody just pushes boundaries pushes boundaries and you know fortunately or unfortunately however you want to look at it the industry's been fantastic for a long time right the real estate industry's went up since the the crash in 2009 2008 all the way until really covid and that was just a blip and then it took off again and then B basically up until last year 2023 is when you started seeing it kind of take
 
a nose dive a little bit because of interest rates and not because of the actual state of the market but the interest rates but either way it started going down you started seeing some people get in trouble but all along the way on that rise up all the investors have been happy he's suing anybody because they've been getting their returns and they've been everybody's been crushing it and even if you're a terrible operator you've still been crushing it because the market saved you and nobody's getting sued so it's all
 
good until it's not and then you've seen in yeah and then you see in 2023 you see you know potential foreclosures and workouts and you know Capital calls things like that investors aren't happy and we're in America and people are like yo how can I get my money back well you try to sue somebody and that's when you start seeing some of these things where the cgp model was abused or people weren't raising Capital the right way or they didn't f exemptions all those sorts of legal things that nobody really
 
worried about because everything was great start coming up and you're you're seeing that now so you're seeing that shift away from the CP model to the fund of funds model because the fund of funds model is compliant obviously if you do it the right way but it's more compliant and it's always been the answer but at the end of the day it's expensive it's more complicated you've got more attorneys you've got a whole separate offering all these different things that you have to take into account and people
 
were like I'm not doing that but now we're kind of forced into having to do that and that's where you know tribe vest and aester and some other folks are coming in and having coming up with solutions for that yeah that's really cool um because one one more thing I'm really curious on that you've seen because I feel like there is a fairly irreg irregulate asset you know coming into a very regulated um like structure right so one the things I'm talking about is like the rise of crypto in these crypto funds and these blockchains
 
based funds have you seen that start to affect like the legal landscape of funds and the formation that people have of that and the way that people are thinking through that and even how the SEC is starting to figure that out and uh and stuff like that have you seen like an emergence of more of those blockchainbased funds I have yeah and not just like strictly you know blockchain and and crypto but also just spin-offs of that right like you saw tokenized real estate was a big thing for a little while it's kind of turned
 
down a little bit but that was huge that was like I was crazy that you could be like I'm tokenizing my my bathroom and when I sell it you get like that much of the footage and the appreciation it's like what that's crazy yeah so it's kind of cooled out a little bit you know I don't I honestly don't follow that that closely just because I know that it just changes so fast and especially now that we've got the new Administration in here you're probably going to see a lot more loosening of that which would be good
 
for us but yeah I mean you know you're going to see that right like CU we are just on the the precipice of just crazy technological advancements from tokenized Real Estate to you know crypto to AI like all this stuff is going to like this landscape 5 years from now is is going to be unrecognizable yeah that's it's it really will just because of the way that contract law is going to go from the from the from um from I guess blockchain based like because like you'll see that where the blockchain will take a lot of
 
those uh a lot of that aspect and change it and flip it on its head so it's going to be super interesting to see how that goes man I want to respect honor your time I appreciate you being on I guess one thing I guess one more question that I have before we kind of go into the exit if there's somebody that's thinking about starting a fund because what you were saying earlier really there's only two main people if I'm fully transparent I want to be able to be uh the voice of funds for minorities and women in this
 
country because like all those other they all the white dudes they could have all the other white dudes that's fine with me but there's a lot there's a there's a huge disparity I heard uh don peees once say and this has changed my my my thought my process like my mindset ever since he says in the history of America there has been $94 trillion to come in through private equity and real estate in the history of American and history of America 8.3% of that had no sorry 1.7% of that have gone to minorities and women that means 98.3% of
 
that has gone to white men and so there's this massive disparity between access to education like you're saying access to Capital Access to I think there there's this quote that says the world equally distributes talent but doesn't equally distribute opportunity and so there's this huge disparity of opportunity of people that look like me and look like you and look like women around this country that I would love to make sure we're the voice for and so for people who don't have a lot of that education one what's a big piece of
 
advice that you would give them and when they're starting to think about starting a fund because I think like if I'm full of transparency most of the people I talked to and I told you I saved from prison there were black dudes they're just trying to do the right thing but don't have the education to do the right thing and so for for that like what what's a big piece of advice you would give people that are thinking like I think I want to start a fund um what should I look out for how expensive does
 
it matter because we've talked about a better solution for how expensive it can be but what's the thing that they should be looking out for yeah I mean you know right off the bat like be confident and don't be intimidated because I think some people yep in those groups that you described might feel a little discouraged because of that because you walk into a room that is maybe all fund managers or all capital risers or you know those types of people and you're like who I don't look like everybody
 
else so maybe I don't belong here or maybe your confidence goes from here to to hear and you're like and then and then you come off that way right like you've got to you got to step into that room with confidence and a lot of a lot of that comes down to self-education right like it comes from education and it's out there now I mean we mentioned that there's only a few really good sources but you can still piece it together I mean you can find anything on YouTube University just to at least get the you know being able to talk to talk
 
and walk the walk and and feel confident doing that so just get educated to start get that Baseline and then get out there and just be be confident like I said don't be intimidated don't feel like you don't belong because we got to get folks out there that are that are doing it from from those groups yep that's right man well I appreciate it Seth where can people find you where can people hire you where can people join what you're doing um because I think that they should I'm a big believer in you and
 
what you're doing and I'm excited for for all those things appreciate it man I usually update all my Links at Seth Paul bradley.com so you can find everything there I'm all over social media so all my handles are Seth Bradley Esq cool man I appreciate you thankful for your time thankful for your friendship I really look forward to uh to Growing growing together man it's fun to see other people that like we're about the same age I don't know you look like you're in your 20s but you're you're not I know
 
that but like uh but like like for us to just rise together on this man and so I'm thankful for this journey that we're on together and I appreciate you being here today love it brother appreciate you yes sir talk to you later man wow I hope you enjoyed that I have a quick favor if you've been enjoying the show there's one simple way you can support us and it's by hitting that follow button or that subscribe button on the app app you're listening to I want to level this podcast up in every single
 
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Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
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https://www.instagram.com/p/DHbcSjGT7Jn/
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https://pfcapital.us/
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Devin Robinson’s Links:
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In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, Seth Bradley welcomes back international investor Louis O’Connor for an insightful discussion on diversification, rare earth metals, and a unique agricultural investment opportunity. Seth Bradley and Louis O’Connor explore the importance of global diversification, with Louis O’Connor sharing how living between Europe and Latin America provides both peace of mind and financial flexibility.
Throughout the episode, Seth Bradley dives into the geopolitical factors shaping the rare earth metals market. Louis O’Connor explains how China continues to dominate the refining process and how recent export restrictions are driving increased global demand. Together, Seth Bradley and Louis O’Connor unpack what these developments mean for investors seeking exposure to strategic commodities.
The conversation then shifts from metals to agriculture, where Louis O’Connor introduces an innovative truffle farm investment. With guidance from Seth Bradley, Louis O’Connor outlines how the project leverages agri-science and Ireland’s ideal climate to offer investors ownership of inoculated truffle trees, complete with professional farm management. Projected returns begin in years four to five and can extend up to 40 years, with potential IRRs ranging from 14% to 69% based on historical truffle prices.
Seth Bradley also explores the associated risks, including natural factors and management challenges, while Louis O’Connor explains how strong biosecurity measures and proven success records mitigate those concerns. The episode concludes with Louis O’Connor sharing a powerful mindset tip: improve by just 1% every day to compound success over time, a philosophy Seth Bradley reinforces as key to long-term investing growth.
 
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://youtu.be/9nckOKE0Jt8 
Bullet Point Highlights:
Diversification across countries and industries provides flexibility and peace of mind
China’s control of rare earth refining and export restrictions create scarcity and opportunity
Truffle farm investment offers strong IRR potential, with returns starting in years 4-5 and lasting 30-40 years
Minimum $30K investment includes 400 saplings and full farm management with a 70/30 profit split
Primary risks are mismanagement and nature, mitigated through biosecurity and replacement guarantees
Lou’s golden nugget: Focus on improving 1% daily to unlock exponential long-term growth
Transcript:
(Seth Bradley) (00:02.062)
What's up, builders? This is Raise the Bar Radio, where we talk about building wealth, raising capital, and all in all, raising the bar in your business and your life. This is the No BS podcast for capital raisers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are serious about scaling their business and living life on their own terms. I'm Seth Bradley, securities attorney, real estate investor, and entrepreneur, bringing you world-class strategies from the best in the game.
 
If you're ready to raise more capital, close bigger deals, build a better you and create true financial freedom, you're in the right place. Let's go. Lou, what's going on, brother? Welcome back to the show.
 
Thank you very much Seth. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. Good to see you again.
 
Yeah, absolutely man. Great to catch up with you. Are you tuning in from where?
 
Well, in Europe still, you know, I'm back and forth between Ireland, Germany, mostly, a little bit of time in Panama as well, because my wife's from there, but I'm in temporary in Ireland, horse breeding country and agricultural heartland actually of Europe. And at the moment anyway, yeah, so in Europe.
 
(Seth Bradley) (01:16.664)
awesome, awesome. That's the beauty of being on a video conference call that you can talk to anyone from anywhere in the world now. That's the one good thing that came out of COVID is it made it normal to do it.
 
Yeah, it's funny, unbelievable. Just yesterday I was contacted actually by CNBC in the US, I'm in Europe, about the metals. We're not talking about metals today, but I've spoken with you before about the rare earth metals. And I guess the US chamber, secretary chamber of commerce is in China this week because China is restricting the export of certain technology metals and that's their area.
 
And within a day, there's like an hour after I speak with you, I'm doing an interview with CNBC on, I think it's Power Launch or something they call it. So it's fascinating really how quickly you can sort of ping around the globe and find somebody and do this.
 
Yeah, yeah, very cool, very cool, man. Well, thanks for taking the time to tune in with us today. And we've got a brand new thing to talk about and we'll jump into that. But before we do, just for listeners who didn't listen to your previous episode, give us a little bit about your background and your story. Just a general synopsis,
 
Sure, thank you. Yeah, so I'm obviously, you can tell from the accent, I'm Irish or Scottish or Australian, but it's Irish. And I suppose you could say I'm bit of a world traveler who has come back home specifically for this project we're going to talk about. Ireland is known as sort of the breadbasket of Europe. But yeah, I lived in Germany for 10 years, lived in Central America and traveled extensively in South America during that time.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (03:05.422)
But my niche, if you will, you know one other business we're involved in. And my niche, what I'm looking for is always what I call, I don't know what you might call it in the US, but we sort of call it a path of progress play here, which is if you sort of look at an industry or a product, what's happened in the last 10 years, or even a country or even a business for that matter, if you look at what's happened in the last 10, you can sort of
 
have a look at likely what's going to happen in the next 10. So I'm always looking for somewhere where demand is increasing and supply is either going to be limited or subject to disruption and somehow, and that's what we will be talking to an agricultural product and we'll talk more about it. But I like to be diversified in every way. So I have business in Germany, this agricultural product is in Ireland.
 
I do my banking in Belize and Panama and different parts of Europe. So just trying to be as diversified as possible.
 
Right, right. And that's part of your kind of plan as well, right? Like to be kind of this international man of mystery, right? Like you have different ties to a couple of different countries, which gives you flexibility in case something goes wrong in one of them, right? Like, you know, I think a lot of people were worried here for a while and I think it's still in the back of people's minds in the United States about, you know, the strength of the dollar and
 
You know, people were talking about getting a second citizenship and things like that. Can you speak to that a little bit about kind of, you know, how you've done that and what your kind of thoughts and feelings are around that?
 
(Louis O'Connor) (04:46.552)
Sure, sure. Well, you my feeling always has this peace of mind, you know, I just want peace of mind. I want to be at peace with myself and the world around me. that's, I mean, I'm probably talking about more philosophically and spiritually as well, but also, you know, in business or residencies or banking. I suppose it's because I left Ireland quite young and I did live.
 
I didn't just go on a vacation somewhere. lived in Germany for 10 years. I learned the language. Ireland is an island, even though we're part of Europe, continental Europe is completely different. And then I went to Latin America, which is a completely different kettle of fish altogether. And I suppose it was those experiences that the perspective that gave me was that, that sounds very simple, really, root of entry, but there's...
 
there's good and bad, know, you we do certain things in Ireland very well, and maybe other things not so well in Germany, they do, you know, they've made better cars and better roads. And we do and you know, Latin America, I think they dance better and drink better maybe than you know, but so yeah, what I learned is, you know, you know, you can pick is a bit like life can be a bit like a buffet, and you can pick what you like, and you know what you don't like leave behind, you know, so and the idea, I suppose the point I should make is that
 
What I've learned is it's not expensive or difficult to be diversified. Like have your banking in different jurisdictions really doesn't cost anything. Having a second or third residency if you do the right homework on I'll go into more detail if you want. have residency still in Panama and I three passports. I'm working on the fourth and it has been a little bit of effort but not expensive or costly.
 
And will I ever use it? I worried that the world's going to end? No. But it's just that peace of mind you have when you've got these other options that, God forbid if something did happen here in Ireland or Europe, I have a residency in Panama, I banking there. So it's just that, suppose it's like having a parachute or a safety net that's always there.
 
(Seth Bradley) (07:00.13)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. mean, that's, you know, especially the way that things are today and people kind of just worry about things generally, right? If you have that peace of mind and you have that, you know, second or third option, it's just something that can kind of let you sleep at night a little bit better. It's like having a nest egg or, you know, having a second, third, fourth, fifth stream of income.
 
things like that that can let you sleep at night and while other people are panicking and worrying and making, you know, maybe even bad decisions based on that, you know, based on those worries, you can sleep soundly and make decisions that are best for you.
 
Yeah, yeah, and you're not limited, know, if you're just, you know, like, I mean, it's funny though, as well, I think it's timely. I think the time has come. I you see people, you know, we were chatting earlier, you know, being involved in multiple different industries and, you know, with technology, we're allowed to do that. We can reside in one country, we can do our bank in another, we can do our tax responsibility somewhere else, we can do our business. So it's probably just in the last 20, 30 years that we can move so freely.
 
with all this stuff, know, you know, only maybe 25, 30 years ago, I wanted to, I couldn't really do business in Germany, but live in Ireland, it'd have to be one or the other. There was no internet, you know, everything. So, so yeah, I think, I think we're heading in that direction anyway. And it's just, yeah, there's great freedom in it and great peace of mind, even though, you know, I mean, I'll be in Ireland for, you know, my two kids are, there's another six or eight years.
 
before they finish school. So I plan to be here, but I just have other options as well, you know.
 
(Seth Bradley) (08:41.42)
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. And speaking of diversification, mean, your investments are very diverse, right? I mean, in the previous episode, we jumped into rare earth metals. And then in this episode, we're going to jump into something new. Before we jump into the new thing, though, give us a little update on what has changed in your business with the rare earth metals or if anything has changed or how those things are going.
 
Yeah, well, thanks. Thanks for asking, Seth. Since we spoke, actually, the big news is just in the last 60 days, I think I mentioned to you that China pretty much sort of dominates the rare earth industry. it's, I think really, it's possible and we understand now that China sort of saw before the EU and maybe before the US or they understood at least that rare earths would become
 
the backbone of manufacturing in the 21st century and they've been, you know, they've taken action on that. So we're in a situation now and it's not really an economic strategy. It's more of a geopolitical strategy that China has big plans for electric cars, big plans for solar, big plans for wind. you know, they, they've hundreds of million people, they're, taken out of the poverty, into the middle class all the time. So sort of
 
thinking strategically and long term, they rightfully secured their supply of rare earths. And what happened just in the last 60 days is the US sort of initiated a sort of a block. Now it was also supported by Holland and Japan and they're blocking sort of the latest sort of semiconductor technology from going to China. And in retaliation for that, China
 
You know, they have, you know, an ace up their sleeve, which is where it hurts. So the West has the technology and China has the raw materials. And just in the last 60 days, China has said they're going to, well, effective August 1, which is a month ago, they're restricting the export now of gallium and germanium, which is two of these technology metals, and that China, you know, is responsible for 95 % of the global production. so we're seeing the prices go up and this is sort of.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (10:57.826)
what I talked to you about that these metals are in demand on a good day, you know, you will make a nice return. But if something like this happens where China sort of weaponizes these metals economically, then you'll see prices increasing quite dramatically, which they are. Yeah, that's that's what's happening there. It's basically a market where there's surging demand and you have sort of political landscapes affecting as well. So
 
It makes for interesting investment.
 
Yeah, yeah. Are these rare earth metals, are they not something that we can mine or is it something we're not willing to mine, like let's say in the West?
 
(Louis O'Connor) (11:44.142)
Yeah, good question actually. that actually gets right to the heart of it, Seth, because despite the name rare earths, they're not all that rare. Some of them are as sort of common as copper and stuff, but there's about eight or ten of them that are rare and they are available in the US. But this is what's changed dramatically in the last 30 years is the rare earths don't occur naturally. So they always occur as a byproduct of another raw material.
 
They're sort of, they're very chemically similar. they're, sort of all stuck together. So they have to be extracted and separated and then refined and processed into, you know, high purity levels for jet engines or smartphones or whatever the case might be. what's happened where China dominates is, is China is responsible for 95 % of the refining. Now there's about 200 or sorry, $390 billion available in subsidies in the U S.
 
from the Inflation Reduction Act, which despite the name is all about energy transition. And that's all very well, except the human capital and the engineering expertise to refine rare earths is depleted in, it doesn't exist in Europe, and it's very much depleted in the US. Just to give you some context, there's 39 universities in China, where they graduate degrees in critical minerals.
 
So the Chinese are graduating about 200 metallurgists a week, every week for the last 30 years. I think the US has a handful of universities. I'd say there's probably 300,000 metallurgists in China and there might be 400 in the US and probably none in Europe at all. So it's not just a question of if they're there, it's how do we get them into 99.99 % purity? Without the engineering expertise, we can't, not anytime soon anyway.
 
Wow, yeah, yeah. mean, that just alone sounds like a recipe for a pretty good play for an investment. you know, there's these bottlenecks, right? Whether that's people that can refine it or the actual element itself or willingness to mine it, you know, all these different things come into play to make it a good investment. All right, let's switch over a little bit here. Let's talk about the new investment vehicle.
 
(Seth Bradley) (14:06.99)
that you talked to me about. It's an agricultural play, correct? we're talking about truffles, talking about mushrooms, right? Tell me a little bit about it just to get started here.
 
Okay, well, you probably I mean, you know, truffles are in the culinary world, they're known as the black diamond of the kitchen, you know, they're, they're a delicacy going back to, you know, thousands and thousands of years. Traditionally, the black perigord, which is the Mediterranean truffle would have originated in France, but for the last sort of, you know, the last 100 years or so,
 
they've been growing abundantly in sort of South, Southwestern France, Northern Spain and Italy. So traditionally, you know, that's where they grow and they sort of, know, because the truffle, as you said, it's a mushroom that has a symbiotic relationship with a a native tree, an oak tree or hazel tree or sometimes beech. So it's a very delicate balance, you know.
 
And although I have invested in agriculture before, we started, we, I mean, a collective does not just me involved here, and I don't want to sound like I take credit for any of this really. I was just a part of a team where we had some agri-science people, and we had sort of four generational farmers involved. But we were looking at, it is no question that climate, there's a climate change, right?
 
It doesn't matter to me whether people, whatever the causes of that are, the reality is if you talk to an olive grower or a truffle grower in Italy or France, they'll tell you the climate has changed because their harvests have been decreasing for about the last 30 to 40 years actually, but really more so in the last 10. So we were sort of, I'll tell you basically the AgriScience partner involved in this.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (16:10.958)
As a test back in 2005, they started to plant and the trees inoculated, the baby trees inoculated with the truffle sort of in the root system as a test all over different countries, not just Ireland, England, UK, also the US. So this has been in sort of research and development since about 2005.
 
And we got seriously involved in about 2015 when history was made and this Mediterranean truffle was grown here in the British Isles for the first time. we then with our agriscience partner in 2015 planted a thousand trees in five different locations in Ireland where I am.
 
and one of them is about 20 minutes away from me here. They're all secret locations. I won't even tell you where they are because they really are. They're highly valued or highly prized. And so it takes about four or five years to see if you're a business. So yeah, we now are growing the Mediterranean truffle, not just in Ireland, but in other parts of the UK. But the real interesting thing, Seth, it's just now ready for scale. And all of the farmers,
 
who were involved in the original research. None of them are going to take it to scale. The one that's local to me is a lovely gentleman. in his 60s and he planted a thousand trees really just as a retirement. His daughter works in banking in Switzerland and so there's nobody really to take over the farm. So we're the first to do it with scale. So we're inviting in...
 
a portion of some investors in as well.
 
(Seth Bradley) (18:05.87)
Gotcha. Are there specific, I assume there are, are specific growing conditions where these things can prosper? Like I can't, I'm in San Diego, I can't just plant them in my backyard and wait five years and be a millionaire.
 
Well, if you you if I hear you're growing truffles death, you know, we should assign an NDA we should assign. You could try but no, they wouldn't grow in San Diego because I mean, there's a very delicate balance and you're what you're you're what you're using here is agri science and nature. You're working with nature. And because the reason they've grown so well in demand is
 
No way.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (18:48.738)
just because of that balance up they get a sort of a dry season or sort of they got to get a lot of rain and then they get the dry season and what's happened is they're getting more drought and less rain and it's just upset the balance. So it's a very, very delicate balance. But what people wouldn't know, I think, is that truffles have always grown wild in Ireland.
 
There was a time five or 600 years ago when Ireland was 85 % forest and our native tree is the oak and the hazel tree, is the tree that's also where the fungus grows. And what happened was when the Brits were before, you know, when shipbuilding was the thing and the British Navy were, you know, the Spanish were, so the Brits sort of chopped down a lot of the forest for the wood for shipbuilding. you know, our forests were depleted. But to this day,
 
Truffles do still grow wild here, but we're doing it differently. know, we're only planting on land where you have like certain protein and pH levels and limestone. And then we're planting baby saplings that are already two years old that were inoculated with the truffle fungus like at birth, like in the root system. And we only plant them after we see that the root system and the fungi are already thriving.
 
So if you get into the right soil and it's already thriving, then two, three, four years later, you'll get truffles.
 
(Seth Bradley) (20:17.216)
the interruption, but we don't do ads. Instead, know that if you're raising capital for real estate, my law firm, RaiseLaw, is here to give you the expert legal guidance you need to raise capital compliantly and structure and close your deal. And if you're looking for a done-for-you fund-to-fund solution, Tribest is the industry's only all-in-one setup and fund administration solution. Visit Raise.Law and Tribest.com to learn more.
 
That's awesome. just, I think about like wine and like, you know, you can grow it, you know, vines in different places. Some places they grow, some places they don't, some places they grow and the result isn't good and some places they grow and the result is awesome. It's probably a very delicate balance between, you know, environment plus how they're raised, how they're taken care of and all those sorts of things.
 
It is 100%. I mean, first and foremost, mean, because of angry science and technology today, you know, I mean, we can plant baby saplings that are already and not, I mean, we're playing God a little bit with nature, but you know, I mean, it's just amazing, you know, like you could do it. And then, you know, the biggest threat is actually mismanagement. You know, if you don't then manage it correctly. If you have a root system inoculated with the fungus and you have the right soil conditions,
 
after that and it's management and it's sort of bio security meaning they have a very pungent smell. mean, squirrels and pigs and they love them. They love to eat. So you have to, mean, you're literally it's like protecting a bank, know, you have a bio security fence. You've you know, you limit visitations to the farm, you've, know, special footwear and cleaning and stuff. so yeah, it's serious stuff, you know.
 
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. Well, let's dive in a little bit to the kind of the investment itself. Like what does that look like for an investor? Like what are your projected returns? You know, what, how does it all kind of, how does it all shape out? Like you've grown these wildly valuable truffles and now I guess the first step would be what's the business plan? Who are we selling these truffles to? What makes them so valuable? And then get into kind of the investor
 
(Seth Bradley) (22:33.794)
portion like how would someone get involved in whether projector returns.
 
Okay, so we sell, first of all, the estate that the farm is, it's called Chan Valley Estate. People can Google it, it's beautiful. It's 200 acres of north-temporary farmland. The estate itself, it's a bit like a smaller version of Downton Abbey. It's a Georgian.
 
a three story Georgian home, it's over 200 years old. It's also a museum and we have events there and it's also a working farm. And it's a herbal farm. So we grow plants and herbs there that we then we have our own, we work the value chain where we also sell those herbs for medicinal purpose and we convert them into medicinal oils and things like that. So the location is already up and running.
 
And what we're doing with the truffles is for every acre, we can plant 800 trees. And so what we're doing is we're offering investors, well, a client, the minimum investment is $30,000 and the investor for that price gets 400 baby saplings already inoculated with the truffle fungus. And then they get the farm management
 
included up to the first four to five years. takes about, there'll be truffles after, bearing in mind that the sapling, the baby tree is two years old. So after three years in the ground, it's already five years old and there'll be truffles then and the returns don't begin until then. But what's included in the price is all the farm management, know, all the, you know, the,
 
(Louis O'Connor) (24:23.508)
implementation of the farm, the irrigation, the electricity, the hardware that's needed. So all the management right up until there is production and then when they're producing, the investor gets 70 % of the growth and the farm management company, we get 30%. So it's a 70-30 split. Now the great thing about the oak and the hazel is they'll produce
 
for 30 to 40 years. it's a long term, it's a legacy investment, you might call it, because you won't see returns until the fourth or fifth year. But once you do, you'll see returns then for another 30 to 35 years. And they're very, very good. mean, we have three numbers in the brochure. We looked at what's...
 
price half the truffles never dropped below. So we have the very low estimate, which is they've never gone below this price. That brings in an IRR, which would be from day one of about 14%. And then the highest that they've sold for, you're looking at about 69%, but the average is about 38%.
 
So the returns will be very, very good once production kicks in and then they'll maintain. We've included an inflation for 30 to 40 years. I hope, I think I answered everything there.
 
Yeah, definitely. sorry. I gave you about six questions there to answer in a row. But yeah, I think you covered everything. And having an IRR, which is time-based on something that has this long of a horizon and even takes four or five years to even start producing, those are really, really strong numbers.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (26:23.63)
Yeah, well, again, even the, you know, one of the reasons obviously we like truffles because they're very, very expensive. mean, they're a luxury product. You know, we're about an hour from Shannon Airport here, which is the transatlantic hub between Europe and the U.S. So we can have truffles in U.S. or anywhere in Europe or even the Middle East or the Far East, for that matter, in less than 24 hours. that's important as well. But they're a luxury item. There's huge demand for them. mean,
 
You know how the world is. mean, there are, unfortunately, you know, there's always sort of, people are getting richer and some people maybe are getting poorer. But the luxury, you know, high end market and the culinary, international culinary explosion means that, you know, there's huge demand for truffles. And also you have to factor in the fact that the harvests in the Mediterranean are less and less every year. And I mean, very, very sadly,
 
I mean, it's an opportunity for us, but very sadly that they've done very specific scientific studies and it's going to over the next 50 years, the truffle harvests in the Med will go will decline between 73 and 100%. So literally, they will not be growing truffles there in 50 plus years from now. So that's an opportunity for us. you know, again,
 
We've been working on this really since 2015. And it was only, you know, it was only 2019, 2020 when we began to get to truffles we knew because there was no guarantee, you know. But yeah, now that we're growing them, we just need to scale up.
 
Gotcha. Gotcha. what's kind of the I see that you know, for that minimum investment, you get X number of baby saplings. How many was that again? 400. That's what I Okay, 400. What's kind of the survival rate, I guess, of those saplings? Do you have kind of a percentage on that? Is it like?
 
(Louis O'Connor) (28:17.102)
400
 
(Louis O'Connor) (28:27.086)
Yeah, well, we expect you got what's happening so far is within in about year three, which is actually year five, because the sapling, you should get three of the five trees producing. But once you have production, once that fungi is thriving, it will just continue to grow. So in year four, you should have four of them. In year five, you should have all of them producing.
 
Now we also put a guarantee in the farm management contract that if any tree, you know, if it dies or if it's not, you know, producing truffles, we'll replace it free of charge at any time. in the event, you know, for some reason, I mean, we put a tree in that's inoculated and it doesn't take, then we just replace it. So either way, over the first four to five years, we get them all. And the great thing is if you protect that soil from
 
pests and diseases and other sort of unwelcome sort of mycorrhizal or fungi, then it will thrive. It will thrive. It'll keep, you know, it'll spread, you know, it's a symbiotic relationship underground between the tree and the fungi.
 
Got it. Yeah, that's awesome to know. like survival is not one of the things that we should consider because if for some reason it wouldn't survive or is not producing, then it just gets replaced. So you actually are getting those full 400 saplings turning into trees that will be producing.
 
almost they mature and produce and you know as I said barring you know any pests or diseases or you know interference then they just continue you just protect them you just allow nature then to do its work.
 
(Seth Bradley) (30:18.848)
Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the risks then? What are the downsides that you can foresee if something were to go wrong? What would it be?
 
Well, the greatest threat is mismanagement, literally. I obviously we're doing this with scale, so it's a professional endeavor, you know, people from time to time, know, I mean, some of the test sites here, mean, I don't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and they're not that hard to manage, but people just lose interest, or the younger kids don't want to farm. But the greatest threat is mismanagement. So as long as you put in these biosecurity measures,
 
and manage, you know, there's got to be some clearing done, there's got to be some pruning done, there's got to be tree guards. So there is a process involved in bringing them to nurturing them along and then keeping everything, you know, neutral, if you will. that's first, weather is always, you know, factor in agriculture. We don't feel it's as much of a threat here, because although we're for the first time,
 
growing the Mediterranean truffle. Truffles have grown, they grow here wild anyway. So the climate is right and has been right for thousands of years in Ireland. So, you know, and again, we'll have irrigation as well. You know, we get a lot of rain here. It's not likely we'll need any more rain, but yeah, we, you know, the agri-science will kick in there as well. And then, you know, as I said, like,
 
you know, biosecurity we call it, which is, you know, very, very serious fencing, limited visits to the farm, know, special footwear if people are going up to the area and sort of rinse. We have a pool area where they have to disinfect before they go into, you know, it's a very, very, very protected area from pests and from diseases or anything, you know, that could be brought in from the outside on whether that's machinery or humans.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (32:22.892)
So yeah, it's almost like a laboratory. mean, you keep it very, very delicate balance and keep it very limited on who visits and, you know, people are a visit, but they have to be properly, you know, the feet have to be cleaned and footwear has to be worn and stuff like that. So, but, know, at the end of the day, Seth, it's, you know, well, any investment really, but agriculture, you know, the final say is in nature's hands, you know, not ours. mean, we...
 
We like to think, suppose, we're in the results business, but the reality is we're not. in the planning business and all we can do is plan everything as well as we can. It's just like, you if you planted a rose, you know, bush out in your backyard there today, you wouldn't stand outside and will it to grow, right? You know, grow quicker. You know, we have to allow nature and the cosmos to do its work. so yeah, nature has the final say, you know.
 
Yeah, yeah, no, totally, totally understand. And any investment has its risks, whether you're investing in truffles or real estate or any of the above. Quick question on this. Don't want to paint you like in a bad way at all, but we have had and it's not you, of course, of course, but we've had an influx of bad sponsors and people that are anything from mismanaging investor capital on one end, which can happen pretty easily. And there's not a whole lot of
 
Not a lot of bad blood there. Things happen. And then on the other side of the spectrum, we've seen everything from fraud to Ponzi schemes and all kinds of stuff lately. One thing that I tell investors is to make sure you know who you're investing with and make sure your investing dollars are actually getting invested where they're supposed to. Could an investor invest with you and actually go to the farm?
 
and see their saplings or see the farm and see this business.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (34:24.654)
100 % in fact, we would rather people do I mean, I it's not always possible. Right. But Shan Valley Estate, I mean, I'll give you the website and stuff after Shan Valley Estate. It's a 200 acre farm. It's already a museum. have events there. It's a herb dispensary as I said, as I said, it's our our manage our farm management partner is the Duggan family, their fourth generation farmers and they're being in temporary, you know,
 
longer than that even. absolutely, you you know, of course, there's legal contracts. mean, people get a legal contract for the purchase of the trees and then we have a legal contract for the farm management that we're responsible for implementing the project, we're responsible for bringing the hard, the trees to truffles to harvest. But we do, we just beginning, we just had our first tour, but it was sort of Europe from Germany. Last, sorry,
 
the 18th, 19th of August. But we will be having tours every quarter. And if anybody wants to come at any time, we'd be delighted to have them because it's like I said, it's like a smaller version of Downton Abbey. And we've accommodated, we converted the stables into accommodation, you know, because we have weddings and events and stuff there as well. It's not just a field that we bought.
 
Yeah.
 
And so it's a big deal. I'll give you the website. The location is spectacular and clients can, you know, stay the night, you know, and there's a three story Georgian estate house and the bottom floor is a museum. So it's like walking into a pharmacy from 1840, all the bottles and the counter is 200 years old, you know, and then the middle level, we've an organic vegetarian restaurant, all the
 
(Louis O'Connor) (36:17.24)
food is grown on the farm. There's an old walled garden that they used to wall the gardens years ago to keep out the pests. And all the food that's served is grown on the farm. And then the top floor is accommodation as well and the stables have been converted. look, it's all about trust, Seth. And, you know, I would say to anybody, you've
 
I mean myself, if I have any doubt about anything, don't do it. And it might not be that somebody's a scam or a fraud, it's just if you're not 100 % sure about it, don't touch it. But what I would recommend is people do their due diligence because we've done ours. We've eight years invested in it, put a lot of time and effort into it. And at the very least, we'd like people to check it out and see it all the way through.
 
for what it is. yeah, we'll be, we're hoping to, we have a partner in Europe and we're to connect with somebody in North America. I don't want name anybody here because it might not come off, but there's a few sort of marketers and there's plenty obviously that we might sort of do a sort of an agreement with where they'll, you know, I mean, we could even have sort of investment real estate conferences on the farm.
 
you know, and do farm tours as well. so definitely 100 % we'd love for people to visit and, and they get to drink some Guinness and they're really brave, they can swim in the Irish sea.
 
Yeah, and I'm looking at the website right now. We'll drop that in the show notes, but it is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, it's making me want to get on a plane right now and check it out. It's incredible.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (38:00.046)
Yeah, that's the estate, shambali.ie. I mean, what I love about it's 100 % organic or members of the Irish Organic Association, track ref, fourth generation. You know, this is not me, I'm a part of this, but the farm management team are, you know, they're already like growing herbs and plants and converting them to medicinal, you know, oils and things. And this is just another, it's more of a farming enterprise, I suppose, than a farm.
 
And then the other partner is the Agri Science Partner, which is this team of scientists who basically made history by growing for the very first time eight years ago, the black, the Mediterranean truffle in Ireland, you know, so there's a lot of professionalism and thought and effort being put into a chap.
 
Love that. Love that man. Is there anything else about this type of investment that I didn't ask about that I should have?
 
I think you know Seth, you should be on CNN or something because I you did. I'm pretty sure you did, you definitely covered it. I mean I may have left something out but I think it's a good foundation for somebody if they're interested, I'll give them my email and you know it's not that expensive to get to Europe and it's a great way to mix a holiday and you know come to the farm and stuff you know.
 
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, since you're repeat guest of the guest of the show, we won't go into the freedom for but you have one last golden nugget for our listeners.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (39:34.446)
You know, I knew you were going to ask me that, Seth, you caught me off guard. So I have one ready and I stole this from someone else. So I'm not going to take it. But I was listening to a guy last week and he, sort of a big operation in Europe. And he was talking about a phrase they have in the office and it's 1%. And they always look at each other and when you pass them, they go 1%. And I love what it's about. It's about the idea that in a way it sort of comes back to what we talked about earlier, which is forget about.
 
Yeah.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (40:04.664)
the fact don't think you're in the results business. You're in the planning business. And the 1 % is every day, try and improve every little action. I'm not just talking about work. I'm talking about family, your spiritual practice, if you have one, increase it by 1 % every day. And you know, it's like compound interest, isn't it? That in a way, then you don't have to worry about the big picture. And the results will just look after themselves then, you know.
 
Yeah, yeah, I love that man. Always improve. mean, you you've got to take small steps to get to those big goals. And a lot of times you just need to ask yourself, did I improve 1 % today? If the answer is yes, then it was a successful day.
 
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it's great because, you know, if I was to try and think now, or you were to try and think now, everything you have to do in the next three weeks, right, you just be overwhelmed, right. And sometimes my head is like that, you know, I mean, I've got meditation practice and stuff, but I watch my thoughts and you know, I mean, it's it's a fact. I mean, it's a human condition. I don't know, some disestimates of how many thoughts do we have a day? How many are repetitive and how many are useless?
 
A lot of them are repetitive, a lot of them are useless. So it's good just to narrow it right down to what's the next thing I can do right now and can I do it 1 % better than I did yesterday, you know?
 
Absolutely. Love that man. All right, Lou, we're gonna let us find out more about you.
 
(Louis O'Connor) (41:34.954)
Okay, so they can email me. It's Truffle Farm Invest. Sorry, it's a new website www.trufflefarminvest.com or they can if somebody from your your audience wants to email me directly, it's louis at trufflefarminvest.com
 
Alright, perfect man. We'll drop all that in the show notes. Thanks again for coming on the show. Always a pleasure, brother.
 
Thank you very much, Seth. A pleasure.
 
(Seth Bradley) (42:08.088)
Thanks for tuning in to Raise the Bar Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Keep pushing, keep building, and keep raising the bar. Until next time, enjoy the journey.
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
Seth Bradley’s Links:
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https://www.youtube.com/@sethbradleyesq
www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq
https://www.threads.com/@sethbradleyesq
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https://passiveincomeattorney.com/seth-bradley/
https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
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Louis O’Connor’s Links:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100054362234822
https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-o-connor-a583341b8/
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/08/30/strategic-metals-founder-louis-oaconnor-breaks-down-china-u-s-rare-metal-wars.html