Building Partnerships and Raising Capital Made Simple with Ruben Greth

by Anthony Vicino | 27, Dec 2020

“I saw multifamily as a great avenue for generational wealth for leaving a legacy for my children.” – Ruben Greth

Our guest for today started in real estate by raising 650,000 dollars of joint venture money from social media to buy small multifamily deals in Phoenix, Arizona.

He is an expert in marketing, brand awareness, and capital raising.

Currently, he connects and learns from successful syndicators and shares his discussions with them through his own podcast, The Capital Raiser Show.

[00:01 – 08:42] Opening Segment

We introduce our guest, Ruben Greth.
Ruben talks about his background and how his real estate journey started

[08:43 – 16:52] Looking for Potential Partners in Competitors

Ruben tells us about what he called the “biggest transfer of wealth ever”
Sharing your business secrets and why you should do it

[16:53 – 31:13] From Building Partnerships to Raising Capital

Ruben talks about the importance of adapting and evolving in the real estate business, as well as finding the right partner
Tips to create a good partnership from the beginning of a real estate business

[31:14 – 47:48] Addressing Emotional Needs

Ruben talks about the importance of addressing the emotional needs of passive investors
Differences in projections about the future of real estate business
- Is multifamily resistant to recessions?

[47:49 – 59:30] Find Your Niche

We talk about the worst pieces of advice we ever heard
Ruben tells us the importance of trust, consistency, and learning in real estate

[59:31 – 01:06:10] Closing Segment

Ruben’s book recommendations:
- The Power of Intention
- Capital Raising
Connect with Ruben online! See the links below.
Final thoughts

Tweetable Quotes:

“I saw multifamily as a great avenue for generational wealth for leaving a legacy for my children.” – Ruben Greth

“Really, in multifamily, it is a team sport. It’s really the only way to go.” – Ruben Greth

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Ruben on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Check out his Youtube channel. Visit their company online and on Facebook and LinkedIn.

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the 5 rules of investing — Rules of Investing

Building Partnerships and Raising Capital Made Simple with Ruben Greth:

ANTHONY VICINO (00:17):

Hello and welcome to multifamily investing made simple the podcast. That’s all about taking the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can start taking action today. I am your host, Anthony Vicino of Invictus capital joined as always by my partner, Dan Krueger.

ANTHONY VICINO (00:34):

I’m trying to get like more creative with how I say your name, like.

DAN KRUEGER (00:36):

I think you just stole that from that boxing guy. I forgot his name. You know.

ANTHONY VICINO (00:41):

Bruce banner. Yeah.

DAN KRUEGER (00:42):

Bruce banner. Yeah. It was kind of like a really tamed version of him. So we’ll get there.

ANTHONY VICINO (00:48):

Well, yeah, I’m, I’m working on my ringside announcer voice. It’s not coming along. Well, I don’t think I have a future there.

DAN KRUEGER (00:55):

Yeah.

RUBEN GRETH (00:57):

I’ve heard much worse.

ANTHONY VICINO (01:01):

That’s funny. So for our listeners at home, you’re probably hearing a third voice in your lay away. Who is that? Well, that’s our special guest for today’s episode. That is the one, the only Ruben Greth. And I will point out Ruben. You’ve got a pretty good radio voice. So that means a lot coming from you saying like that. My, my ringside announcer voice. Isn’t so terrible. I appreciate that.

RUBEN GRETH (01:19):

Actually. You know, I heard that we did this personal development. I was a staff member for this personal development group. And every time that there was a new graduate, we would have to say their name and like first know how to pronounce it. Right. And then say it and a famous Dan Krueger. So it’s like that thing that was good. The announcer at the basketball games.

ANTHONY VICINO (01:40):

We need it. Okay. So we’re going to go back. Okay. We’re going to we’re like a minute, or like only a couple of minutes into the intro. Let’s just go back to the beginning. Ruben, you’re going to do the intro and the Dan you’re going to run through like smoke and fireworks and then.

RUBEN GRETH (01:54):

Alright.

ANTHONY VICINO (01:58):

So for our listeners at home who are confused about what the heck is going on, they have tuned in for a real estate education show. And instead, they’re getting a lot of pomp, a lot of circumstance.

DAN KRUEGER (02:07):

But we get off topic fast. That’s very fast.

ANTHONY VICINO (02:10):

That’s Okay. We’re going to do a U-turn here and we’re going to get right back on course. So today we’re joined by, like I mentioned, Ruben Greth. He has his own podcast about raising money for a multifamily syndications called the capital raiser show where he learns best practices from successful syndicators and multi-family investors. He is a capital manager for Baker sin and does marketing brand awareness and capital raising for the company who has purchased 850 units in Arizona, many, three syndicated apartment communities. He originally got started in real estate by raising $650,000 of joint venture money from social media to buy a small multi-family deals in Phoenix during the real estate crash. He has a wealth of knowledge. He’s interviewed ton of people on his podcast. That’s a great show. And we’ve had I believe your CEO, Bruce roulette on the show. We just interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. And that was a good conversation. So you’re coming from the bakers and clan. You’ve got some big shoes to fill. Yeah.

RUBEN GRETH (03:05):

Cool. I’m happy to, so I think we are there, the nice thing about a team is that we all watch for each other’s blind spots. Right. So they’re very good at acquisitions. I’m very good at marketing. It’s just a perfect little mesh and blend that we have going on.

ANTHONY VICINO (03:19):

Yeah. So walk us through that. How’d you get involved with those guys?

RUBEN GRETH (03:22):

So I guess the first thing to know is that after I raised money, thank you for the bio. Back in the day, I disappeared from real estate. When I broke up with my partner and like I left the country, I went back to corporate America and then try to sell real estate was horrible at it, and really always had my eye on multifamily. So I wanted to get back into it just from a generational wealth perspective. I knew that was a really good vehicle because of the tax benefits and having all the properties in one place and having a property manager that doesn’t have to go to a million different places within the same city or different towns, which would be even worse. And so the broker that I had my license with so I heard about syndication, who do you know that syndicating? He’s like, well, I sold a $5 million property to Baker son last year. I’m like, can you set up something so that I can interview them and find out who do I need on my team to become a syndicator and syndication? All it really means is putting a pool of investor’s money together and having a common goal. So you can syndicate casinos, hotels, even Wall Street investments, a baseball team, movies, oil, and gas. But these guys were syndicating multifamily, and I wanted to know how they were doing it. So I interviewed them and they’re like, well, they turned it around. They’re like, why do you want to know about multi-family syndication? And I explained the same thing that I just mentioned to you. I saw multifamily is a great Avenue for generational wealth for leaving a legacy for my children and mentioned that I had raised some capital back in the day with my own. What I didn’t realize at the time was a thought leadership platform. I thought it was just a YouTube channel where I interviewed people. And they’re like, so you raised capital using YouTube and Facebook. I’m like, yeah, this is back during the crash. But I have, you know, a little success there and they’re like, well, we need somebody that does marketing. So we don’t have a presence. Nobody has ever heard of us. And I just took it to the next level. I didn’t want just people in town to know who they were. I wanted everybody in the whole country to know. So I started a podcast. I figured that was going to be the most efficient way to get in front of as many people as possible and learn this thing called capital raising from true syndicators. And, you know, I was lucky that nobody else had a show on the topic and I grew pretty fast and you know, hopefully people like my content, I try and from a very humble place, because I don’t feel like I have arrived by any means. Especially when I compare myself to the people that I interview on the show, they have a wealth of knowledge and I just try and ask them questions as if I was in a seminar and feeling like, Oh, I didn’t get the answer to this specific question. And, you know, you feel empty when you leave the seminar. I ask them the tougher questions because I want to know, you know, like how do you raise capital or what’s the right mind-set? Or how do you approach things in social? What are the dynamics that need to be put in place? What is the communication infrastructure? What are all the tools, techniques, and strategies to raise money? And one, does it make sense depending on what type of property and what type of asset you’re investing in. And it’s been a really fun ride. I’m still learning. I can’t wait to continue. And to season two, starting in a couple of months here.

ANTHONY VICINO (06:46):

That’s what really cool. The thing about this space is that there’s always somebody ahead of you. There isn’t really no top rung of the ladder for however big that you want to get for all the, you know, the Ken McElroy’s of the world. There’s always somebody even bigger than that. There’s the Blackstone capital. And so that if you, if you view that as a competitive thing, then you’re going to be very frustrated because you’re going to, if you’re always comparing yourself to them, but if you use it as an opportunity to like inspire and say, hey, I can learn from those people or you can go really far then. So I think that’s really cool that you’ve brought that into your platform there.

DAN KRUEGER (07:20):

And also I really like about your approach is that you come into this social media kind of podcasting thought leadership platform space as a student almost, which is great because there’s so many people out there that are coming as the expert or the guru, and there’s some experts and gurus out there. But a lot of the people out there who claim to be said, guru are early. So the fact that you’re coming to the table and said, hey, I’m just here to learn anyone else who wants to hang out and learn with me is more than welcome is I think that’s probably why you’re so popular is because that’s very well received. You automatically relate to people and know those other guys out there that are just trying to create the image of being these big, successful, whatever they are. I think people start to see right through that. So I think your authenticity was probably one of the most important things that led to you know, gaining traction with your audience and providing value for people.

RUBEN GRETH (08:14):

Well, it’s been a fun ride for sure. And I just love all the people and the connections that I’ve met. I’m really starting to, it’s getting to the point where there’s partners coming from it, right? So people that I interview or people that heard the show and they’re like, hey, we are familiar with what your company is doing because you talk about it on the show. Occasionally. Can you tell us more? Why do you like to Sohn? How do you structure things? And it’s been a great Avenue for bringing partners too.

DAN KRUEGER (08:41):

That’s very cool.

ANTHONY VICINO (08:42):

One of the best things about your approach is its very value focused, right? You’re just trying to bring value and content to the, to your audience, to the world. And you’re not pushing hard. Like you just mentioned there, you’ll occasionally mention what Baker sends up to, but it’s not like a hard pitch, every podcast episode and saying, hey, look at us, look how great we’re doing. You’re just putting out content out there in a very authentic way. And so I want to rewind then to that first thought leadership platform that you built, that you didn’t even realize that you had built it like that it was a thought leadership platform. What’s that mean for you? What does it mean to be a thought leader? What does it mean to build something that’s meaningful and valuable to the community of listeners and your audience? What’s that look like for you?

RUBEN GRETH (09:27):

Yeah, I guess the other part of thought leadership is these two words interview-based thought leadership, right? So that’s what my YouTube channel was about. It was called the Phoenix real estate investors, and I was totally a rookie back then. It was like throwing rap music in the background. As I was interviewing people, I was interviewing a couple of different investors, some of them in the single family space. And then I ran into this one guy that came to one of my meetups and he was buying. He had just showed up to town, to Phoenix with a bankruptcy because he lost everything in speculums in San Diego and just started taking down four flexes. And me coming from the finance world, I didn’t really understand how that was possible. I mean, I had a grasp on this capital raising thing because I studied with a couple of people, but I didn’t really know what were the steps to doing it. And I thought, well, maybe if I just promote people and connect people, I can figure it out. So I started interviewing him and he would talk about some of the stuff we talked about before the show, like what’s an asset, what’s a liability. When does it make sense to buy a car? Well, if you don’t have a cash flow producing asset, that’s paying off enough to pay for your car, then it’s a liability. So we started sharing that and providing some thought leadership about creating wealth, creating generational wealth. And at the time our perspective was this was going to be the biggest transfer of wealth ever. Like the real estate market was so rock bottom, we were buying stuff for 20,000, a unit and cherry picking them right off of the MLS, which just sounds crazy now, but so we would share our program, how we were going to find the property, how we’re going to raise capital for it, what we’re going to do to tenant occupied, how we’re going to re renovate it or rehabilitated it and get it back on the market for resale within 15 days and have a really nice equity position and cash flowing astronomically. And people really liked that. So we never got scared that people would listen to our model and do it. Even though some people did, it was more from an abundance mentality of, hey, let’s just share what we’re doing. Most people are probably not going to do it anyways. And sure enough, people started flying into town. They would interview us. We would take them to lunch, show them are our deals, let them touch physically the asset for whatever reason, that’s magical to people when they can actually be at the property and see it or touch it and feel it and experience it. And we would say, hey, we have a deal coming up here. Do you want to participate with us on it as a joint venture? And a lot of times they would say, well, maybe on the next one. So we would take a down anyways and then explain to them our position that we were now cash flowing, astronomically, and doing really well on it. And they’re like, I can’t let another one go. And that fear of missing out really allowed us to bring in some new capital partners because they saw what we were doing and how much money we were making at the time. Or at least we thought it was a lot of money. We were kind of smaller investors, but we thought that it was, it was pretty good. And I think our investors really liked the returns to the owners.

DAN KRUEGER (12:29):

I was going to say that comes back to a theme that we just touched on before there, which is putting, providing value to others ahead of pretty much everything else. Right? You didn’t have that scarcity mind-set that a lot of people do in business. I haven’t seen as much in the real estate space, but in a lot of like entrepreneurial circles, there’s the scarcity mind-set where anyone who’s kind of in the same space as you is pretty much your competition and you should not try to help them let alone put deals right in front of their face. That you know, it’s very easy to see that as competition, but again, it comes right back to you and it works.

ANTHONY VICINO (13:05):

Yeah. Perfect case in point of that in action was this afternoon, we were on a property tour and it was a group property tour where multiple people were going on the tour. And we struck up a conversation with another guy who presumably was competition. So for he had a, an off-market deal that he was looking to sell. And so now we have a conversation with that person that if we had just viewed him as pure competition and said, Oh no, we’re not going to talk to that guy. You know, now there’s no secondary opportunity there. So and I love this idea. You hear this a lot about people like, Oh, if I give away all my best content for free, then you know what people are going to come back for other people are going to steal my secret sauce. Well, what I found is that only like 1% of people are actually going to follow through with what you’re teaching and telling them and of those, that 1% they were going to do it anyway, they had the desire, the energy, they were going to go figure it out. You just made it a little bit easier for them. That’s all like at the end of the day, you’ve just given yourself that stronger brand position you’ve helped some people. And that’s great.

RUBEN GRETH (14:02):

It’s super important from my perspective, it’s to have this abundance mentality and I’ve had a lot of people come on my show and say, hey, give away everything. Like share every secret there is to raising capital and don’t be afraid to hold back. And, and so Shelly Peterson told me that, and she has said a nice business with her husband Corey here in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we’re in Arizona, by the way. And I’ve taken that to heart. Like I want to share everything. There’s nothing I want to hold back. And interestingly enough, I did run across one person. I tried to get on my show and he’s like you’re like my competition. You don’t, I’m not going to come on your show and give away all of my capital-raising secrets. Like that’s the last thing that I want to do. And also he’s the only person that ever said no to an interview invitation. And I just find that very interesting that some people really operate from the competitive plane, but like you mentioned, it’s only 1% of the people are really ever going to do anything with that knowledge.

DAN KRUEGER (15:01):

Yeah. And I think that mentality is going to come back and bite that guy eventually, because this is a pretty small community. Even like nationally speaking, the multi-family circle. Isn’t a huge one. So if you come into any potential relationship with that kind of attitude, the Ooh, you know, get back your comp competition. I mean, people are just going to stop doing business with you, whether it’s brokers or lenders or other potential partners or investors, like, you know, that’s going to kind of come back to that guy in a negative way, just like you helping other people and putting other people first is going to come back to you. It might not be the same day. You do a favour for somebody. It might be three, four or five years later, but it always comes back in some way. So we subscribed to the exact same philosophy that’s been kind of the basis for our whole brand is just as let’s just try to educate everybody and you know, not try to, you know, sell anything or pitch products and, you know, try to get people into a funnel, just try to educate people.

RUBEN GRETH (15:58):

It actually makes you a lot more rapid reputable because if you can teach on something or share knowledge about something, then you’re automatically perceived as somebody that has value to bring, which kind of puts you up at a higher place. And seam makes you look a little bit more respectable and somebody that you’d want to do this is with.

DAN KRUEGER (16:13):

There you go. I love it.

ANTHONY VICINO (16:14):

Yeah. So I learned this lesson a long time ago from a small child. We were playing in a field, I think it was my nephew and there was a bee and the bee was flying around his head or his sister’s head rather. And she was swatting at it and he turned to her and he said, make friends not enemies. And I was like, okay, I’m going to put that into my mental Rolodex. I’m going to hold onto that forever because that’s awesome. And it’s usable in every context. Right. So make allies, not enemies, like don’t, you view everybody as competition view them as potential partners that you just haven’t partnered with yet. So I’m really curious then from that, those early days, when you first began, like way back during what was that? 2007, 2008, kind of mid financial crisis.

RUBEN GRETH (17:01):

2009. So I was asking a lot, but I’m at the very bottom 2009 to 2000, I think at the end of 2011 before we split up.

ANTHONY VICINO (17:10):

Okay. So, and those years, like the depths of despair, things have changed a lot since then. Well kind of like maybe we’re heading back there. Maybe we’re not, who knows how things changed for you and your approach. Have you gotten just more sophisticated in your approach or have you realized that you were making some mistakes back then that if you were to go back, you would do it different.

RUBEN GRETH (17:30):

Yeah. Well, one of the major principles that I did not apply back then was this ability. Most of the investors that have been around for a long time have been able to adapt and evolve along the way or find the right partner to do it. So a couple missteps that I had, one is after I had an ugly breakup with my partner, I thought I had to do from myself. And that was the wrong approach because that was a lot of tire wheel spinning. And I couldn’t get any traction. The other part of it was that even if I had, I guess part of it was that I didn’t have a partner. So it made it very challenging for me to raise capital because I didn’t have my own track record, really at least that was my limiting belief. I’ve even though I had done about 22 units, I think for four deals and raise some capital, some other places, I was just like, well, and I’ve nobody to tout. I have nobody to interview. And I started getting frustrated and not having money. I ended up back in corporate America and I couldn’t stand being behind a desk. So eventually one day I just quit, took off to Mexico for a year. And along the way I’ve met my wife. We didn’t get married too many years later. But when I got back to United States, it was the same thing. It was like, man, I missed out between 2013 and 2014 and 2015, like all of the appreciation that’s happened now, I’m still stuck in this mind-set where I’m looking for $20,000 units and they don’t exist anymore. Right. So the prices they’re still increasing, even people comparatively speaking to 2018, they’re still trying to buy stuff at 2018 prices and they’re not adapting fast enough. So that was one of my biggest mistakes. Can you, can you repeat the question about, you know, how is it different? I guess really what it is that I’ve just opened my mind up to having a partnership with people again, and really in multifamily, it is a team sport. It’s really the only way to go. Especially if you’re trying to buy these large properties, you want to leverage somebody else’s track record and bring something, add value to them and their team and partner up and, you know, have a complete system where everybody’s bringing something to the table. And that’s kind of where I find myself today. And we are going through this process, we’re adapting, pivoting, and changing and going from a buy fix and sell multi-family property to a buy fix and hold it, you know, intention where we have investors coming in and we’re giving them their entire capital back or the majority of it, and then keeping them into the deal into perpetuity. So they get their cash back. They can redeploy it in somebody else’s deal or with us on another deal. And yet they can take that same initial investment and use it over and over and recycle it and grow it indefinitely.

ANTHONY VICINO (20:29):

Yeah. I said it so many times on the show, it’s becoming a dead horse that I’ve beat a million times, but it’s the falsely attributed Darwin quotes, not the species. That’s the strongest. It’s not the species. That’s the fittest, it’s the species that is most able to adapt that will survive. And, you know, we were talking Gino, Barbaro, not too long back. And he was talking about how, when he first started in multi-family real estate, they were buying properties for 20, 30,000 per unit. And, you know, that became their fixed mind-set of that’s what these properties are worth despite the properties, you know, appreciating over time. And so, you know, a couple years later, all of those properties are now selling for 40, 50,000 per door. And they’re looking at those opportunities and saying, well, that’s too much. I’m not paying that. Not realizing that like they haven’t shifted with the market. They’ve stayed, locked into this previous mind-set, which is a very easy place to stay locked into. If you’re not careful, I’m really curious. What do you think were the factors that led to your partnership breaking up and then what are some things that we should be looking forward to create a good partnership beginning?

RUBEN GRETH (21:36):

Yeah, so I try to become a mirror of him and we started getting successful at it. So I would find the property underwrite, it, put the deposit on it, get it under contract and essentially evaluate whether it’s a good deal or not. And he’s like, well, we don’t need to have the same people. It’s like we have two machines doing the exact same thing. You’re really good at the raising capital. Why don’t you focus on that? And I really tried to take it to the next level. So I got a, an author that I was going to write a book for us. We had some people that were going to help us create a CD system and educational platform. And we were going to go on tour. I even flew this producer out from San Diego that was starting to film like a mini pilot episode that we were going to pitch to networks to see if we could start a TV show. And here’s another issue that we had is we were so focused on saving money by micromanaging the contractors that he just became over leveraged and had no time to participate in these marketing things. So he would miss meetings. The guys from San Diego would fly into town and he wasn’t available or didn’t have the energy and like I had money on the line. I was putting my cash into this marketing system and he was just not showing up and flaking out on me. And I love him to death. And I learned a lot from him. But at the time I was very angry that I felt like I was wasting my time with him. So, you know, a couple of arguments took place and I just decided to go my own way and try it on my own, which that was probably a mistake we probably should have just looked at where are we being over leveraged and how can we address this? So that would be the first thing is like, if you can repair the relationship and you don’t come from a place of, you know, fighting and let’s look at what’s missing instead of what we have in place. Because when you focus on what’s missing, you attract more of it and you can’t really process people through your thoughts. You can’t step behind their eyeballs and become them. All you can do is just shower them with value or with, you know, if you’re talking about a relationship with love, right? Because if you look at what’s missing, then that’s

RUBEN GRETH (23:46):

Just going to make it much more challenging to have an ongoing fruitful relationship. But anyways, that’s what I would recommend is like be able to shift and adapt. And instead of when something gets kind of, hey, wiry, look for fixing the problem instead of just giving up on it, which is exactly what I did.

ANTHONY VICINO (24:07):

It reminds me of a relationship, a partnership I had many years ago. And it was very similar in the sense that we were both playing to our strengths and it left this void then where nobody was picking up our weaknesses. And, you know, it sounds like in that instance, you pivoted, you said, okay, we’re going to focus on the marketing. You focus over here on these other things. And then reminds me of this idea that 80% of success in life is just showing up. And the other 20% is following through with what you say you will. Right? And so that can be a very difficult conversation to have with a partner. When you look over and you say, hey, you’re not showing up and you’re not following through with what you say will and can lead to like these hurt feelings and resentment. And when there’s money on the line, you know, like financial incentives, things can get out of whack really quickly. And so you have to have those hard conversations. You have to have those clear lines of accountability and then actually hold each other to those things, which is not an easy thing to do.

DAN KRUEGER (25:02):

Hey, you brought up a few things there that kind of resonated with me from my personal experience and from talking to a lot of other people when it comes to being in real estate and scaling a business, and one of them was the issue that your partner is running into, where he was so busy, micromanaging the contractors that he wasn’t able to focus on other aspects of the business and move the business forward. So we kind of got into a point where he wasn’t able to scale anymore because it wasn’t willing to outsource or taking the steps necessary to move to the next level. Sounds like you realize that, but, you know, he didn’t really, you know, there’s a few things there that might be part of that. I don’t know the relationship obviously, but something that Andy and I have talked about in the past when it comes to finding good partnerships is making sure that you and the other potential partner or partners have the same end goal in mind. You know, your end goal may have been bigger than his. And he was kind of getting to a point where he was like, you know what, I’m happy here. This is good enough where you’re like, no, this is step two of five. We’ve got more. So I was just riding his coattails, honestly. I mean, but he just stopped showing up. So yeah, I think, yeah, he had a big at the time he had a bigger vision than I did. Because I mean, I was just blown away by the fact that I own 22 units. He was already at like 70, he had raised his own capital. I never knew that I would get into syndication at that point in life. You know, like I never even knew syndication existed until about a year ago, honestly.

DAN KRUEGER (26:23):

Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s a fantastic business model to your point that you made earlier about the new strategy they’re using our bakers and where you could basically just recycle your money over and over again, if you provide that to passive investors who aren’t aware of this whole real estate business model, I mean, that is such a valuable resource for people. And I think if I remember from when we had Bruce on before, was it, did you guys kind of brand it as like a general generational wealth vehicle or something, you had some kind of branding that went along with this whole buy fix and just keep holding,

RUBEN GRETH (26:55):

Probably use the words, legacy investing. Yes. And we’re probably changed as you get now to compounding and investing because it’s not just, we hold it forever. It’s like, hey, you take one an investment and you’re you compound it. You basically put it into multiple deals and it keeps growing and growing you’re growing.

DAN KRUEGER (27:13):

It grows exponentially too. So, I mean, it’s not just a lane, that’s straight up to the right. It’s the one that keeps curving up, you know? So when you keep performing well, but it’s, you know, it’s that compounding effect is really exponential. And it’s tough to kind of articulate that over the long-term to people who aren’t just like, you know, finance guys who are used to looking at that kind of stuff. But when you can see how quickly you can really multiply your wealth, when you just keep reinvesting and ruin things over like that, it’s really exciting. So I’m glad that you guys are embracing that philosophy because the norm out there is buy it, fix it, maybe refine, but then sell after five to seven years. That’s kind of.

RUBEN GRETH (27:51):

Yeah, and then the partners are like either in a situation where they have a lot of capital gains or they have to go and find a new deal. Right. So that’s a struggle in itself, especially in today’s market, because deal sourcing is so hard to find right now.

DAN KRUEGER (28:06):

Yeah. I think it makes a lot of sense, especially where we’re at in the market right now. I think it just makes a lot of sense. One other question I’ve got for you is the, that question, but one thing I just want to point out, and it’s something that Anthony and have talked about a lot, as well as its finding people to work with that offset your skillset. So you really like honed in on the marketing and the capital raising side of things. Did you realize that’s what you wanted to do before you and Bruce connected? Or did you find out organically as you went in with him and started to grow?

RUBEN GRETH (28:37):

Yeah. So back in 2008, maybe around 2007, I was first introduced to multifamily and then introduced by a gentleman named Mike Watson through a book called higher and better use investing about different ways to raise capital and the legalities around it. And I was still, even though it was in small multi-family or small deals in general, I knew that I couldn’t advertise numbers. I couldn’t project a specific return or say that out loud. All I could really do. And one of the things that really saved my butt from violating any Securities and Exchange Commission rules was that I never promised anybody, anything. All I just said was, hey, this is what we’re doing. And even today, like in the syndication world, that’s very similar where, unless you’re doing a special type of capital raise with a regulation, D five or six B type of raising money or five or six C better said that allows you to advertise publicly. You can’t ever say anything like what your returns are, especially not on a podcast where I think a lot of people start talking about their deals that they’re currently raising capital for. That is a violation of securities law. You can’t share anything about your deal publicly or announced it or advertise it, or even shared on Facebook. If it’s that type of a capital raise in that type of business where you’re syndicating, it might be a little different for notes, or if you only have one investor. Or if everybody has an active role on going. Yeah. But there’s all kinds of things that I knew even way back then. So yeah, I realized as soon as you could do all these creative things like seller finance was a form of capital raising or, you know, attracting money from joint venture partners, or now, you know, today’s capital raising markets, you can raise it from limited partners. You can raise it from institutions, you can raise it from debt, and you can raise it from family office. You can create a fund. There’s so many different creative ways that people are raising money. It’s just very fascinating to me, but yeah, I’ve always wanted to master this because there’s always going to be a need for people that can bring capital to the table. So I knew that my value would be high if I could raise capital for people.

ANTHONY VICINO (30:50):

Yeah. It’s always a sought after skill, right? Where’s the money coming from. Every deal needs. Somebody who has the time, somebody who has the money, somebody who has to experience. And so that money component is massive. And if you know how to connect with passive investors and raise that for deals, then you’ve solidified a, an important niche there. I am curious, let’s say, you know, for our audience, if you’re a passive investor out there and you’re listening right now to Ruben, you’re like, Oh, I didn’t know that they can’t talk about these deals in that way. I didn’t know that it was such a big deal. Is, is this something for passive investor that they could get in trouble for if their operators out there, you know, telling everybody about this deal on podcasts, is that something they should be on the lookout for? And then from your perspective, what are some things that passive investors should be aware of when they’re engaging with different operators marketing?

ANTHONY VICINO (31:41):

So typically you’re pretty safe. As long as you’re not getting paid. Like let’s say that you’re a passive investor in a deal and you tell your friends, hey, I did really good on this deal. You know, maybe you should check out and investing with them. And then the operator says, okay, well, if you bring me East people, that’ll passively invest my deals. I’ll give you a little kickback. That’s totally illegal. So unless you have an active role in the business, that’s purchasing these properties. So in other words, if you’re handing your money to somebody and then never doing anything on the property that is called passive investing, and that is also a security, as soon as you give your money to somebody else, and you’re not participating in the ongoing duties of that business, that is a security. And if you raise money and get paid for it, you can’t go to jail. You can get in trouble

DAN KRUEGER (32:37):

Broker dealer. If you have your series seven, and you have your licenses where you’re able to sell securities, that person could come in and be, hey, I’m just going to raise capital for these guys that are going to pay me. That’s what I do.

ANTHONY VICINO (32:49):

They probably know that though. Right? They know that person knows that.

RUBEN GRETH (32:52):

Yeah. The passive investor just needs to know that they can’t get paid for bringing their friends along. I think too, to stay safe.

ANTHONY VICINO (33:00):

And that’s a, that’s a great piece of advice. I don’t think we’ve ever actually addressed that here. If you have an operator, let’s say that’s approached you and say, hey, if you do this, then I’ll give you a kickback. Like that’s something to be very aware of that you can do.

RUBEN GRETH (33:12):

Doesn’t even matter if you call it a marketing fee or something else. If you’re getting paid some way and you’re don’t have ongoing operations you can get in trouble for that. Probably you won’t, but be very careful with that. Talk to a lawyer, things of that nature. What was the second part of your question?

ANTHONY VICINO (33:31):

What should a passive investor be on the lookout for, from a marketing perspective? Like what are things that they should look at and say, hey, that’s good. And this is bad. What are some of those red flags and some of those green flags?

RUBEN GRETH (33:43):

Yeah. I might actually turn the table a little bit on you. And one thing that I’ve noticed about passive investors are people that end up doing business with somebody is that the ones that are most effective are really not only finding out their pain points, but addressing emotional needs. Right? So a lot of syndication editors are very flat and dry and talk about hypotheticals and return structures and you know, what markets we invest in and why and what our team looks like. And they’re really not connecting with people on an emotional base. And maybe a red flag would be like, if somebody has mastered that, you know, touching on your pain points and they have a really good deal, maybe not the best, the best numbers. If somebody has 10%, you know, return on investment and somebody else says 8%, someone might say, well, these guys are both active syndicators. Maybe I’ll just go with the one that’s got a 10% return and that’s not always the best thing. So my biggest advice would be like, get to know the sponsor on a very close level and interview some of the people that they’ve worked with. And if you only know one sponsor, don’t just put your money in with that. Like go interview a couple of people. If you have a friend that’s in the business and you want to partner with them, still go and look at some of their competitors before it’s just to see what other operators look like, how they communicate what their track record is and compare it to who you invest with. If the, if your friend that’s a syndicator really has your best interest in heart, you know, they won’t mind that you go and do some due diligence. In fact, they should recommend that. You’d go do that view.

DAN KRUEGER (35:26):

Yeah, that’s great. That’s a great piece of advice for people. And I think we’ve, we’ve echoed something similar in the past. That’s, that’s worth reiterating because it’s kind of the same message, which is that we think it’s, it’s, it’s paramount to vet the operator. You’re thinking about doing business with more so than the marketing package they put in front of you, right? The deal itself should be secondary to the operating team. And if you are aligned with a solid operator, you can, you could be pretty well that the deal’s going to be good as well, then obviously underwrite the deal, right? But the operators, the prerequisite to whether or not the deal is even worth looking at, in our opinion.

ANTHONY VICINO (36:05):

Ruben, you said something there that I absolutely love, which is that you’re talking about how very easily, very often operators fall into this trap of here are the numbers. Here’s the return metrics and our exit strategy and the business plan. It’s very dry. And it’s just cut and dry where you’re talking about, hey, the passive investors, they have an emotional need, right? And you’re, you’re looking for somebody who can understand and address that emotional need. And it reminded me of something that I saw the other day from Donald Miller, who is the founder of Story Brand, which is a marketing firm. And it was, this is your brand is not the hero of the story. Your customer is the hero of the story. And so don’t be don’t position yourself or your business as the hero, think about the passive investor. How do we pull them into the story so that they can see them, their emotional need, and their story being told in a way that’s meaningful to them? And I think very easy, very often we overlook that as operators because we just, hey, here’s the deal. It looks good. Right? They look at them. Yeah.

RUBEN GRETH (37:09):

Everybody can resonate with multi-family because they’ve lived there in apartment, probably. So that’s probably where they kind of lean towards, but they never invest because they love multifamily. They invest because they have needs for time freedom because they’re getting to retirement age and don’t have, you know, a way to get passive income there. Some kind of emotional need, whether their kid needs to go to college or they’re worried about their nest egg, or they’re freaking out about the stock market going up and down like a roller coaster. And they’re tired of losing capital or giving the control to somebody else. It’s always getting paid. You know, all of these things are our problems and pain points. Like, hey, I need to be able to be on a beach for the next 20 years. And I’m now, I’m nowhere close to that. How, how can I get there? That’s really why people invest. It’s not, you know, Oh, I love this building. You know, they don’t really care about that.

ANTHONY VICINO (38:06):

Yeah, exactly. If you, if you want to sell somebody, it’s like, nobody goes what do they say? They you don’t, you don’t buy a drill to make a hole. You, you buy a drill to hang a picture, right? And so the person that’s coming to the hardware store to buy the drill, they don’t, they don’t care about the trail. They don’t even care about the hole that it’s going to make them the wall. They, they want those things that they can hang the picture there. And so sell them the picture that they’re hanging on the wall and like, let them see themselves as the hero of that story. Hey, you want to be on the beach and this is going to get you there. This is how we’re going to do that in the rest then needs to be built on a solid foundation of like fundamental business practices and good underwriting and good operational expertise. But at the end of the day for a lot of passive investors, it’s, hey, here’s my story. How do I get to that point? How do I live in that story?

RUBEN GRETH (38:55):

People’s buying patterns. And even their investing patterns are 80% emotional and justified with 20% logic. So if you’re giving somebody 80% logic and not really addressing the pain points, they’re probably going to find somebody that is addressing the pain points and that’s causing a problem for the passive investor because somebody may address their pain points and not be the best operator out there. So it’s kind of a careful balance. If you’re a passive investor looking to get into a deal, you know, it’s not just the first person that triggers your emotions because they may not be the best operators. There may be a great salesman, but maybe not a great operator. So keep that in mind as you’re looking for deals.

ANTHONY VICINO (39:36):

So this kind of leads me to my next question, which is right now, we’re in the midst of such a tumultuous period. And I think we all realize that during these tumultuous periods, there’s a lot of opportunity born. And there’s, you know, some massive shifts of wealth. And we were talking to a passive investor a while ago, who looked back on 2008 and realized, hey, I really missed out on that opportunity. And now I’ve been preparing for the last decade. I’ve been piling up my cash. I I’m ready to take advantage of the next crisis. And here we are, and I don’t want to miss out. Those were the words he said, I don’t want to miss out. What do you say to the passive investors who are in that mind-set right now of, I don’t want to miss out. I know that there’s a lot of opportunity here. Everybody’s been saying, this is the moment it’s been coming for all this time. What should they be doing right now to either position themselves best to take advantage of the opportunity or to not go burned.

RUBEN GRETH (40:30):

So they have this fear of missing out, right? So they’re like, Oh, I missed on the last opportunity, the last transfer of wealth. But here’s, here’s the first thing that I’ll say is that a lot of operators right now are not seeing things that they’re talking about. So a lot of people who come on my show and said, Oh, all these people are not getting their full rent collection. And I’m like, well, are you receiving all your full rent collection? They’re like, yeah, but you know, I, I’m an anomaly, you know, or you’re an anomaly or this isn’t happening across the country. But the reality is what I’m seeing is properties, if not dipped in value. And some people are saying it’s a buyer’s market. And yeah, maybe if you’re, you’re a seller before you wouldn’t give somebody an opportunity to extend closing, but with the current pandemic and lending parameters changes, you have to be a little bit more flexible. But that to me doesn’t mean it’s a buyer’s market. It just means that the sellers are adapting with COVID. But right now I would, I wouldn’t say like stand on the side-lines, but right now I’m not seeing anything that’s crazy in terms of opportunities yet that may change down the road. Really the best thing to do, if you have a fear of missing out is better. And operator fined somebody that’s doing really good business that has, and does stress tests on their deals that can actually be profitable in this pandemic. You know, meeting certain metrics if craziness happens and all of a sudden, you know, you’re at 60% occupied, if you can still break, even at that point, that’s really one of the things that you want to look for. And also you have to have a high level of trust that the operator is not going to, you know, miscalculate some things, because everybody is looking for a deal right now.

ANTHONY VICINO (42:18):

This has been the really interesting thing to me over the last couple months of social media and just like listening to the news cycles. And you can trace this back to it at any period in time, but everybody’s always projecting into the future. What they think is going to happen. We look at the data and one group says, hey, we’re heading towards imminent failure. Everything is going to go bonkers and brake. And then other people are looking at that same data set or a slightly different data set and saying, no, everything’s going perfectly. This is going to be great. And all that seems to reinforce to me is that one, nobody really knows, you know, if 50% of the people are guessing, things are going to be great and 50% are guessing that it’s, it’s going to be worse. You know, 50% of people are going to be right. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were justified in what led them to that opinion. And I think until we get to the point where the market has decided definitively one way or the other sellers are going to still interpret the data and a pro seller fashion and buyers are going to interpret it in a pro buyer fashion and between the two, they shall never meet until something definitive happens. I mean, we see more of a break that we can then point to and say, yep. Now, okay, this seems to be pointing more towards buyers or sellers.

DAN KRUEGER (43:33):

And a lot of them stuff you don’t even know until after the fact anyways, I mean, it’s kind of like trying to tell whether or not you’re in a recession. Well, you know, six months after it started, right. You know, in retrospect where you’re looking at historical data, when you’re looking at what’s already happened, then, you know, okay. Yeah, because then hindsight is 2020. So it’s, it’s almost like one of those things where you’re not going to pick the bottom, right. You’re not going to pick the top. So as long as your underwriting and your strategy can survive in the tops and the bottoms, then you’re probably pretty good. So, you know,

RUBEN GRETH (44:03):

Multifamily has been really recession resistant throughout this, from my perspective, but there is, you know, a lot of emotional turmoil, a lot of fear out in the market, the passive investors for just the general public. And there are certain industries that are taking big hits, particularly hospitality or short-term rentals, hotels, things that, you know, particularly small business and retail and gymnasiums and some things that are just been like you probably noticed in your city. I know in my city, I’ve seen some businesses shut down since it started.

ANTHONY VICINO (44:36):

Yeah. Dan, Dan’s favourite restaurant in the world is shutting down and he’s heartbroken about it.

DAN KRUEGER (44:42):

Well, that’s not public news yet. I found out from someone. So don’t say it

ANTHONY VICINO (44:46):

Just don’t tell anybody what’s your favourite restaurant is

DAN KRUEGER (44:49):

A lot of people already know, so, okay.

ANTHONY VICINO (44:52):

I talked to those people, but for those people, they need to tune out

DAN KRUEGER (44:54):

This isn’t going to be posted until its already public news. I think.

ANTHONY VICINO (44:57):

Yeah, that’s true.

DAN KRUEGER (44:58):

But yes, it’s unfortunate, especially that industry is getting hit ridiculously hard, but to your point, Ruben real estate, or I should say multi-family is typically pretty recession proof with the caveat that it needs to be run by a good operator. Someone who didn’t over leverage. Cause there’s probably tons of multi-family guys who just went into this period way over leveraged, where they weren’t even cash flow positive, but they were just banking on the fact that, you know, over the next year or two things are going to appreciate, and I’ll just do a refine. I don’t need a cash flow for the next year or two. I’ll just wait for things to keep doing what they’ve been doing for the last 10 years.

RUBEN GRETH (45:30):

At the end of the day, everybody needs a place to live. So there’s a shortage of workforce housing and even workforce multifamily all across the country and it’s not going to go.

DAN KRUEGER (45:41):

And the bottom line is it costs more to build a property these days than is reasonable. If you’re going to try to charge the rents to compete with our assets, that workforce housing, right? I mean, unless they’re getting some kind of a tax abatement from the County or something to cut you a deal. If you’re going to build something today, you’re not going to be able to lease it and be competitive with those workforce housing assets. It’s just not possible. So good old supply and demand, right? Demand is or demands increasing are at least stable and supply is kept limited, at least for our stocks. Because I think you guys from talking with Bruce last time are pretty much focused on the same products as us, just different geographic markets, Arizona, and Russell, you guys

RUBEN GRETH (46:25):

Right now, everything that we’ve done is in Arizona. Okay. We’re, we’re looking at Texas New Mexico, Oklahoma. I actually want to start peaking in Nevada. We’re, we’re we have some interesting strategies around town in terms of how we can get into some new deals. But right now we’re still in exploration phase in terms of our new strategies. And we’re excited. It’s actually a good time. If we can find something, we’ve had a lot of people say, hey, well, we’ll partner with you. If you can find the right deal. And I’m not talking about little partners, you’re talking about like people that want to stroke a two or $3 million check. So hopefully it’s just a matter of going through enough deals here in Phoenix, because there’s not a lot of operators that live here. There are a lot of California people and Canadian people and Chinese people and hedge funds investing here and they don’t live here. And you know, the people, the operators that live in their specific market always have an advantage because they actually live there. Right. So that’s why you guys are in town and looking at stuff in those places.

ANTHONY VICINO (47:25):

Exactly. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys are well poised for whatever comes next and you guys are making really big moves and I’m optimistic that you guys are going to take down some pretty amazing opportunities here in the not distant future. So I’m looking forward to seeing more about that. I want to cause we skipped right over this at the beginning of the show and it’s been burning at my heart ever since. It’s my favourite part of the show. I like to assume it’s everybody’s favourite part of the show. I don’t actually know if that’s true or not. So if you’re listening to this at home and this is in fact, your favourite part of the show, do us a favour, go leave a review right now, drop it down there. Also leave five stars, nothing lasts. Cause Dan gets sad and tell us, is this, or is this not your favourite part of the show? Yeah, but here we are at the weekly bad investing advice, tip thing, weekly, bad investing advice. Here we are. Who’s got our bad, weekly investing advice? Is that you Ruben or is that you Dan?

RUBEN GRETH (48:21):

It could be both of us. Do you take just one piece and then dissect it

ANTHONY VICINO (48:26):

Let’s do two. Let’s do two. And then we can compare and contrast and say, who had, who had worse advice? Cause I can make it better. Right? Whereas this gives first, it goes for more audience engagement, they get to vote who had worser advice. Okay.

RUBEN GRETH (48:43):

The first piece of that advice is always go with the investment that is projecting the highest returns. How about that?

ANTHONY VICINO (48:51):

Yes. Just look at the Performa and go based entirely off the number.

DAN KRUEGER (48:56):

That’s what I was going to choose. Because I was going to not try that. Well, because I kind of thought I knew what your other one was going to be. So I was going to try to pick that one. But since you picked that one, I’m going to try to back my way into the other one that I think you’re going to talk about, which is try to take advantage of all the opportunities that are at your disposal. That sounds like good advice on the surface. But as we were talking about before we actually went live here, a lot of people get shiny object syndrome, especially in real estate. There’s just so many ways you could potentially get in the business. You know, you could be flipping houses, you could be buying multifamily assets and just holding them forever and ever sign them. You could pretty much flip multifamily. You could do mobile homes, you could do storage, you could do retail, you could do all this stuff. And a lot of it’s really great and will probably work really well. But I think it’s really important to dive into, you know, what you actually enjoy doing what fits your personality and what fits your investment parameters. And focusing on that.

RUBEN GRETH (49:53):

When I was getting started, I had this intense desire to have this investor label, right. So I can declare myself as an investor. And you know, I studied a lot of things and I just needed to make something happen so that I could share with the world, hey, this person in my family or me, myself and my family, I am now an investor. So I put some money into a gold mining operation. I put my money into a hotel, entitlement development kind of thing, lost money on both. But hey, you know, I got that in. Interesting. So like be careful with that, like definitely the reverse of this, we were trying to figure out what it is focus on one thing and master it before you move on to the next. And that is the definition of shiny object syndrome is, or the opposite of that is like really focusing in. So the opposite is the bad advice and we’re trying to figure out how does that look right? And what is, what is it? Is it that you have too many irons in one fire and you’re going to do a general understanding and kind of figure something out first? But yeah, that’s, that’s kind of what we were chatting about is how do we break this down backwards is not focused on one thing, but focus on a lot of things.

ANTHONY VICINO (51:07):

I love, I love both of these pieces of advice and this is like a, it gives me warm and fuzzy it’s because this week we have two pieces of really bad advice and we could spend another hour on each one of these dissecting them, honestly, on the dope, the don’t focus side of things. The interesting thing there for me is that when you’re new, you don’t know what you’re going to be best suited for. You don’t know, maybe that is single families. Maybe it’s short-term rentals, maybe its notes, maybe it’s wholesaling, maybe it’s multifamily or storage. And it’s like, who knows? Like at that point you’re so new. You don’t even, you don’t know what’s going to fit your personality the best. So you need to kind of go broad and educate widely enough to understand enough of like, Oh, I know that investing isn’t for me and my personality, neither is wholesaling. That sounds like a job. I don’t want a cold calling job. That sounds like a lot of work, you know? So figuring out what

It is that’s going to work for you and then zero in on it and go hard at that thing until you get really good. And unfortunately it takes a long time to get really good at it

RUBEN GRETH (52:07):

Yeah, I think I got it dialled in. So I hear this from network marketers all the time. You need to have multiple sources of inquiry. Yes. You need to have multiple sources of income. Right. So, but yeah, dude, like get one of them established before you move on to the next, if you’re trying to go after multiple streams at the beginning while you’re learning, it’s just like, Whoa, you’re going to be spending your time.

ANTHONY VICINO (52:30):

Yeah. That’s perfect ribbon honestly, because what people end up doing is they try to everybody here is like, you need to have seven passive income streams or different revenue streams. And then they go to start building all seven. At the same time, they feel like this overwhelming pressure, like, Oh, I need to do a lot. That’s all I have. I only have one. So I need to go throw out five real quick and then none make any kind of meaningful progress. You never generate any kind of meaningful revenue out of any of those other streams. Then you get frustrated and you quit and you think, Oh, I’m a failure. Or you think that just doesn’t work, which doesn’t, isn’t true. Like these things take a while to get off the ground and make traction. I’m curious with your very first thought leadership platform on YouTube. How long did it take you before you started seeing meaningful traction there?

RUBEN GRETH (53:14):

So when you say meaningful, you mean actual capital raising and ownership of deals. They took me, let’s see, I started the channel probably in 2008. Didn’t really mess with it too much. And then started promoting people in 2009. And at the same time I was raising capital from outside of the YouTube channel raise like 50 grand for some houses. But when I met my multifamily partner from the time that we did our first video to the time that we took down, our first property was probably around eight months. And before we started getting leads, you know, like either flying into town or meeting with us at lunch probably took like four months. So it is a long cycle, whether it’s attracting passive investors or joint venture partners, typically it’s not something where you pick up a telephone call and hey, you have the capital right there immediately. It is a cycle where you have to walk people through your process, what it looks like to invest with you and let them see what your deals look like before they actually invest.

ANTHONY VICINO (54:15):

Yeah. And you know, we talk about people need to know like, and trust you. And that trust component takes a lot of time to build. It’s not something I might sit down and have a phone call with Ruben and be like, man ribbon seems like a great guy. I really like Ruben a lot, but I’m not convinced yet that I’m going to give him money. Like I need to see him over the next couple of weeks and months. I need to see a track record of consistent behaviour before I can feel like I trust Ruben, right? Like I’m not going to trust her to babysit my cats right now. I don’t know how he is with cats, but in six months, if I see him every day on YouTube or a Facebook or LinkedIn posting videos about him and like educating on cats and how to take care of cats and I’d be like, Ruben knows a lot about cats. And I don’t know why I went to cats on this one, but we’re here now guys. So we’re stuck.

RUBEN GRETH (55:02):

No, that’s cool. Trust, trust. The other part about trust is it can easily be broken. And if it is, it’s so hard to re-establish, so it is a matter of consistency. And I think it’s absolutely fair to want to take your time to vet somebody, to learn about them, to make sure that they are around because you get more comfortable. And for some of the people that I’ve had on my show, they’re like, I didn’t get any major capital investors. Like the biggest ones that I’ve had all took at least three years of knowing me before they invest in a million dollars or more. So I think it’s totally fair. And, and the question really is, are you willing to put in the time and the effort, if you are a capital raiser or a syndicator to establish those relationships on a long-term, you know, are you willing to go through the grind and put in all the hard work? Because there is a law of compensation in that says, I think, you know, you get compensated based on the need for what you do, your ability to do it. And the difficulty there will be to replace to you. And if you’re putting in this work over a long period of time, it’s going to make it very challenging to replace you. And through this natural law of compensation, eventually over time, you will build enough relationships where people invest with you. And it’s just a matter of, do you want to put in the work or not?

DAN KRUEGER (56:17):

I think that kind of goes back to one of the first points that we brought up, which was that you have always prioritized providing value to other people before like worrying about what you’re going to get out of something. Right. So I think you’ve, I think you need to have that type of personality because typically, I mean, if things don’t become, you know, quote unquote fruitful for at least a year, I mean, most people are going to be like, Oh, this is pointless. But if you genuinely enjoy educating people and showing them how they can improve their lives and become more financially stable and accumulate wealth, like if that generally makes you happy, you’ll do it for a long time. When, you know, you’re not getting the pay checks in the mail, but after enough time, it was just providing that much Goodwill to the community around you. It always comes back. So kind of goes back to that whole philosophy that you’ve always had and that we’ve had as well. If you’ve got that kind of philosophy in life, then that’s probably the type of person that can, that can have that rule. I really, I really like this philosophy too, or this metaphor is, you know, 90% or 80%, whatever the number is of the fuel that a plan uses going from one city to another city is used up on the take-off. Right? So like all of the work that you’re putting in, you may not see the results right away, but you know, once you get airborne, man, all of that work will have been worth it. And then it’ll be a lot easier just like it is. That’s a really cool analogy. But is that, is that true?

ANTHONY VICINO (57:41):

Yeah. Well think about it from a rocket standpoint, right? I don’t know about plans, but I know rockets because I’m a rocket scientist by trade. No, I made that up. So yeah, they used the majority of their fuel getting off the ground and getting initial inertia going by the time that they reached the, you know, the upper stratosphere, they’re using much less fuel, less wind resistance and they have that momentum and it’s the same concept with a flywheel, right? Like flywheels are hard to get going. Initially. They, they take a lot of energy. They’re not moving practically at all, but then once they get that momentum going, they get that inertia, they start spinning and every ounce of force then that you apply to that is translated into exponential results. And, but it’s really hard. It takes so long to get those wheels move. And you know, when you talked about ribbon that it’s about eight months for you guys, that’s actually really quickly, right? In, in some cases it can take years to three years. That’s not unlikely. I was listening to a podcast the other day with a big money raiser who said something to the effect of, you know, they had a really great long track record of raising tons of capital and the money manager for one of the wealthiest families in the country, reached out to him and said, hey, I’d like to be put on your list, keep me in the loop of any opportunities that you have. And I’ll keep an eye on you for the next couple of years. And if I like what I see, we’ll think about investing with you, right? And so he wants to see years’ worth of track record of saying, show me your performance. And then I want to see the back end. I want to see the results. And we’re going to compare that for a couple of years. And if I like what I see, then we’ll invest in, I have access to, you know, godly amounts of capital, but just these things take time and they take consistency and they take a lot of effort. All right. So Ruben hit me with your book recommendation for the week. I know, I know you got one. I can see some books there in the background.

RUBEN GRETH (59:30):

Yeah. So I have a favourite book that I want to mention. It’s, it’s a spiritual book. It’s called the power of intention by Wayne Dyer. And it really talks about like attracting peace into your life and being a certain way to attract wealth into your life. So that one really kind of brings home the concept of whether or not you acquire 10,000 units or get this specific goal that you’re after to really just be happy along the way, because the goal is and what makes you happy? I’ve had people on my show that have become millionaires and have been like sitting in their swimming pool, just absolutely miserable. So it’s like making the decision and putting the spiritual and philosophical practices in the place and the mind-set in a place to be happy, regardless of circumstance, happiness is a choice. It’s not something that you get when you achieve a goal. So that’s probably the number one book. And the one that I’m reading right now in a book club is Richard C. Wilson raising capital book. I forget the exact title, but if you look up Richard C. Wilson raising capital, I’m sure you’ll find it. And that one really talks about all of these like creation of an avatar and a SWAT analysis against your competitors. And I’m not sure if it, everything applies in all cases, but it is very useful information in terms of, you know, taking a little bit from the buffet that you like and applying it to your visit.

ANTHONY VICINO (60:54):

I love it. I haven’t heard either of those books. So that’s, that’s helpful for me.

DAN KRUEGER (60:57):

Feeling second one sounds vaguely familiar. The first one does not. So I appreciate that.

ANTHONY VICINO (61:01):

I’m going to dig into both. I am curious, I want to ask a question about the power of intention, cause you’re talking about happiness there, and this is a sideways question maybe is what does success in happiness mean for you? Are those synonyms? Are they different? Like some people are like, hey happiness. Yeah, it’s a state of being, but it’s not the ultimate goal, right? Like maybe its chase, we should be pursuing meaning or fulfilment or purpose. And sometimes that, you know, isn’t synonymous with happiness necessarily.

RUBEN GRETH (61:28):

Yeah, So I actually did a personal development course where people assigned a contract to me and we had these really big juicy goals and they would basically shut me up and I had to stand and watch and they would say words and shout them out. And depending on my reaction to those words, they would, they would decide what my contract would be. So they would say things like, you know, passionate and, you know, I’d kind of get nervous or they would say successful. And then they would see that would kind of freak me out because I didn’t feel successful. So they made me create the statement, which is my contract. And they said, if you live by your contract, you will achieve all of your goals. And my contract was, I am a passionate, successful, determined leader, urgently creating the life of my dreams now. And I had to say that and convince people that I was living that way before they would like stand up out of their chair. It was very interesting, but successful was one of my words that really triggered something for me because I thought you had to have a portfolio or be a real estate investor to be successful. But that can mean so many different things. It can mean like, you know, are you happy in your relationship or in life that is a form of success. Have you graduated from college and do you have a roof over your head? That is another form of access. Like when we compare ourselves to other countries around the world, our standard of living is hugely successful, comparatively speaking. Right? So I do consider myself a success, even though I may not have all of the goals achieved that I want, and I am happy along the way. And that is a big part of success. Its like, are you happy with yourself? And are you at peace? And when something hits, you know, when it’s a tough situation and the storm arrives, are you just saying that you’re happy? Or can you weather that, you know, and still being able to be happy when things go awry and things are sour.

ANTHONY VICINO (63:18):

I love that. That sounds like a really challenging personal development challenge. Like standing up there while people yell words at you and just kind of judging your reaction, but I can see how that would be very powerful. So thanks for sharing that. It’s just, I was just kind of curious as you’re talking about happiness and the power of intention, there just wanted to, wanted to get a feel for what does Rubin live for here on a day to day basis? So, well guys, this has been, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve enjoyed this conversation. This was a really good one today day I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve had a ton of fun now for you guys at home, we can’t let you go quite yet. I know I already did the pitch earlier with the three reviews to during the bad investing tip of the week, but here’s the real pitch. Please go leave a review. Five stars, nothing less. Dan gets very cell salty when he sees three stars. It’s actually, I don’t think we have anything less than five stars. So you guys are great. We appreciate that a lot because.

DAN KRUEGER (64:11):

We appreciate to our listeners.

ANTHONY VICINO (64:12):

We do.

RUBEN GRETH (64:14):

All, all lead the way and actually go on there right now.

ANTHONY VICINO (64:18):

And be the change you wish to see in the world in Roman’s leading the charge. I like it.

DAN KRUEGER (64:22):

Speaking out reviews and podcasts and all that good stuff. We mentioned, Rubin, you have your podcasts. Where, how do people find that? And any other information about you and bakers and all this awesome stuff that you guys are up to.

RUBEN GRETH (64:35):

Cool. So I like to be found on LinkedIn. I like messaging on there, but you can find us and our offerings at Baker, sun.com or check out my show and sign up for the newsletter@capitalraiseorshow.com or find us anywhere that you like to listen to podcasts for the most part. Also, if you want to check me out on Instagram, my handle is at capital raiser.

DAN KRUEGER (64:56):

Nice. Yeah. That’s your second review. Yes. Yeah. I need to go leave a review for Ruben. Cause I haven’t yet, but I do love your show. I’ve been listening to it ever since I met you at a North Star event last year, a really good quality podcast. Tons of information. Tons of really cool people you have on there. So I need to go leave an actual review on the interweb, make it official.

RUBEN GRETH (65:16):

Yeah. And that Jake and Gino, right? Yes. I saw you at both of those places.

DAN KRUEGER (65:25):

Yeah. It was 24 seconds. Two seconds of that one. Cause there’s so many people there, but we actually got a chance to chat for a little bit at the North Star. That’s where I met you and your wife the first time. Yeah. Anyways, for those of you out there, if you haven’t come across this guy on the YouTube, check them out. Good stuff. Yeah. And that will do it for us guys. We appreciate you taking this time to listen, then we’ll catch you next week.

RUBEN GRETH (65:48):

Thanks guys. Thanks Dan. Thanks Anthony.