Raise the Bar

TME 14 | How to Quit Your W-2 and Never Look Back with Jamie Bateman

In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, Seth Bradley welcomes Jamie Bateman, a military veteran turned real estate and mortgage note investor, who shares his story of transitioning from a W-2 career into entrepreneurship and financial freedom. Jamie Bateman discusses the phases of his life, including collegiate sports, military service, and a long tenure at the Department of Defense before pivoting to real estate and eventually mortgage note investing.
Seth Bradley and Jamie Bateman explore how discipline shaped Jamie Bateman’s journey, and how shifting mindset, focusing on strengths, and leveraging his network were key to taking ownership of his life and finances. Jamie Bateman dives deep into the mortgage note investing space, explaining how performing and non-performing notes work, the active nature of the business, and how he now offers passive investment opportunities for accredited investors. The episode concludes with Seth Bradley and Jamie Bateman highlighting the importance of planning with intention, overcoming perfectionism, and using passive income to create margin and freedom in life.
 
Links to Watch and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/nRyX8_YA9YI
Bullet Point Highlights:
Discipline builds freedom - Sports, military, and entrepreneurship all instilled the value of discipline, which Jamie says is critical for success and freedom.
W-2 life wasn’t the path - Jamie recognized through his commute and stagnant career trajectory that he didn’t want to follow the traditional path, sparking his exit plan.
Mindset shift was essential - He stopped consuming negative news and started focusing on education and his strengths to shift into entrepreneurship.
Mortgage note investing explained - Performing notes offer cash flow while non-performing notes offer the chance to add value, akin to fix and flips. However, both are active businesses, not passive.
Passive income fuels risk-taking - Creating passive income streams allowed Jamie to take entrepreneurial risks while maintaining financial security.
Action beats perfection - As an entrepreneur, chasing perfection isn’t practical. Done is better than perfect.
Reverse planning drives clarity - Backwards planning from a vivid vision 3-5 years into the future increases urgency and helps set clear, intentional actions.
Final advice - Start by investing passively to learn, and later you can decide whether to become active. Don't underestimate the transferable skills you already possess.
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. Jamie, what's going on, brother? Welcome to the show.
 
Thanks Seth, is awesome. 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 on that show and I think it turned out pretty good. I know we're going to deliver on this one as well.
 
Yeah, we're gonna try to try to I'll try to do as good a job as you did. So yeah, was that was a yeah, no, I that was a very, very good episode from adversity to abundance. highly recommend your your listeners check that one out to your episode on that show. So thanks for thanks for doing that.
 
(Seth Bradley) (01:20.086)
Absolutely, man. You're an incredible interviewer. I've net, that's the only, 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? Take it back as far as you'd like to brother.
 
Yeah. Man, I'd like to think that life has phases. So I've had a few different phases in my life. I come from a large family. I'm the oldest of seven kids and we always had a competitive background as far as team sports and things like that. So I played lacrosse in college. That was always a foundational piece of my life and just kind of
 
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 kind of a thread through my life and then got married and joined the military and actually joined the military technically before I got married, but seemed like I got married and then ran off and ran away from my wife. But it's not exactly what happened. But
 
(Jamie Bateman) (02:36.02)
I joined the military, was an officer in the US Army. I did miss my first three wedding anniversaries through deployment and things like that. 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 add value like I think we all want to do. I've obviously glossed over a lot of details, but those were a couple of inflection points, I guess, if you will, like you like to talk about, I know.
 
And so my military career transitioned into a career with the Department of Defense as a civilian, and did 14 years as a civilian with DoD at Fort Meade. And the first half, so the first seven, for all you math wizards out there, 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 real estate investing and mortgage note investing focus. So we can get into the details there. And then in 2022, I ended up quitting my job and now I have a few different small businesses that I run. And like you, Seth, I've got a lot of different things that I'm juggling and
 
You know, so, but yeah, I love talking about taking ownership of your financial situation and taking ownership of your life really. And I know that you and I have that in common. So yeah, that's a high level overview of my background.
 
Awesome, man. I appreciate that. There's a lot to unpack there. You know, going back to playing sports all the way up to the collegiate level, that's incredible. I always like to think even playing like popcorn or football back in the day, you need a way to instill discipline in yourself. And that's kind of the oldest memory I can think of where it was hard, right? Like it was like you've got a coach screaming at you.
 
(Seth Bradley) (04:38.134)
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 you had to earn that drink of water and all those sorts of things. But you you really learned what it's like 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 I would say that, you know, being in the military yourself, that takes it to a whole new level.
 
Right. It's like 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 being disciplined. And people, people shy away from that word, because it just sounds like work or no fun and no flexibility. But I found that having discipline in your life ends up adding more freedom in a sense, because you kind of have your foundational pieces set in stone, you don't have to think about those. And so, yeah, regarding
 
team sports, it's really a matter of, you know, everyone doing their part, right. And so there's a level of individual discipline and, and then just, and then also just kind of putting the putting the group ahead of yourself. Obviously, you know, you want individual, there's nothing wrong with individual accolades. And I was certainly chasing, you know, those individual accolades. It's not something I shied away from, I was definitely was wrapped up in
 
trying to be an All-American and that kind of thing. And did get that a couple of times, you know, but at the end of the day, nobody really cares about that. And the way I viewed it was if I was doing my part, and I got those, you 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. But yeah, that discipline is critical.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (06:36.73)
you know, even it's certain I played at a high level in college and there was year round your training your your your into it. It was a division three school but it but the reality was we worked just as hard as any any D one program and yeah, it's it's a these are skills that have paid off and are absolutely transferable to the rest of life.
 
For sure. Yeah, I think you've got to get those intangible things. You've got to develop them somewhere along the way, whatever that is, if that's sports or the military or from your parents. mean, you can get it from different places, but you definitely need it. I mean, we're in different stages of our life at this point. talking about a lot. We talk about freedom and flexibility and fun to try to get away from kind of the W-2 mindset.
 
But in order to achieve freedom, flexibility and fun in a successful way, have to be disciplined to be able to get there. You had to have done something successfully to be able to get there or maybe what separates you from the guy living in a van down by the river. That guy has freedom and flexibility. I don't know about fun, maybe fun, but it's a different, obviously it's a different outcome.
 
Yeah, and I, I think I still need, you I still use a lot of discipline today. It's still, still required, but it's, I guess it's self imposed. And, you know, I just love, love having that flexibility and that freedom that comes along with being an entrepreneur. So yeah, it's been a central piece to my success for sure. But 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. So yeah, absolutely. And as you said, 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 the lacrosse game, okay, you lost the lacrosse game, but military the stakes are a little higher. So maybe certain things are more important attention to detail or critic is critical and
 
(Jamie Bateman) (08:53.73)
But at the end of the day, it's, the same principles apply across both, I guess, sectors, if you will.
 
For sure. So let's dive into that transition. You started working kind of part-time there for seven years, so that seems like a transitional period. How were you able to progress from that W2? And what I've heard you say is call yourself a W2 quitter. I love that. 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 know a lot of people can identify with. So it just was Groundhog Day was the same thing over and over and over. And that's not me sitting here complaining about my family or having having the opportunity to work.
 
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 worked for the government and you look around and you say, who, okay, who's sort of ahead of me on this? Like you, like I think you probably mentioned on our, on your, your show and my, show, your episode, you look around to the people who are more kind of 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 it just just having that just super long term just you know, pot at the end of the rainbow, I guess, nothing driving me in the interim, 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
 
(Jamie Bateman) (10:54.934)
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 it just made a shift. And I, and I stopped watching cable news. I stopped, just, you know, stop 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 in my network that I can add value to and who can add value to me. So I started looking around and my father was a realtor for many years. My brother was a loan officer. We had one rental property at the time. I had worked at, 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 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. you know, 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.
 
know, bigger pockets and all the other real estate podcasts and different investing podcasts and started using that mental bandwidth instead of focusing on national media stories that I have zero influence over. Here's something that I can actually take action on. And so in mid 2015, I went part time and it just so happens that at
 
DoD is one of the few agencies in the in 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 well, I did. So that's what I did. And, and, you know, that's, again, decided to decide to start building my my other streams of income outside of my W two.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (13:15.752)
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 laddered approach, I guess, or tiered approach to kind of ripping off the bandaid.
 
Yeah, yeah, no, that's awesome. I love just the idea of taking ownership of your life, right? Like everybody has those moments where they're feeling sorry for themselves. But the successful people, they don't sit there and stay in that mindset. They move on. You're going to be there sometimes where you've got to get out of it. You got to say, OK, 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 you you're constantly blaming someone else or saying this happened to me rather than what can I do to get myself out of it, then you're going to be stuck there forever. You're going to be absolutely going to be spinning your wheels forever. 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. No, it's a waste of time. What control? What does that do for us? 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. I look at it like this is funny. Like I can, you know what I mean? You kind of analyze it like, this is funny. This guy's saying this in a debate. Right. This guy's saying that it's not taking it as a news and this is how I should live my life because of what they're saying.
 
sports almost.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (14:43.341)
Fact.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (14:48.078)
Absolutely. And it's not to say that none of these topics are important, mean, global war, politics, poverty, global warming, whatever, it's all very important, but I have zero control over it, almost zero, right? And then the other thing is fear sells and that's what they're selling. And so it doesn't mean that every story is invented and it's all fake news, but it's
 
it just doesn't serve me. And so I'd rather focus on, you know, go ground up and kind of just, I see it in people, maybe older people in my own life now who maybe are retired 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 you end up only focusing on
 
the negative really, and it just didn't serve me. yeah, during that lot, 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 BRRRR method that maybe some of your audience is familiar with. And so kind of putting that capital back into the rental property machine and expanding our portfolio. And then eventually last year, well, and
 
2018, made the pivot, I kept the rental properties, but made a pivot to also add on mortgage note investing. And that's been my primary focus as of late. And if you want, can tell the story quickly about how I actually quit my job in 2022. I think it's kind of a funny one.
 
Absolutely, let's do it.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (16:38.318)
All right. So, I, so I, two years ago, I was playing badminton and, I'd been doing now, mind you, I used to be like tough, you know, athlete. And like I did, you know, did jujitsu for three years right up before this. And, know, I used to lift weights a lot and still do it here and there, but, you know, I think I'm tough. Right. And,
 
ruptured my Achilles playing badminton. So that's an ego blow to add on to the physical pain that you know, especially with the recovery. So rupture my Achilles a little over two years ago today and I was out of work, it was my right right foot. And the reason I bring this up is not for sympathy, but 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, might've been at your, your big law job, but I was, I was checked out. mean, 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. was just a matter of, of when, not if.
 
That's right
 
(Jamie Bateman) (18:04.43)
I can tell you truthfully, I 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 podcast banned from something but yes, I'd been vaccinated to answer the question. But no one asked me how's your how's your recovery going? Like how you 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? 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 Air Force kid at my desk and long story short, they kind of moved 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 desk and, 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. My wife didn't know I quit, but I quit that day. Still worked for another month or two, but there was no question, zero question in my mind, I'm done with this place. So that was March of 2022. And ever since then, I've just focused on building out my businesses and having look back.
 
That's awesome. Sometimes you just know, right? Like sometimes it's done. You just knew. I love that story, man. For me, it was a little bit. You already know the story, but for me, it was a little bit more of someone else's decision. I got fired. mean, and you mentioned that, you you weren't the best employee at that point. Correct. 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.
 
(Seth Bradley) (20:21.292)
His output isn't what it should be. Like, he's got to go. mean, he's not the best employee. And as a business owner now, I have really good perspective of that and seeing that. And they were doing me a favor by being like, hey, your heart's not in it, it? And I'm like, no, it's not.
 
It's not. Yeah. The reality is for me, it's really hard to work. know, 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. But so, yeah, haven't looked back and just loved love the entrepreneurial
 
you know, day to day and freedom that you alluded to and just the multiple streams of income and certainly has its challenges. I probably work harder now than ever than I ever have. But it's by choice. So I love it.
 
Exactly. Same here, man. mean, it's, you my days are long. I mean, I get up way before I used to get up when I had a 95. I worked past when I would have worked a 95 and 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, it doesn't feel like you're putting that much time in.
 
Definitely. I wake up early. A lot of days not on purpose is because I'm just excited to get cracking.
 
(Seth Bradley) (21:55.886)
So, yeah. absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's kind of get into your current business. I know you mentioned that you focused on your strengths and your assets. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's important. just say it's important to take an inventory of what your strengths are when you're kind of considering going into something else, because a lot of our listeners are attorneys, they're doctors, folks like that. They kind of feel like maybe they're pigeonholed, right? Like, well, if I'm not an attorney, what the hell else can I do?
 
Right. And 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 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
 
to do. Definitely. And one thing I'd say is that, 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. You know, there's one quote about every man is my superior in something, right? So basically, it gives me a lot of comfort to know, like, just because an attorney listening to your show knows a
 
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 you know, that's, that's always comforting to me is to when I say look to your strengths, it's also looking to the people in your network who know, it can help you get to where you want to go. So yeah, I mean,
 
So many things we take for granted that we do know. 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 salary. 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.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (24:10.03)
trained in that in school typically, right? So, you know, you forget and so your your listener out there, the attorney, the doctor, guarantee they have a lot of life experience, not just from their professional world, but just life experience 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'll go back to life as seasons. I mean, you've shown that in your own story, Seth, like, you know, it's a, 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, it doesn't mean that's what I have to do for the rest of my life. So we always have options. 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, just make the most of it and just keep, think, keep learning constantly is critical. I just hired a business coach, we've had one call. But one of his mottos is, 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.
 
(Seth Bradley) (25:40.64)
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.
 
Yeah, I love that permanent beta. I haven't heard that before, but I like that. I like that phrase. like that phrase. So tell me about your current business. Tell me about MortgageNode Investing. Start with the basics. What is it?
 
Yeah, so and, and I'll try to keep it, 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, takes time to learn. We buy debt, so we buy a mortgage note, and that could be performing or non performing. The real high level version is, is a performing note is kind of like a long term buy and hold rental property.
 
but you're buying the debt and becoming the lender, becoming the bank, if you will. And so you're buying that performing note for cashflow. So I buy a performing note, the borrower now pays me through a loan servicer and I get monthly payments. So that's a great way to go. 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
 
principal balance goes down. So it's just, it's worth less than, you know, then, you know, then it would then it was when you bought it. Then on the other side, the non performing side of things, we buy those as well. And those are more like a fix and flip property. So 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,
 
(Jamie Bateman) (27:49.826)
I should say sell that asset, whether that's as a re performing note, or as through the the real estate itself, there are a few different ways you can exit a non performing note deal. And but, but back to your kind of one of the themes 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, I to start buying distressed, you know, multifamily debt, which I know you could probably help me understand better. But at that, you know, it's like, incremental progress and change isn't that scary. So I kind of expanded my, you know, toolbox, if you will.
 
and got into the mortgage note space. So we have a couple of note funds. One is open currently and they're all for accredited investors. the income fund that's open pays a monthly, aims to pay a monthly preferred return. I know you and a lot of your listeners are attorneys, so I gotta hold the line here. And...
 
So the fund is structured to pay, to aim to pay a monthly return of 8%. It's not a, there's no growth in that fund. It's literally a cashflow play and diversification play. You're putting your capital in. We buy assets across the country. We've bought notes in probably 25 states at this point. And so the investment is diversified across geographic areas, across borrower types.
 
And we buy for a certain yield, we take a small management fee, and then we ideally pay the preferred return that we're aiming for to our investors.
 
(Seth Bradley) (29:56.686)
Yeah, nice. 506c, you're able to talk about it. It's a credit investors only. Just want to that out there. yeah, I mean, so just going back to the basics a little bit and we'll get back into the fun. Like, how do you, how do you even find these things? mean, yeah, that's, 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 things that truthfully a passive investor who doesn't have time to develop the network to go find these assets, they're just not going to have success. They might here and there, but it takes time. It's a word of mouth industry, just like real estate itself is. so we've built out a network of sellers and that could be
 
quite honestly, I've never had luck buying directly from banks. It's really either a larger 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. 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, you know, where
 
they just, there's an opportunity to buy from them as well. And so there are other, you know, I guess we buy from hedge funds, note investors, other note funds. There are also note brokers as well out there. 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 paper stack and other exchanges as well.
 
And you can find assets there. But at the end of the day, have our 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 due diligence on the assets that they're selling. And so it's taken some work and it's a work in progress always. But it is the million dollar question is where do find these assets?
 
(Seth Bradley) (32:12.598)
Yeah. So that's the hard part, right? Finding these assets is the hard part. Have you ever had to foreclose on any of these notes and actually acquire the property? And I guess a follow-up question is, do you ever look at a non-performing note like, hey, I actually want to own that property?
 
So, great questions. Yeah, great questions. To be clear, we're not trying to kick people, you know, grandma out on onto the street or anything like that. You know, that's not our goal typically. Well, that's never our goal. But we're never trying to kick someone out of their home. But the reality is, some people honestly need a little bit of a kick in the pants. And oftentimes, that's not really the best them staying in the house is not often
 
the best scenario for them. know that might sound harsh, but at end of the day, if someone can't afford to live somewhere, sometimes these people are living in squalor and they really need a change of environment. To answer your question about do we target the property? Yes, sometimes we do. In fact, we just closed on to, they're called heckum loans or reverse mortgages, where the borrowers are deceased. The property is underwater, meaning, you know,
 
the loan amount is higher, than the property value. And it should be a quick exit through the property. So HUD will sell off these big pools 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 heirs or foreclosure and exit the property that way.
 
If your listener wants to go to my website, I've got a really good 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 I had no intention of exiting through the property or holding, holding the property as a rental property, but running the numbers, it just was too good to, to let go. so long story, but we, we
 
(Jamie Bateman) (34:22.51)
ended up doing a deed in lieu 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 portfolio.
 
Yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense. There's always multiple ways to look at an investment, right? But it does sound, you know, it's not something 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. as everybody knows, there's active investments, there's passive investments. If you're 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 get those returns. So if you want to go the passive side, if you're still full-time in your career, you're a full-time doctor or lawyer or whatever you are, 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 wear this specifically for your for this
 
There it is. There it is.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (35:29.272)
Passive income. You're absolutely right. You know, these gurus, some of the some of the note investing gurus out there will try to sell, you know, notes as passive. We have another blog post that talks about just the it's a spectrum, there's active and passive on either end. But at end of the day, if you're going to note 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
 
You're dealing with foreclosures, bankruptcies, deed and loo, tracking delinquent property taxes. Do I have to physically go anywhere? No, but it is not passive. But that's why we offer the passive investment for 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 are certain gurus out there that, know, whatever it is that they are pitching, they tend to always pitch it as passive, even though it is an active business, that's money. Whether that's a mortgage note or I mean, people will 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.
 
Mm-mm.
 
(Seth Bradley) (36:48.396)
You've still got to monitor all those things. 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 it is on a spectrum. Some things are more passive than others, but when you're investing in, you know, as a passive investor into some sort of a fund or syndication, that's really leaning really far into the passive side.
 
Absolutely, 100%. And I'm, as you are, Seth, I'm, I assume you are, I know you're an active investor, but 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 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. Yeah. And a lot of, you know, lot of the listeners are high income earning professionals. So they've already dedicated, put a lot of time and effort into being able to earn this much money from their W2. And 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 and like, let's grind for a few years. Let's not spend every single dollar that we make on all the new stuff 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 no fund where you're like, man, I kind of like this business. 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 you want to get into that as a business, as an entrepreneur. But a great way to kind of dip your toe in the water is to become a passive investor. That's the way that I did it in the,
 
(Seth Bradley) (38:53.186)
multifamily syndications. 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 really comes down to what your goals are and what your situation is, for sure. I'll say I was too passive initially when I went into notes, because personally, just don't... You were probably a little better student, Seth. Not that I was a bad student, I invest... Unless I'm actively investing, 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.
 
you're putting capital with them, but you're not going to once you're getting your checks and your disbursements, 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 maybe you already have that spark and then you invest passively. Then you're like, OK, well, now I'm invested. Like, let me learn about this. And you have to have to actively go out there and educate yourself and network and talk to people that are in the business.
 
Definitely, 100%.
 
(Seth Bradley) (40:01.71)
Alright man, before we jump into the Freedom Four, you have one last golden nugget for our listeners.
 
Oh, I would say within when it comes to investing, you know, take the long term view. Don't chase immediate returns. 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 a 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 form. What's the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?
 
Yeah, I mean, one thing that I instituted this year, actually, is breathwork. And it's, you know, it's so it takes 10 minutes. 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. And it's like, it is phenomenal. So breathwork,
 
I mean, I do other things for sure. But that's certainly this year, it's been a game changer for me. I just feel like it resets my central nervous system. It just gets me focused. And I know there are other physiological benefits that you can ask Dr. Andrew Huberman or somebody else about.
 
(Seth Bradley) (41:26.153)
Cool. I'll have to look into that. actually have it. mean, obviously everybody talks about it's a hot topic. Yeah. I haven't gotten into it. I haven't gotten into that plus like the cold plunges and that sort of thing. Yeah. But I really want to want to
 
So 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 neurovirus. 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 doing this. And somebody on my team actually sent me a, I guess we'll call it an implement or a tool that
 
I use for the breath work. It's blue. There's a Bluetooth connection to your phone and it's pretty cool. So it's structured and back to that discipline, right? But yeah, so it's, there was a reason I started doing it and it's, it's so accessible in five to 10 minutes a day. You can start doing it. So I recommend. Cool.
 
Thanks for sharing that man. With all your success, what is one limiting belief that you've crushed along the way and how did you get past it?
 
I think just, you know, being afraid to, you know, that you have to be perfect, right? So 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, because it had to be perfect. And it's like, I think as I've progressed into more of the entrepreneurial lifestyle and
 
(Jamie Bateman) (43:02.35)
is just it's not a it's not an option anymore. So yeah, I think just taking action has kind of overcome that limiting belief of chasing perfection.
 
Yeah, I can agree with you there. Done not perfect. Yes. My background as an attorney, mean, we're paid to be perfect. We can't make mistakes, especially in contracts and the way that we write things. But when you make that transition over to being an entrepreneur, there's too much to do to be perfect. You just got to get it done. Good enough.
 
Absolutely. Good enough. You have to be willing to accept that for sure.
 
What's one actionable step our listeners can do right now to start creating more freedom?
 
I'll use the military here, which is where I learned kind of reverse backwards planning, reverse planning. literally just, and I'm not going to tell you I'm perfect at this, but, you know, think about what, create a vivid vision for your life in the next three to five years, pick it, 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
 
(Jamie Bateman) (44:20.876)
you can be that will that will increase the urgency, 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 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, House Passive Income made your life better.
 
Yeah, I mean, I think in multiple ways, but a big one that stands out is giving me, I guess we'll call it margin to take some more risks on the entrepreneurial side. And because I do have alternative sources of income, passive income, 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 go perfectly, or doesn't go well, it's not profitable, that's okay. I still have that cushion for me and my family. 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. Jamie, this has been incredible, dude. You've got so much great content to share in your brain, man. You got to get out there. know you've got an awesome podcast that I was on, Adversity to Abundance. Everybody should check that out. Other than that, Jamie, where else can people find out more about you? Yeah.
 
(Jamie Bateman) (45:54.924)
Just two things I'll mention very quickly. Literally got my book delivered today, like an hour before I hopped on here. It's 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. then labradorlending.com, L A 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.
 
(Seth Bradley) (46:26.978)
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:
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?xmt=AQF0nwaIL6JD_GK94lbTvHphHOmWwlUyt3TkeHLav-vXU_E
https://www.instagram.com/batemanjames11/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-bateman-5359a811/
https://labradorlending.com/about/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-adversity-to-abundance/id1618672867
https://open.spotify.com/show/7JjGWsKVzzEI8UwXP9GONZ
https://www.youtube.com/@FromAdversity2AbundancePodcast

FBF 01 | Flash Back Friday | The Unconventional Investor: Why Following the Crowd is Costing You Millions with M.C. Laubscher

In this episode of the Passive Income Attorney Podcast, host Seth Bradley welcomes back MC Lobster, a cashflow investor and entrepreneur. Seth Bradley and MC Lobster discuss the importance of diversification in income streams, exploring various investment vehicles beyond traditional methods. MC Lobster shares insights from his journey from South Africa to the U.S., emphasizing the opportunities available for those willing to take action.
The conversation highlights innovative cashflow niches, including agriculture, energy, life settlements, and music royalties, as well as strategies for achieving financial freedom. MC Lobster emphasizes the mindset necessary for successful investing and the importance of accountability in both personal and financial growth, while Seth Bradley adds context and guidance for listeners seeking to expand their passive income portfolios.
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II3UR8G3eWU
Bullet Point Highlights:
Mikkel Thorpe helps people relocate overseas and navigate tax issues.
The expat lifestyle offers freedom and adventure beyond traditional living.
Second residencies provide legal rights to live and work in another country.
Tax benefits for U.S. citizens living abroad include the foreign earned income exclusion.
Investing in real estate can provide both residency benefits and financial returns.
Personal responsibility is crucial for achieving financial independence.
Mikkel emphasizes the importance of emotional support during relocation.
Countries like Panama offer favorable tax situations for expats.
Understanding the legal obligations of living abroad is essential for compliance.
Exploring different cultures can lead to personal growth and new opportunities.
Transcript:
Seth Bradley (00:10.572)
What's going on y'all. Welcome back to a new episode of the Passive Income Attorney Podcast. Of course, your favorite place for learning about the world of alternative passive investing so that you can have more freedom, flexibility, and fun. Now, if you're ready to kick that billable out of the curb, start by going to attorneybydesign.com and download the Freedom Blueprint, which will also get you access to partner with us on one of our next passive real estate deals, which we'd love to have you on board for.
 
to help you on your journey to financial freedom. All right, today, let's talk about diversification in a particular way though. Let's talk about the different ways that you can make money. There are so many different ways. Unfortunately, for most of us, we have it in our heads that there's only one way. For my attorneys out there, well,
 
We just do our attorney thing and that's how we get paid. We have one stream of income, one active stream. Maybe we save for retirement through a 401k or we buy some stocks and bonds or play around on Robinhood or something like that. But we don't think about all the other ways that we can make money. If you've listened to my show before, I've had so many attorneys on here that have leveraged their knowledge, their background, their experience, their education as an attorney.
 
to catapult them in other aspects of life, in other avenues of business so that they can create multiple streams of income, whether that's through starting a side business, a side hustle, which eventually might become their full-time hustle or investing in real estate, both passively and or actively. There are so many different ways to make money, but there's more ways than just the things that we've talked about so far. There are so many different ways and there's no magic pill.
 
Right now we talk about syndications a lot on this show, but it's not a magic pill. I'm not preaching to you and telling you if you don't invest in a syndication or invest in syndications, then you're not going to become wealthy or that investing in real estate is the only way to become wealthy. It's not, it's a tried and proven way to become wealthy. And it's my favorite way and a lot of my guests favorite way, but it's not the only way.
 
Seth Bradley (02:30.814)
And our guest today, MC Lobster, who is no stranger to this show. He's been on here before. He's actually our first repeat guest. but I love chatting with him. He's such a great guy. So knowledgeable. he is a true expert at this idea of diversification across so many different types of income that you can create for yourself. And he's on here on the show today, especially to talk about his new book, the 21 best cashflow niches, where we'll
 
jump into what some of those are. Some of these things you've probably never even heard about. We'll talk about life insurance contracts. We'll talk about agriculture, energy, of course, real estate and all of those things. But inside you, you'll get some new ideas about things that you never even thought you could invest in. MC Lobster is a cashflow investor and a serial entrepreneur. He's the creator and host of the top rated business and investing podcast, the cashflow Ninja.
 
which has been downloaded over 3 million times in over 180 countries. He's also the president and CEO of Producers Wealth, a virtual wealth creation firm that assists investors and business owners to set up and implement infinite banking. All right, without further ado, the one, the only MC Lobster, let's go. This is the Passive Income Attorney Podcast.
 
where you'll discover the secrets and strategies of the ultra wealthy on how they build streams of passive income to give them the freedom we all want. Attorney Seth Bradley will help you end the cycle of trading your time for money so you can make money while you sleep. Start living the good life on your own terms. Now, here's your host, Seth Bradley. MC Lobster, what's going on, brother? Welcome to the show.
 
Great to be back. Great to connect. Looking forward to our conversation.
 
Seth Bradley (04:25.71)
Absolutely, man. You are my first repeat guest. So you have that honor. Awesome, man. Well, for our listeners that haven't heard you on the first episode, maybe just give a quick rundown of a little bit about your background and who you are and, you know, where you come from and all that kind of stuff,
 
Definitely honored.
 
M.C Laubscher (04:46.542)
Yeah, originally from South Africa, came to the US in 2001 and just blown away with the opportunity in this in this country. I mean, there's literally no place with the upward mobility like the US. You can literally start here with absolutely nothing, which is what I did. Basically a backpack, a suitcase, five hundred bucks, sense of humor, sense of adventure. And I'm an entrepreneur investor. I've started several companies.
 
failed at a lot of them, they had a lot of success in some of them. I've been an investor since 2001 in real estate. And I have a couple of companies, people know me for the Cash Loan Ninja, which is a podcast that I started six years ago, which has turned into a full blown financial education company. We have podcasts, tools, resources, programs, and now books. And then also,
 
know, I have a company called Producers Wealth. We help folks all across the United States. In 49 states, set up infinite banking, a cashflow management strategy utilizing an insurance product. And then I also have a company where we do a lot of syndications in the resort and multifamily space called Producers Capital Partners. But I love cashflow. I love talking about cashflow, creating it.
 
positioning it efficiently and managing it and then multiplying it. So everything cashflow gets me excited.
 
Is that all you got going on, man?
 
M.C Laubscher (06:20.8)
You know, throw throw throw a family that's very active and love to do stuff in there. I've got a beautiful wife and two young kids to all one for an off and three boy and a girl. So you can just imagine the energy there. So a full time job almost by itself, right?
 
That's
 
All right. Yeah. So many hours in the day, man. I don't know how you do it. I know how you do it. I love what you said about upward mobility, man. And I think we take that for granted in the US. So how is that different in other countries for us? don't even think about that sort of thing.
 
Yeah, so I grew up in South Africa and then I was fortunate enough, I traveled to a number of African countries and then I also traveled to a number of European countries, Latin American countries and Asian countries. And I don't think people realize, like if you're born in the United States, you literally won a lottery ticket. I it's I don't know how else to say it. When I got here, I looked at this and I'm like, wait a second. So there's not really like you could, mean,
 
You just bring your game, you start where you're at and the sky's the limit where, you know, it's very tough in certain countries. Let's just use Africa as an example, you know, in South Africa, the lack of infrastructure, supportive infrastructure for somebody starting there and maybe folks from other countries can relate like in Brazil is probably the same, a of Latin American countries that don't have the same infrastructure that's in the States. So let's just say you are,
 
M.C Laubscher (07:53.614)
you're born on the lowest economic rung. That happens to folks, right? If you're born in the United States, well, you still have access to stuff. You could go to a library, jump on a computer, learn skills, there's public schools. When you're born in a shanty town in South Africa or in a favela in Brazil, you don't have the same access. And also when you come here, literally,
 
I mean, you look at all the rags to reach the stories and, funnily enough, a lot of it is immigrants. You see it, a lot of immigrants rise to the top because most of them, whether they're from Africa, the Middle East, Eastern European countries, Latin America, that's kind of what they experienced too. And I've had conversations with them too where they're like, man, you could do anything you want to here. There's nothing holding you back.
 
and the sky is limit. It's not even the limit. You could go to space if you want like Elon. no, it's an incredible place. It still is. We live in an incredible time in the US is an incredible country, where, you know, it's all what you make of it, and all how you approach it, right?
 
Yeah, for sure. mean, it's kind of like, the access to information, the access to technology, the access to education. I know that's kind of a, you know, we fight about that all the time, but we have access to those things up to a certain point for free. Whereas other places do not have that access to information, technology, education. And that in itself gives you power. Knowledge is power. It's not just a saying.
 
Yeah, think think about the time that we live in. Who is it? Who is in Star Trek? Was it like Buck Rogers or Captain Kirk? Was Captain Kirk the guy? So, I mean, I still remember and we had very little TV. I grew up inside everywhere. We had like two TV channels, but one of them had like Star Trek episodes on. And I still remember like he would press a button and talk to someone on the telly on like a like a television screen.
 
M.C Laubscher (10:01.082)
and I always saw, man, that's, that's, it's so cool. They're not even the same galaxy at that stage, but they're talking to one another. I like they're in the same room. We have access to that. And for most part, it's free. We have like access to star Trek technology in the time that we live in for base, for, most, for the most part, it's free. So you have a smartphone and.
 
you have some service or an internet connection, you're good to go. yeah, and again, the technology, which, you know, it's the frenemy. It's your friend and it's the enemy. It's a frenemy. But for the most part, if you approach it right and utilize it right, now a lot of the opportunities, when I came here in about 2001,
 
It was just around the internet kind of boom. So most people didn't really know what was happening there yet, but now everybody's in it. and all over the world. So a lot of the opportunity that only existed in the U.S. then too, are now available in other areas for folks to start online businesses and that kind of stuff globally. You know, to bring it back with Africa, I see on my last visit, and it's been a while ago, but I just remember seeing folks walking around with smartphones and that's all they transected bank.
 
They do everything on their smartphones. They have SIM cards and they buy like airtime. And I'm like, man, what you could do with a smartphone these days. It's quite incredible. So it's starting to open up in other places. yeah, you know, it's quite, we live in remarkable times and sometimes I don't think we appreciate it because we're so used to it. It's like, man, why is my internet taking so long to get on? I'm like, does anybody remember dial-up?
 
You know, it's like. Yeah, it will dial up, man. It's like, yeah, if we click on a link on our phone or click on a link on our computer and it takes more than like, you know, a snap, we're just like, what is going on? This is ridiculous. I can't get anything done. like, well, what did you get done when you didn't have that?
 
M.C Laubscher (12:09.986)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As like I said, before I came to the States, I remember we had dial up and I would add to download emails. So you would start at dial up and you would basically hit start for your emails to download and you would go and grab a cup of coffee and do whatever you have to do. And like 20, 30 minutes later, your emails would have been downloaded. That's so now it's, it's like this and everything moves quicker, right? So you can, you can disrupt slow, archaic,
 
markets in any asset class really, really quickly with technology and boy, there's some dinosaurs, especially in the markets that we were operating, real estate being one of them. And I'm in insurance too, mean, both very, very big dinosaurs that's ready for disruption.
 
Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about some of those things that you invest in. know you're pretty famous for infinite banking and also in commercial real estate. mean, what are some of the things that, are some of the best vehicles to invest in that you're seeing today and how has that maybe changed recently? I, and I asked that because there's a lot of people out there, you know, they'll listen to one podcast, right? And it'll just be like, you have to do this. If you don't do this one thing, if you don't take this one magic pill,
 
You're never going to be able to retire, achieve financial freedom, but we all know that that's not true. Hopefully we all know that, but what are, what are some of the investment vehicles that you love and why?
 
Yeah, I love what you just said. It's the maximalist approach, right? It's because I made my money in single family real estate that that's the only way to do it or multifamily or so. And that's why my show is to just get as many different ideas in business and real estate and commodities, paper assets. We covered crypto and blockchain since 2016, as I thought was was pretty exciting then. Now it's like out of control. But
 
M.C Laubscher (14:07.562)
Actually, this ties into one of the reasons why I wrote my latest book, because most people would say, MC, you've interviewed like the best minds of business and investing and all these different opinions on your show, which was very funny in the beginning because we're so used to echo chambers. You know, I didn't want an echo chamber. So I would have someone on, for example, that hates Bitcoin. And then was someone on that loves it. And that's the only thing. And people are like, I don't understand. I'm like, yeah, you have to you're both sides of the argument.
 
and then to make a decision. But yeah, I wrote the 21 base cashflow niches, the book where I share, you know, the top 21 that's been shared on my show and I threw in five bonus ones there, but you know, as a marketer, 26 doesn't set as well as 21, right? It's funny how psychology works. Seven's good, 10, 20, 21. And then you gotta go to 50, I guess, or 100 off to that, right?
 
But anyway, 21 is what I used for the name of the book. Yeah, I mean, there's incredible niches that I don't think people think about. When you invest too, you know, this is just what I've done and I just share what I do. I eat my own cooking without throwing up. But what I initially did when I built the cashflow portfolio is I was very clear on what I was trying to accomplish with each investment. So what do I mean by that? So some investments you're going to buy,
 
that's going to be tax favorable, right? A little bit of light on the cash flow maybe, good on appreciation or a little bit light there, but really good on taxes. Then there's certain investments that's very strong on cash flow, okay on the taxes and good on appreciation. And then there's some that's purely on appreciation, okay on taxes and okay on cash flow, but it's really driven by the appreciation. And then there's some that
 
that's really good on all three. Knocks out a ton of taxes, great cash flow and appreciation like real estate is one of those assets that does that. So you have to be very clear when you build out a portfolio and I would advise just this is what I'm doing in the time that we're living in today that you have diversified income streams within a cashflow portfolio because we're living, mean, again, during times of great change
 
M.C Laubscher (16:29.25)
There's going to be disruption. There's going to be chaos. You don't want to be in one. You don't want to put all of your eggs just in one basket. And that's you know, that's the horse that's going to win you the Kentucky Derby. You got to have a stable of horses and have many access to many different income streams. So what are some of the what are some of the coolest ones that I've seen? There are some some, know, if you're looking for taxes, there's some great plays and energy, great plays.
 
Disclaimer, not a tax accountant or CPA, but when you invest oil and gas, different energy projects, there's a very, very, very good tax incentives from a strong cash flow and so forth. So that's a great tax strategy, by the way, to offset active income, not just only passive income. If you do it properly and you're investing in it. And by the way, in case anybody hasn't checked energy prices.
 
It's just skyrocket. Try and put gas in wherever you are right now. So energy prices has a great appreciation with inflation, great cash flow and great taxes. the tax play is really good with that one. Then, of course, mean, different types of real estate. But one thing that I would share that was very interesting when I was writing this book is kind of reflecting on the years of and I've done this six years and all the people that I've interviewed. But one thing was very interesting.
 
So agricultural, the market is big. There's many different things in agriculture. And that's where a lot of folks obviously invest farmland, livestock, produce, that kind of stuff. What I found just fascinating was the portfolio allocations of some of the wealthiest people on this planet in timber, more specifically tea.
 
And I'm like, wait a second, because I've some friends that work in family offices, too. So when I came across this, I reached out to them and I'm like, I see like, is there a lot of like the some of the families that are working with you invested in this asset class? And they're like, yeah, it's in all of our portfolios. And I'm like, that is fascinating. So teak, which is in the timber category is is there. And then I started looking into this. And it's like institutional companies are buying this hedge funds.
 
M.C Laubscher (18:58.594)
family offices, like Ted Turner is one of the largest investors. And I looked into this and I'm like, why? And then of course, you reach the conclusion that what happens in agriculture, trees grow, they grew five years ago, they're gonna grow five years from now, they're gonna grow 20 to 25 years from now, they're just gonna do what they do if they're in the right climate, in the right country.
 
And so forth, so it provides stability to a portfolio. So it's a long term play. It's not a get rich quick scheme. Anybody that's in agriculture that has ever invested in that space knows that this is not a Bitcoin where you buy something and the next day it doubles. It's I mean, it's literally you have to hand it over to God. It's nature. It's going to take time to grow before you harvest. And when you harvest, obviously.
 
you're going to generate some cash flow from it. But I thought that was fascinating that how they build their portfolio there, they have to have things in there that stabilize it. Obviously, it's very big on real estate. There's a lot of energy plays on there. There's a lot of that in there. Another great asset class that can stabilize the portfolio, which I'm personally an investor in too, is life settlements.
 
And a lot of folks that say, is what is life settlement? So you can actually sell life insurance contracts just like you would sell real estate notes. So why would somebody sell a life insurance contract? Well, there are some folks that, like most Americans, have all their wealth in their homes and in a 401k. And that's it. No diversification. what happened in 2008, 2009? Well.
 
They were in retirement already and maybe lost the majority of the equity of the value of their house. They got clobbered in their stock portfolio and their retirement accounts. And now they're out of money basically. So what do you do? And now because of the stress, there's an illness too. So you can sell and you realize, I have a life insurance policy that I could sell to an investor. And then obviously the investor can, and this is being underwritten of course, an agent and so forth.
 
M.C Laubscher (21:21.804)
But they have a life insurance policy that they can sell and live out the remainder of their life comfortably. So there's a win-win on both sides of it. I'll give an example. Let's just say you have a million dollar death benefit and a life insurance policy, and you have like $50,000 in cash value. And you're in a very bad situation like these folks are that I just told you. Well, you could go.
 
to a live settlement company at that stage, if you qualify, not all of them of course qualify, it has to be under underwritten to make sense for an investor to buy that. But let's just say you could get four to five times the amount that you have some, even if you're getting $200,000, $250,000 in cash, the investor would then pay for that. And then now they own the life insurance policy. So eventually when
 
when the seller then passes away, then obviously the proceeds gets paid out to the investor. So they got money to live out the remainder of their life comfortably. The other folks then obviously got a return on the investment that they made. And there's pools of this, there's funds, it's a security. So there's a lot of undesirable, just disclaimer and I was warned about all this stuff is there's undesirable.
 
characters in every industry. And as you can imagine, there's probably a lot in that space. Just be aware that if it's in a fund, which is the best way to do it, because you can diversify over a large number of policies and utilize the law of large numbers like insurance companies, it is a security. So there are security laws that apply to all those things. it's essentially for accredited investors that have access to this.
 
Institutions, they just buy tons of policies on their own. Life insurance companies buy policies from other. They buy policies from other insurers to have on their books as a hedge. Folks like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, shocker, he's a big investor in that kind of stuff, too. But yeah, it's a very interesting asset class. And again, with the teak, what does it provide?
 
M.C Laubscher (23:37.87)
Well, it provides stability because you're essentially buying your equity upfront. So the only factor is time, which will impact your return, obviously, right? So you could get a very nice return on that, which you kind of know when you buy it, sort of the equity that you have in that policy. And then with Teak, I mean, it stabilizes a portfolio. So between the two of those great plays, settlements, not as much cash flow heavy, but great upside potential appreciation.
 
So that was the main driver of that, but it stabilizes portfolios. So there's some interesting stuff that I've seen, but those are, you know, I figured I wanted to share some of the stuff that can stabilize a portfolio too, especially during times of craziness where it's not just speculative kind of place.
 
Yeah, that's fascinating, man. There's so many different things that you've invested in and that there are just to invest in in general and people just don't know about it, right? They get stuck in that, that 401k stocks and bonds bubble. And they think that that's just the only way to invest. And that's why sometimes I'll say, just get into a passive real estate deal, right? Not just because that's the only way to invest, but once you do it once you kind of surround yourself with those types of people that are looking at alternative investments. And then you start your mind just kind of opens up to
 
all these different things in agriculture, in energy, in, you know, all of those things that you just mentioned that are out there to invest in. And you just start seeing all these opportunities just around you. And then you can kind of start diversifying away from that.
 
Yeah, you know what another one is, and I cover this in the book too, which would be interesting for your folks at the time that we live in. You know, we had the whole Joe Rogan thing, the Joe Rogan experience controversy, and we had these folks that wanted to pull their music off Spotify. So some folks, if they actually read the story, might have grasped how that side of the business works. But essentially, you can invest in music royalties. And that's another niche on the book, which someone shared on my show.
 
M.C Laubscher (25:39.118)
a couple of years ago, which I found was fascinating. Now, a musician can sell a portion or all of the royalties on their music to an investor. And that's essentially what happened to a lot of those folks that wanted to leave Spotify. They don't even own their royalties or all of it, maybe a small portion or a part of it, but corporations do. They own their music royalties.
 
So every single time a song gets played somewhere or is used in a movie or something, royalties are paid on that and the investor collects cashflow. Now, do we listen to music when markets crash? Yeah. Do we listen to music when markets boom? Yeah. We always listen to music, you know, whether it's good or bad times. So it's another, it's another interesting aspect of, of that. Now, why would a musician sell their royalties?
 
And this is fascinating because that side of the business and my brother, my brother is a musician too. So I learned a little bit of that, that side of it and had an insight of that, but why would they sell a portion or all of it? So maybe they need to fund the next album and they don't have a record label backing that. And maybe they just want to do it themselves or, you know, for them to raise money for the next project would be, would be one example of that. So, and of course, if there's
 
partial ownership of royalties. It's actually the best way to do that because otherwise the musician doesn't have incentives to keep promoting those songs. Right. So you almost want to go like 50 50 with someone to make sure like they've got skin in the game to still promote their albums and the songs and play them at concerts and all that kind of stuff. Otherwise, they're not really going to care because they don't own the rights or the royalties to that music anymore.
 
So it's fascinating. There's a whole exchange, as you can invest like an investor, but there's so many ways to do it. There's so many ways. see to your point, I see people argue all the time. This one's better, this one's better, this one. I'm like, you can make, it's incredible to see the ways that people can make money and become successful. There's so many ways to do it.
 
Seth Bradley (27:53.698)
Yeah. Are there any, I know you went through quite a few there and I want to give the entire book away, but are there, is there another like really surprising one that kind of stands out in that book where somebody's going to read and they're like, what? That's crazy.
 
Yeah, I throw in there a different angle on crypto. So I share a strategy in there. I share a crypto strategy and then I share an angle of how to look at it as an investor because most people think cryptocurrency and blockchain and they go, oh, I just buy Bitcoin and it goes up 20 fold and now I'm a millionaire or a doggy coin and I'll be fine.
 
But there's actually that's very speculative, obviously, and you're a speculator. What the folks, the absolute cash flow ninjas have done is they have approached this as investors in the space. So they have followed what I call the California gold rush strategy. So they looked at this and said, wow, all right, there's gold found in California and San Francisco in that area.
 
Instead of going to mine or dig or pan for gold, I'm going to be the person selling the shovels, the picks, the equipment. I'm going to be the person selling the clothes like Levi Strauss. I'm going to be the person there that has provides housing, hotels, bars, restaurants, entertainment, brothels, whatever floats your boat. And I'm going to be the person that offers financial services like Wells Fargo.
 
You take a different strategic approach of investing. So you actually go in as an investor and say, like in the crypto and blockchain space, I'll give you some examples. The folks that have absolutely made a fortune in this space. Yeah, they had some Bitcoin. Yeah, they were early investors in Bitcoin and Ethereum. But guess what? They were early investors in exchanges. You know, I actually was in the Bauschman group of one of the first investors in Coinbase, which is now
 
M.C Laubscher (29:59.714)
They went public. I think he did pretty well. The same with Kraken. He's also one of the earliest investors in Kraken. So he's on exchange. So the same with music. Do you think a lot of people trade crypto when the markets are going up? Absolutely. A lot of people are chasing the pump. Do you think there's a lot of activity on an exchange when crypto wets the bed and corrects? Absolutely. There's a panic selling going on.
 
Markets go up, down and sideways. They make money regardless. So that's one way of doing it. But think of other things, right? You know, in the cannabis space, everything was like, if you're a lawyer, I mean, you would never run out of work. If you are a tax accountant, you would never run out of work in that space. The same with crypto. So there's so many legal things happening there. And think about estate plans.
 
You have coins. How are you planning on transferring that to your children or your grandchildren? How does that work? Nobody's figured that out. There's companies that have been started in that space to address that problem. And you could be an investor in that company. How about taxes? You think they're coming off the taxes in crypto? You think if you're investing in a very, very good tax firm globally or locally and so forth that specializes in crypto, you're going to lose money?
 
going to be busier than ever. So it's a different kind of angle that you're coming in as an investor in the space, less sexy. I prefer it that way, cash flow, taxes, you're a business owner, that kind of stuff. But it's not the Elon Musk doggy coin kind of style that you're investing in the space. It's a little bit more strategic.
 
Right. Yeah, I love that, man. And you can use that, you know, that strategy across different industries. Like you said, you know, you're, selling, you're selling the picks and the, and the pans for the gold rushers. You're, selling the tools rather than actually going and trying to find the gold. And those are the people that actually got rich during the gold rush, right? People that sold the tool. So just think about, you know, any hot industry that way, like, what can I do? That's kind of that ancillary angle rather than the direct angle. And that could be the
 
Seth Bradley (32:18.03)
the better investment.
 
Yeah, it's almost like I interviewed Jim Rogers a couple of times on my show and he's very comical, legendary investor. And he always said to me, know, when I asked him about how, how we like some of the big hits that he had and some of his best investments, he said, MC, it's quite simple. All I do is I sit and I just wait until people, the money is just lying on the floor. And then I go and pick up the money. That's all I do.
 
So and then I asked him about, all right, what is that? What is how does that relate to it? And it's like when you see something that's a no brainer that everybody else is seeing. I mean, like, for example, the legal side and the taxes and crypto kind of a no brainer. Not a lot of people are thinking about it. It was the same way in cannabis, too, where everybody wanted to invest in a farm or a farmer or dispensary or a distribution and all this stuff.
 
and deal with all the headaches of the federal government and the local government, you could have been the lawyer starting a legal firm dealing with those headaches for them. You would never run out of work and you could probably charge much, much more. And it's the same thing with the tax thing. So that, in my opinion, was it's just that money lying on the floor waiting to be picked up as an investor.
 
Yeah, perfect man. Nailed it. one last gold nugget before we jump into the freedom for
 
M.C Laubscher (33:48.362)
Absolutely. Yeah, so I would say the big thing is you have to be very, very specific, obviously, why you're doing what you're doing, what you have and why you have it and what it's doing for you from a strategy. And then that's how you build your cashflow portfolio. But don't forget about the other stuff in your economy. There's a way to make your money as efficiently as possible. There's a way to position it.
 
And then there's a way to invest in this portfolio. And then there's a way to protect all of us with proper asset protection, with proper estate planning and with proper tax strategy. So most folks don't even think about the estate planning, the asset protection and the tax strategy. You're going to wish you have in five years. This will be a sound bite that that you can keep. You're going to wish you have thought about these things and not just on the shiny stuff.
 
I know because I've made all of those mistakes. I became a much better business owner investor when I started to put it all together and just didn't chase shiny stuff or had tunnel vision.
 
Yeah. Awesome, man. All right. Let's jump into the freedom for we're to mix it up a little bit because you've already been on the show once.
 
It's time for the Freedom Four.
 
Seth Bradley (35:09.422)
So what does your morning routine look like?
 
You know, it varies since I have two very young kids, but there's one, but there's two things that are consistent. So I make sure that I go for a walk 45 minutes to an hour. And I do spend an hour thinking. It's a habit that I've developed over time and that I learned from Keith Cunningham. So he just calls it thinking time. We don't think because it's the hardest thing to do as Andrew Ford would always say,
 
So I make sure that I block everything off. No computers, no smartphones, nothing, just me and a pad. And I write down, I have certain frameworks I use to analyze things and help me think through things, looking at the dangers that are out there, the opportunities and how I can capitalize on a lot of the stuff. that's, I mean, that's definitely, that's in my morning. The other stuff, it varies because they got two young ones, but those two things are consistent. So.
 
clear my mind with a walk, get some exercise in, and then thinking for an hour.
 
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we, have these ideal morning routines put together, but it, know, especially when you have kids and you have all these different variables, that's not always possible, but you know, there are a couple of things that you definitely need to carve out and just make sure you do every single day. All right. With all your success, what is one limiting belief that you've crushed along the way and how did you get past it?
 
M.C Laubscher (36:40.63)
I do it every day and limiting beliefs in the sense of, people talk about the mindset of abundance, you know, and having an abundant mindset, you know, and I intentionally move every single day when I get up, there are some certain elements of scarcity and I transform that into abundance and I do it intentionally. It's actually part of thinking time. You know, I've listened to all the gurus, I get all that.
 
But I don't wake up in the morning and go, yeah, this is going to be great. Every every person wakes up. This is just how we were built. If we weren't built this way, we wouldn't have survived. So we get up and we scan our environment and we start kind of not in a fearful fear isn't the right word, but it's kind of like fight or flight situation. Like I said, if you're not built that if you weren't built that way, you wouldn't be alive right now. We wouldn't be as a specie.
 
because otherwise we would have probably the saber-toothed tiger would have probably gotten us. So we were built that way. So I do it intentionally to transform from whatever elements it is of scarcity into abundance. And by doing that and doing that every single day intentionally, it changes your whole day. then you don't have any bad days. So I don't get up drumming my chest saying everything is perfect and rosy and rainbows and unicorns.
 
I understand that there are certain things that I've got to work out kinks and I have frameworks to do that. And I just make sure that I do it every single day. So overcoming limiting beliefs, we all have some of them. think like the, mean, the biggest one, there are some things like, the biggest one that I've ever came lightly and this is probably over the last three years is,
 
You know, Dan Sullivan, which is one of my coaches, a strategic coach said, you need to work less and make more money. And I'm like, I don't know how to do I know what's what's the catch here? Yeah. So that was a limiting belief. then I'm like, wait a second, does he have a superpower that I don't have? But then I started to realize that you could structure your day and then have proper systems and processes in place. And that I work four days a week now when I started as an entrepreneur, it was
 
M.C Laubscher (39:05.866)
seven days a week, 10 to 12 hours. Now I work four days a week and it's probably seven to eight hours at most because I have those systems and processes in place. it was, mean, yeah, talk about a limiting belief right there. It was something that I to work out and figure out.
 
Yeah. Yeah. And it's counterintuitive, right? It's like, wait, work less and make more. That's not how it works. That's not how I was taught growing up. That's not how it works.
 
It's everything, everything against what you were have been taught in school, right? So it's almost like you have to break down core foundational beliefs and a mindset. You have to double down on that. It's like when Labeque Saki said he makes more money every year and pays less in taxes. When you first hear that and you read the book, you're like, well, how does that, how does that work? So again, beliefs that have to change and then your mindset and then you
 
learn the game of money and you're like, yeah, that is that's what they do. This is what the castle and then just do they make more money every year, they pay less in taxes, actually get money back from the government, legally, and they work less and then and they make more money.
 
Yeah, exactly. I had Tom Willwright on the show last month and he said the same thing. That was the his big quote was, you know, the wealthier you get, the less taxes you pay. It's like what? Yeah, but it's 100 percent true, 100 percent true. What do you believe separates successful people like yourself who have taken action and taken control of their life and their own economy from those who get stuck in the nine to five, never take action and maybe never get started with cash flow?
 
M.C Laubscher (40:50.57)
I own all of my outcomes. And I think that's the biggest difference between a lot of folks and people that achieve certain levels of success. I don't blame anyone. Everything that happens is because of me. So even if there is something nefarious done to you, I shouldn't have put myself in that position and I should have seen it coming. So it's my responsibility, not anybody else's.
 
So I take responsibility for everything that I've done in my past, my present, my future. I own everything. So I was stuck for a while in a deep dark place. We're talking now like 10, 12 years ago and I wasn't going anywhere at that stage. And that was the one switch that I made and I've never looked back since, you know? So I own everything. The good, the bad and the ugly.
 
Yeah, I love that more than you know, man. Accountability is my number one principle in everything in business and life. Even again, if you if you know inside that maybe it was somebody else's fault, it still doesn't matter. You say, well, what could I have done to change it and to make it better? What could I have done differently? Take accountability for it. Don't blame other people.
 
Yeah, there's a person that I follow that I was very honored to meet in person, Tim Grover. And he's the guy behind Michael Jordan. mean, he's Michael Jordan's coach, Kobe's coach, know, Dwayne Wade. And he was actually, it's funny that I just saw that he actually worked with the Rams over the past month too, during that. And he's just, I mean, quite incredible because he literally gets you into
 
This is how a champion thinks. This is what's going in their mind. This is how they're wired. And those folks, mean, it's just so interesting to see. Even if folks don't win, listen to what Tom Brady said, by the way, in his playoff loss before he retired. Where they're like, you you didn't get the ball back and you didn't have another shot. basically you thought you were going into overtime, but then that final play that the Rams got you and he's like,
 
M.C Laubscher (43:12.386)
I shouldn't we shouldn't have been in that situation. I shouldn't have put my team in that situation in the first place. So that's all they think. That's all those folks think. And I know it's sports, but there's so much between sports, obviously, and and business and investing. So you look at the mind of a champion in any industry in any part of part of life. And that's all those folks think, whether it's a whether it's sports, it's a business, a marriage, investments, you know, they own it.
 
That on the outcomes.
 
Yeah, for sure. I'm listening to Winning right now, his book on Audible. it's great so far. All right. Last but not least, what does financial freedom mean to you?
 
You know, freedom is is a is it's it's we're living during interesting times. It's funny how freedom is is being spun. You know, I'm one of those folks that. Nobody grants you freedom, no one. You just you just take it, you're born free and you take it. You know, you can't you can't negotiate it, you can't vote for it, you can't beg for it, you can't plead for it, you just take it.
 
And you do that by taking action. So financial freedom and the same thing is no one no one's going to give it to you. And you're just going to have to go out and take it. And in the sense is what freedom means to me is having freedom of time, how I spend my time, what I do, having freedom of money. I do things and I spend my time how money no longer becomes a reason why and why I'm not doing something.
 
M.C Laubscher (44:55.126)
relationships, having freedom of relationships. doing cool things with people that I like to do things with and hanging out with people that I want to hang out with. So I don't have to hang out with someone just to hang out with someone. That's what freedom means. then obviously purpose, know, purpose is, yeah, the freedom to pursue what you want to pursue, the stuff that you want to work on, the stuff that you're passionate about.
 
So you don't do things just to do things and you have to get there by the way, you know, if you if you see all the things that I've had to do to get to the part where I just do stuff that I want to do. It's been a long road. It didn't start with that, but that should be the goal in the end. So we all have to do things that we don't like to do and some way or shape or form. But essentially, when you get to financial freedom, you can just focus on the things that you want to do that you're passionate about, whatever they are. If it's
 
doing cool things with cool people and cool places. If it's spending time supporting your charities and your church and so forth and being actively involved with that. There's folks that I know that are very wealthy that, mean, they just, and a lot of them, by the way, right now, they're just buying ranches and farms and just living off the land in the middle of nowhere, you know, in different states.
 
Yeah, I mean, and that's that's it. That's it. That's what they that's what they want to do right now. Get away from all the craziness. They kind of see that things are going to get wilder and crazier in the in coming months and the next couple of years. And they're like, I don't want to participate in this. I'm just going to buy a piece of land in the middle of nowhere and come back when this so when the dust settles. So, yeah, that's that's that's what that's what it means to me. It's it's something that I talk about a lot, too, that I'm pretty passionate about.
 
Because we are in a fight for it now too. You know, all over the world in many, many, many different ways. So my own little way, I try to, you know, help as many people as I can to get the financial park right. Because if you are financially independent and free, you know, you're not going to be forced into a corner or have your back to the wall and be forced to make decisions that are against your principles, your values, and what you believe in. You're going to tell
 
M.C Laubscher (47:18.466)
people to go pound sand. So I want as many people to be in that position as possible.
 
man, that was an awesome answer, dude. Let's wrap it up, man. It's been awesome having you on the show. Where can our listeners find out more about you? Where can they get that new book? 21 Best Cash Flow Niches. Tell us all about it.
 
So cashflowninja.com is everything Cashflow Ninja and the book is called the 21 Best Cashflow Ninjas, Creating Wealth and the Best Alternative Cashflow Investments. It's available on Amazon or cashflowninja.com. And when your listeners purchase a copy of the book, just screenshot a proof of your purchase to my team at info at cashflowninja.com and I'll throw in some bonus goodies. I'll give you a digital version of the book if you wanna read it on Kindle.
 
A audio version of the book, if you just want to listen to it, driving in your car, working out or hanging out. I've actually curated a library of interviews specifically where people talk about these niches. You'll get access to that and more bonus goodies. So it's available on Amazon dot com, but also at cash learning dot com, you'll be able to buy the book. The twenty one best cash flow and it just creating wealth in the best alternative cash flow investments.
 
Awesome brother. Well, congratulations on the book launch and it's been awesome having you on the show again. I MC let's catch up soon.
 
M.C Laubscher (48:37.962)
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
 
All right kiddos, MC Lobster, the cash flow ninja, drop in bombs. As always, he always comes up with all these new ideas, all these new ways to create cash flow and income outside of the box. We're not just talking about real estate. We're not just talking about stocks, bonds and mutual funds. We're talking about agriculture, life insurance contracts, all these different ways that you can create income for yourself. There's more than one way.
 
to create income that does not involve just lawyering, just doctoring, just engineering, just doing your, just creating your active daily, trading your time for money income. So at the end of the day, look, this is the major key. The major key is to get started. Again, I always say start out with a real estate syndication on the passive side because...
 
that will open your eyes to opportunities. That's what it did for me. When I started investing in commercial real estate to begin with, it was through a passive investment. And then I invested more and then I invested more. And then my network expanded and to people like MC who exposed my mind to ideas about other types of ways to get started in multiple streams of income. Then I bought into franchises, then I bought into crypto, then I bought into all these different things. But until you get started,
 
and you get this cashflow train moving, you're gonna be stuck. You're gonna be stuck at your day job with one stream of income, putting yourself and your family's financial future at risk. So I encourage you to just get started. So if you're ready to take action and partner with us on one of our next passive real estate deals, go to passiveincomeattorney.com, join our Esquire passive investor club and get started today. All right, kids, until next time, enjoy the journey.
 
M.C Laubscher (50:34.616)
Thank you for listening to the Passive Income Attorney Podcast with Seth Bradley. Do you want more ideas on how to generate multiple streams of passive income? Then jump over to passiveincomeattorney.com for show notes and resources. Then apply for the private Facebook community by searching for the Passive Income Attorney on Facebook. And we'll see you on the next episode.
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https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/sethbradleyesq
https://medium.com/@sethbradleyesq
https://www.tiktok.com/@sethbradleyesq?lang=en
M.C Laubscher’s Link:https://cashflowninja.com/https://www.amazon.com/Best-Cashflow-NichesTM-Alternative-Investments/dp/1737883414

TME 13 | Reg D 506(b) 506(c): Which One Will Make You More Money?

In this episode, securities attorney and real estate investor Seth Bradley discusses the key differences between Regulation D’s 506(b) and 506(c) exemptions and their implications for capital raising in real estate. Seth Bradley emphasizes the importance of understanding these distinctions to maximize fundraising opportunities while remaining compliant with SEC regulations.
Seth Bradley explains that both exemptions allow for raising funds without registering as public securities, but they come with different rules regarding investor eligibility and solicitation. The 506(b) exemption relies on pre-existing relationships and allows for non-accredited investors, but does not permit advertising or solicitation. In contrast, 506(c) offers full advertising capabilities but limits participation to accredited investors only. Seth Bradley concludes by stressing that selecting the incorrect exemption can lead to potential legal issues and missed financial opportunities, encouraging viewers to carefully analyze their business model before choosing an exemption.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnGLVOCBfqE&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=1
Bullet Point Highlights:
Regulation D Overview: Both 506(b) and 506© are part of the SEC’s Regulation D, allowing capital raising without public registration.
506(b) Details: This exemption permits up to 35 non-accredited investors, but prohibits advertising and requires pre-existing relationships.
Advertising Freedom with 506©: Enables widespread advertising and solicitation, but limits participants to accredited investors only.
Investor Credibility: Verification of accredited investor status is mandatory in 506© to ensure compliance with SEC regulations.
Financial Implications: Understanding each exemption is crucial for maximizing fundraising and minimizing legal risks.
Legal Compliance: Choosing the wrong exemption can result in SEC violations and significantly limit fundraising capabilities.
Strategic Decision-Making: Investors should align their exemption choice with their business model to ensure optimal capital raising.
Transcript:
(Seth Bradley)
regggd 506b versus 506 C. Which one makes you more money? You're about to raise capital for your next real estate deal and someone tells you just file under regggd 506b or 506. But hold up, is that actually the best way to maximize your raise or are you leaving money on the table? Today, I'm breaking down the real difference between 506b and 506 C. And more importantly, which one will put the most money in your pocket as a capital raiser, while I'm keeping you, of course, out of trouble with the SEC. Real quick, if you don't
 
know me, I'm Seth Bradley, securities attorney, real estate investor, capital raiser. I'm here to show you how to scale your business while staying compliant and out of the SEC's purview. Let's get it. All right. First, the basics of regggd. what you need to know. All right, let's keep this simple. Both 506b and 506 C fall under what's called regulation D, which is an SEC exemption that allows you to raise money for private investors without registering it as a public security. This is why syndicators, fund managers, capital
 
raisers, we all love it. It's faster, it's cheaper, and doesn't require SEC approval before you start raising capital. But here's where most people get confused. These two exemptions are not the same, and picking the wrong one can limit your ability to raise capital or even get you into legal trouble. So, let's figure this thing out together. Next, let's go through 506b first. It's the old school relationshipbased method. So, 506b, it's the old school country club method of raising capital. It allows you to bring in up to 35
 
nonacredited investors. That's significant. But here's the catch. You cannot advertise. you cannot solicit. So that means no Facebook ads, Instagram posts, no blasting your deal to strangers, no talking at a networking event about your deal. The SEC says you must have a pre-existing substantive relationship with your investors before they invest. So what does that mean? Well, if you just met a person at a networking event last week and now you're pitching him your deal, you could already be violating securities laws.
 
The SEC has cracked down on this and if they think you're using 506b as an excuse to backdoor advertise, they will come knocking. That said, 506b has its place. If you have a strong investor network, you don't need to publicly advertise. This exemption gives you more flexibility with investor qualifications because you can bring in nonacredited investors, not just accredited investors. All right. Next, 506 C. The modern kind of a more scalable approach. the exemption that lets you go big. With 506C, you can advertise freely. You can
 
talk freely. You can post your deals on social media. You can run paid ads. You can do webinars. You can shout it from the rooftops if you want. You're no longer limited to people that you already know. You can talk to strangers about it. But here's the trade-off. As noted before, every investor must be accredited. No exceptions. That means each investor needs to prove that they have either $1 million in net worth excluding their primary home or an income of 200k per year if you're married 300k combined. And you as a
 
syndicator must verify this. Self-certification is not enough. Typically, you'll have investors submit CPA letters or a letter from their attorney, broker statements, or a third party verification company such as Parallel Markets. This means fewer investors can participate, but the ones that can have deeper pockets. And if you structure your deal right, you can raise money way faster, scale way bigger, and you're going to have less headaches because these people are going to have more money. So, they're not giving you
 
their last $50,000. All right, so we've talked about highlevel 506b, 506 C, but which one makes you more money? That's the question. Which one actually makes you more money? So, well, it depends on your business model. If you already have a strong investor network and you don't need to solicit, you don't need to advertise, 506b might be the best bet because you can take both accredited and nonacredited or what we call sophisticated investors. This is great if you have repeat investors who trust
 
you or you already have that built-in network that you already know. But if you want to scale, attract institutional money and market openly, then 506c is the clear winner and it's really the only option. you get bigger checks, fewer investor headaches, and the ability to automate and market your fund. The biggest syndicators I know, they're all using 506 C because they want the ability to raise capital at scale. The old school guys who like keeping it private, they stick with 506b. You have to decide what fits best
 
for your model. Okay, let's structure your deal the right way. Bottom line, choosing the wrong exemption could cost you millions. If you mess this up, you can get stuck with fewer investors, slower raises, or if you don't follow the rules, even SEC violations. We definitely don't want that. So, at Raise Law, we structure bulletproof syndications that protect your business, maximize your ability to raise capital, and keep you legally compliant. So, before you launch your next fund, let's make sure you're using the right
 
exemption for your goals. Hit the link below, schedule a call, and let's build your deal the right way.
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnGLVOCBfqE&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=1
https://www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq/posts/pfbid034EjyZdtL1fXCXpdBHrq7DuGf2PR8FTQYaCSzfmLgSmr8Y1883CjTJmuY7i6bPkbel
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJCneQFTQ2B/
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq/status/1917287147872354315
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sethbradleyesq_capitalraising-realestatesyndication-506bvs506c-activity-7323052563652579328-ER8I?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

RTBL 09 | Life's Best Moments Are Earned Not Given with Celina Eklund

In this episode, Seth Bradley shares his unique journey from being adopted and raised in a blue-collar family in West Virginia to navigating medical school, business school, and law school before discovering his true calling in entrepreneurship and real estate investing. Seth Bradley explains how a mindset shift, exposure to high-level deals as a big law attorney, and a relentless work ethic enabled him to launch multiple businesses and achieve true freedom.
The episode delves into Seth Bradley’s beliefs around grit, personal development, hiring values-based teams, and designing a life focused on ownership instead of traditional employment. Listeners gain insight into the principles and strategies that have shaped Seth Bradley’s path to success and financial independence.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:https://youtu.be/2Gcx4Ix8-zo
Bullet Point Highlights:
Adopted from Korea, raised in West Virginia by a coal miner and teacher.
Went from med school to law school before finding alignment in entrepreneurship.
Realized in big law he wanted to be the dealmaker, not just the attorney.
Now runs 7+ businesses including RaiseLaw, gyms, and startups.
Works 12-hour days by choice — building freedom, not trading time for money.
Core values: Accountability, Resilience, Transparency, Intelligence, Consistency, Awareness (ARTICA).
Married to Allison — also from WV, they now run gyms together in SoCal.
Major mindset shift came from Rich Dad Poor Dad in 2013.
Believes most avoid hard things because they’ve never seen the reward on the other side.
Emphasizes hiring based on culture and values over just skills.
Stays grounded through personal development and emotional regulation.
Focused on building legacy, not just income — ownership > employment.
Transcript:
Seth Bradley (00:00.462)
Welcome back to Revenue from Retention, the show where we dive into the stories behind success, the mindset, the pivots, and the purpose-driven decisions that create powerful transformations. Today's guest has a story that is inspiring, as it is also uncommon. Seth Bradley was born in West Virginia and adopted at birth and has been defying the odds ever since. He walked the path from medical school to law school only to realize that neither were truly aligned with his purpose.
 
After years of grinding, Seth made a bold leap into real estate entrepreneurship and never look back. Today, he's a thriving investor and a sought out after mentor, also soon to be father and the host of Passive Income Attorney Podcasts, where he teaches other high achievers how to break free from the golden handcuffs and build true freedom through passive income. This episode, we're going to dive into reinvention, identity and finding courage to live life on your own terms. So welcome to the show, Seth. So good to have you.
 
Oh, so good to be here, Selena. Thank you so much for having me on. Really appreciate it.
 
I love people with, I don't know if I've ever interviewed anybody that has like medical and law background per se. So it's neat to be able to like have, I love people that have so many, so much on their resume and it's like so colorful because you have so many experiences. So glad to have you here, but I ask everybody the same question before we dive into the podcast and I'm going to ask you the same. Why do feel like people should listen to your story? There's millions of podcasts out there. Why do you feel like people should listen to you?
 
Sure. You know, I believe that my story resonates with a lot of people. I like to frame it and I like to call it the blue-collar mindset. know, trading time for money, right? We've all heard that. We've all kind of been through that at some point in our lives, at least most of us. You know, getting caught up in comfort and lacking, you know, just lacking that knowledge of what's possible and like what's out there. And that's kind of how I grew up. Just a small twig, I was actually born in Korea.
 
Celina Eklund (01:56.652)
And then I got adopted in West Virginia. So I was there for about three months and maybe I made my way over to West Virginia via plane when I was three months old. But growing up in West Virginia, great place, beautiful place, not a lot of diversity, but also growing up with my parents who are incredible people, I love them so much and they were instrumental in making me who that I am today.
 
But that being said, they're just, you know, I was never exposed to entrepreneurship and real estate and just the, you know, these bigger concepts, right? Of like private equity and owning companies and raising capital. Like none of those things were ever even in my atmosphere ever until I got really to really until I got to business school and law school. So, you know, that blue collar mindset or, you know, just get the best job that you can possibly get and getting caught up in just
 
living that life and getting comfortable with it and not knowing what's possible that's out there, I think it's a relatable story.
 
That's cool. did, how did you, what was the thing that got you into education, into school first? Because like my family, my dad is like, no, we're all 25 plus years retired in the military. You're gonna join the military. And then my mom is like, you're gonna go to school. And I didn't really wanna go to school, but then somebody, there was one person, it was the one person that changed my life forever that told me about sales and entrepreneurship. Like I'll never forget that light bulb moment of like, oh, interesting. So like, did you have that?
 
Like that person that had the conversation with you or a professor that talked to you that brought you into like, you know, like going to school. What did that look like?
 
Celina Eklund (03:34.766)
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, having that blue collar mindset, my dad's a retired coal miner, my mom's a retired school teacher. And they had that mindset like you need to go to college, get an education. And that's just the best thing that you can do for yourself. I'm still kind of of that generation, right? But and school was always really easy for me. I'll say that. So it was really easy for me. So and I never had like a passion for anything in particular. So I just kind of looked at like, what's the best
 
job that I can get. And to me when I was younger, that was becoming a doctor. So that's why I went kind of that med school route first before realizing that wasn't for me. And then that's when I went to this school and then law school and all that. And my parents were encouraging of all these things and they're actually very understanding of when I kept changing between the schools because I was still on at least, you know, that educational path, still higher education and striving towards. Yeah, curious. Yeah, striving towards something.
 
So I was always just kind of put in that again that kind of narrow mindset where that's the only path I knew I didn't know about entrepreneurship or didn't think it was like a possibility for me and for my life.
 
That's cool. I am. Do you have any other brothers or sisters? Are you the only one?
 
I do, have an older sister.
 
Seth Bradley (04:53.27)
And what's the age gap difference between you two?
 
About seven years. Okay. She's not adopted, so she's biological.
 
on the issue living california with where you guys are at
 
No, she's in Charleston, South Carolina. That's cool. Do you go up?
 
Celina Eklund (05:14.328)
Have not.
 
I don't, you know, I've talked to other adoptees in the past and that's always one of the core things. They all want to go and figure out where they're from and they feel like they're kind of missing something. I think that my parents did such a great job and loved me so much and I felt that throughout the process that I just never felt the need to kind of go outside of that. They were always just my parents and that's it. I didn't feel the need to find anything else.
 
Yeah, to like hunt back. My boyfriend, he doesn't know his dad. I think his dad left when he was like three or four years old, really young age. And so I've asked him this before too, like, do you think your dad will ever find you? And he's like, you know, if he finds me, great, but like, I'm not out there like actively searching into that. So, that's cool. It's neat to hear from, I don't know too many people that have been adopted like so young, so early. So it's good that you have that. And then also you have really good
 
your parents are like a form of mentorship and, you know, have been very supportive. So that's cool that you're able to carry it on. yeah, so let's talk a little bit about like entrepreneurship. And when we were, before we got on this podcast, we talked a lot about like, you know, leadership and the importance of like building people. So did you, when you met your wife, did I know that she is a big part in like business with you too? Like, did you find her through business or how did that whole thing happen?
 
Yeah, it's really interesting because she's also from West Virginia, but we didn't meet until we were actually in San Diego. So I moved to LA first in 2009 and then made my way down to San Diego for law school. And then she came out later and we met through a mutual friend who's also from West Virginia. So like West Virginia was the, you know, the commonality between us. So pretty awesome that we met each other, you 2000 miles away in San Diego.
 
Seth Bradley (07:10.722)
Wow, that's neat. so like, how did you guys both realize, we like business and we want to like do this together?
 
Yeah, I mean it took a while, right? So I ended up graduating from law school and we moved back across the country together back to West Virginia because at the time that was the best big law firm job that I could get. It was back home because I had some pull there. So she followed me back to West Virginia begrudgingly. She didn't want to do that, but she did. So God bless her. And then we ended up going to North Carolina for a little bit and then trying to find a way back out to California.
 
But at the same time, I was actually working for Big Law Firms at the time. again, entrepreneurship wasn't really on the table at that point in time. It was still, hey, let's just keep slaving away here, grinding, trying to work a way up to partner at the Big Law Firms. And she had actually went back to school for her second degree in interior design and started.
 
You guys are smart. Both of you are just geniuses. Holy cow.
 
Well, I don't know about that. Honestly, like nowadays, if somebody asked me, should they be going to college? I would have to have a deeper conversation with that person, right? Like it depends on what they're going to get into.
 
Seth Bradley (08:19.97)
Yeah, you're it's just crazy because times have changed so much like back then like you needed a degree to do anything and now it's more of like people are looking for like experience.
 
Yep, 100%.
 
Like if I, you know, if I'm looking to, you know, if I own a restaurant and I'm looking to hire like a bartender, like I don't care if you went to school for four years to get a science degree. I'm like, how many cocktails have you made? Do you know how to make a spicy margarita and a regular margarita? Like, do you know what ingredients are in it? You know, so it's kind of like, it's, it's insane to see like how things have changed over, over time.
 
Totally, It used to be like a minimum, right? Like you had to get a four-year degree no matter what you're doing. It doesn't matter. Like get a degree in communications or general studies or whatever, but you have to get a degree to kind of get to that next level or to get a good job. But it's just not like that anymore unless there's like a very specific skill set that you have to have a degree for. I don't believe in that system and that's coming from a guy who went to school for 11 years, which is insane to say out loud.
 
But if you're not going to school to be a doctor, to be a lawyer, to be a dentist, to be an engineer, things like that where you have to have a degree for it, it probably doesn't make sense.
 
Seth Bradley (09:38.274)
Yeah, I, it's funny that you said, you said just a little bit ago, you said that you're just kind of grinding and grinding, grinding, keep on going. And you know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, but you don't see like the light yet and what, what that looks like. And, it's, it's funny how like when your intentions are in the right place and your heart is in the right place and you want to, you know, give back to other people and you're a good human being, like those things naturally, you know, come like they unfold.
 
for one another and that's neat that you guys have that vision of just like, put in the hard work right now. That way we can have the fruits for our kids later. And I think that that's where like a lot of people get caught up or give up is like, the result isn't tomorrow. And I'm sure that you see that with investing too. Like I can't just pick up my phone and be like, okay, here's a million dollars in my bank account. Like there's strategy that's involved, right? Like there's thought and processes and it.
 
Like you have to build certain things and go certain avenues. So with you guys like getting into investing now, what are some of like the bigger projects that you guys are working on or what it is that you focus on?
 
Yeah, I was gonna say before I get into that, mean, it does come down to relationships and networking and things like that where you just, you have to get out there and meet the right people and get exposed to the right people. I think that that's really key. I mean, I know for me, working in those big law firms, I was actually doing what I do now on the business side. I was representing clients to do what I do now on the business side. So they were buying large real estate projects. They were raising capital.
 
to buy huge apartment buildings and to buy companies and things like that. But it was funny because when you're in the weeds, you don't really think about you on that side of the table. You're always just like kind of in it and you're like, all right, well, my job is this small part, which is being the attorney on the job. But then later, like you have to take a step back and say, wait a minute, like I know all these things and I would actually be really good at this. Why wouldn't I want to be on the business side? And that's kind of the light bulb moment for me was just seeing
 
Celina Eklund (11:38.766)
take a step back and say, maybe I don't want to just be a vendor. Maybe I actually want to be that person that's buying businesses, that's operating large apartment complexes, that's doing, that's raising capital, doing those things. And I think it's funny, especially for attorneys, because that's just one example of a person that's in the weeds there every single day, but perhaps they don't necessarily own any real estate, even though they're a real estate attorney, or they've never raised capital before, even though they're a securities attorney.
 
Things like that. Another common example is like real estate agents, right? There's so many real estate agents out there. many. You know, they're supposed to be professionals. It's like, well, if you ask them, like, how much real estate do you own? You know, maybe they own their own house, but they don't own any rental properties. Most of them, I should say, don't own many rental properties. They're not actually in that business, which is wild because they would probably be really good at it if they could kind of take a step back and say,
 
Yeah, maybe I should get into this bit, the business side, not just the vendor side.
 
Yeah, it's so true. Find somebody that has been where it is that you want to go. It's kind of like, it's kind of like if you want to get like, like body modifications, right? So like Botox or like, you know, you want to get what's what's in for hair right now, hair extensions, right? Like you're not going to go to a hair salon and the freaking chick doesn't
 
have hair extensions in right or like the lady that you're go get Botox from like she doesn't even have Botox and you can clearly tell like she's not taking good care of her skin it's like okay wait what like I want to make sure like whoever I'm working with like they have that that track record.
 
Celina Eklund (13:17.662)
You gotta be careful with that talking about education, right? So it's it's awesome that there's all this alternative education out there with coaching and mentoring and YouTube University and Master, I like to call these folks mastermind scholars sometimes it's like, know, make sure that you are buying from the right people people that are doing what they said that they are doing and teaching what they what you want to learn, right? Like they're not just they're not just educators. They've actually done what you want to do.
 
It's really important and they're continuing to do that. Like they were successful at it and they were good enough that, you know, hey, I want to teach other people, but at the same time, that's my core business. My core business is what I'm teaching, not the education side because there's just a lot of people out there that you can waste a lot of money with. So that's kind of the downside to that.
 
That's true. like what is your, also talked about like the reason why we love entrepreneurship so much is because it gives you the ability to have freedom. You can go take a trip to Disney world with your family for three days, or you can, you know, fly wherever it is that you want to go because you're not working in the business. You're working on the business and you have other people that are helping run it too. So what is like that? I have a lot of people that are going to be listening to this that are
 
you know, wanting to get maybe out of their nine to five, or if they work a corporate job and they kind of like want to transition. like, what is your day to day look like for you? Like what does an average Monday through Friday look like for you? And like, what does that schedule, you know, represent you? How does it look like?
 
Yeah, I might be scaring some of your listeners away by telling them this, but my day is long. I have seven businesses that I run, at least seven, some people might say more than that. So I get up around six o'clock and I start working almost immediately. I used to have kind of this long, drawn out morning routine, but I'm kind of the Alex Hormozi cult now where it's like, how quickly can you get dialed in? And for me, I just grab a cup of coffee, I sit down, I put some headphones on and I get going.
 
Celina Eklund (15:17.31)
So I can get in that zone pretty quickly. But I'm working long hours. I mean, if I'm in the office and not traveling and not speaking at conferences and doing those sorts of things, I'm working six to at least six o'clock, like 12 hours straight. I might take 30 minutes off for a quick lunch, that sort of thing. And then I'll go get my workout. And it's six thirty across the street at one of my gyms. So it's long. It's very long. But alluding to what you said to earlier, if something did come up,
 
or if I did want to go on a vacation or take 30 days off, things like that that you might not have the flexibility or freedom to do with a W-2, you can. So I am choosing to work 12 hour days because I'm putting that time in for myself because I can see the vision for myself, my family, and my businesses. And it's different. It's different when you're putting that time in for the things that you believe in and the things that are important for you.
 
as opposed to working at W2 where all you're doing is counting the seconds as they're ticking down so you can clock out. And you're working for somebody else's dream. It's totally different. 12 hours working for myself versus nine hours working for somebody else is totally different. Totally different.
 
Do you, this is a side note, do you play the guitar? There's a guitar, I know people can't see this, they're only gonna hear it, but do you play music?
 
I used to. don't have as much time anymore, but I grew up playing guitar all the way through college and that sort of thing, but not so much anymore. But I do want to get back into it one day.
 
Seth Bradley (16:54.146)
Do you think that music has helped fuel your creativity and keep your brain fresh?
 
I think it always does. I think it always does. think that that's a completely different side of your brain that you can stimulate and I should probably get back into it because of that. I think it just kind of unlocks things for you.
 
Yeah, it's a, I'm reading this book right now. Well, it's like probably my third time reading it. He's one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin. He wrote the book, Lynchpin. He has a couple of different books. Have you heard of him before? for sure.
 
Marketing marketing king
 
my gosh, he's just, he's incredible. But I read different things and he talks about how to like not fit the mold, the purple cow, be the purple cow, not the black and white cow. And so like, I think like music is something that kind of helps fuel that creativity. But why, why do you feel like you love the grit so much? Like you don't have to work 12 hours every single day. You don't have to get up at six if you want to get up at, you know, 12 o'clock in the afternoon, you can, but what makes you so addicted to the grit and the hard work? Why do you like that? Cause most people
 
Seth Bradley (17:57.068)
want to run away from the stuff that's hard. They're not trying to put themselves in the tough stuff, which is rare. And I feel like that's how I found you is because I love tough stuff. Especially being a female, I love it when people tell me, you can't do that. And I'm a woman. So the odds are even smaller. like, hell yeah. Like that, like I'm all in. how do you, like, why are you so obsessed with business and wanting to grow so much?
 
Yeah, I mean, think there's a couple things. think number one, I just enjoy building. So like I enjoy being a builder and building businesses and learning about new things. I have a hard time saying no. Like I've gotten better at it and I think I'm actually pretty good at it now, but it took me a long time to get there. It probably got me to this maximum capacity before I started saying no, because I just love like diving into new businesses and learning about new things and
 
and ways to make money and build businesses and help people. But that's number one. I think that I just genuinely enjoy that. So I try to fill my day up with that. Now, sometimes you do get bogged down with some of the smaller things that you don't want to do, but try to avoid that as much as possible and still dedicate as much time to your highest and best and most fun, enjoyable use as possible. And number two, I think that a lot of folks
 
avoid the hard because they haven't been rewarded for doing it. I think that people that have been successful have seen that the hard stuff is the best stuff. Meaning like once you've gotten through that hard place and you just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and you had that breakthrough and you saw it and you were like, that's it. That's it. Like that's where I need to get. So when you see it again, when you see it get hard, you realize that's what you want. Right. That's when you realize
 
I just got to keep pushing and pushing and pushing and eventually I'll break through again. Whereas other people may have in the past ran up against something hard and said this is too hard and kind of pulled back. So they weren't, didn't get to see that, you know, that reward.
 
Seth Bradley (20:06.702)
How long have you been into the self-development space? Have you always been there? like personal, I should say personal development. Have you always been there? Is it something new or do you?
 
Yeah, I would say it actually started with maybe around 2013 when I got my first big law firm job and I realized once again that that wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. So I started kind of looking around and learning about real estate and I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. That was kind of a game changer, which it is for a lot of people just with like mindset. So I would say that that book, even though it's not necessarily a lot of personal development there, but it is a mindset shift.
 
And that was probably the one that kind of got me going and got me to start reading more books and start thinking about things differently.
 
He lives here in Arizona. We've ran into him a couple of times. Yeah, he lives here in Scottsdale. or like going to the mall or restaurant like every now and then somebody in our company will come across him and he's a great guy. We have his book around our shelves too as well. Yeah, I wish I found self-development when I was like 18. I'm like, where was this? My brother is, there's a big age gap difference between the two of us, but he just turned 17 in January.
 
and he's been into self-development because of me since he was 15 years old. And, you know, I just want him to be so much further ahead when he's like 20, you know, and 21 and like he's making good decisions for himself. think that's so important. So I even watched like really old videos of like Tony Robbins. Love Tony Robbins. And it's neat to watch like his evolution from when he first started with the big baggy suits and he was doing, you know, one-off seminars.
 
Seth Bradley (21:52.31)
you know, way back in the day. And then now, like, I mean, he's at a point where he's starting to retire because his vocal cords are going out, kids are getting older. And it's neat to watch him grow because he, you know, if like he can do it, there's no difference between me and him. Like, I, the only difference between him and me is like, he just wanted it more than I wanted it. And he made it happen faster, you know, so.
 
You're doing that for your brother. I mean because that's again It's all about like exposure, right? Like the sooner that you're exposed to that or the sooner like you meet that person even if it's a sibling or whoever it is, right? That gives you at least that exposure. Maybe sometimes you Resist it like you might not want it at the time But at least it's kind of in your mind and then later when you're ready You know you you have that at least that idea and inclination in your mind So just being exposed to different ideas and networking with the right people
 
makes a huge difference. The earlier that it can happen, the better.
 
Yeah, I think that's when like the ego has to be put aside. Like you gotta, you gotta set the ego down. You know, you don't know it all and that's okay. And I think for men, maybe it's a little bit more difficult because guys want to act like, you know, they, they know everything. Women are like, no, what are all my resources? Like, I'm going to read all these baby books. Like I'm going to start, you know, watching YouTube videos on how to properly, you know,
 
do something for their baby like me. I've got a ton of women around me and I have like, don't have kids yet, but I'm just like, I tossed out our candles because the flame from the candles isn't good for your insides. So we got like this freaking new scent thing. We got rid of the microwave cause I'm like a little nervous of radiation for my baby. know, like I'm just like kind of like immersing myself, emerging myself like into the whole process of like becoming a mom. But that's like the cool stuff with, with resources, but that takes the ego to like put aside, you know.
 
Celina Eklund (23:38.078)
I agree. I think you're onto something there. I remember being in my 20s and I thought I knew everything and I never ask questions, which is sad to even say now. I wouldn't ask questions. I'd be like, I'll figure it out. I don't care. I'm not going to give you anything. It's crazy how not humble I was. I was really just like, I know everything and if I don't, I'll figure it out. I don't need help. And nowadays, I'm totally different mindset now.
 
I'm gonna share.
 
Seth Bradley (24:08.354)
I'm going to share my screen with you. And even though the people on the other side, they can't see this, we'll just kind of like walk through it. But I look at this chart every single day actually, and it talks about power and force. like whenever I'm in a situation or having a conversation with somebody, I'm like always trying to check what my level is. And so I'm just kind of walking through it because other people can't see this. So they're just hearing it.
 
At the bottom of this chart, it's like bright red. And then at the top, it slowly starts to go into it, like a yellow, a green, a blue, and a purple. And at the very bottom, it talks about shame, guilt. And that's how you're operating at a level 125, desire, anger, pride, 175. And then you slowly move up the chart. And as you get into the blues and the purple, you operate out of love and joy and peace and enlightenment. So you either have power or you have force that's coming out of your system.
 
And I'm just always trying to think like, how can I always operate at this violet purple? Because if I'm that way towards somebody, like they're going to have that reciprocity towards me versus like operating out of anxiety. And I think it comes to like emotional maturity. I think emotional maturity is really like a big part of this, but I wanted to share this with you because I thought that I look
 
at it every do you use that? Do you kind of look at this every day and then just kind of stop and take a moment and just kind of where you're at?
 
If I need like a reset, you know, if something bad happened or something that was unexpected or, you know, I'll give you like an example. Like my, text my dad on Saturday and I'm like, Hey, this is the venue where we're having our wedding at. You know, this is what's happening in March. And he just hasn't texted me back at all, you know? And I'm just like, I just think to myself, like you're my dad. You're also important part because you're supposed to be here at this wedding coming up and I haven't gotten a text back. immediately, I mean, I'm over here like boiling in like,
 
Seth Bradley (26:01.652)
shame and anger and I'm pissed off. And so like whenever I like lose that edge, I check myself and I'm like, okay, how do we go back over here? Maybe, you know, back to enlightenment, powerful inspiration.
 
you know, maybe he's on a trip right now and he doesn't have phone service or signal or, you know, maybe I just need to have more compassion for his situation. My stepmom got diagnosed with cancer last year. Who knows? Maybe it came back again. They're at the hospital. Like, you just kind of don't know what other people are going through on the other side. So I just like check myself on this list. And if I'm not, if I don't see the chart, I kind of take like a mental note of like, you know, hey, let's go back up to the top. It's okay. And everything's all figure audible.
 
I that. like my thing. So I just kind of wanted to like share that, but I'll text it to you after this so you can have it.
 
Sure, yeah, I appreciate that. That's awesome. That's awesome.
 
That's a, that's important to me. And I noticed another thing. I love watching people's patterns. That's what I'm, I am really, really good at is like studying people because you obviously have information and you want to take it from the people who have it to the people who need it too. So how have you learned to be like so coachable and open-minded? Like I can tell that there, you have a certain level where you can put your ego aside. And you know, I think that that's kind of like why we're on this podcast too, as well.
 
Seth Bradley (27:23.852)
you have a certain level of like open mindedness. Is your wife somebody that like grounds you with that to be that way or is that something that's always been in
 
She definitely helps, that's for sure. I would say it definitely hasn't always been in me. Like I said, I think that I was not humble enough in my 20s to be able to accept coaching and mentoring and advice. I wasn't as open as I used to be. I think it probably took a little bit of spinning around, meaning going to medical school and
 
dropping out and then going to business school and like, isn't good enough and then going to law school and I was like, okay, this is cool, but going to get in a great job and then realizing like, this isn't what I want to do either. I think it took a lot of that like kind of spinning around where it's like, hey buddy, maybe you don't know it all. Right. And then you had to have a little bit of self had to have a little bit of self reflection and say, all right, what, what am I missing here? And just be a lot more open to mentorship and coaching and
 
and people just that are, you know, that are, have the experience that you want to have and to have more life experiences and have done the things that you want to do already. And once you kind of open yourself up to that and realize like, man, this is a shortcut right here. Like this is the shortcut. You know, I think again, it comes with experience and exposure and results.
 
That's cool. So you and your wife now you guys have two gyms and you're opening up a third one soon in Southern California What's next up for you guys? What is a what's a thing that's up and coming? have the third gym You're gonna have a family soon, too So do you are you guys like building out like another team for your third location? Or what is what is like the next like six months to a year look like for you guys?
 
Celina Eklund (29:14.54)
We are, we are. So I've been kind of kicked out of the partnership for the gyms, so to speak, at least on paper, just because she wants to just, you know, it's her baby. So she wants to run with it, which is great. Even though I'm still doing the same stuff that I was doing before, I'm just not going to get paid for it. All good. No worries there, but we'll get it. I know, I know. So helping her get that launched, hopefully before the end of the year. And same thing with the family starting before the end of the year as well. So they'll
 
still loves you, don't worry.
 
Celina Eklund (29:43.97)
be going about at the same time, it looks like. And then, you know, with my other businesses just really growing my own boutique law firm and my startups as well. So a lot of, a lot of irons in the fire right now to keep going.
 
Do you guys have our culture where I'm at, like hiring is really important, the way that we bring on people. So do you guys have like a specific way of how you find your people, how to find the right people, like retaining employees? Because I mean, I feel like there's a lot of people that just kind of, you know, they're in it for like the paycheck, they're there for six months and then they're bouncing. So like, do you guys have a specific process of what you're doing for your upcoming third location?
 
Yeah, I mean, think you get better at it as you go, right? Like trial and error, figure out who, know, personality wise will work. I think you've really got to stick to who's going to fit in with your culture and your values and things like that. I mean, for instance, like we really value accountability and transparency and consistency. Awareness is another big one, right? So like making sure that the people that you hire on your team also value those same things. And if they don't.
 
it's probably not going to work out in the long run. So it's really important that culturally, that your values align. So that's the important thing. And we do certain things like we don't even hire out of the gate necessarily full time. It's, you're on a 90 day probationary period. We like to call it so that, hey, we have this exit. And especially in California, we've got to spell these things out very clearly with everyone.
 
I think you just get better at it and we've gotten a lot better at keeping employees and retention.
 
Seth Bradley (31:30.52)
Yeah, that's important. We, we always talk about having like an unrecruitable team, you know, like no matter what, if somebody came over here and tried to pay me a million dollars, like I wouldn't do it because this is my family and we've gone through the tough stuff. And if you can go through the hard stuff, like you can go through the easy stuff together. hiring, like we, whenever we go to hire too, we always meet the spouse, the kids, the whole family, because it's like the, the, person's going to be working there for 10 hours out of the day or eight hours out of the day. Like we want to ensure that the spouse knows that
 
they're at work working hard. And also like you don't want to treat it like it's they're just paying for a paycheck. Like this is a family, like we're doing life together. Like you made a commitment to work here. Like I'm going to make a commitment to making sure that we're increasing your bonuses or your salary or you you're upping the standard of the company. So that's super cool. I love that. Yeah.
 
What's a so so you guys have that that's coming up you're going to be starting a family that's so exciting What a what a good time in life for everything to be coming through together I'm I can't wait to to see your guys's baby on Instagram and and you know like Watch your baby start doing pull-ups in the gym. You know, yeah
 
Yeah. He's so cute. That's super exciting. Yeah, super excited.
 
And as we wrap up here, is there anything else that you'd like to leave off with or any other message that you'd like to put out for anybody that's listening to this too?
 
Celina Eklund (32:54.572)
Yeah, I mean, I would just say like stick with it, right? Like figure out where I'm trying to think what the best word would be. I don't like to say where your passion is, but figure out where you can where you can harness your energy and focus it somewhere and then stick it out and really push through. Like I said earlier, the hard when it gets hard, that's when you you don't stop. That's not when you pull back. That's when you push harder and you push through and there will be a breakthrough.
 
but you just gotta keep going.
 
yeah love that you are your new life is on the other side of you being uncomfortable have to go through that that uncomfortable face that's awesome well if i have somebody that's actually looking for a job or wanting to come to your heart of your team you know cuz i do have people out in southern california that are always like looking for new opportunities and also want to work with like like-minded people you know so
 
Somebody is looking for an opportunity like I'm not going to send him to Joe Schmo or have him go Google something right like I would love for them to be work directly with you. So what's the best way and point of contact that we can that anybody can get a hold of you?
 
Yeah, you can go to SethBradleyESQ.com, so like Esquire, S-SethBradleyESQ.com. That will be set up for you to kind of tell me where you, what your interest is with me and then we can kind of point you in the right direction. I do have a number of businesses, so that site is kind of set up to guide you to the right resource.
 
Seth Bradley (34:22.542)
Awesome. Well, thank you, Seth, so much for being here. And next time on our next podcast where we shatter limiting beliefs. Thanks for being here, Seth.
 
Thanks, Elena. Really appreciate it.
 
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ7TLuEz93X/
 
Celina Eklund’s Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/celina-eklund/
https://www.instagram.com/celina.eklund/
https://x.com/AiryJane1
https://www.youtube.com/@CelinaEklund/featured
https://www.facebook.com/CelinaEklundd
https://www.threads.com/@celina.eklund
 
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

TME 12 | Why High Earners Stay Broke (and How to Escape the W-2 Trap) with Rich Fettke

In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, Seth Bradley welcomes Rich Fettke, co-founder of Real Wealth, to share his incredible journey from a life-threatening cancer scare to building a real estate empire. Rich Fettke explains how his wife’s pivot to real estate investing during his health crisis led to the creation of Real Wealth, which has since helped over 70,000 members acquire more than $1.2 billion in assets.
Together, Seth Bradley and Rich Fettke dive deep into the mindset shift required to escape the grind, the importance of clarity and vision, and why hard assets like real estate are key to sustainable wealth, freedom, and major tax advantages, especially for high-income professionals such as attorneys and doctors.
Rich Fettke also breaks down the difference between passive and active investing, explaining how Real Wealth offers vetted markets and property teams for investors seeking a more hands-off experience. Seth Bradley and Rich Fettke discuss insights from Rich’s book, The Wise Investor, designed to inspire readers to take control of their financial futures through compelling storytelling. Wrapping up, Seth Bradley and Rich Fettke emphasize the power of passive income in creating freedom, reducing stress, and ultimately living life on your own terms without sacrificing health, family, or personal passions.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/rF_4-7G7vYw
Bullet Point Highlights:
Rich Fettke shares his powerful origin story and the creation of Real Wealth.
Real Wealth has helped 70,000+ members acquire $1.2B+ in assets.
Importance of clarity, vision, and avoiding reactive life decisions.
Hard assets like real estate provide stability, tax advantages, and true passive income.
Real Wealth offers turnkey, vetted investing options through preferred property teams.
Passive income helps professionals reduce tax burdens and escape active income traps.
Rich's book The Wise Investor inspires readers to take action through relatable storytelling.
Transcript:
Seth Bradley (00:02.094)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.
So.
Rich, what's going on brother? Welcome to the show.
Rich Fettke Thank you, good to be here.
Seth Bradley (00:47.054) Absolutely, man. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Let's just dive right in. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and feel free to take it back as far as you'd like.
Rich Fettke Okay, well... (continues storytelling about business origins and melanoma diagnosis)
Seth Bradley Yeah, that's an incredible story, man. I just think about those inflection points and obviously that was a major inflection point in your life. How do you think other people could shift into investing or making a change without having something catastrophic happen?
Rich Fettke Thank goodness I don't want that to happen to anyone... (continues explanation about clarity and creating vision)
Seth Bradley Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's almost like just slowing down for a second and thinking about your life.
Rich Fettke And that is it. Yeah. Investment properties, whatever that looks like... (continues explanation about real estate, passive income, etc.)
Seth Bradley Yeah, yeah. So is that the first step? I'd really like you to walk us through what you would do with a potential client or person who comes to you and says, "I'm a highly paid W-2..."
Rich Fettke It's vital. Yeah. Starting with the why like we talked about... (continues explanation about active vs passive income and tax advantages)
Seth Bradley Yeah, for sure. And that retirement gets farther and farther away.
Rich Fettke 100% and getting hard assets... (continues explanation about why hard assets like real estate matter)
Seth Bradley Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Now, I'm sure you've seen a lot of people you've helped. What are the changes you've seen in their lives after they start investing?
Rich Fettke You know, that was the whole intention of that book I just wrote... (continues explanation about The Wise Investor and people creating real wealth)
Seth Bradley Absolutely. I talk to folks, especially attorneys, who are unhappy with where they’re at...
Rich Fettke So much. At Real Wealth we call them Henrys — high earners, not rich yet... (continues explanation about tax savings and financial freedom)
Seth Bradley Yeah, that's right. Taxes are the thing...
Rich Fettke Mm-hmm. Ain’t that?
Seth Bradley Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about this book. Is it out? Can we buy it now?
Rich Fettke Yeah, it’s been out for almost a year now... (continues explanation about The Wise Investor, story format, and why he wrote it as a parable)
Seth Bradley Yeah, same here. Same here. Sounds like the hero of that story, I think a lot of people can relate to that.
Rich Fettke Yeah, and that's how I wrote it... (continues explanation about hero's journey format and story impact)
Seth Bradley (27:11.202) Yeah, yeah. I love that. I mean, Rich Dad Poor Dad — story form impacts millions.
Rich Fettke Number one finance book of all time. Pretty amazing.
Seth Bradley Yeah. I'd love to dive into passive vs active real estate investing. I know you do both. What do you think about that and what do you advise folks?
Rich Fettke Yeah, great question. I love that you said it's a sliding scale... (continues explanation about passive LP investing, single family properties, active oversight)
Seth Bradley That's right. Yeah. It's that first action that changes everything...
Rich Fettke Yeah, it's like buying your first house... (continues explanation about mindset shift and leverage)
Seth Bradley Yeah. And going back to what you said about active vs passive... it's about finding the right team members, right? Broker, coach, property manager...
Rich Fettke Yeah, yeah. Don’t try to do it yourself... (continues explanation about importance of team and referrals)
Seth Bradley Absolutely. Alright Rich, before we jump into the Freedom Four, do you have one last gold nugget for our listeners?
Rich Fettke One last gold nugget... (explains importance of working with tax attorney and CPA)
Seth Bradley Love that. Alright, let’s jump into the Freedom Four. What's the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?
Rich Fettke Oh, working out, exercise every morning... (cold plunge and workout routine)
Seth Bradley Perfect. What's one limiting belief you've crushed along the way?
Rich Fettke Mostly crushed... (story about overcoming "I'm stupid" belief and weight training for discipline)
Seth Bradley Yeah, I love that. What's one actionable step listeners can do right now to start creating more freedom?
Rich Fettke I would say get clear on that vision... (setting life goals and clarity)
Seth Bradley And last but not least, how has passive income made your life better?
Rich Fettke Me personally, I can live life on my own terms... (adventure sports, freedom, job optional)
Seth Bradley Love that, man. Rich, this has been great. Where can our listeners find out more about you?
Rich Fettke Our company website is realwealth.com... (social media handles, Amazon book link, etc.)
Seth Bradley (38:22.082) 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:
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
Rich Fettke’s Links:
https://x.com/FettkeRich
https://www.facebook.com/rich.fettke
https://www.threads.com/@richfettke
https://www.instagram.com/richfettke/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fettke/
https://realwealth.com/about/rich-fettke/

RTBL 08 | When Real Estate Deals Go South: What to Do Next with Ted Patel

In this episode of Decoding Cash Flow, host Ted Patel interviews Seth Bradley, a securities attorney and real estate syndicator. Seth Bradley discusses the intricacies of raising capital for real estate investments and delves into the legal considerations involved, particularly compliance with SEC regulations. Seth Bradley shares his journey from a blue-collar background to becoming a successful attorney and real estate investor, providing a detailed account of his experiences in syndication and capital raising.
The conversation covers topics such as the importance of being an active partner in syndications, the evolution of Seth Bradley’s investment strategy from small multifamily properties to larger syndications, and the rise of fund-of-funds models. Seth Bradley emphasizes the necessity for investors to understand legal documents and outlines key strategies for successful capital raising. This episode serves as a valuable resource for both passive and active investors looking to navigate the complex world of real estate investment with guidance from Seth Bradley.
Links to listen and subscribe:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2104713/episodes/15911080-ep-153-leveraging-legal-expertise-for-investment-success-with-seth-bradley
Links to watch and subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4xTU9T6CVA&t=375s
Bullet Point Highlights:
Securities Compliance: Understanding the legal framework is crucial when raising capital to avoid issues with the SEC.
Transitioning to Syndication: Seth discusses moving from small investments to syndication, emphasizing a progressive approach.
Legal Documents: The importance of reviewing legal documents and understanding what to look for to avoid pitfalls.
Network Importance: Leveraging existing networks can significantly boost initial capital raising efforts.
Fund of Funds: Exploring how the fund of funds model offers a structured way to raise capital while adhering to regulations.
Investor Communication: Maintaining regular communication with investors leads to referrals and sustained relationships.
Future Trends: Insights into potential changes in the real estate syndication market depending on political climate and economic factors.
 
Transcript:
you can certainly partner with other partners and buy a property together and raise Capital together and it's perfectly fine but as you know all you all need to be active partners and as you also know many times people put these things together not everybody's an active partner some people are just coming into the deal just to raise capital and then they don't have anything to do with the operations or the decision-making or anything like that and that's where you get yourself into trouble with the SEC and the state
 
commission are you looking to achieve massive success in your life without dealing with costly investment nightmares if yes then this is the podcast for you here we provide engineers and busy professionals all the secrets and strategies to create multiple streams of income build generational wealth and live a meaningful Life by Design here's your host Ted Patel welcome back to another episode of decoding cash fla podcast and today we have a very special guest Seth Bradley who is a Securities attorney and
 
a real estate syndicator he's a chief legal officer at tribe West and a managing partner at rise law and law Capital Partners uh Seth is also a host of passive income attorney podcast and uh today we'll like to you know get his perspective on as an attorney I would say uh on the ways different ways to raise capitals and you know what to look into or where to be careful why is why rais Capital Etc so we'll dive deep into those aspect as well as touch based upon uh the pros and cons of passive income
 
so uh Seth welcome to decoding cash flow it's a pleasure having you on the show Absolutely Ted really appreciate you having me on man looking forward to it all right great so said before we uh dive deep into your Niche uh can you give our listeners a little bit background about yourself what do you do and how did you get started in the real estate for sure man I I'll give you the expedited version but um you know I grew up in West Virginia grew up blue collar my dad was a coal miner he's a retired
 
coal miner my mom's a retired school teacher so you know I didn't come from a an entrepreneurship or a real estate background uh blue collar background and you know that kind of sent me into a path of you know full-time W2 and trying to figure out what the best job I can get because I didn't really think of you know entrepreneurship and owning assets and things like that were really an option um so I went into med school um hated it I went for about a year and a half uh dropped out on my own valtion um
 
ended up actually getting my MBA after that and then into law school where I really started to thrive I really liked law school a lot I liked you know I never wanted to litigate but I was always interested in business and transactions and real estate and those sorts of things so um getting that that legal background gave me kind of that really solid foundation to you know honestly at a young age getting myself into into doors uh where I probably didn't belong you know when you say you're an attorney you're a real estate
 
attorney or Securities attorney um you know when you're younger it's like oh really that's really cool um and you kind of you know eat your foot in the door so that's really how I got started um I worked in big law for about six six almost seven years um worked at most recently uh one of the top three law firms in the world um uh you know it it was a great experience gave me a really good background and foundation on Securities Law and kind of that that highest level of sophistication and transactions um and you know allowed me
 
to you know save a little bit of money and really kind of start going out on my own and start purchasing real estate and start investing in syndications passively and then actively um and then eventually start my own firm uh my own Boutique Securities Law Firm that's awesome I love it so you know a lot of people uh you know they they start their investment journey by maybe at at the initial level they buy a small multif family or do a Fix and Flip you know uh how how did you manage to get into syndication directly or what
 
what what was the path that you took you know what inspired you to get into syndication directly while being an attorney in sort of going through through the normal route of you know starting small and then getting into multi family syndication yeah well I'll tell you what Ted I actually took a I took the traditional route man I started you know like a lot of people do I started really small I started listening to Bigger Pockets right you listen to Bigger Pockets you started thinking oh I've got to uh own rental property so um
 
as soon as I got my first big Law Firm job I actually house hacked into a duplex lived in one half uh my wife was flexible enough with me to be able to do that so she didn't mind living in a duplex and living in one half renting the other half out and having them pay the mortgage and that was kind of the beginning and then I just started um like a lot of people uh you know doing fix and flips and doing fixing buy and holds and wholesaling a little bit here and there and then moving your way up to
 
uh you know small multif family and then as I got more sophisticated as an investor and more sophisticated as an attorney and started looking at the clients that I have because I'm working at Big law firms and you know these clients are the folks like like us now right like they're taking down you know $20 million properties hundred million funds things like that um and you just start thinking man I'm I'm not thinking big enough um I need to go bigger how do I do that um you know having that attorney background in real estate
 
Securities really helped me out um but I was still kind of you know a little bit hesitant I didn't really know that side of the business I knew the legal side I knew the closing side but I didn't know the business side um so I started investing passively first and that was after I spoke to some people and they said that's probably the best thing to do you know I had a good job so I I was able to afford it so I invested passively in some deals kind of got my feet wet that way started to understand
 
from you know the investor standpoint what that looked like to invest in a in a syndication or a fund and then at that point I realized hey I I can do this um so I actually started leveraging my Securities background um to partner with other operators um and get an equity position in the company um you know bringing in investors I'm doing the due diligence doing the uh some of the underwriting and and then also you know bringing my Securities uh Securities skills of the table which everybody needs when they're raising
 
capital okay all right that sounds great man so so you did take a traditional route as you mentioned right you yeah maybe maybe didn't uh you know stay in that U uh field for quite long time you just jump to syndication yeah pretty quick hacking yeah pretty quick yeah yeah I mean I built a small portfolio and like I said went into some smaller multifamilies maybe took about three or four years and I started investing passively and then you know by the time I started investing passively I was already looking to go to
 
the active side within you know a couple of months so are you an attorney do you still practice law I do um kind of as a you know it's not like a a full-time gig but I do have my own Boutique Law Firm raise law where you know I I you know if it's down the middle I'll take on the work um you know if it's a real estate syndication if it's a real estate fund or it's a fund of fund I put those together for people U you know I've been doing that for you know over a decade now so it's like breaking sticks at this
 
point but I've really been able to leverage my uh Securities attorney background to um some of these other positions with uh startups so startups are really exciting for me um you know they've those are home run swings right like real estate is kind of like singles like let's let's hit singles let's keep that batting average High um you know these are you know a little bit safer they're secure um when you get into the startup world it's like your chance of failure is pretty high whereas real estate your chance of failure is on the
 
low side um but with with startups it's pretty high but you know that that kind of appeases my risk appetite um to get involved with these startups and I've been able to to like I said leverage my security skills and my background as a a syndicator and a fund manager um to become Chief legal officer for trib bestest so trib bestest um traditionally was a group investing platform and uh you know I was speaking at a conference in the bvis with uh Travis Smith who is the CEO and we really just hit it off
 
and our wives hit it off and you know they were trying to Pivot from this group investing platform to um you know try to try to enter the Securities and the syndication market and I and they were looking at like a cgp model and I said look Travis this this is going to fun funds right like you know this was this was about a year and a half ago um some things were going on in background with the SEC uh doing some investigations and things like that for some well-known folks and you know the market was starting to to see hey we
 
need to we need to start paying more attention to these Securities regulations and maybe get away from the cgp model and the solution all along has always been fund of funds it's just fund of funds is expensive it's hard to put together it's you know all those different things um but what we've done to try best is be able to kind of package that into a fun fun in a box all right yeah we'll we'll speak um get more uh into that fun of fund models you know but before we dive deep into that I just wanted to che check few
 
things like you you mentioned uh startups so in addition to the real estate you also do raise capital for the startups is that so so I'm not raising capital for the startups I'm actually uh fractional clo for not only tribe vest but two other startups one called clavis which is also a real estate uh technology software platform um and then stack rck battery which is a battery manufacturing company so think um you know Tesla power wall it's similar to that it's actually a newer technology that we use a more powerful
 
technology um but it's very similar in nature where you pair that with solar so we're we're a solar manufacturing or a battery Manufacturing Company um and again these are you know these are I would call them somewhat mature startups in in that world I mean um you know we're well over a million and a half in revenue of a stack rack and um we just went live with a fully automated software with with clavis and then triest is of is is really headed towards series a right now so you know all three of them are progressing really
 
well um and looking forward to seeing how I can help help ignite that okay sounds good man all right so now moving on to this uh triest right tell me something about uh a little bit more about what do you do at Tri like you said you have a fund in the Box model yeah now uh so so any any group of investors they can come together create their own fund and they can invest in a operators fund is is that though how it works with triest yeah to a certain extent I mean I think it it helps to think about kind of
 
the history of group investing so traditionally tested what they called group investing it's more similar what you described let's say me you and three buddies put in 100,000 bucks and we've got 500,000 bucks now to get over maybe an investment minimum to invest in a syndication or a fund um and that's it so we just we leveraged each other's Capital to um you know get into a deal at maybe a a large minimum or maybe that uh you know we got a bet we got better financial terms because we put together
 
half a million instead of investing 50,000 bucks or something um the the ISS is there is is no one gets paid right like we're all just putting our money together investing together and it's really set up like a joint venture we all have equal voting rights based on how much money we put in um you know we we make decisions together we all decided to invest in that one deal and we could all decide together to invest in a different deal if we actually want to um but nobody's getting paid um because when you start getting paid now
 
you're talking about Securities laws when you start getting paid you should be licensed or find an exemption so um you know you need a broker's dealer license or be in raia under certain circumstances so that's where you start getting into that um a lot more complicated when that starts to happen and that's what tribe vest pivoted to last year is hey we still have the group investing option but a lot of times what happens is one of those people in the group is the one doing all the work right like one of the person is the one
 
that found tribe vest and is like hey I found this platform I'm gonna let's all put our money together and then you know he's the one collecting the money and badgering people to you know do the distributions and the taxes and all those sorts of things there's somebody putting in some time and effort for that and they at some point they're like hey if I do this next time like I want to get paid for it but how can I do that um you have to find the right uh Capital raising vehicle to be able to legally
 
pay yourself and we've created that with trivest and that kind of coincided with what I mentioned earlier which was kind of the industry pivot away from the cgp model um when I say CP model I mean I mean the abuse of the cgp model you can certainly partner with other partners and buy a property together and raise Capital together and it's perfectly fine but as you know all you all need to be active partners and as you also know many times people put these things together not everybody's an active
 
partner some people are just coming into the deal just to raise capital and then they don't have anything to do with the operations or the decision-making or anything like that and that's where you get yourself into trouble with the SEC and the state commissions and the solution to that is is well first of all just don't do it but the solution to it if you still want to raise capital is to create a fund of funds um but the problem with the fund of funds model is now these former cgps have all these new
 
responsibilities they have to find a Securities attorney they have to put together offering documents they have to find a CPA they have to start a business they have to get a business banking account they have to manage their investors they have to find a portal they have to do all the things that a a real active GP would normally have to do um but typically you know the the active partner is the one doing it for them now they have to do it all themselves so it's a lot more work so in short um it as you mentioned right cgps um they
 
need to be active in the syndication you know if you're Co GP and know any of the property you need to be active and I I also seen and you might have also seen uh there are certain projects where there are 10 or 15 different C GPS and only five or six takes responsibilities other are just you know raising fund for that uh particular property so this helps uh this model uh you know helps the inactive coach I would say Partners to get the fees that they need as well as raise Capital without getting into
 
Crosshair of s that's right that's right and the only reason that it's it's been going on for so long now and I'll say since like I'll say 2012 because that's when the jobs Act pass and you were starting to be able to advertise for um these syndication deals and things like that um is because real estate's been so fantastic right like it's been going up up up since the crash in 2008 um and nobody's nobody's suing anyone for the most part because their Investments are great right up until let's say that
 
little blip in 2020 from but then last year when the interest rates started going up some of these projects started to fail and that's when investors start getting angry because they're not getting you know their distributions and they start asking questions and that's when you're seeing people you know they're getting Capital calls and and they're starting to you know get sued by passive investors that's when these things start to fall apart because if if everybody's happy there's there's you know nobody's going
 
to get caught so to speak you know what I mean like nobody's going to find out that you raised Capital illegally unless somebody's upset and starting last year that's when people started getting upset and that's when you're starting to see some people um you know get exposed for raising capital in the wrong way what what are the fees that uh you can charge in this fund of fund model what kind of fees because as a cgp there are many different venues right you you can charge the finding fees operations
 
management fees uh at the end you can also take a part of the profit uh you know yeah so a lot of comes down to how you structure it right like these are these are very complicated Securities regulations that have a lot of layers on top of them because when you get into a fund of funds you're not just dealing with um what people are familiar with 506 C and 506b exemptions which are the 1930s acts you also get into the 1940s acts when you start dealing with fund of funds um and those are uh the invest the
 
investment advisor Act and the Investment Company act so there are lots of nuances to that and how you can get paid but if you're structured correctly you can get paid the same way so you can get paid an upfront fee you can get paid a um you know an ongoing annual fee percentage and you can get paid a profit split like basically all the same types of fees that you would collect as a cgp you can also collect as a fund manager but again there's a lot of nuances to that okay all right so um for for the new investors right
 
uh uh when when they start into this passive invest investment world you know uh they are you know they get a little intimidated by seeing all the different uh documents that the operator sends them uh the ppms and all the other legal documents right um and so based on your perspective like you know you're an attorney right so what what are the things that the investor needs to checking these legal documents to make sure there are no red flags or to be cautious of something what what are those things that you would like to
 
tell to our listeners for sure and it's tough right like these are not short documents I mean you know the the subscription booklet so to speak that includes let's say the subscription agreement the operating agreement and the the PPM it can be minimum 100 Pages it's probably going to be closer to 200 pages in totality and that's in intimidating I mean that's intimidating for myself who is an attorney let alone you know a passive investor that says hey I I thought I was just going to invest passively like this reading a
 
200-page legal document is not passive to me so you do need to be educated on kind of the things to look for and you know you should read the whole thing unfortunately I you should at least skim it over and the more you do it the more you'll get comfortable with it and the more when you see that see it the next time and the time after that you'll be able to get through it quicker and quicker because they all look you know they all have the the same basic parts but I you know I would say some things
 
to look for you know first of all make sure that everything matches so let's say the what call the offering memorandum or the pitch deck that the the marketing piece that the operator puts out you know they're going to have their projected returns their fees the proforma they're going to have some other information in there make sure that those numbers match the numbers in the PPM and the PPM is is a Disclosure document so it's a legal document but it's not it's not the final legal document the final document is going to
 
be the operating agreement so you really want to make sure that the the marketing piece or the pitch deck matches the PPM and the PPM matches what the operating agreement says and ultimately whatever the operating agreement says is what goes so if you take the time to read anything it should be the operating agreement even though that will probably be the hardest um hardest document to read because it will be completely in legal ease but that's the controlling document so if if the pitch deck says
 
something um and then the op agreement says another thing the operating agreement is what controls um so you know some big things to look out for are are voting rights you know typically as a passive investor you're not going to have a lot of voting rights but there should be some sort of a mechanism to remove the manager in very extreme circumstances so if there's you know some sort of gross negligence or fraud or misrepresentation or you know things like that then there should be a mechanism to um remove the manager and
 
that's usually done through some sort of a majority vote or super majority vote Plus you know proving that they did commit those actions um again it should be a pretty extreme case but there should be a mechanism there for that um obviously you know make sure that your Fe you know what the fees are going to be you need to know what fees you're paying you need to know um what that waterfall looks like meaning you need to know how you're going to get paid as the passive investor make sure you understand that and make sure it matches
 
your understanding and if you have questions about it make sure you ask the fund manager or ask the operator um to explain it to you in in um you know in non-legal e language so that you can understand it um and then on top of that you know another important thing that you're seeing nowadays is capital calls make sure you know what the capital call language is so if there's some sort of a a demand for Capital from the operator or from the fund manager what triggers that is it mandatory is it discretionary
 
um is it up to a vote it could be up to a vote um just make sure you know the mechanism for that and that you're comfortable with it yeah and if uh if your share gets diluted if you don't contribute to the capital call that's right that's right and it's perfectly fine to get diluted if you don't contribute I mean that's typical like if you don't contribute um you should get diluted right but what you need to look out for is if you get deluded Pro uh based on how much you didn't contribute which is fine um it's
 
typical but you'll see some uh penalty Provisions where you get diluted even more so than than prata and that's where it can be a problem um so just look out for those types of provisions and um in in these documents right the legal documents what if if you take fun of fund model if you take like separate 506b or C right what what are the extra documents in each of these sections that uh uh any any person who wants to start uh raising Capital uh needs to be aware of yeah so if you do a fund of fund you
 
you just have to think of it like it's your own syndication it's your own fund so you're going to have your own separate set of offering documents or subscription booklet whatever you want to call it so there's going to be two sets and looking at it from the passive investor standpoint if you're the passive investor that's going to be investing in the fun of fund there's going to be two of documents you're going to have to look at you're going to have to look at the fund of fund documents um which is going to have the
 
PPM the operating agreement and the subscription agreement and then you're also going to have to look at the offering documents for the um for the Target deal that the fun of fund is investing in so there's going to be two set so uh double the work um but you know there there are some benefits to that and obviously if you're investing in a fund of fund then you have a certain level of trust with that particular fund manager which is you know probably why you're investing with them anyways and sometimes you can get a
 
better deal I mean not all the time but every once in a while you can um so there you know you'll have to review two sets of offering documents but at the end of the day you know it's like I said you'll get better and better at as time goes by as a syndicator uh what what are the different uh assets that you are involved with I know multif family is there anything else that you do syndication for yeah I've done I've done a lot of different things um multif family I've done industrial I've done ret shopping
 
centers um RV parks um different funds right now um I'm actually doing a California U fund so accessory dwelling units so we're doing those in Riverside County it's a $20 million fund um and we're buying single family houses and turning it into a basically a three or four Plex um and sometimes you split the lot and you end up with six to eight units on that thing and they're incredible um it's it it's really the only thing you can get done here in California um with you know Little Resistance because everybody knows
 
California is the king of Regulation so but for some reason they think the adus are the the solution for the housing crisis out here so they let these things get permitted pretty quickly and it's an excellent opportunity it may be might be a short window but right now it's it's a fantastic uh fantastic asset right and uh so you only invest in California you're only focused or are you look at the other properties on out of state also oh I look out of state for sure this is actually the first thing
 
that I've done outside of you know a few single families and condos um in California generally I was I was one of those people that always said hey you can't really invest in California doesn't cash flow it never makees sense um I've actually came around quite a bit to that you know now that I'm I'm a more mature investor and you know you're in you're in New Jersey so you see like you know that big appreciation play as well um I just remember like bigger Pockets used to be they used to preach oh it's
 
all about cash flow right like you know all cash flow don't don't invest for appreciation but you need to invest for both I mean I think you need to invest for cash flow because you need to cover your bases I mean you don't want a negatively cash flowing asset that's for sure you don't want something that's going to cost you money but when you invest in places like New York and Coastal California and you know Beach areas things like that um City centers over the long run they're going to appreciate and they're going to
 
appreciate a lot I mean you might have you know more of a up and down um but at the end of the day it's going to be much higher whereas you know when you invest in which I do I invest in the midwest I invest in the South um those places a little bit more um you know subtle and they're going to increase in in price as well and in appreciation but it's just you know it's a lot more slow um and you might get a little bit more cash flow so you know I like to have a good mix but you know if if you're not strapped for
 
cash um and you're really trying to build long long-term wealth um that appreciation play is is really important absolutely I can't agree with you Mora because it's all about numbers right first of all yeah you don't don't have to have a negative cash as you mentioned uh the other thing is regardless of which state it is like California New Jersey New York uh of course you know there are some landlord friendly States some are not but as long as you know how to navigate those Waters you'll be fine for sure for sure and
 
then and you know obviously Force appreciation in everything I mean I don't buy anything that doesn't have some some upside from rolling up your sleeves for sure so um now you you are an ATT Securities attorney do you see in in in next few years do you see any uh any changes upcoming changes with regards to real estate indication like there are you know some more uh rules or you know coming in you know I I I don't want to get political but I I do think that politics have a a pretty big influence
 
on this um you know I I vote for policy um I don't vote for the the uh person I vote for the policy and I'm in business I'm in real estate so I like to vote for people that are going to be favorable for me so you know this recently proposed massive capital gains tax is absolutely insane to me so things like that really tough to tough to judge right but like you know if it let's say it does go towards um the Republican side let's just say that it it's known that there they want less government oversight um including the SEC um
 
because you've seen the SEC pick up in the last four years um with oversight you've seen it o you know increased um employees with the IRS things like that so that does influence things um especially with the SEC right because we're talking about syndications we're talking about funds it'll make people a little bit more uh trepid to do anything right um if if people if it's more of a free market and you know they're not too worried about the SEC you're going to see more business you're going to see
 
more funds you're going to see more syndications um you know looming is the capital gains thing that is huge that will that will be massive for the real estate market whichever way that goes now even if it even if it goes towards uh the left it's not to say that those laws are going to pass I mean that's that's going to be a really difficult thing to pass anyway ways but if it does that can that can dramatically influence it um and there are other things that are out of control as well I mean things
 
like um you know world wars like things like that you can't predict control you cannot predict those things so you really just you can't focus on politics you can't focus on things that are out of control you have to do what what you can do to to make yourself better and to better your business um but you know I I see the the Securities um the Securities industry um you know funds fun to funds raising capital for Real Estate those sorts of things I can only see it going up I mean there even even with some headwinds from
 
different things from different regulations or different things that are happening around the world um you know just there's a massive there's there there's a massive movement towards it so I think it'll continue to to go up over time okay all right so um before we get to the final round of questions I had one topic that I want to touch based upon you know you being a syndicator if you like to give a listeners a little bit uh overview on the strategies that you use to raise Capital sure sure man
 
um you know and I actually have a really good perspective working at tribe vest now because we deal with so many different uh Capital raisers and fund managers and Lead sponsors and we're getting to see who raises a lot of capital who doesn't who's able to perform who can't and you know you start to see the people that are successful and the people that are not and you know what we're trends that we're seeing are people that already have an existing Network are usually successful out of the gate right like if you're a doctor a
 
lawyer an engineer um maybe even a software engineer someone like that that already has a a wealthy Network those people are generally very successful at raising Capital because they have wealthy friends and it's easy for them to raise uh you know half a million bucks a million bucks out of the gate um that's number one but that only lasts for so long I mean number two once you kind of exhaust those resources you really need to focus on um referrals from those people that invested with you and hopefully you did a good job and you
 
keep your Communications up um which is really important too I should say that keeping those investor Communications are super important and hardly anybody does it you would you've got once they invest with you you got to fall up on regular basis that's right man provide the reports you wouldn't believe it I mean you would think that that that would be one of the easiest things but it's not because everybody has shiny object syndrome and as soon as you close a deal you're moving on to the next one
 
and you're not worried about those other investors well that's your best source of new investors are your current ones for referrals because if they give you a referral that's that's golden that's your easiest way um and then secondarily you're going to have to figure out a way to get in front of strangers and new investors so whatever that looks like if that looks like um going on other people's podcasts or starting your own podcast or speaking at events or um you know if you're a doctor start going to
 
conferences and just talking about um you know what you're investing in and what you're doing and the deals you're deals you're doing things like that you you've got to network you've got to get out there and you've got to figure out a way to get in front of of new people and and new potential investors any any specific uh um tools or you know softwares you recommend um you know me personally I I just use active campaign for my CRM um I've seen a bunch of people use different ones um go high level is great
 
as well because it's all in one so you can create your your emails your funnels CRM your courses if you have one you can manage a mastermind on there you can do it all on there um it doesn't do anything exceptional but it does everything pretty good so that's that's kind of the knock on it but yeah those are the two big ones that that I use same here I'm also good uh I'm I'm also into active campaign oh cool yep yeah yep that's a good tool yeah all right uh so uh Seth loving this conversation you know but uh I also need
 
to be mindful of your time so I would like to move on to the final round of questions uh is there anything else that you like to tell to a list us before we move to the final questions um I would just say you know I've seen this journey before I know a lot of your in your a lot of your listeners are passive investors and a lot of times when I give a keynote when I'm speaking it's a it's two passive investors so and I talk about the journey from passive investing to raising Capital um because that's kind
 
of the the natural progression it's like you invest passively for a while then your friends ask you about that deal and oh man where do you find these Investments blah blah blah and you know eventually you're like man maybe I can raise some Capital but you know doing that transition from passive investor to Capital razor um has never been easier right and especially with um you know I'm going to plug tribe here because it's a done for you product so when you have your five wealthy friends or your
 
10 wealthy friends that want to invest in a deal but you want to figure out how you can actually get paid for it legally triest does all the stuff that I was talking about doing before that's just a pain like getting your CPA getting a Securities attorney doing your offering documents starting a business we do all that for you we onboard your investors we do everything I mean it's it's a white glove service so you that didn't exist a few years ago um so it's it's easier than ever to make that transition
 
from passive investor to raising capital for somebody like you Ted that's awesome man uh you know it's always good to uh see like you know people simplifying the things less time less money less energy to put in and you get the same kind of returns and uh you know for sure yep uh let's move on to the final round of questions are you ready let's do it all right pretty easy ones okay so all right man I'll take your word for it better not stop me here so uh what are the main source of information main source of information
 
to learn and grow um you know I listen to a lot of podcasts I I do a lot of audio um if it's and especially like Audible for books and then podcast obviously for shorter content um and then if if I think it's a really good audible book then I'll actually buy the hard copy and and try to read it I won't say that I always get to it because I just don't have time but I like to listen to stuff while I'm working out and running and doing stuff like that um but mainly podcasts to just stay up up to date on
 
things and you know I've kind of actually gotten away from Real Estate specific podcast and more into like business things like um you know Alex horos and and those types of guys that talk about business generally I think it's a good flavor um to mix it up with awesome uh what is the one book that you'll recommend would had the most impact on your life or on your business yeah I mean you know it's Rich Dad Poor Dad I mean that's for sure I I'll say another one though because I would say everybody probably says that I
 
mean It Rich Dad Poor Dad definitely had the the most impact I mean it's I think it has that influence on a lot of people when they read that book they're like it's so simple but it just flips the light and it just changes the way that you look at kind of Life generally um but I would say this one it's a little flu flu but Miracle equation by Hal Hal Elrod um who did the miracle morning um this one came after that but it it's great because it's it just the the main line which is unwavering Faith plus
 
extraordinary effort equals Miracles I mean if you just kind of I use that as a mantra because it's like you know gets tough right like and you've got to be consistent and you've got to do it over and over again and when you're an entrepreneur or you're a business owner or even if you're an investor and you're trying to get out of your W2 you're 9 to5 like you don't know if it's going to have a happy ending so you have to have unwavering faith and if you do have that faith and you do keep putting in the
 
consistent effort it's going to work out in the end yeah absolutely I have read that book too it's one of my favorite also and all right so what is the one advice that you like to give to at least any business or investment advice yeah um pay for help pay for Speed um you know you can you can sit here and um figure it out yourself you can go to YouTube University you can go to chat GPT um you can listen to all the podcasts and read the books but nothing's going to accelerate your time like getting a coach or a mentor that's
 
already doing the things that you want to do um and don't be if you can't get them on board for free then pay them to do it um make sure you know what you're doing because a lot of people out there you know call themselves coaches and they're they're not they don't know what they're doing so be careful but if you find a good one don't be afraid to to pay money for that it it just blows my mind that you know people pay 40 50 $60,000 a year for a college education but then for you know a fourth of that
 
they could get direct Hands-On mentorship from somebody that's already doing exactly what they want to do and people don't want to do it it's you know they don't be afraid to pay for Speed don't be afraid to pay for help yeah just check out in detail what the coach has done for you know what exactly he's doing and what what he has done for different people yeah of course if it fits your yeah all right uh SE uh it was a pleasure talking to you and thanks a lot for all the details and information that
 
you provided to thanks Ted really appreciate it man oh before that I just missed one part how can decoding cash FL listeners get in touch with you for sure man I usually update my Links at Seth Paul bradley.com you can find all my social media links there and you can find links to tribe vest and and other things that I'm involved in if I'm raising capital for anything in particular but that's that's the best place to find all my links South paa bradley.com awesome man all right thanks a lot for
 
coming on the show my friend all right Ted appreciate it man thanks all right take it thanks for listening to decoding cash flow brought to you by Aster Capital if you found value in this episode then please share it with someone who you think could benefit from it and make sure to ask on what you've learned if you want Ted Patel to personally help you reach your goals then feel free to set up a one-on-one call with him also visit us at Aster capital.com for more free resources content of this podcast is for
 
informational purposes only as always please consult your own adviser before making any investment decisions or setting a course of action thanks again for joining us on this episode of decoding cash flow and we'll catch you in the next episode
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4xTU9T6CVA&t=375s
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/astre-capital_astrecapital-podcast-finance-activity-7250610044331769857-4KgJ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAFY-6nMBbbX5J6KeuEtIMcA9tcRG4F_1ItE
https://www.instagram.com/p/DA_3q-BOWJm/
https://x.com/AstreCapital/status/1844844972295741635
https://fb.watch/zpTx6laLaU/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/astre-capital/
https://www.facebook.com/AstreCapital/
https://x.com/AstreCapital
https://www.instagram.com/astrecapital/
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

T1C 03 | The 1% Closer with Eli Facenda

In this episode, Seth Bradley interviews Eli Facenda about what sets him apart in the ultra-niche space of travel hacking for entrepreneurs. Eli Facenda explains that he and his team truly live what they teach—they are entrepreneurs themselves who have traveled extensively and understand the time and complexity challenges faced by business owners. Seth Bradley and Eli Facenda discuss how their credibility comes from personal experience, deep destination knowledge, and practicing what they preach. Eli Facenda shares one actionable tip to move closer to a dream life: block time on your calendar now for your dream trip, because unless you schedule your fun first, it won’t happen.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/oLrxBcm_WFU
Bullet Point Highlights:
Eli separates himself by living what he teaches, he travels extensively and is a business owner, just like his clients
His team has traveled to 50–100 countries, giving them expert-level insight on global destinations
They bring real-world credibility, personalization, and strategic value to clients
Most travel "gurus" don’t walk the walk; Eli's team does
Actionable advice: Pick your dream destination, put it on the calendar, and commit
Quote inspiration: “If you don’t schedule your fun first, it won’t happen”
Entrepreneurs must prioritize life experiences, not wait for “the right time”
Transcript:
Eli, you're clearly in the top 1 % of what you do. I don't even know if there's that many people out there that do what you do at all, period. So clearly in the top 0.0001%, what is it about you that separates you from the rest of the field?
 
I think it's our ability to actually live what we preach. This is something where, you know, there are other fantastic people that talk about credit card points, but very few of them are actually business owners, like that's who we serve, and very few of them are actually traveling in the way that they're trying to help people travel. So we've done both. I've built multiple businesses, so I understand the...
 
psychology and the relatability of how you want to think about travel and point in the various stresses in your life, the limitations on time and complexity. So yeah, so not only have we really walked the walk with actually living what we preach, but we also understand that psychology of what it's like to be a business owner, your limitations on time and complexity and all that stuff. And because we're talking about travel, people also want to know like what's actually in store for me in this destination. I've been to 50 countries now and my business partner has been to almost a hundred.
 
We have other team members who are all over 30, 40, 50 countries. So we've been to a lot of the destinations around the world that we're advising people to go to. So we know the ins and outs, best places to stay, hidden gems, top restaurants, stuff like that, that really add another layer of personalization and true experience into the service. So I think those are the things that really make us most credible in this space.
 
Dude, it's so important, right? Like there's so many, you know, there's so much content out there now. There's gurus and coaches and mentors, whatever you want to call them. Like the ones that are truly valuable and that people should pay attention to are the ones that are actually practicing what they preach, right? The ones that aren't just selling you education or aren't just selling you a product. Like they're actually, they've done what they're selling and they continue to
 
Enjoy or do.
 
100%. Yeah, if you're a living embodiment of what you do, makes it that much easier to communicate it and sell it because you just are the thing you're selling. Yeah.
 
Absolutely. What's one thing someone listening could do today to get 1 % closer to their dream life?
 
One thing that would be the easiest is to spend 30 minutes, go on Instagram, go on your favorite social media site, go on some travel blog site, look for your dream destination, then pull up your calendar and put a time on the calendar where you're committing to go. One of my favorite quotes is from Tim Ferriss, I forget the exact quote, but basically the idea is that if you don't schedule your fun first, it won't happen.
 
because your business and your life will take up as much space as you allow it to. So most people find that I'll take the trip when it's convenient. I'll take the trip when I have more time. That time is never coming until you make it a priority. So the one thing they can do to get closer to their dream life is to just make a more bold commitment to putting the time on the calendar and be like, I am going and make some sort of investment, whether you're telling someone, whether you're putting some money down, whether you're learn the point stuff, that's gonna be the biggest leverage you can make.
 
to make sure that you actually follow through on taking these trips and then you'll find how to get there on points if you need to from there.
 
100 % man, gotta put it, people, entrepreneurs, people like us, we work in all the time, you've gotta put it, put it in your schedule. You've gotta block it out.
 
Absolutely, 100%.
 
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
Eli Facenda Links:
https://www.instagram.com/elitravelguy/
https://x.com/elitravelguy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-facenda/
https://www.facebook.com/eli.facenda
https://www.youtube.com/@elifacenda
https://www.threads.com/@elitravelguy
https://www.skool.com/@eli-facenda-5305?t=posts

TME 11 | How You Can Win Trump’s Tariff War

Title: How You Can Win Trump’s Tariff War 
In this episode, Seth Bradley discusses the potential economic implications of President Trump’s aggressive tariff policies and how they could present unique opportunities for wealth building in America amid global economic upheaval. Seth Bradley explains that tariffs, essentially taxes on imports, serve as economic tools that can protect domestic industries but may also create broader economic challenges if not applied thoughtfully. Seth Bradley outlines the dynamics of Trump’s tariff strategy, including a systematic and reciprocal approach to trade that has the potential to reshape relationships with various countries and impact investment opportunities.
Seth Bradley emphasizes that while the stock market is experiencing volatility and media outlets are reacting negatively, there are underlying opportunities that savvy investors should seize. He advocates for focusing on U.S. manufacturing and infrastructure, energy independence, and advancements in AI and automation as key areas for investment. The video suggests that although immediate challenges such as inflation and retaliation from trade partners are likely, the long-term outlook points to a potential reshoring of American industry, a reemergence of economic sovereignty, and ultimately, an empowered U.S. economy.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgWxz_V0lPk&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=2
Bullet Point Highlights:
Market Volatility: The stock market sees a significant downturn as tariffs take effect, presenting both challenges and opportunities.
Tariff Strategy: Trump’s tariffs are described as calculated economic warfare, designed to compel countries to negotiate trade terms.
Manufacturing Reshoring: The video advocates for investing in U.S.-based manufacturing as companies look to bring jobs back onshore.
Energy Independence: Emerging opportunities in U.S. energy production are highlighted amid tariffs hurting foreign oil imports.
AI and Automation: The potential for AI-driven solutions to replace expensive offshore labor costs is discussed as a strategic investment avenue.
Investment Strategies: Three key strategies are proposed for capitalizing on the unique economic landscape: investing in infrastructure, energy, and AI technologies.
Vision for the Future: The potential long-term benefits of Trump’s tariff policies are framed as a chance to reset trade imbalances and promote U.S. economic strength.
Transcript:
(Seth Bradley)
Trump just broke the global economy and it might be the best thing to happen to America in decades. The stock market is crashing. China, Mexico, Canada, they're retaliating. The mainstream media is melting down. But the truth, if you understand what's really going on, this might be the single greatest opportunity of the decade to build wealth. So, let's break it down. No fluff, just facts. What's up, big brains? Welcome back to Raise the Bar, where I simplify complex money, legal, and political moves so you
 
can make power plays in real time. I'm Seth Bradley, securities attorney, founder, and investor, and I quit a multiple six-f figureure big law job to pursue entrepreneurship and a life without limits. Today, I'm giving you the truth about tariffs, Trump's Liberation Day, and how to turn this global shakeup into your personal leverage point. All right, let's get it. Let's start out with the basics. So, what exactly is a tariff? At its core, a tariff is a tax on imports. That's right. It is a tax. When a foreign
 
company sells goods into the US, the government slaps on a tax, usually a percentage of the total value. So, if a car from Germany costs 50k and there's a 10% tariff, then that car now costs $55,000 to bring into the US. So, who pays the tariff? Well, it's US importers, not the foreign shippers. And yes, it trickles down to you, the consumer, right here in the US. But tariffs aren't just taxes. They're economic weapons. And right now, Trump's using them with either surgical precision or as a nuclear bomb,
 
depending on how you look at it. All right. To know where you're going to go, you have to know where you come from. Tariffs go way back in American history. It's not anything new. And in fact, before the IRS, tariffs were how we paid for the entire federal government, rather than through, let's say, income taxes, property, capital gains taxes, and all these other taxes that we all just know and love today. Tariffs haven't always resulted in good or bad for the US. It's a mixed bag. Alexander Hamilton pushed for tariffs to protect
 
US industry. Success, yes. Abraham Lincoln used them to industrialize the North during the Civil War. Success, yes. But in the 1930s, the Smooth Holly Tariff Act backfired hard, triggering a trade war that deepened the Great Depression. So, not always successful. Tariffs can protect jobs and industries, but if they're too extreme or poorly timed, they can tank the economy. So, the key is strategy. And whether or not you believe in Trump, he's playing chess here, not checkers. Something you never
 
used to associate with Trump is humble, but he has come a long way and is humble enough to at least have some of the greatest economic minds in his corner. So, they have a business-minded mentality, and that's exactly what this is. We need to stop treating the government like it's aing goodwill. It's not here to give you for free, and it's certainly not here to take what's yours. It's here to work for you, for what the people want, and decide through a democratic process what to do. Once upon a time, we literally became a
 
country because we wanted independence, self-sufficiency, and freedom. We chose to break free from overt taxation, oppression, control, regulation, and government oversight. What's happening in 2025? In case you missed it, let's get caught up right now. Trump has declared Liberation Day and followed up with the most aggressive global tariff policy in modern history. A minimum of 10% tariffs on every import into the US, up to 60% tariffs on China. That changes every single day though. Reciprocal
 
tariffs on all countries. If a country charges us 25%, we charge them 25% back. But that's not exactly true. And we'll get into more of that later. Canada and Mexico not exempt. This isn't just about China. It's about a full global reset. So the kicker is formula based. Trump's trade team built a publicly disclosed algorithm that adjusts tariff rates based on countries how countries treat the US exports. It's dynamic. is constantly changing. It updates monthly. This isn't random. It's calculated
 
economic warfare. All right, next. Now that it's in effect, what's happening? Well, you're seeing it. Wall Street is panicking. S&P 500 is down 14% in the first two weeks. Tech stocks are plummeting. Elon Musk just posted on X that supply chain realignment is overdue and this pain is necessary. Mexico is negotiating. Canada's threatening retaliation, but also showing signs of blinking. China, they're digging the toes in, but there's exports that are suffering. You just won't hear all this stuff on CNBC, but you know, many of
 
these global players are coming to the table. Tariffs are doing exactly what they're designed to do. Force negotiation, good or bad. Trump's move is forcing every country to rethink dependence on the US consumer. And not just that, it's forcing us to rethink how we depend on them. All right, let's set the record straight on a few of these common things that are floating around here. One, tariffs only hurt the other country. That's totally wrong. US businesses and consumers feel the sting, and we will. We are, at least
 
at first. Sometimes you're going to hear this is just economic nationalism. But that's also wrong. This is about strategic leverage, not about isolating us. Third, it's inflationary in the short term. This is true. But if local supply chains relocize, prices stabilize and strengthen the domestic economy and we'll be good to go. But right now, we're feeling it. Next, tariffs can bring manufacturing back. This is true. Maybe, and we're already seeing US factories reannounced, reopenings in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, places
 
like that. And we've seen trillions of dollars of investment promises rolling in already. But if this steers us into a deep recession, companies won't have the resources or confidence to build. All right. So, what's my prediction? And some of these aren't even predictions cuz they're happening right now. Are risks, short-term inflation, price increases, stock market volatility, retaliation from trade partners. These things are already happening. So, they're probably just going to escalate for the near future.
 
But the potential upsides, reshoring of manufacturing, massive supply chain independence, huge massive negotiation leverage for better and at the very least equal trade terms. Stronger US dollars, capital fleas, unstable markets abroad. Those are all massive positives, but they're not going to happen overnight. So, what's my prediction? short-term pain, long-term economic sovereignty, but we're entering a serious rebalancing period, and the US is reasserting its economic power. And while it hurts now, this could finally
 
reset the broken trade game that's been bleeding our economy dry for decades and would eventually take us down. All right, so what do we do about it? We need to capitalize. So, what are the three smartest ways to capitalize on Trump's 2025 tariffs? There are lots of unknowns and unpredictability in business. But one thing is always true. When there's panic in the streets, there is massive opportunity somewhere and there's going to be wealth transfer. For those with cool heads, fortitude, and discipline, we can win. So, what am I
 
doing? And what can you do to capitalize on all of this unpredictability? All right. Strategy number one, invest in US manufacturing and infrastructure. Tariffs equal a return to Americanmade. Full stop. Trump's reciprocal tariffs aren't just economic sanctions. They're a forced reshoring event here in the US. Global trade is breaking. Supply chains are rerouting. Countries like China, Mexico, and Canada, they're scrambling to adjust. And meanwhile, America is rebuilding. This is your moment to build
 
wealth while the rest of the market panics. So, how do we actually do this? Play number one, invest passively in the U in industrial and infrastructure projects. Tap into private equity funds, syndications, or REIT alternatives that focus on, of course, manufacturing facilities, US-based supply chain logistics, cold storage, and warehouse assets, transportation, freight infrastructure, that stuff works, too. These funds are just pouring into the reshoring initiatives, not just from the government, but from Fortune 500
 
companies rethinking their risk exposure. Play number two for my capital raisers out there. Raise capital for experienced sponsors in the same space. If you're not the operator, but you've got a network, become a capital aggregator. Use SPVS or fund of funds models like TriVest to compliantly pull investor capital into high quality US industrial and infrastructure deals. Bring your network along. Bring limited partners into deals with better terms, higher leverage, and strategic upside. Focus on experienced sponsors. Of
 
course, do your due diligence. Make sure they have a track record in industrial real estate or again critical infrastructure. All right, play number three. If you have the resources, buy directly. Also got to have the knowhow, right? Focus on manufacturing assets, warehouses near growing ports, logistics hubs, things like that. Make sure you have a boots on the ground partner if it's not you in that local market. Think markets like Columbus, Kansas City. These cities are turning into many powerhouses as global shipping patterns
 
shift inland. Bonus play, buy dirt where the roads are going. Right? So, if you're into residential and you don't know anything about industrial and you're not comfortable with it, think about residential and mixed juice land near inland ports, new highways, industrial corridors, growth zones, things like that. These plays won't necessarily cash flow day one, but they will appreciate like crazy over the next 3 to 5 years as that infrastructure is finally built out. Strategy number two, energy independence investing. If
 
manufacturing is the body, energy is the blood, where are you going to power this thing from? Trump's tariffs are slamming foreign oil and renewables equipment. And that gives domestic US producers, especially in oil and gas and renewables such as batteries, an unmatched advantage. And with the world watching this tariff war unfold, there's one thing everyone agrees on. Energy is national security right now. So what do you do? Play number one, invest passively, of course, in US energy assets, oil and gas royalties, own a
 
slice of production without the drilling risk. You have to dig deep into those documents and see what you're getting yourself into. There's a lot of different oil and gas funds that are structured in different ways and have different tax incentives versus cash flow. So, make sure you dig deep into that. Also look at battery manufacturers like Stack Rack Battery, especially US-based ones, solar developers, those leveraging domestic supply chains. Look for funds and startups focused on energy independence, not just ESG headlines.
 
Real world example, I had mentioned StackRrack battery. I co-founded StackRrack, a US-based modular battery company. And we're not just producing batteries, we're part of the national grid modernized push. Our battery systems are designed, they're assembled, and they're shipped right here in the US. We're ULcertified, scalable, and recession resistant. And tariffs just gave us a built-in mode. This is exactly what happens when policy meets opportunity. You just have to open your eyes and find those right opportunities.
 
And a bonus here, tax credit tailwinds. The US is still offering massive tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, for now at least. Pair that with import based price increases and you've got a once in a decade profit window. And building on that, what's your capital aggregator play? If you don't want to operate, partner with fund managers or sponsors deploying capital into these sectors, be the legal, the capital raising or the strategic partner in high demand governmentbacked tariff fueled energy projects. My law firm,
 
Raise Law, can help you build any capital raising structure you can imagine. So feel free to reach out. All right, strategy number three, back or build AIdriven alternatives to offshore labor. Tariffs don't just hit goods, they hit services, too. Let me explain. Think about it. If China, Mexico, or Canada are now more expensive to work with because of reciprocal tariffs, that raises the cost of offshore labor. So, enter what's happening right now. AI, automation, US-based software. This is your moment to kill the middleman.
 
Reduce labor cost and automate what is already going to be offshored. This is your moment to kill the middleman. Reduce labor cost and automate what was once offshored in different countries. So here we go. Play number one. Build or invest in AI tools that replace outsource labor. Think about jobs like customer service, document review and data entry, uh logistics coordination, manufacturing floor labor, things like that. It's not sci-fi. The LLMs and the manufacturing robotics are ready today and the opportunity is right now. All
 
right, so step-by-step action plan. Identify high friction outsource tasks that just got more expensive. Right. Next, what's the capital aggregator play? partner with early stage AI founders or companies. Use your network expertise or capital raising jobs to make strategic investments or even try to leverage an advisory equity position or a role in a startup in these sectors. I've done it and feel free to reach out and I can tell you more about how I've done it. So, pro tip though, don't just invest in AI for the sake of it. Invest
 
in AI that displaces foreign labor. That's where the pressure is. That's where the real value will be. This is the moment most people will fear. We're in it right now and a few smart ones will capitalize. Tariffs are just the first shot in a major larger realignment. And if you're able to stay calm, not get caught up in all the political nonsense. This is a time where real wealth changes hands. Keep your mind clear, keep your eyes open, and if this breakdown helped you see the game clearer, smash that subscribe button,
 
drop a comment with your take on Trump's global economic strategy, and let me know, are you playing offense or defense? Keep your head in the game. Raise the bar, baby. Until next time, enjoy the journey. [Music]
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgWxz_V0lPk&list=PLSfheWyV7beFqERLX4ebBUJ4SmzmF6z8e&index=2
https://www.facebook.com/sethbradleyesq/posts/pfbid02RZL2XfebNjV7orN7Ze4Ue8z437ZobHSQoDoCZWwLNwG1VgsshZrRMSkyeGkydwZGl
https://www.instagram.com/p/DIUN1PvTvgQ/
https://x.com/sethbradleyesq/status/1910758713683746925
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sethbradleyesq_tariffs-trump2025-donaldtrump-activity-7316522747164086272-47ae?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

RTBL 07 | Why Most Capital Raisers Will Get Sued in the Next Crash with Rob Beardsley and Craig McGrouther

In this episode of Fund Friday, hosts discuss the innovative solutions offered by Tribe Vest, a pioneering fund-of-funds startup poised to transform the landscape for emerging fund managers, investors, and capital raisers. Guests Rob Beardsley, Craig McGrouther, and Seth Bradley share their personal journeys and the genesis of Tribe Vest, highlighting the advantages of adopting a fund-of-funds model that enhances compliance and increases access for accredited investors. Seth Bradley, Rob Beardsley, and Craig McGrouther explain how Tribe Vest supports fund managers through comprehensive services, enabling them to raise capital efficiently while ensuring legal and financial compliance.
The conversation explores the key challenges faced by fund managers, including connecting accredited investors with high-quality deals and maintaining compliance in a constantly evolving regulatory environment. Seth Bradley, Rob Beardsley, and Craig McGrouther emphasize the operational efficiency of Tribe Vest, including K-1 tax distribution, capital-raising infrastructure, and investor onboarding, all streamlined through advanced technology.
In conclusion, Seth Bradley, Rob Beardsley, and Craig McGrouther spotlight the competitive pricing and fast service turnaround of Tribe Vest, while expressing their commitment to democratizing access to high-quality investing opportunities. They aim to break down barriers traditionally faced in private investment, empowering fund managers and creating a more inclusive investment landscape.
Links to Listen and Subscribe:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fund-friday-e49-the-cost-effective-way-to-launch-a/id1511202840?i=1000673582673
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4tLAtXFe3OrqtCwyc7gfBE
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVgT4GMrPPI&t=70s
Bullet Point Highlights:
Tribe Vest revolutionizes the fund-of-funds model for emerging fund managers.
The connection of accredited investors to high-quality private investment opportunities is crucial yet challenging.
Efficient operational support, including compliance and investor onboarding, sets Tribe Vest apart.
The need for compliance amid industry scrutiny has shifted sentiment towards fund-of-funds for risk mitigation.
Tribe Vest empowers fund managers by providing an institutional-level infrastructure for capital raises.
Cost-effective solutions allow fund managers to focus on relationships rather than administrative burdens.
Quick setup times (just five days) streamline the capital-raising process for fund managers.
Transcript:
welcome back to another episode of fund Friday this is going to be a very nutrient dense jam-packed episode with two amazing people we just had the pleasure of connecting with them once more at our Flagship uh summon event in New York City the gentleman behind tribe vest here a cuttingedge fun to fun group VC backed the whole nine this is going to be such an important episode for all you emerging fund managers you Capital raisers Maybe investors who kind of want to know behind the curtain what's going
 
on and also just from a structural perspective as to how we've been able to scale our business safely and compliantly but with that said let's give a warm introduction to Travis Smith and Seth Bradley how are you both today good craigg good to see you it's been just a few weeks since we were in New York together which was an awesome event glad to be here yeah well there's been a lot of great updates to the product that tribe is offering since our initial conversation we had so I would almost even argue um for the
 
better Awards you can maybe even scrap that episode for future purposes don't need to look back because we're going to cover that and then some here today so I'm absolutely elated and thrilled to talk about that so let's get right into it and just to start with for some some context because we're gonna just keep it moving forward here how did Seth and Travis and the team have tried best kind of Forge and kind of come together from you know this Alliance from a business perspective yeah tra you want to kick that off man
 
sure sure and look you can't scrap that first episode because I think it's the first episode yeah like we're in the record books at this time right yeah so yeah no look uh me finding Seth and Seth Finding Me is a big part of our story no doubt really uh in early 2023 we had built out the infrastructure and the technology uh we' even been challenged by our clients to build out the back office where we do all the distributions cap table management uh k1s taxes and um but I hadn't quite figured out the fun to fun portion of this yet
 
and uh good story you know met Seth Bradley at a a conference in the British Virgin Islands where we were both speaking at the event uh both of our wives were there and uh they hit it off we hit it off and just had a wonderful wonderful week and weekend and um and that was when Seth kind of really opened my eyes to um this opportunity Seth you know how how do you remember it where where you know how how did it go from there yeah well funny enough my my pitch or my speaking engagement was on fund of funds it was
 
it was teaching the group about fund of funds what is it how can you how can you go from basically a passive investor and and start a business raising capital and and fund of funds is kind of the the next step and at the same time the industry was was pivoting there was uh you know there were Winds of Change so to speak from the the cgp model and people were starting to really take the fun of funds model more seriously and take a deeper look at it and the timing just couldn't be better as Travis was
 
taking his company and and trying to make it pivot himself into the the syndicator and the fund and the capital raising market and you know originally there was a cgp type of model that was being uh thrown around and actually had a good bit of success Travis right going into uh earlier that year and you know I I we just got into some deeper discussions about where the market is and where it's going and the market was really going to fund to funds and I said' look Travis if you're going to if you're going to take this business to
 
the next level get ahead of the game like this is where it's going it's going to fun and fund is kind of getting away from the cgp model so if you're going to build a product around that market really should focus in on fun to funds yeah I mean and I'll just go as well just to to piggyback off that timing is so funny there because I think it was roughly around the summer of 2023 when fun to fun was the biggest buzzword in the industry what is a fun of fund how does it work why is this the most compliant way do I need to do it what is
 
it how does it structure everything included there so we're going to unpack that all there but it sounds like Travis you might have had an additional comment well I was say it really it truly was right place right time for Seth and I to meet you think about leading up to that it was the becc 2023 and there just all these Rumblings with some some bigger names in our industry that were under an investigation for the CP model and that was really how the industry was working with capital Partners at the time and uh
 
collectively realized that there's got to be a more compliant better way and there I was with a two-thirds of the solution talking to Seth who rep represented the the last third of the solution so really was right place right time and and uh you know we're we're we're so glad to be partnered together and and solving a big problem Big Challenge yeah well and let's get right into that problem so the the problem of the industry so how can someone like loans start Capital safely compliantly bring dollars into our deals from
 
outside investors fund managers capital allocators and opportunity so what is the industry problem and what are you guys both solving Seth I I'll hand it over to you I think from a big industry problem I mean there's just the age-old you know you have awesome lead sponsors that are working hard finding great deals private deals out there like Lone Star and and then on the other side there's over 20 million accredited investors that want the benefits of private investing they want the the benefits that come with real estate they
 
want cash flow they want tax advantages uh you know they they want the appreciation all those things that are Why Real Estate so awesome they want to invest with these lead sponsors in these deals but as as we know unless you're kind of in a country club or in the network it's really hard to access those so that's the big problem the big problem is we have great lead sponsors with great deals and then on the other side we have have awesome accredited uh investors looking for those deals meanwhile they can't find each other and
 
uh they don't know how to access them and so the the industry as a whole you know a big conduit to solving that is this Capital Partner right the fund manager and Seth I'll turn it over to you kind of again maybe start with how the industry was solving it and what the problem was with that right yeah I mean I think you framed it correctly it's it's access we know these these accredited investors are out there there's Millions U maybe tens of millions out there in the United States that um maybe they know it maybe they
 
don't but they they might want to invest um they need educated they need access to Deals and on the other side you've got uh lead sponsors you've got fund managers you've got Capital aggregators who want to get access to these folks and we work on that in our business every single day about how do we reach these accredited investors um and then we all have our own little networks of people that we can raise capital from and that we know and that they no like and trust us to be able to place their
 
Capital with us um you know since the jobs act in 2012 which is um what enabled us to start going out and soliciting and advertising um in the public uh for deals and raising capital in that manner and the the problem is that everything's been great since then up until covid right the real estate market has just been going absolutely through the roof so anybody that decided to jump into the the sector during that time had success I mean you could just you know throw paint in a wall and you're G to have success because the
 
market just really helped us out a lot like you had to make a lot of mistakes operationally um for things to go wrong right I mean you really did you really did um not to not not Lone Star Lone Star is awesome right you're you're absolutely right no you you you hit the hammer on the nail there for sure yeah and it's uh you know until covid hit and we got that little blip and that was just kind of a you know something that you know came and went um but now you've seen in the last year and a half or so
 
the market has slowed down um you've seen Capital calls you've seen um you know some SEC um interactions with folks and trying to see if Capital was raised correctly things like that um kind of looking into how the market evolved the market evolved beginning with a cgp model um you know initially the C GP model was thought to be compliant and if it executed properly it is compliant if you have all people in a group that are raising capital for their own deal they're all active participants they're
 
all General Partners they're all executing the business plan and participating in decision-making all good that's an age-old uh way to do business and it's been done for all the time right like you've got Capital you've got people actively participating and all is good but just like anything else you know us entrepreneurs we like to go around the edges and try to pick and choose like oh well can we do this or can we do this let's push the limits and unfortunately the market kind of changed into this this um this thing
 
where we push the limits too far and we've had 10 15 20 CPS in an active deal where you know really all they're doing is Raising Capital right like we might try to say on paper that this person's doing that and this person's doing investor relations and this person's doing a little bit of underwriting which all may be true true but at the end of the day if the SEC comes in and says let's take a look at your whole business plan plan with this particular asset in this particular offering and see how you
 
raise capital and who's doing what and they're going to look under the hood and they're going to be able to figure it out they're they're smart people back there they can figure out what you're doing they can figure out that hey this person raised uh $200,000 and got 2% and this person raised $600,000 and got 6% it's pretty easy to put those pieces together um but like I had mentioned before the market you know kind of went our Direction and there were really happy investors nobody was upset nobody
 
was suing nobody was asking questions and now since the market has changed you've seen the capital calls you've seen the foreclosures you've seen the investors upset um and now that's what Travis was alluding to earlier is there were certain folks in the industry that were um you know getting interviewed by the SEC I don't think anything ever came of it but it was enough for people to be like look we've still got to raise Capital we've still got to do these deals somehow what other way is there to
 
do it that's more compliant than this cgp model that the industry has turned to and the answer is fun to funds and it's always been fun to funds you know there's people out there that have preached that for years but it's just a little bit you know more nuanced a little bit more complicated a little bit more expensive so people have stayed away from it yeah so exactly and and thank you so much for painting such a Picasso beautiful picture here pertaining to the why before and why now and kind of the context there because I
 
think so many people are missing that why y component so you beautifully explained that so but then why is the fun of fund the route to do it in because it's pretty similar right and fun of funds to your point have actually been around for really not going to say forever but for a long period of time so just curious to know you know why fun of fun is this the solution from a client's perspective and and things of that nature yeah and we can and Travis jump in here whenever you want but we can kind of go through um with each
 
stakeholder why why it's compliant why they love funded funds maybe why they don't you know let's talk about the pluses and the minuses um I think we can start with the lead sponsor I mean for the lead sponsor um to me there's there's really no downside and I'd love for somebody to may maybe making a counterargument to that but to me there there's no downside for the lead sponsor themselves right the people that are actually operating buying executing the business plan by them creating a level of Separation through the fund to funds
 
model and not uh inviting other folks into their deal to raise Capital they're creating they're creating uh risk mitigation and dissipating liability for themselves right and they don't have to worry about bringing people into their business because it's a totally separate offering that the fund manager is going to be putting out there separate from the actual lead sponsors right and and uh another reason why the lead sponsors love it other than it's compliant creates that separation is it's way more uh efficient
 
way more efficient when you're working with a capital partner and they're the ones that are pulling the fund to fund they might be bringing in five 10 15 20 investors into their fund to fund well uh they can coordinate that from a sales perspective and then also on the ongoing Administration right it's one line on their uh on their cap table right so instead of getting 15 smaller checks you're getting you're getting one big check and it's just way more efficient and way more safer is is Seth said too yeah and your your listeners
 
are are very educated but just in case there a few out there that are wondering I mean the the fund of fund itself is just an LLC it's just a a group of investors it's a you know somebody managing that which is the fund manager and that LLC or that partnership however you want to structure it legally is actually just a passive investor for the lead sponsor it's just going to be a big aggregated passive investor for the lead sponsor so I just wanted to clarify that yeah and then let's talk about from so
 
and there's also been some Evolution I hit on that word to start the conversation but before we were partnering or triest was partnering with this a couple handful of lead sponsors but there's been some Evolution so can we talk about how you guys have maybe handpicked and cherry-picked some of the top you know first and- class sponsors and how it worked kind of before and now the new product lines rolling out and how you know why fund managers are loving it and should even love it more moving forward absolutely yeah great great
 
question and great points here so you know as you mentioned Craig when we were initially rolling this out uh it made sense for us to to cherry pick and go work with uh the lead sponsors with the best track record the best reputation and we're proud to say that you know Lone Star is one of our earliest lead sponsor partners and um and then since then uh really we had almost a requirement where you had to go through one of our our lead sponsor partners and there's good reason for it we'll we'll come back to
 
that in a second but since if you're lead sponsor and looking to do this on different deals I'm sorry if you're a fund manager and looking to do a fun to fun on different deals working with different lead sponsors you can absolutely work with tribe best so and you think about the benefits of that right what you're what you're able to do is you can control your own brand right you you get to build your own um your your company you're building a business one deal at a time and from your Investor's perspective instead of them
 
going to one investor portal and then you know going to another deal that has another investor uh portal they can actually all come to one portal uh as you're using tribe vest so um I want to again just point out that fund managers can now uh absolutely work directly with us they don't need a lead sponsor now I will tell you this think about the benefits though you do get when we are partnered with the lead sponsor and lonar is a perfect example of that right lonar has done the work to say look if
 
you're a capital raiser you get these marketing resources right you get we we'll we'll put together a you know a deck that you can configure um we've thought through all the economic for you so if you're wondering how to communicate the terms and the returns you know lone Stars gone as far as adding it to their their underwriting spreadsheet so you can play with the numbers calculate it and that's a huge deal right and so all these things that a a lead sponsor partner of ours like lonar does just makes it so so much more
 
seamless when we do engage with the funder manager right we don't have to go back and kind of figure out well what are the economics and and how are you you know doing uh you know commitments from your investors all those types of things so fund manager can absolutely come and work directly with us it's still way more smooth because we already have the offering docks ready we already have the calculator ready we already have marketing materials right all those things are reasons why by working with
 
one of our lead sponsor Partners just makes the experience that much better for you and your investors yeah and just a little back and for a lot of people who may not be privy to this but if you are a capital allocator specifically that we're talking about in this situation who is looking to work with the loans or capital or a group similar to us your other sponsors there's just some groups that are just not really built or have the infrastructure in place to really streamline the funto fund process I.E and the underwriting
 
model IE it already been kind of baked in there we've done this before some groups are kind of in Old way of doing things maybe they only do a couple deals a year that's totally fine I'm not saying that's a bad thing but they might have to create a funto fund breakdown economics setup for the double waterfall there where everyone gets paid out the investors get their returns that should be you know similar to what our investors get and then the fund manager needs to figure out his compensation for
 
his basically part in the opportunity so we have that baked in and we've done this now enough times to know how this is going to look and actually as a matter of fact to go through that process even one step further before we even go to public or live with the opportunity to even start the capital raising those numbers are ironed out those numbers are in place you know what's going on it's not a scramble drill amongst everything else to get your partners going so on and so forth when you do partner and work with us
 
which is a key benefit to do and solve for one of the most important uh places in the capital raising you know equation which is speed and time so we kind of shrink that time Gap versus other groups when do that or the other people that you work with which is highly crucial there are a lot more groups now that are tailored to the fund of fund but not every group is um so that's the exciting thing and then going back to now being partnered with a fund manager at at the fund manager level as much that's
 
amazing for a multitude of things number one if you're a capital allocator fund manager we don't see who your investors are because as Travis alluded to it's one check going into our opportunity so you get the shield and Sheltering in that perspective in that equation there so that's number one number two is we're not going to create the other big problem in the business I would say which is Portal fatigue so it's not a big issue it's not the endl be all but you know if you're let's say a alt uh a
 
big alternative investor guy right guy or gal person what's GNA end up happening let's say if you've got five to 10 sponsors you're probably going to have you know a bunch of different portals to go into but if you work with a couple of capital raisers who only use triest as your back office well that's immensely beneficial because you can just keep your accounts there so I just want to really highlight those two things and if you want to expand on that further please feel free to do so yeah I mean I'll jump in for sure I
 
mean you know I've got to mention again compliance right like think about you know the fun to fun model where the fund manager is going to create their own business they're going to create their own entity that they're going to manage um that going to administrate and they're going to operate so by doing so yes there are more responsibilities you are running your own business you are taking accountability for you and your investors and your business but uh on the flip side of that is hey the old CP
 
model you're getting into bed with all these other CPS that you don't even know I mean you may they may be an acquaintance off of social media or you might not even know who they are at all let alone the lead sponsor so if one of those folks does something wrong you guys are all in the same boat like you're not just taking care of yourself but you've got to worry about all the other people that you're in business with and if they do something wrong they're going to put your investment and your past investors um in a bad
 
situation and let's get to the next idea which is some of the problems that some people have experienced with a fun of fund that I think you guys are really really Cutting Edge on to solve for them so let's just talk about maybe a couple of the problems which I think is you know the expense I think there's a lot of misnomers about how expensive it can be um and also what you kind of solve for it how you bundle and Pat package it together because if you're the typical person that's going to be very expensive
 
but that's why we love you guys uh the administration burden and then also time so let's T let's just kind of break down those problems there how you see fit accordingly and uh we'll let you take it away again SE I'll let you jump in because you were saying you were just at a conference in uh think that uh maybe rais Masters conference in in San Diego and you the conversations you were having with fund managers once they kind of fully understood what we did and how we did it it really kind of uh popped
 
for them so anyway I thought since that was fresh i' I'd ask you to to talk about it yeah I think people that have any kind of experience uh raising Capital under when they hear about all the things that we do and for the amount of money that we do it for they are absolutely blown away I think the problem that comes up is that it's a misunderstanding of what we do and what we are so a lot of folks that don't understand will put us in a category of just being an investor portal they'll be like hey triest is like cash flow portal
 
or like syndication Pro or invest next or one of those and they just kind of lump Us in with them and we're like that's the smallest thing that we do the smallest thing that we do is the investor portal that's that's one of the services that we provide but we provide everything Soup To Nuts I mean from start to finish I mean it includes everything that you could possibly imagine I mean from getting your EI and letter to setting up your LLC to opening your business banking account to doing your legal documents and setting those
 
up for signatures for your investors and actually onboarding your investors or hurting the cats I was going to say you actually get a account manager to help you on board your investors professionally and uh yeah you mentioned hurting cats that's maybe one of the things that we're the best in the world at is helping hurt cats yeah I think that's something definitely gets so much fun Craig knows about it all too well yeah lot a lot of work lot of uh reaching out to investors lot of questions on hey where how how do we
 
fill out these form fields on these subscription documents right like where do we sign how do we fill this out what does this mean those things those they they take time they take effort um it's an administrative burden for you and your company and we take that off your hands and then we also Badger the passive investors till they actually send the wire right like a lot of times they get cold feet and you know we prompt them to to send the wire and actually finish their investment all the things that investor relations manager
 
might do we handle that now there's there's some teamwork involved as well because they're your passive investors but um you know we do the heavy lifting on on that side and then even on the back end we are managing your cap table so we're setting that up for you on our dashboard and actually making distributions to your passive investors now you can log on to your dashboard if you want to and send them out manually when you want how you want and what amounts but if you want us to just take those over pursuant to the terms of your
 
offering documents we'll handle that as well it's amazing and and the and the taxes yeah I think Craig tax can't forget the taxes yeah the taxes k1s again one K1 comes in from Lone Star uh we we of course at our core the banking and the cap table so we have the ownership percentage makes it easy for us to and our CPAs to create that K1 for each one of the members we distribute it they find it right in their uh document Management on their dashboard and uh literally two days after After we receive the K1 your
 
investors have the K1 so think about that and I know everybody's going through tax season here yesterday was kind of a a big day uh but it it's um it's a it's amazing that it really speaks to the technology that we have that we can receive the K1 on behalf of the the deal and then create those k1s in two days and distribute them to to the members I was just going to make one last Point Craig you know I think if you think about what we do if you think about an Institutional level group or fund so I think the way
 
fund managers can think about what we do is we really bring this institutional level uh setup legal Administration so think about a family office all the organization all the administration everything they need to have in place to operate well we bring that down to the individual level so you can have that institutional level Administration and setup as a you know a oneman business and therefore you can you can really build a business and a brand here's the thing one deal at a time you don't have
 
to go invest tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars you can do this one deal at a time because try best is in the business of of helping you uh launch a capital raising business efficiently amazing so let's get into the next two components which is expense and time so let's talk about time and then we'll bring it home for the the of course the the elephant in the room which is what is this going to cost me so let's get into the time factor and how long it takes to set everything up from Soup To Nuts from Hey I want to
 
work with the deal to you know funding and things of that nature Seth you want yeah yeah I'll jump in um timing wise you know we are industry leading in that in that as soon as you give us the basic information that you that we need for your fund of fund so you know just simple stuff like what do you want to call your LLC what do you want your preferred return to be what do you want your profit split to be those those things that you're going to make some decisions on as soon as you get those items to us which is in a simple
 
form that we provide that you fill out and we walk you through that as well we can have your business banking account and your LLC set up in two days and we'll have you ready to raise Capital meaning we're going to have your legal setup we're gonna have your business bank account open all those things done within five business days so that's why you know it's we should emphasize what Travis said there that it's a deal based decision I mean you can come to us with a deal that's already that's already
 
under contract that that maybe the lead sponsor is already raising for and say hey look I want to raise for this deal but I've only got a few weeks to go that that's plenty of time for us to to jump into action so it's really tough to do that with let's say you know if you came to me and I have my security attorney hat on i' would be like there's there's no way we we've got to get this going weeks before that like you've got to give us some setup time um with triest we've we've got it streamlined
 
and efficient to the point where five business days you're raising Capital that's incredible and that's just really a big X Factor that should make everyone feel comfortable with the process because you know there's situations just like go out a sponsor level here where hey a capital raiser might have not been able to get an allocation to deal because of the commitments were there and guess what someone Falls up short well now as you know as a sponsor whatever dollar is not coming in you got to make up for that so it's kind of a a
 
moving moving Target a kind of moving goal post in many respects so it's very nice that five days you're in you're out you're ready to go to the next that is awesome and then the next thought I have there is a capital allocator maybe you were late you're on vacation and there's this great deal that maybe your inbox is flooded and then one they you know peaked your interest and you could get the space into it well hey the deal could be live but you could have a five-day window to get your turntable
 
going to raise Capital safely and compliantly um in within this structure and infrastructure yeah great great points again I'll just come back to the benefits of working with some of our our lead sponsor partners like Lone Star so you heard Seth say hey as soon as you have all these things in order and you push the tri the tribit button we spring into action and you're ready to go right well you do need to have certain things figured out before you hit that tribit button and again the nice thing of
 
working with a a group like lonar amongst many other reasons is they have really ironed out the program the fun to fun program so if you're coming through them you already have those things figured out you hand them we get handed off or you get handed off to us and we're you're pushing that button and in five days you're ready to do onboard investors it's incredible that's amazing now the final thing what people have been waiting for what does this cost cuz you have to think for the amazing benefits
 
and the amazing opportunity you get to raise in this time and environment this has to cost a fortune maybe there's a massive upfront cost you know I'm not going to get into names but some groups charge an arm and a leg to get things set up if you want to do the more Boutique bespoke route where you're doing everything yourself without a name brand in a sense of the the setup you've got to go through the painstaking process of finding a Seth and a Travis and a this and a that to get all your documents ready to go however it's
 
pretty cost efficient and effective here so let's get into that I'll let Travis speak to our pricing at trivest but I do want to frame it with this when I worked in big law and you know massive Law Firm thousands of attorneys you would come to our law firm and want to put a fund of fund together or you know maybe even a more sophisticated fund but our prices started at $75,000 I think a lot of people out there in the industry are used to seeing kind of oh yeah maybe it costs like $115,000 maybe it cost $12,000 $225,000
 
on the top end when you get into the big leagues $75,000 to start and that's just your first drafts of your offering documents and then maybe one round of revisions and then we start charging you $1,000 doll plus an hour um to get across the finish line and that is just the legal by itself and guess what you may get there and then some could change a Nuance could happen and guess what you got to start it all over again and make further res revisions and have more billable hours to your incredible
 
attorney like s uh these people make a lot of money okay so this is a incredible opportunity to be in a very nice spot here where it might be cheaper and to your point there about that dollar fee I'm hearing 25 Grand from certain Services I'm hearing 75k 50k to make it do it yourself and for some people that's great that's fine that fits into their budget but for I would say the most people that are doing this that probably makes it to a point where you're paying to raise capital and that's what we're looking to avoid and
 
solve with try this so with that said Travis lead us away absolutely no what a great discussion and I teased Seth all all the time about his his industry it is it is it's the establishment right so we're disrupting The Establishment no doubt about it and uh so we just talked about what it would cost kind of going the more traditional routes well we're able to do everything that we just shared with you the setup the legal offering do uh the banking the uh helping of the onboarding setting up the cap table you
 
know doing the servicing of the filing for you all that for $5,000 so literally say that one more time please $5,000 yes only $5,000 and here's the other thing right when we talk about having the economics of the fun to fund set up and again getting back to the benefits of working with loone star is they've they've figured out the terms and uh even added in all the expenses of tribe vest right so that $5,000 is actually included in those in the economics so it's you don't have to kind of add on additional uh cost it's all in
 
there right and and you can do that with tri best because it's contained there's there's no creep of cost right and and I think it's also important to call out how we're able to do this is we have made a very firm box of what we're doing of course we've we've tailored it to these deals like to these deals so everything's in there that you need including the compliance includ you know everything we just talked about um but that's how we're able to do that this at scale and TurnKey and done for for you
 
so it's $5,000 to set up now we could also talk about what's it cost to administer this over five five years six years right most of these business plans are five years before they're exiting you know working with an administrator an Administration uh you know administrator you're talking about $155,000 a year well with tri best it's $2,000 a year remember we're doing all your uh distributions for you your cap table management that includes your k1s your taxes so you know anybody that's done this before they're like
 
it's more than $2,000 just to do the taxes every year right never mind you get the portal your investors have a a dashboard to see all their Investments and and set up their payout accounts and they get to see when their distributions are how many distributions they've had that's all there and and the distribution so anyway it's you know I think about we we mentioned right right place right time Craig and we've talked about all those things that kind of lined up for us but the industry has been trying to
 
figure this out and we just like to think that we're a small part of it we're that technology that kind of was the major unlock that kind of opened up the floodgates if you will and um and now our job is to go out there and tell people that this exists like this tool in technology is available for you and you should build a business on it yeah I want to make some other kind of comments and points there so you hear right there so just to summarize that it's $5,000 takes five days and it's you know
 
roughly $2,000 maybe a little bit more depending on the number of investors you have in the opportunity but all that's fine and dandy but if the product wasn't good that is where the problem is and it's sucks and I mean it sucks to spend money for something to not work well and people's experience that we've worked with have really liked the infrastructure of the product what it solves for because I think I'm someone personally that I am not afraid to spend a dollar I'm very good at spending money
 
but I like to spend money in areas where it's actually worth the money and I've had very good reviews here from people who have of course used the product so I just want to share that right there and that's kind of been some of the burden with some of the other products out there as well you spend a lot of money for the technology to not be great I mean Travis has a background with tech so inherently having that there to have the infrastructure be supported by a good product is the difference between
 
coming back and not coming back so I just want to tip the cap there to make it not only a good product but also have people come back to it but um it being cost efficient and effective as well and then the other time factor that I want to speak on is more from a sales perspective being someone that's been in sales by basically my entire career since I was 21 um almost a decade of sales in real estate specifically the last thing that I want to worry about and think about and do is uh had there be a burden of having you know to go
 
through Administration stuff talking to an attorney doing this doing that doing everything that's not shaking hands and legitimately moving the conversation forward and funding dollars into the account and what tribe best solves for is a cost- effective route with good technology and done quickly where you don't have to think about any admin stuff I want to connect with people I want to talk with people I want to grow the relationships and raise the capital I do not want to deal with in the your
 
view and the peripheral stuff and I'm sure you guys can appreciate that sentiment and also I've had people say similar things as well it means a ton to hear you say that of course that's we're building our business on fund managers coming back and building their business on our platform so um you know it's funny as as the founder and you know always improving and growing uh the the the the business and our solution We're Never Satisfied and um we always think we're disappointing in terms of the experience
 
or and we can be doing this better and we can right and we will but when we get feedback and we we do net promoter scores and get the feedback back from the fund managers and we get you know seven plus you know would you recommend this to friends and family and would you come back and that's just a super high rating if anybody's familiar with it and um and we're we're we're proud of that but we are just getting started I mean we are just getting started so I think we nailed the fact that we bring a ton
 
of value you know you're getting a good value uh but now we're going to really wow you and your investors that's our goal and uh we're going to keep pushing yeah so let's talk into maybe just the mission as the why you know why you guys are so passionate about this and want to create this product because you both are really smart guys you're very successful prior to this endeavor and Venture so you know why is this your mission and in your day to-day right now because you have the option of working so and doing
 
really what you want to do so let's talk about that maybe man that's Travis that's you again buddy you're the you're the big picture guy bring it oh man no look I think Seth and I this is personal for both of us right um my brothers and I wanted to get into real estate we didn't come from a real estate family you didn't get it you know that education in in school and we did what you know we've been doing since the beginning which is you know you come together with your tribe when you need to figure something out and that's what
 
we did and we we we started a a a tribe pulled our capital and started investing together and it changed our lives and it changed the trajectory of our of our family's Financial lives and um and that's why we're doing it um you know by doing this the fund managers right they're they're the they're the heroes in this movie the fund managers are the heroes in this movie that's how millions of investors are going to get access to these deals like the wealthy right we all know why we love real estate it it's
 
it appreciates it cash flow there's tax advantages you you name it there's a reason why the wealthy invest in these private deals these private real estate deals well most people don't have access to it the conduit to getting into those deals are you are the fund managers are those Capital raisers we're just happy that we're providing a tool for them that makes it easy that makes it easy but as you can tell we're passionate about it Seth I mean he he was a capital Riser right Seth's done a lot he's an
 
entrepreneur but he knows how hard it is to be a capital Riser and uh maybe you could talk a little bit about what what's motivating you s yeah I mean just quickly you know I took the the Bigger Pockets route so to speak you know read Rich Dad Poor Dad startlist to the Bigger Pockets podcast did a house hacked into a duplex and then started buying single family properties fixing flips and then started investing you're a grinder grinder just level by level by level right um started investing passively in deals when I
 
became a little bit more sophisticated um and then I was like okay now what now I want to be on the active side and at that point I really wanted to switch over to not practicing law whatsoever I was like screw this I'm leaving Big law I'm not doing this anymore I'm only going to invest in real estate um but then kind of along the the Journey of becoming an active investor and a syndicator and capital Riser I realized that my highest and best use is actually still as a Securities attorney and I'm
 
pretty good at it so I've kind of integrated that into my real estate business and and use that to um uh join join triest which is at the Forefront of I think perfect timing in this industry right like real estate and legal are two industries that just move extremely slow they're dinosaurs they don't want change and they're resistant to any kind of change right so we've got to as entrepreneurs even if we're fund managers or passive investors that are looking to um diversify our assets or lead sponsors we're the ones that have
 
to propel this forward and say hey we've got technology now behind us we've got all these different tools and ways to do things we need to take advantage of that and at Tri bestest we're building that so like what we are today is going to be completely different than what we are in q1 2025 and Beyond we are we are constantly building taking in feedback from all of our stakeholders and and and looking to take over the market I love it well then let's just real quickly go back into this we've kind of touched on
 
it but maybe just more specifically how you do work with everyone from lead sponsors fund managers and I know you're obviously always going to conferences and masterminds you're very accessible in many respects but let's just get into you know how you work with everyone once more just to maybe spoon feed everyone a little bit more information yeah absolutely so the lead sponsor uh we help them form their funto fun program right and that's a huge Advantage for them uh that they can offer a turnkey
 
funto fund program to their Capital Partners their their Capital raisers their fund managers and we'll we'll actually sit down and talk about all the things that you need to do for that to be successful you know how are you going to work with the fund manager um economics we talked about that you got to build in the fun to fun economics into your underwriting you know uh how are you how are you going to give them access to the marketing tools those types of things and really the the blueprint is is um you know is Lone Star
 
so lone Stars uh leading the way as they do in most things out there and have built just an awesome fun to fun program and that's why so many fun to fun managers are working with them but um you know that's how we work with the the uh the lead sponsors and we talked about all the benefits of that cool and then go ahead Seth on the are any questions there Craig no I think that that was really well said um kind of building out the blueprint that many people don't have and just how it works and pertains
 
to us if you are a capital allocator you kind of have understanding of the deal functions and then there's a additional level there of of underwriting materials so you can raise Capital so you understand the ever important what's in it for me conversation you can assess your opportunity cost between us and other sponsor if you're looking at other deals and whatnot I'll tell you this right now I'll say it again and again again we under promise and overd deliver that's kind of the the Mantra that we
 
try to have here like everything we're probably never going to show you the highest Returns on projections um we like to beat our deals up as much as possible prior to going live because it doesn't serve us nor you the investors to see what the best case scenario is um we try to make it as modest as possible with our assumptions so you know we have our infrastructure for what the deal looks like from an underwriting perspective what your theoretical compensation could look like so these are things are just very important to
 
think about uh we want basically everyone to be at parody what do I mean by that well if you're a capital raiser looking to raise for our deals we want your investor returns and our investor returns to look very similar they're going to vary ever so slightly because there's a slight drag you know for the fees Associated to the deal what do I mean by that well there's the administration fees that could be about $2,000 so sometimes that by comes by way of affecting the cash on cash return minuscule from a couple you know basis
 
points I would say roughly about the what looks like but you'll make it on the back end for the lift and raise of the deal there when the deal goes to sell so it's never going to be 100% similar because there are some you know technical nuances there but it is to be fair to everyone there and then you'll be getting you know a nice return on the deal that you raise for as well should there be profit split um above the preferred return so I just think that's a really important thing to hit on as to
 
how that fundamentally works now let's get into Seth with you over there on fund managers yeah fund managers we kind of touched on it already but you know we' we've changed our business so we're ready to work with fund managers directly um you know you can reach out to us and have an exploratory call if you want but really when you have a deal or you have a lead sponsor that you're ready to to work with that's really when we can spring into action um make that introduction reach out to us make the
 
introduction to the lead sponsor we can start going to work and again we can have you uh once we have the the information and and the things that we need from all the stakeholders we can have you up and running in five days and you know I'll just go ahead and talk about the passive investors too because they are really important maybe the most important I know a lot of those folks are are listening right now and just know that that's on our that's always on our road map to make the passive investors happy to make that user
 
experience awesome and streamlined and um you know just just an awesome experience for that passive investor because ultimately that's who we're serving we're trying to reach the passive investors let them get their money moving and so they can uh create multiple streams of income and we want to make that experience awesome for them because if they're happy then the fund managers are happy and the lead sponsors are happy too yeah there's two things that this show is about it's about the for this particular episode two things
 
it is the fund manager to be safely raising money in an everchanging business business and it is all about at the end of the day the investor the investor is the straw that stirs the drink they are the king of the beach so to speak they're the ones that this is all about for us to be able to give people who may not know that they can invest in those beautiful commercial real estate buildings that we drive by all the time you know it's sad to think that you know that's not in the hands of Main Street so to speak you know a
 
$50,000 investment gives you access uh to that product type now I'm not saying that's where every dollar should be you should have money probably in the stock market maybe you should have some money in your primary residence maybe you don't believe that mattra but you should have also some money in these institutional grade ACC or assets and that's what we're delivering here and it's so fun to be in a conversation with you both because you guys really are creating and are the future so it's cool
 
to be in in the moment to be having the conversation now but to be also progressing accordingly with with you all moving forward we just appreciate the partnership there's a reason why when we were cherry picking our initial lead sponsors that we we started to work with lonar and uh just you know couldn't couldn't tell you couldn't tell you how much we appreciate uh this partnership and and like you looking forward to what's to come in the future here yeah well with that said we could talk forever but we got to wrap it up at some
 
point so let's do that now Travis and sth thank you so much for giving us so much of your time here being generous how can people reach out with you want to learn more with maybe partnering at a sponsor level investor level and or a uh fund manager level absolutely LinkedIn is always the best place to kind of find me and follow me let me know you you heard me on this show I'd love to connect with you and uh and then you can email me and we'll also have a link on the show notes Here If that's uh if that's uh okay yeah of
 
course you can check out trib vest.com obviously and then for me you can find me all over any social media platform so feel free to reach out excellent well gentlemen thank you so much for your time today for those listening I hope you enjoyed this informative conversation about how the industry is moving and grooving and Ever Changing uh so we'll see you next week everyone have a great rest of your day peace
Links from the Show and Guest Info and Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVgT4GMrPPI&t=70s
https://www.structuringandraising.com
https://www.lscre.com/content/passive…
https://www.lscre.com/resource/underw
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
Rob Beardsley’s Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-beardsley/
https://www.facebook.com/RobBeardsleyLSC/
https://www.lscre.com/team/rob-beardsley
https://www.instagram.com/robbeardsley8/
https://www.facebook.com/RobertToddBeardsleyIII/
https://x.com/RobBeardsley3?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://www.tiktok.com/@robbeardsley3

MDM 03 | Million Dollar Monday with Eli Faceda

In this episode of Million Dollar Monday, Seth Bradley interviews Eli Facenda, who shares that he made his first million through an international youth sports tour company. The business was growing rapidly until COVID completely shut it down. Eli Facenda made his last million through his current business, which helps entrepreneurs use credit card points to take luxury trips for a fraction of the cost.
Seth Bradley and Eli Facenda discuss his plans for making his next million by scaling the same business through lower-ticket, community-driven, and digital products, while continuing to offer his high-ticket services. Eli Facenda emphasizes strategies for leveraging credit card points, enhancing travel experiences, and building scalable entrepreneurial ventures.
Links to Watch and Subscribe:
https://youtu.be/o8qmXoQf8LE
Bullet Point Highlights:
First Million: Built through a youth sports international tour company (pre-COVID)
Business Model: Organized overseas travel for youth teams and families
Impact of COVID: Entire business was decimated by travel restrictions
Last Million: Made via a business helping entrepreneurs maximize credit card points for luxury travel
High-ticket offers: $5K–$15K services, hit $1M revenue in 2024
Next Million Strategy: Scale through lower-ticket products, community offerings, and digital content (YouTube, affiliates)
Goal: Reach more people without sacrificing service quality at the high-ticket level
Approach: Reverse path—starting high-ticket, moving into scalable, lower-ticket reach
Transcript:
Seth Bradley (00:00.16)
Welcome to Million Dollar Monday with Eli Facenda. Let's just jump right in. Let's do it. Yeah. How did you make your first million?
 
So I actually made my first million in a tour company. Now I made the first million. I didn't get to keep the first million, but what we were doing, we were running sports trips all over the world. This is actually part of how I fell in love with the travel industry and the work that I'd now do with points. And ultimately what we were doing, we were creating these international tour packages for youth sports teams and families to go on these international tours. So think of like a 14 year old baseball team in your, you're in San Diego. We'd like do a selection of kids.
 
from that area, the families would come and they would go to Japan or Italy or wherever and travel for 10 days, experience the culture, have an educational tour and also play the local teams. So we did that in a variety of sports, ice hockey and baseball and lacrosse, all these different sports and we were growing a lot and then that was ramping right until COVID and that just decimated the entire business. it took us about two years to get to a million and then we started to double almost every year for a few years and that was like,
 
really really tough break in COVID but that was the first night.
 
Man, nobody saw that coming. I No,
 
Eli Facenda (01:09.548)
definitely you know group large or large group sports international travel was like the worst potential like you can't go overseas and you definitely can't do it with 60 people so it was a brutal industry to be in
 
Yeah, there were certain sectors that just, I mean, there was nothing you could do. We opened up our first gym actually two weeks before COVID hit in 2020. So we had our, us like two years to open and then our grand opening. And then we had a bunch of free clients in those first two weeks. And then they ended up being free clients for about a year because we couldn't charge them. Cause we couldn't get them back in the gym. We're doing online workouts and all that kind of stuff. Isn't that? Hey, we adapt man.
 
Yeah, the true entrepreneurial muscles are definitely strengthened in times like that though. mean, like the people that bounce back and figure it out, like you just have a new sense of confidence of like, you know, I can handle anything.
 
Yeah, man. I mean, you pivot, right? Like I actually ended up launching my first podcast during COVID because I was stuck inside and it was like, all right, let's do this. Let's get on Zoom and interview people and all that kind of stuff, man. So that leads us right to the next question, man. How'd you make your last million? How'd you make that transition?
 
Yeah, so the last million that I made was in the current business that I have. so essentially what we've been doing there for about four years now is helping entrepreneurs maximize their travel on credit card points. So helping them get their dream bucket list trips, these 30, 40, $50,000 trips all over the world for about 90 % off by leveraging credit card points. And we've traditionally had some pretty high ticket services. I mean, not crazy expensive, but like,
 
Eli Facenda (02:40.046)
know, 5, 10, 15K in that range has been the main service. And so we cracked our first million about two years in. So that was 2024. Actually, it was the first year we made a million there.
 
Awesome man, awesome. How about your next million? Where are you scaling to?
 
Yeah, so the next million I want to make is the same business. I love what I do. I really enjoy it. And what I want to do is do it in a more community oriented and lower ticket way. So I want to have bigger reach, more digital products, more of the community, more affiliate services and stuff like that. And I'm really excited about kind of cracking the code on that because we've done it decently with the higher ticket stuff, more agency level service level stuff, which is great. And we're still cranking on that. We're going keep growing it. But I really want to see what we can do with
 
So the lower ticket stuff, creating awesome stuff on YouTube that leads to different channels and distributions there. So that's the next million and same business, just different type of money.
 
love it man. Yeah, that's kind of opposite of how some people approach it, right? You usually start with a lower ticket and then you have to build up that base before anybody will give you, you know, higher, pay for that higher ticket product, but you're kind of working backwards because you want to help more people.
 
Eli Facenda (03:44.398)
Totally, exactly. Yeah, there's a limit. mean, what we do in the high ticket is incredible, but it really is a specialized skill. Like you think about like a bookkeeper or an accounting firm or something, there's like a million bookkeepers. There's like 50 people that know points and travel to the level that I need them to know it to really serve clients with the highest level. So there's a real limit on the ability to scale that. It's also just like, we want to be able to do really quality work for less people, but then serve more people with the other stuff too.
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
Eli Facenda Links:
https://www.instagram.com/elitravelguy/
https://x.com/elitravelguy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-facenda/
https://www.facebook.com/eli.facenda
https://www.youtube.com/@elifacenda
https://www.threads.com/@elitravelguy
https://www.skool.com/@eli-facenda-5305?t=posts