In episode 29 of Wake Up to Wealth, Brandon Brittingham interviews Brandon Rooks, the CEO of Rockstar Capital Group, as he explains the importance of building strong relationships with investors and the strategies that have helped him maintain a stellar reputation in the industry.
Tune in to hear their insightful discussion on wealth, investment strategies, and personal growth.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Brandon Brittingham
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mailboxmoneyb/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandon.brittingham.1/
Brandon Rooks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockstarcapitalgroup/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandonrooks1/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcg-rockstar807hp/
WEBSITE
Brandon Brittingham: https://www.brandonsbrain.org/home
Rockstar Capital Group: https://www.rockstarcapitalfund.com/
This is Wake Up to Wealth, a podcast dedicated to helping you change the way you think about wealth. And now here's your host, Brandon Brittingham.
Hey, what's up, everybody? We are back. with another episode of Wake Up to Wealth. And I can't say enough about all of you guys for just a few weeks ago, we hit number one in the United States in the investing category. We leapfrogged Dave Ramsey. which is pretty amazing considering how big of a show that guy has and We are staying between number one and number three and that's all because of you guys supporting the show So I just wanted to give a huge thank you to all of you guys out there and today We've got my homies coming on today, and it's also sponsor of the show Brandon Rockstar Rooks, what's up, brother?
Brandon Brittingham
Living the dream brother so
Brandon Rooks
Brandon has seen real estate from a lot of different sides. Been in the investment side for a really, really long time, but has seen multiple facets of this business. Very interesting story. Besides him being a homie, one of the smartest guys I know in the investment space, for people that don't know you that are listening to this, give us the high level, a little bit about your background.
Brandon Brittingham
I went in the Navy right out of high school, read two books while I was in the Navy. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. And when I got out of the Navy, I did not want to do anything with electronic warfare, which is what my specialty was. I was an anti-ship missile defense operator. Saw three tours in the Gulf. I'm considered a combat Desert Storm Navy veteran. But I came out and I just went into sales. And I've been selling since I was a kid. It's just I was born to be a salesperson. and got out of the Navy, sold MCI long distance cars at Greeley Dodge in Colorado, started a mobile disc jockey business. Then I got headhunted into in-home water treatment sales. Then I got headhunted into the mortgage industry and became a loan officer in Kansas City. And that was where my foray into the real estate world happened. I I've never made a cold call in the real estate arena. I just basically sent letters out to all of my clients that I had when I got in the mortgage business and started doing refinances and purchases. And then I got connected with investment lending and just started crushing it in the early 2000s. And I was funding investment loans left and right. And it was really because of the method. Rather than me trying to figure out how much money I could make on the loan, I just charged all of my investors a 1.5% rate and then gave them a par rate. So I was beating every lender in the country by like a point on the rate. And that in turn meant that even when we had the real estate collapse in 2008, all the clients I had helped didn't lose their properties because I gave them stellar rates and I convinced them, don't just do zero down or 5% down, throw a little extra down because of the rate I'm giving you. And everybody got to keep their properties. And it's really where I started to build my investor base in the real estate arena is by making those choices. got headhunted over into the full-scale large development sales at Lake of the Ozarks. And I had about $86 million in projects under contract with the hedge fund group out of California. And that was 07. And then we all know what happened in 08. And my whole world came crumbling down, right? Lost everything, had to file bankruptcy, but I did not let any of my investors lose their money. And you know, there was a lot of people had deposits, but look, I don't care if it takes me a year, five years, 10 years, as soon as I can make up the deposit you put down on that, I'm going to make it up for you. And I did that. And that built my reputation as being someone that stood behind the investment. So, that's kind of when I got into real estate and, you know, it kind of sucked because I'm like, you know, start from scratch in 2010, but I jumped back in. and started helping people just buy some little lots as kind of like a buy and hold strategy. Then I got back into connecting with renovators and builders that I knew from around the country. And I started helping investors start investing in fix and flip, turnkey renovations and new construction. And long story short, in 2015, kind of at the peak of when I was selling turnkey rental properties, I sold 954 doors across the US And then I saw the prices start to climb and the rates were still doing good, but I saw the cap on cap return, cash on cash and the cap rates start to come down. It came down below the number I was comfortable with. And that's when I moved into raising money and private capital to actually invest in the builders. And that kind of shifted and changed. And that's where I'm at today. And that high level is we basically came down to now all we do is investors invest with me. I lend it to my strategic partners in the Southeast, but we are in and out at dirt. And so I found a way to cashflow on land. And we'll talk about a little bit about that a little bit later in the podcast. So that's kind of where I'm at. Love sales. Dumb luck got into being a hedge fund manager, so to speak. We're now sitting at about probably around seventy five, eighty million dollars in capital raised. And all we do is invest in dirt.
Yeah, so. you've done a lot in a short period of time. And so where do you think the turning point was where you said, man, this investment, and I'm asking for a reason because there's so many facets of real estate that don't go into the investment side of real estate. I feel like if you are selling real estate on the retail side, or you're a loan officer, you understand this business, but if you're not investing in that, you're essentially like a damn transaction coordinator, right? Which, look, there's nothing wrong with that. I made a ton of money selling a ton of real estate, but I realized a long time ago that being on the investment side is where true wealth is built. Like, where did you... Was there a moment? Was there a transaction? Like, where did you kind of pivot and say, man, I got to get on this investment side and I really got to learn and do and understand this?
I had invested myself and bought some of those turnkey renovations, and that was a great path to setting me up for the next place. So I did do those, and then I had maxed out my mortgage loans that I could do under Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, whatever. Of course. And then I raised some capital and we went into some larger scale projects and we did buy multiple units. I think at one point, I mean, 2021, I believe I was probably sitting at either owning or being a fund manager and investor in each of those funds and had about 500 doors. And so that was because owning real estate is the quickest way to wealth that there is a lot of tax advantages and benefits. But I hit a point where for me that we were able to sell out of all those doors and basically become the bank. which I liked that better. I liked being the bank because, you know, usually the banks always win. Maybe not SVP out there in San Francisco.
No, but you're, I mean, if you look at everybody that's listening to this, George Anton wrote a book called Become Your Own Bank. And I read that in my, how long ago has that been? It's been a long time. It was probably, I'd say 10 or 12 years ago, might even been longer than that. And it gave me the idea of becoming a lender, understanding the debt model and understanding how banks work. To your point, banks traditionally don't lose. Right.
Yeah. And you just keep recycling the money, right? So, investors invest with us. We lend it to our strategic partners. Like I said, we're in and out of dirt. So, we're funding lots for new construction builds. When you're in the new construction arena, you know, you're A to Z, right? And you've pretty much got it all down. And when you get into a fix and flip or a rental or, you know, a bird or any of those types of things, there's a lot of unknowns that can happen, grabbing an existing property. And then when you go in to start turning it, you know, just things could happen. So, I gravitated more towards, okay, what is a constant? What do we know? and you know that the dirt is usually about 20% of the value of a property on average. And then, so we did the lots and then my partners that I had got into a little bit different scale where we kind of fell into it, but we'd learned that you could take large pieces of ground and just get it fully permitted, shovel-ready, engineered, so like the plat map and how many lots there are and what the size of the lots, and then sell it off to the national builders, which you've got some experience with this, and just make a killing. And that was really, we fell into it. We would build those developments at one point in time and because our build cost was so much higher than like a national builder. We had to work three times as hard to make this profit. And we learned that if we did it right, and we just got all this ground ready, and then sold it to the builders and they could put shovels, you know, equipment on the ground the next day and start construction. We actually profited more. So, we didn't have all the carrying costs. We didn't have all the, you know, the unseen that could happen. The labor just, you know, shortages and the supply chain, none of that. It was just in and out of dirt. Dirt never changes. You know, it just gets, becomes more and more valuable. And that's what we learned. So, the profit margins my strategic partners have are like on average 40 to 60%. So, they take a piece of ground. from start to finish and their profit margins are on average 50%. So with that and how we've structured our strategic partnership, they pay us a really strong interest rate when we lend them the money for acquisition, entitlement and soft cost, which mostly banks won't do, right? Banks want them to buy the ground. Yeah, buy the ground, put the money down, carry a note. And then that's where you get into trouble. So, and we can talk more on that a little bit later, but effectively, even if I'm, charging them between 20 and 30% annualized return, which I know sounds too good to be true. But if you understand how that works, by the time they get that ground ready and sold off and they have their, let's call it 50% profit, the interest rate that I charge for that 12 months actually becomes about a 2% interest rate on the entire project. Yeah, it's nominal. But a bank still won't do it. That's why you have alternative investors like us. And Which we get to, much like you, we get to proudly say that we've never missed a quarterly distribution. We've never paid less than the preferred interest that we've offered. We've had six profit-sharing interest quarters in a row. And what we've helped, LTV, which is another important factor, is this 75 million that we've raised, for my strategic partners, they're now sitting on $1.5 billion of retail ground in their pipeline. So at 50% of that, that's 750 million. So I've got a 10% LTV against the profits that they're expecting. So man, it doesn't get much better than that.
So this is obviously a very profitable niche that you've discovered and really been able to leverage it. and make it work really well. How did you figure this out? When you think investing in real estate, you don't wake up usually and say, hey, I'm going to go after dirt and figure this out. It's a great play. I've done it. Not at the skill you've done it, but to your point, we were doing developments and I had a couple of nationals come knock on our door and say, hey, before you start that next one, we'll buy the ground from you at X. And I said, shit, I can't build the houses and make that much money. Right. So how did you I mean, how did you figure this out? Was it a deal that you did? It was just an idea you had. Like, how did you get to this point?
So it was a combination of a few things, and we call it a little bit of dumb luck that we kind of fell into it, but fell into it and then realized that it was like a light bulb moment. And it was one specific piece of ground. It was a piece of ground that we called the Oneida parcel out in Charlotte, North Carolina, which by the way, our strategic partners were operating in the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, and Texas currently. We have the ability to scale this across the country with, and we sell to 14 of the top 25 national builders in the country. And they're always begging us to come to their markets. Like, I can't raise capital fast enough. You have to give me some time. It was one piece of ground. It was going to be 99 townhomes. We picked it up for $3 million from the bank, a legacy lot from the 2008 collapse. No sooner than we bought it, Ryan Holmes, their rep, Tim Samuels, came to us and said, hey, we were getting ready to buy that ground. And our partner, Lindsey Jarvis, said, well, you're too old, too fat, and too slow, I guess. And he tracked us down. And he's like, look, if you ever want to sell it, call us first. And we were sitting on it, we were building other stuff, single family homes and some scattered lots and some smaller parcels we're working on. And it was about every month or so, Tim would kind of come reach out, hey, you haven't pulled a permit, you haven't started. He goes, yeah, yeah, we're getting to it. But then one day, he was just persistent enough. Lindsey said, fine, come sit with us, make an offer. I assume Ryan Holmes is on your back about trying to figure out how to get that piece of ground. And I'll keep it short for the podcast, but he brought an offer and it was like, what the hell? This doesn't make any sense. The offer was over $6 million. And we're like, man, even if we, like you said, even if we built the whole project all the way out to the end. We were gonna make like 20,000 a door, but this made us make 33,000 a door and we never had to build anything. And it was that light bulb moment. It was just like, Why the hell would we ever continue building when we could do this? So, we just started going after more ground. And it wasn't long after that, Tim Samuels was let go from Ryan Holmes, which she'd been there for years. And he was known as the godfather of land in the Carolinas. And they let him go to replace him with some young buck out of college, thinking that this guy could do the same things that Tim would do. And they didn't have to pay him $350,000, $400,000 a year. When they did that, they lost 1600 lots that they had LOIs on and some that were under contract because they let everybody know that Tim was no longer with the company. And those sellers were like, well, Tim's not there. You're not getting lots. That's a sales lesson. That's a lesson for any business owner out there. If you've got a guy that's known as the godfather of anything, don't you ever let them know. And similar story to me, right? I was with a company and He thought I was running too hard and too fast. And so, well, I think we need to kind of part ways. And that didn't work out so well for him, but it worked out great for me because it was kind of like that door that opened. Well, shit, I don't have a job and a silent partnership in this anymore. I'm going to have to go to work. But that's OK. That happened in December of 2016. And the next year, I reached out to my investors and all the investors reached out to me like, hey, man, Where are you at? And I said, well, I couldn't call you, but you could always call me. And I made almost a million dollars the next year helping people invest in real estate. with some of the contacts that I have. But you just don't let go of the guy. But that was what, it was that one piece of ground. And then Lindsey Jarvis being from New Zealand just doesn't have all these preconceived ideas and notions of how business works in the US. He's like, he just started asking questions. Well, then Tim came on and says, Tim's got, I got an idea. I can reach out to all the guys like me in these other markets. they can find us the ground. If Rockstar can continue to raise money so that we can get this stuff locked up or put it under contract or control it, then we can grab ground, do all of the soft cost entitlements, get it fully permitted, and then we can take it to all the builders. And it was just, you know the circle we're running. We're like, there's never a can't, it's like, how can we? And we just decided to do something different that nobody else had really done. And we've actually just recently been called a disruptor in the industry. And we've had two top execs from top 10 builders in the country leave their company recently to come join our operation like you guys are sitting on. Yeah, that's awesome. This is brilliant. And I also just found out that if you ranked us for the amount of lots we control currently that we've like we control them or own them, we would be ranked as the number 16th builder in the country for lots. the amount of lots that we own. Currently, the pipeline is about 56,000 and about 33,000 of them are locked up tighter than a frog's asshole. Sorry.
No, you can't. They're used to me.
But I turned it into, okay, for me, it's always been about my investors. How do I make my investors money? If I help, same old Zig Ziglar thing, if you may help enough other people achieve their goals, then you never have to worry about your own. I also do the Walmart method. I'm generous to my investors. I couldn't make more than I make by structuring my management fees and operations differently. I could take a higher GP profit, but I don't. I've always been focused on making sure my investors make about a 15 percent return annually or better. That means I structured everything so that they win. Anybody, and you know this, and anybody that you talk to, it's my investors first. I take care of them first. And then I never have to worry about my income. And which is now, it's just, you know, a healthy seven-figure income. Not bad for a kid with a GED, you know, that grew up blue collar. But it's really about just taking care of my investors and the business model we have, there's just so much profit in it that it allows us to do that. But yeah. It's been fortunate, very fortunate.
So one of the things that, granted, you've had to be really good at raising capital to get to this point, right? And look, I could go against the grain and say this, but I do believe this. I don't think everyone is good at raising capital. I think there are certain people who are good at it. Obviously, the treatment of your investors of being a good steward of their money is one thing. But I will say every investor out there, if you're listening to this, in any niche you're in, the lifeblood of growth of the real estate investor is your access to capital. So if you don't think you're the guy or the gal to raise capital, you get somebody on your team that can do that, right? And learn this because it's so important. What do you think for you? You've been raising capital for a long time. what made you good at it? When did you develop the skill? Obviously you're consistently developing it, but where did that start of like, ah, a path for me to grow is being able to raise capital. And then kind of when did you jump in and what do you think has made you successful doing it? Because obviously $75 million for anything to raise is not easy to do.
It's a few key principles that that I think is attuned to my success is one, and so anybody that is in the capital raising space, all my business is from referrals. It's from my existing investors that I helped make great investments and stood behind and jumped in the trenches if something had to be fixed during all those other things. I've never let a call, email, or text go unanswered in the same day. people wanna feel important, and my investors should feel important. Our success is based on them investing with us. And you know my hours that I just, I'm wired, no drugs, no cocaine, it's just natural energy. I'm up around five in the morning and then I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not working to be honest with you. It's just reaching out to my investors, keeping them abreast of what's going on, doing some regular quarterly reports, you know, doing some special reports or memos when things go awry, you know, and all the MSM is touting all this doom and gloom, you know, investors get nervous and is their investment safe? And, you know, it's just about being present for them and making sure that they feel, know, and understand that their investment is solid. and that I've got their back. And it's not to say we haven't had some hiccups. And the hiccups usually came with the renovation properties and the fix and flips. And I've had a couple of renovators that, you know, I did my due diligence and homework and I always dip my toe in the water with them first. And we've had a couple that went bad. And for the most part, I was able to rescue, rectify, bring the investor's capital back, and even some with, if not just principal, maybe some extra interest, because I didn't quit until I made it right. But there was a handful that I had to write a check to, and it's just my integrity, which by the way, Apex. So, to me, if I help that person find an investment, That's my responsibility. And I want to protect their principles. So I've had to write some checks. And that's okay with me. Because that's what an investor should be able to rely on is if they're working with someone that's helping them invest, they need to be able to count on that person. And it doesn't bother me in the least. You know, I'm not just one of those guys that said, Oh, well, you know, investing is a risk. You know, you knew it was a risk when you went into it. So, sorry, you know, you're out 30, 40, $50,000. I just didn't sit well with me. So, I wrote a check. Didn't have to do that a lot, but you know, yeah, I tend to get long-winded. So, I'm trying to cut myself so you can answer all the right questions.
Yeah. No, no, I appreciate that. Do you, for someone that's listening though, that might be like, they're early in their journey of just like, what do you think it is that is one skill you could give somebody that's listening to this that says, I want to learn or get better at raising capital? What's a piece of advice you'd give them?
Follow-up one, you and I have talked about this before. There's business inside your business, whatever it is you're doing, You know, if you're in the real estate investment arena, you've either invested or you've created connections or you've worked with some investors, you have to one, have something that's worth raising capital for, right? I believe that you want to keep it as simple as possible. I've seen so many operators and fund managers just complicate the crap.
I got to stop doing that right there. That is probably, listen to what he just said. I was literally on the phone with two people yesterday that wanted to start a fund. And in the first five minutes I said, I'm confused, which means an investor is going to be confused. And I said, if you can turn this into a simple debt offering, you're going to target a fixed return with some upside that you can spell out. Simple, people say yes. Complex, people say no because they don't understand it. That's a great piece of advice.
Yeah, it is. And if you're going to raise capital, you need a structure. I would recommend for someone just getting in, probably go to a 506B. If you've got some people you've worked with, because that will allow you to bring in some non-accredited, sophisticated investors, also make your offering feasible. I see guys that come out like, well, it's got to be $50,000 minimum. Well, guess what? A lot of people don't just have $50,000 laying around. If they're a good investor, they've invested it. So, my offer has always been like 10,000 minimum and $1,000 shares. I want to make it so that you can use qualified or non-qualified funds. So, self-directed IRAs, solo 401ks. Yeah. Just make it so that anybody that wants to invest has the ability to invest. Now, 506B has some drawbacks, drawbacks for me because we're starting to grow, but Yeah, we outgrew it. And we ended up having three 506Bs because you set a number, you can only have 35 non-accredited investors. Once you hit the number or your date, you close it. And we learned that because we're growing, we learned that a Reg A Tier 2 worked better for us because there's no cap on how many non-accredited investors we can have. Which by the way, all of my non-accredited investors are just simply referrals. They're family members or the friends of my accredited investors. that now say, you've never missed a distribution, you always come through, I feel comfortable referring some of my family, you know, because a lot of think about this, if you're raising capital, your investor might invest, but they might not want to tell anybody else about you, until they've got a tried and true tested, you know, performance, they want to see you perform for a few years. And But make it simple. You know, you don't need a class B class C class. And if someone puts in a hundred thousand more, you know, a hundred thousand, they get a higher return. could unclutter that shit, right? Keep it simple, stupid, right? The KISS method, these things work. So we kept it simple. Everybody earns 10% preferred. All the investors get 60% of all the leftover interest that we earned in a quarter. And after management fees and operation costs, which my management fees and operation costs is like 3% of the total capital raised.
I keep it really minimal.
Yeah, it's low. Yeah, especially for as big as you guys are. Yeah. And you know, Well, sometimes, yeah. We work our asses off though, too, though. I should be hiring more, but I'm also, this is a family legacy. And it's my family that works for me because I really don't trust my investors to just anybody. I've seen companies blow up where someone came in and said, yeah, let me come in and raise capital for you. And, you know, they come in and then they've got their own little side thing and they start swindling your investors.
Yeah. You know, the funny thing is, the funny thing is we're, Brandon and I are in a lot of the same circles and rooms. And I'd say the last three-ish years, the one thing that I always hear from a bunch of people is, and look, I'm not paying everybody with the same brush. I'm just telling you guys in our circles, what I hear consistently is myself and him are the only two people delivering on all the places they invested their money. That's what I hear consistently the last few years.
And you're not wrong. It's hard to go wrong with a guy named Brandon.
Yeah. In our circle. So if you guys are listening to this, you guys know me, you know, I won't let anybody sponsor the show that I don't trust. I will not recommend anybody that I don't trust. And frankly, if you have invested with me or you've reached out to me, you know that the only other person I've ever recommended outside of myself or one of my partners is Brandon's Fund. So if you guys are paying attention and you're listening to this and you want a place to park money, he's somebody that I trust. And that's one of the reasons why I asked him to come on the show. and talk to you guys because for a lot of people out there, the door is closed for you to get in investments like this. And he created something that you guys could do, which I think is great. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, hey, I want to invest with you, then what's the best way for them to reach out to you?
Best way is you can go to our website, rockstarcapitalfund.com. you can email us at info at rockstarcapitalfund.com and, you know, or reach out Brandon at Rockstar Capital Fund, whatever. So that's the easiest way to like connect with us. And it's so important. Everybody knows it's not pressure. We don't capture your email and start blowing you up. I'm of the mind that if you'd like to invest, we'll help you, but we're certainly not going to chase you. And I'm not going to blast you with a bunch of emails and texts and all this stuff. It's just not us. We're 100% referral only anyway, but we aren't evergreen. reg A offering and we're like a lending offering, which means people can invest with us. They can add to their investment. So when you get your distribution, like, hey man, I want to add a little bit more. You know, they have a redemption option, a hundred percent redemption option. I do say, you got to stay for at least 12 months and see how it performs. But if you had to pull your money out, you could say, man, I invested 20K, but I need 10K really bad. As long as you've been in a year, we can get 10K of that back to you and it doesn't cost you time. You get all 10,000 of it back, right? Because like a bank, it's just as long as your money's with us, we're going to keep it working and paying you interest. but we've been averaging 15% returns to our investors. We hit 16.5 in 2021. We'll probably hit 17% next year. So I would just say that, you know, if you're earning 15, 16, 17% a year and you decide to get out, shame on you. Cause that's beating the stock market. And, you know, we, but we, again, it's all about helping our investors start to earn consistent returns. I don't charge fees to our investors. I make my money from what the fund does. So my investors aren't paying me. We're earning together. I have seven figures invested. I have shares and ownership, and we have equity ownership in the companies that we are lending to on that ground and on that dirt, which is good. More stability for us. found a way to diversify, even though it's three companies, they're in multiple states and multiple areas, so it's still diversification. And for now, with what they're doing, there's no reason for me to go and lend to anybody else because I'm not just going to lend to anybody, that's for damn sure. Got to have a proven track record. And it's going to get to a point where we'll start to hit that point where we can take on some new people to fund or support, but it'll be within our organization and it'll be an affiliate of who we're working with. But long story short is, you know, The only way you're ever going to start to create wealth, which is why I love this Wake Up to Wealth podcast, is you've got to take action. You can't just read 100 books and jot down all these notes and talk about what you're going to do. You know what? I just got in and did it. Just like you. You're like, idea, boom. How do we act on this idea? Let's make it happen. And you know what? There's going to be some failures. But if you remember some of the basic principles of investing, diversify. right? Do your due diligence so that you bet on the jockey, not the horse, right? And I've seen people invest with people and they just didn't do their due diligence. One guy recently just ran off with about $23 million and he'd been, it turned out it was a policy scheme and he had a record and he was in one of our networks. And the guy that just didn't vet him, it's like, holy shit, you know, just do your homework. Make sure someone has a proven track record. Anybody could open a Reg D or 506B or 506B. Anybody can have a great idea. A proforma, they could put anything they want on that proforma. But yeah, you know, you got to see someone that's been in the thick of it and done it. And More importantly, make sure they got skin in the game. You know, when you're working with somebody that's wanting your capital, are they also invested in their own? shit. So that's really important, but anybody can start to have wealth, but you've got to put your money to work. A lot of people have this concept or idea of they start making money and pay my house off. I never pay my house off. That's a tax deduction. Plus, if anything never did go bad, we have a black swan event and something, some way, shape or form went to hell. Guess what the bank doesn't want? They don't want your house if it's fully mortgaged. But if you own it free and clear, they're like, well, there's some money we can take from you. So, you know, God, we could talk on this for hours, you know, we could have, we could probably do a full day on real estate.
That question about it. The last question I'll ask you, it's the same question I ask everybody. It is, and it can be whatever the version is for you. What is waking up to wealth? What does that mean to you?
You know, to me at this stage in life, it is freedom. Don't get me wrong, I'm at this desk probably 10, 12 hours a day, but I love what I do. If I wanted to go take two weeks off and go to work with my wife, I can do that. And waking up to wealth means I've achieved the level of where my passive income exceeds my earned income. I can do whatever I want to do, doesn't mean I'm going to do it, doesn't mean I'm going to go get stupid and start buying a hundred foot yacht and buying houses all over the country. I still live as if I'm a blue jeans, blue collar poor kid. so to speak. And when I do invest, I invest in, I don't just invest in things like this. Sometimes we all have to figure out how to spread our money that we make a little bit. So, and I think you've seen some pictures. I got a nice little room on the other side of my desk here. Those things that I have in there, I could sell for more than I paid for them, but it's the freedom to not be worried about, are my bills paid? Can I take off for two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks, and the company will still run. And I have someone behind me that helps take care of that. And now that we can pretty much go from anywhere in the world anyway, so I'm accessible wherever I go. But it's that freedom of just not living paycheck to paycheck. And also, I I feel like I've built the right thing. My investors, you're a rockstar investor if you work with us. And you're not just an investor, you've really become a friend. So I have 518 really good friends. And that was built up from, matter of fact, I just did the numbers on this the other day. I think we're going to put it on our website. 2017, I think it was 70 investors that I was working with. And from that time to now, we're at 518 with $75 million. Think about that for a minute. Some of our people are $10,000 investors, some are 100,000, some are seven figures. But we don't lose a lot to attrition. I mean, our investors stay with us and they keep bringing us more investors. So do what's right and waking up to wealth won't be that hard. And by God, by all means, it's not gonna happen overnight.
Social media. That's it. Yeah. Social media. Oh my God.
It is, guys, it's gonna take time. Do the right thing, put in the work, invest smartly, start to put some money aside. Investing in yourself is one thing, and a lot of people that do that, and investing in your business is one thing, and you've gotta do that, but you should start cutting out some money and having it go to things like Brandon's, Birdingham's fund, having it go to stuff like ours. And Brandon's in real estate, hard assets that generate revenue. and plus has tax advantages. And then, you know, I'm a bank and we lived on dirt and there's not much you can do to fuck up dirt. You know, it's just like, it just keeps going up in value. So again, it's just being really smart, taking your time. And there's so many things to choose from, but I will say this, and you and I both know this, the fastest path to wealth is through real estate in my eyes. So many other unknowns when you invest in the stock market, you can't control what's going on in the stock market and you can't control what's going on in the world and everything going on in the world affects what's going on in the stock market. So just be smart and sure, throw some money in Bitcoin and crypto and throw some in the stock market, but you'll find out time and time again, real estate has always outperformed both of those things. So yeah, that's kind of it. Freedom, waking up like, I can do whatever I want to do.
I mean, that's a good one. So I just want to say thank you again. Thanks for coming here, pouring in knowledge. Look him up. He told you how to get in touch with him if you have any interest in investing with him. But thank you for coming and giving us a ton of knowledge today. I appreciate you being on the episode.
Man, always happy to get on with you. And I guess I'll be seeing you in San Diego, right? Yes, sir. I'll bring Dylan with me to that one, too. Thanks, brother.
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