Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Ben Reinberg - $500M+ Real Estate Empire | The "Smart" Decision That Keeps You Broke

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Ben Reinberg - $500M+ Real Estate Empire | The "Smart" Decision That Keeps You Broke · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  When I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, the premise was build cash flow through assets, hard assets.
• 0:05
  Commercial real estate is a great asset to produce cash flows. I saw all the icons in commercial real
• 0:09
  estate in Chicago, and I said, this is what I want to do, I get it. In business, most people chase
• 0:14
  the deal. Few understand the discipline behind the deal. Ben Reinberg has spent decades mastering
• 0:18
  the art of commercial real estate investing, building, scaling, and structuring multi-million dollar
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  portfolios with precision and long-term vision. When I tied up that first deal, my mental state
• 0:29
  of being was, what is the worst thing that could happen? God forbid you failed. What happens?
• 0:34
  You just go back to where you started. What I see as people give up. If you don't take the risk,
• 0:39
  you'll regret. And regret is the worst medicine you have to swallow in life. The biggest
• 0:44
  misnomer is they think that by moving quickly, they'll be able to get more work done, make more
• 0:48
  money. It's the opposite. When you can slow things down and see the chess board, things will speed up.
• 0:54
  As the founder of Alliance Consolidated Group and the leading voice in commercial real estate strategy,
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  Ben doesn't just invest in buildings. He invests in systems, in discipline, in asymmetric
• 1:03
  opportunities. Learn how to control your emotions, learn how to be calm under pressure,
• 1:08
  and really enhancing your communication skills. Communication equals wealth. Nothing happens overnight.
• 1:14
  Success doesn't happen overnight. You have to grind, you have to show up, you have to be persistent,
• 1:18
  and it's not easy. It just doesn't happen overnight.
• 1:28
  I appreciate you coming on. It's going to be a lot of fun. You started off as an accountant,
• 1:36
  but somehow you ended up building a massive $500 million plus real estate portfolio. Tell me
• 1:42
  about the moment when you realized that commercial real estate was your path.
• 1:45
  Well, Scott, first of all, it's so nice to be here. Thank you for hosting me in Miami. I always
• 1:50
  love and joy coming to the city. It's really a treat to come down here all the way from California.
• 1:56
  Accounting was special to me because when I graduated from Indiana, my mom said, get a job.
• 2:02
  It was a deep recession going on in 1992, but I always knew I was an entrepreneur. I always
• 2:09
  knew I wanted my own business. I just didn't know how to get there. I work for this accounting firm.
• 2:14
  They do entertainment accounting. I was the youngest associate they've ever hired. It was a small
• 2:19
  firm out of Chicago. That's where I'm from. The goal was, I want to have enough money saved
• 2:26
  so I can move downtown because that's where the girls were. Everything revolves around women.
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  The goal was make good salary, be able to buy a car, move downtown Chicago, find a way.
• 2:41
  I'm on an audit for the firm. It's the first couple weeks I'm there. They throw me on audit
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  with a billionaire who owned cable vision in the New York Knicks and very successful family.
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  I'm doing the audit. I'm seeing his office for weeks and he comes up to me and we're having dinner
• 2:57
  multiple times. I'm getting to know him. I don't realize who he is and how successful he is. I see
• 3:02
  as a client of ours, but I looked him up and understood who he was and I read newspaper articles
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  and my boss told me how significant he was. I saw the trusts and returns and work we did for him.
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  He pulled me aside. He said, you're doing not much of an account. I was 22 years old. I said,
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  what do you mean? And he said, you're really more of an entrepreneur. You're someone who should have
• 3:24
  your own business figure out what you want to do and go start your own business. So I came back from
• 3:30
  Chicago up that trip and I took it to heart. I said, he's right. And I ended up I was watching an
• 3:37
  infomercial. There was no internet at the time. It was 1992, 93. And I ended up watching this
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  infomercial and it's Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. And it's really Sharon Lecture
• 3:51
  story. And so and there's a full circle story behind this, which I love telling is so with Sharon
• 3:59
  and Robert, they wrote this book. You had to order it on the TV. It came 10 days later. I kept
• 4:06
  looking in the mailbox. When's it coming? You know, this is old school. How old I am. I'm dating my
• 4:10
  son. Book finally comes. I take two days off of the counting firm. Okay. We're in tax season.
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  I was miserable. I hated taxies. I was working seven days a week. I still work seven days a week,
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  but I hate what I was doing. And so then I read the book twice in a 48 hour period and
• 4:30
  Scott, what I realized was this is what I want to do. I have a financial background. I understand
• 4:36
  numbers well. It's a good industry commercial real estate and that side of real estate for me.
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  I like the numbers. They're bigger numbers. There are things I treat me was growing up in Chicago,
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  all the biggest icons in commercial real estate were from Chicago, the Pritzker's, the Crown,
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  Sam Zell, the list went on and on. And so I said, wow, this is a way to build wealth. It's been
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  proven. It's an old tested formula. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I need to get in this
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  industry and figure it out. So I left accounting. One of our clients from Los Angeles inspired me
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  and said, go buy a deal. I'll help you structure out. I'll get one done. Just get one done. Yeah.
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  Get your feet wet. So I walk into this business as a principal, never a broker. Always a principal,
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  always that landlord that the key top person in the transaction. So I go and tie up a 95,000 square
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  foot industrial building. I decide I'm going to do industrial in office. That's where I'm going to
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  cut my teeth in Chicago. I'm not getting into multifamily like a lot of my colleagues do in the city.
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  I want to get involved in industrial in office. I find this industrial though 95,000 square feet.
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  It's in North Brook, Illinois. It's next to Glenview, Captains of Industry. One of the best suburbs
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  in the United States, Nero Harrier Airport. And it's got a great story to it. So I tied up.
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  I go and I raise a couple million bucks in equity. I remember I'm young. Yeah, it's your first deal.
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  I don't have track record. I have a track record. I got to put together a package, which I did.
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  And then I have to go raise equity. I was paying like an 8% preferred return. I gave away a store.
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  I structured an 80 20 deal. First week, well, we go through due diligence. And I have to negotiate
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  a $250,000 credit with two icons that were home builders in the United States. And they bring me
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  into the conference room and I'm in a suit. And they turn up the temperature on me on purpose.
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  Secretary walks in serving coffee on fine China. I mean, this is dating myself. This is how cool it
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  was. If they want to they want to make sure they're going into business with the right guys. Exactly.
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  Put them in the pressure cooker. So they put me in the pressure cooker. They have this conference
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  table. That's probably like twice the size of this studio, right? And they're on one end. I'm on
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  the other end. They just put me on the end to intimidate me. And they're just kind of staring at
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  me for like a minute before we get started. And they said, are you Ben Reimberg? And I said,
• 7:01
  yes, I am. I was young. I looked younger. No gray here at the time. And they said, are you buying
• 7:07
  this deal from us? Like they didn't know like how young I was, you know, because the broker's
• 7:12
  dealing with it. And so I'm like, yes, I am. I'm the sponsor. It's my company and alliance and
• 7:18
  bubble bath. And they go, so what are you doing here? What do you need? I said, well, back then,
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  we'd do things in person. It was a relationship business that still is. I showed them the numbers.
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  I said, I need to earn $50,000 credit. It was for the roof and the parking lot and different
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  viseley. And they they looked at me and they gave me a stare. And they said, man, young kid,
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  you have a, you have a, they called me a kid. They go, you have a lot of nerve coming in here,
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  asking for a credit. And I said, they said, do you have your equity rates? I said, I have about 80
• 7:49
  percent of it. I'll have it done next two weeks. Okay. Great. What about a loan? Because I heard
• 7:53
  your financing. Yep. Here's the bank. I got the term sheet, the commitment. We're ready to go.
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  I said, the biggest challenge for me is the improvements that you guys haven't fixed replaced
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  in a while. You got a roof that needs to be replaced. You got some HVAC that needs to work.
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  You have a parking lot in shambles. Yeah. It's 250,000. Here's the quote. You're this kid.
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  And I'm this guy now. And they looked at me and they said, you have a lot of nerve walking in here.
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  That was their speech to me. And I said, well, we have a choice. Either I could walk out of here.
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  And you're not selling the building to me and you got put back on the market. And by the way,
• 8:30
  you got to, you got to tell everyone now what needs to be done to this property because now it's
• 8:35
  public. That's how it works. And so I walked out of there. They gave me the credit of 250,000.
• 8:44
  One of the partners between the two guys walks up to me and puts his arm around me and
• 8:48
  he whispers in my ear and goes, you know what? Kid, you're going places. Keep pushing forward.
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  So I buy the building at close a few weeks later. We raise the rest of the equity. We close my first
• 8:58
  deal. First week, we lose 45% of the income of the building. Tenant moves out in the middle of
• 9:05
  night. It's an, it's an automotive tenant in 45% of the square footage. So within a year,
• 9:12
  I backfill it. I make, instead of a two tenant building, I make a three tenant building. I renew
• 9:16
  the largest tenant. I have new leases. I end up putting the property on the market. And I decided,
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  I said, you know what? Instead of hiring a broker, I'm going to sell it myself and learn how to
• 9:29
  sell a deal. That way, when I hire brokers in the future, I understand the process better.
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  So I end up aligning myself with the first war room that's ever was created in commercial
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  real estate, where it was evolved and you don't upload documents and people can go online and
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  download stuff. It was way better. This was way before this type is common. I find it so
• 9:51
  interesting. A couple of things that I picked up on. First of all, it seems like you had,
• 9:56
  even though you said the first deal with a three X gave you confidence, it seems like you had an
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  incredible amount of confidence even before that deal. I think it also just gave you a track record.
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  And I'm curious why, curious because of two things. And maybe you can take the question wherever
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  you want. First of all, I'm curious why so many people read rich dad, poor dad, and they all get
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  different lessons out of it. And not everybody reads that book is like, I want to go into commercial
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  real estate. There's a variety of different pathways. So I think the first question is,
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  how did you decide what was right for you versus all the other ways you can interpret that book
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  and go into different kinds of real estate or whatever you want to do. And the second question is
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  very simply, how did you get over the imposter syndrome or just like the terror of doing that first
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  deal and having the balls to go into that room and actually have those conversations?
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  Well, first I'll answer both great questions, by the way.
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  The first one you said was the different interpretations of rich dad, poor dad, and why you chose
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  this versus all the other. When I read rich dad, poor dad, to me, the premise was
• 11:03
  build cash flow through assets, hard assets, which has been my career.
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  And Scott, when I was, I didn't come from money. So for me, the only way I knew was, you know what,
• 11:14
  this makes a lot of sense. So what are assets that could produce cash flow?
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  Well, commercial real estate is a great asset to produce cash flow. So, and then I took
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  step out, like I said, and I saw all the icons in commercial real estate in Chicago. And I said,
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  this is what I want to do. I get it. And so how I interpret that book was,
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  by assets that produce cash flow, that's how you build wealth. That's how you make a living.
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  That's how you can live. So when I tied up that first deal, my mental state of being was,
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  what is the worst thing that could happen? And everyone out there listening is that whether
• 11:56
  you're getting started or you've been in business a long time or you're about to go in the working
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  world or you're starting a new company, God forbid you fail. What happens? You just go back to
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  where you started and you could try again and do the same thing or do something different.
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  What I see is people give up. And being from Chicago, I'm a fighter. When people challenge me,
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  I fight. When people debate me, I'm fighting. That's my nature from Chicago. That's why I am.
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  And so when I said to myself, look, I have a couple million dollars. I got a raise bed. You
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  got to go get done. So to me, that's seven days a week. It's shoe leather. It's meeting people
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  at a breakfast place. There was no Starbucks at the time. So I'm meeting someone for breakfast or
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  lunch, pitching them. Who else do you know? Who else can refer me this? I met my health club
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  talking to people. I'm out there. And I'm an introvert and I'm out there at the age of 23. And I
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  am pushing myself mentally saying, just go talk to people because what's the worst thing that they
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  could say? No. And it's the same thing in life. It's it's if you don't take the shot, you'll never
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  know. The key to buying any hard asset is really packaging. Explain what that means. Well,
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  packaging means, especially in commercial real estate is understanding the numbers and commercial
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  real estate, it's understanding the market, vacancy rate, absorption rates, supply and demand.
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  Same thing with buying a company or any other asset. So for me, I took the approach of if I get my
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  arms around the market, get my arms around the deal, no market rent. I can explain to anyone in any
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  conference room. And the lesson here is, and anyone out there listening, especially if you know
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  numbers, the person that knows the numbers can sit in any meeting at any time. They're the most
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  important person in the room. And that was always a staple in my in my company. And for me,
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  when I know the numbers, and I can explain the story and the real estate fundamentals and the
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  risk and how to protect the downside, the upside took care of itself. And so tell me what just
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  based on that lesson, because I grew with everything you're saying, I think that's it makes so,
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  it's such common sense to know your numbers to prove to if you're going to try and do a deal,
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  make sure that the people on the other end of that deal are clearly communicated,
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  to understand exactly what's happening. There's no ambiguity. How do entrepreneurs screw this up?
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  The ones that you see right now, I'm sure you have a lot of entrepreneurs that you mentor and you
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  work with people in real estate, probably people outside of real estate too. What is the average
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  entrepreneur not getting right about communication about presenting all of it? Well, there's a couple
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  of things. Number one is they don't put the time in. And I'll tell you why. And I see this
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  with my kids. I see this with the younger men and women that work for Alliance is everything is
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  moving so quickly now. Text messaging, DMs with Microsoft Teams, we do Zoom calls, everything is
• 14:51
  quick. It's not like it used to be where I'd have to go fly and meet Scott Claire and go towards
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  property and have a conversation, raise equity in person. And people are moving so quick that they
• 15:01
  don't slow things down. They don't think. And so the biggest misnomer is they think that by moving
• 15:08
  quickly, they'll be able to get more work done, make more money. It's the opposite. When you can
• 15:12
  slow things down and see the chess board and see what you have to do and be more efficient,
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  things will speed up. That's the first thing I see in this generation. The other thing that's missing
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  is listening is understanding exactly what the truth is so insane to you. So you make their time
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  in your time efficient. So you might look at that wall and see white and I see it's a beige.
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  So my opinion is different, but you should understand the truth of why I think it's beige. Just like
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  I should understand the truth of white, when you could seek the truth and what someone's saying,
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  you can engage and build rapport and building rapport is something that's lacking in this marketplace.
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  I see it with the younger acquisition guys and my company as well as some of the equity razors.
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  What's missing is taking time to give a shit about the other side, listening, understand where
• 16:02
  they're coming from, seeking the truth and what they're saying. And so putting in the time is important.
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  And to go back to my first point is when you're younger, you're getting started in business for
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  everyone out there. Okay. The reason why I say be the first one in the last one to lead,
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  it's not you want to impress your superior, your boss and whatever in a company. It's because you
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  need the extra time to be able to get your arms around more variables that you're not accustomed to.
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  So for example, for me to underwrite a deal or look at a property commercial real estate and say
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  next door, yeah, let's put it in offer at this rate. I could do it instantly because of where
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  I've been doing this for three decades. A younger gentleman or woman in my company,
• 16:47
  it might take them four days to get to that decision. So guess what? You need to put in the time.
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  I always say when you're younger, you're new in business, put in the time, the hours, you need to
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  get up on the learning curve. And a lot of people are willing to do that because they're being pulled
• 17:03
  in a thousand directions. And it leads to, are you going out for a beer on Friday night? What are
• 17:10
  you doing that would pull you away from your dream? If your dream, Scott, is to be wildly successful
• 17:15
  in business and life. Why would you let social pressures or anything else mess with that life you're
• 17:22
  want to create? It's the biggest thing I see in people. They're not willing to do what it takes to
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  be successful. I go, I don't even have to do what I do. I go to work a new poor beach on a Saturday.
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  I am the only one in this monstrosity building. Security knows me. I pull into the parking garage.
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  They are following me to the door to make sure I get it. And they'll call me by my name.
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  And I'll do that on a Sunday if I have to. But out of everyone in that building, you're one of
• 17:49
  the only ones is going, I am right. You don't, you don't have to do that. I don't have to. But you know
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  what? I do it because one I care. I have responsibilities. I want to continue to grow. I want to be
• 18:01
  different. And that's how I learn life is putting in that extra work if I need to. And I think
• 18:06
  part of that is if you're not willing to do what it takes, you can't complain. What was me? I
• 18:12
  didn't get there because especially when you're younger and for everyone out listening there,
• 18:17
  how you can differentiate yourself is putting in the work because I guarantee you like all of us,
• 18:22
  we don't know everything. And so you got to be vulnerable. You got to build up your resources.
• 18:27
  You got to ask questions. And maybe if you had some space and quiet time because you spend a
• 18:34
  little extra time maybe at the office later at night, you'll have the ability to think. And that's
• 18:40
  the other thing that's got no one really does anymore is they don't take the time to think. So for
• 18:43
  example, what I've done in my career, and I do a lot of personal development, I'm very open
• 18:48
  about it is in order for me to think and process and be more aware, which is so important is
• 18:54
  awareness is I meditate twice a day. And I do that because it allows me to be more aware, more
• 19:00
  present like I am with you. And guess what? We build rapport. We potentially I might help you.
• 19:06
  You might help me. You might drop some knowledge on technology that I have no idea what it is,
• 19:10
  but changes my life, changes someone that works for me. And so it's why I don't drink. I don't do
• 19:16
  drugs. I eat healthy. I work out. I'm physically fit. I do all these things because they give me
• 19:22
  a competitive advantage because that's how bad I want it still. I never forget the day I started.
• 19:28
  And so for everyone out there listening, you're getting started in business or you're getting
• 19:33
  your MBA or whatever you're doing, whatever you're going after, ask yourself, am I getting in the
• 19:39
  deep water and I'm going to actually not do things half-ass or am I going to go for it so I don't
• 19:45
  regret. And regret is the worst medicine you have to swallow in life.
• 19:53
  People look back and say, well, I wish I would have done that. Why not do it? And just to go back
• 19:57
  to failing, God forbid something happens. God forbid someone makes fun of you. God forbid you have
• 20:04
  an issue. It will pass. I promise you. And failures are inevitable. You're going to fail in business.
• 20:12
  You're going to have bad conversations. You're going to write an email. You're not proud of.
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  You're going to have a conversation. You're going to treat someone you wish you wouldn't have
• 20:20
  treated that way. That's growth. That's learning. You observe. You grow from it. You step up and
• 20:26
  you keep moving forward. And a lot of entrepreneurs out there or even people getting into business
• 20:32
  is they're so worried about what other people think when no one really cares. Everyone's so
• 20:37
  focused on themselves, especially in my business, a commercial real estate broker, they all have
• 20:41
  amnesia. They sell you a deal and then a month later it's like, hey, remember that deal we bought
• 20:45
  in Delray Beach that you sent me stakes for the closing? Oh yeah, that's right. What else do you
• 20:51
  have? They forget about you. And that's everything in life. So my point to everyone out there
• 20:58
  is harness your craft. Decide how bad you want it. And if you want it, go for it and be very careful.
• 21:08
  Yeah, and be very careful. You know, there's a saying one of my mentors says, show show me your
• 21:12
  friends. I'll show you your future. And it's a true statement because who you surround yourself with
• 21:19
  will uplift you to where you want to go. Do you want someone criticizing you like, hey, Joe,
• 21:24
  went in on a Saturday. Why didn't you come out with us on Friday? Well, Joe's on his mission.
• 21:30
  But that person should be like, you know what? Joe, you should be really proud of yourself. That's
• 21:34
  that's a lot of discipline. Great. You know what? Maybe I'd love to go to a coffee shop with you and
• 21:39
  talk to you about what you do. And I was going to say it's tough to find people like that though. It is.
• 21:44
  But that's why you have to focus on your inner circle, especially when you're young. I just want
• 21:48
  to touch on some of the ideas that you had. But I guess really you mentioned so many good life lessons.
• 21:54
  pertaining to, you know, discipline and putting in all of yourself into your work and
• 22:00
  surrounding yourself with the right people. One idea that I love that you that you sort of touched on
• 22:06
  is I think a younger generation is focusing on these big milestone moments as opposed to putting
• 22:11
  in the work every single day. And this is not this is not a hard and fast rule for everyone. So
• 22:16
  I don't want to make it sound like that. But I noticed that people are trying for the next viral
• 22:20
  hack or the next big win or that like it's always like they look for these huge milestones that
• 22:26
  are going to catapult their career or their business or they're following or whatever their
• 22:30
  businesses. And they don't focus on every day just being exceptional. And I think that that is
• 22:36
  I think that that is a lesson that I've heard repeatedly from people that have already built as
• 22:40
  exceeded that are older my mentors. They don't optimize for the milestones optimized for being
• 22:46
  excellent every single day. However, that looks for you. And I think that's a really important idea.
• 22:51
  But outside of all the lessons that you taught. What was the hardest one for you? And why? Well,
• 22:58
  the hardest lesson for me was taking a look in the mirror and knowing I had to learn how to
• 23:05
  communicate better and improve my communication. Understand how to listen better. Understand how to
• 23:12
  interact with different types of people. Not get emotionally aggravated by people if it didn't go
• 23:18
  my way. Because when I was younger, I didn't I couldn't control my emotions. I was this hard-nosed
• 23:24
  kid from Chicago hustling doing deals. You know, I sold cigarettes at the age of eight. I mean,
• 23:30
  I was I was this crazy tough kid. And then I get in the business world with sophisticated people.
• 23:37
  And I got to learn how to regulate my emotions. And that was a tough pill this while. Be like
• 23:42
  there's something wrong with me. I'm not I'm not perfect. I'm not I'm successful. You know,
• 23:47
  I had to take a step back and learn how to communicate better with people and how to inspire people
• 23:54
  and how to influence people. And and so that was hard for me because when I was younger, I had a
• 24:00
  battle everyone. I was the young kid. I was a kid who, you know, didn't come from money. I was the
• 24:05
  kid that had to prove himself always. And when you constantly have to prove yourself, you lose
• 24:11
  yourself. And so I had to take a step back and figure out who I really was and improve my
• 24:17
  communication, prove my listening, become more empathetic, you know, come from a state of love
• 24:24
  instead of fear sometimes. And so I had to change the way I looked at things. And personal
• 24:29
  development was a huge thing for me because when I was younger, there was no personal development. There
• 24:34
  was no, hey, figure out what's going on with you. Figure out how to communicate better. Figure out
• 24:40
  what triggers you. How do you regulate your emotions? I was a complete mess. And so for me,
• 24:47
  the lesson I learned most was I have to I have to work on myself in order to make my environment
• 24:54
  around me better. Quick question. What's your go to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a
• 25:00
  workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab, which usually meant skipping meals entirely
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• 27:26
  Scott Clary. NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. Let's talk about hard assets for hard times. So
• 27:35
  a lot of people on this podcast are entrepreneurs, but a lot of people have also made some money,
• 27:40
  and they're trying to figure out where to put their money. And a recurring theme is
• 27:46
  you can make money anywhere as long as you understand that particular asset class better than
• 27:51
  anything else. I think what a lot of people end up doing incorrectly is they become great entrepreneurs
• 27:57
  and they find a way and not all entrepreneurs through investing entrepreneurs like through building
• 28:01
  a business or selling your skills or whatever their version of entrepreneurship is. But then they
• 28:07
  make some money and they think that just because they're a good entrepreneur, they're a good investor.
• 28:11
  And they put money into like startups and real estate and commercial, residential, crypto,
• 28:16
  stocks, they put money everywhere and they don't really know anything very well. So I always am
• 28:20
  curious about your advice for somebody just starting out and investing. Where should they put their
• 28:26
  money? Obviously the argument is hard assets. But first of all, why hard assets over all the other
• 28:34
  types of assets you can put money into? Obviously disclaimer, not investment advice. But then the second
• 28:39
  thought is the way you started, you just started on your own. You didn't put money into a
• 28:48
  fund to learn. You just did it. That's right. Is that the way that people should start?
• 28:55
  Oh, if you want to live through torture, then start the way I did, Scott. But in all reality,
• 29:03
  if you're going to go into commercial real estate and if someone asks me a day, I would say
• 29:08
  starting brokerage, don't do what I do. And the reason behind that is you could do more deals,
• 29:12
  see more deals that make some money, save some money and then decide to go out and you're on
• 29:17
  start buying deals. That's why I would recommend the way I did it was different. Okay. I guess I had
• 29:23
  a lot of balls and a lot of guts and last stones, people say I had a last stones. But that was me
• 29:28
  growing up. The book, hard assets and hard money for our times is special to me. I started a
• 29:36
  year ago. And the reason why I wrote it was there was hundreds of people throughout my career. It
• 29:43
  seemed like it was every week. How do I get into commercial real estate? How do I buy real estate,
• 29:48
  commercial real estate or any type of real estate? Can you look at my portfolio? I'm going to invest
• 29:55
  in this deal with this sponsor, whether it's real estate or a company. Can you review a for me and
• 30:00
  give me your thoughts? And I started going through these questions for a long time. And last year,
• 30:07
  I took a step back and I said, someone on my leadership team, I said, I need to write a book about
• 30:13
  this. People keep asking me, no one knows how to build wealth. No one understands it. No one
• 30:19
  really teaches it the right way. So I took a step back and I developed the blueprint. It's called
• 30:24
  the hard asset blueprint that anyone can use, whether you're a young man or woman starting in
• 30:31
  business or a kid all the way up to someone that's a trillionaire, a billionaire can use it.
• 30:37
  And so what I do is I end the blueprint, it looks like a castle. There's capstones and keystones
• 30:43
  and walls and there's a foundation and different vaults to put assets in. And I show people,
• 30:51
  when I teach them how to allocate assets in each of the different sectors of your castle,
• 30:56
  how to protect it, how to deal with data and privacy, a state planning asset protection,
• 31:02
  taxes, we touch it all. We talk about different hard assets and why hard assets? Well, hard assets,
• 31:10
  why I love hard assets and it's been staple my career and I'm biased towards it. And by the way,
• 31:15
  I'm not giving any legal advice or investment advice. The reason why I like it's got is because
• 31:22
  one, they could deal with economic uncertainty, political, geopolitical unrest going on in our world.
• 31:29
  I can have more certainty buying hard assets that produce cashful than any other investment,
• 31:35
  especially in commercial real estate. I can kick the bricks and mortar, which is important to me.
• 31:39
  So I tell everyone out there, whatever your hard asset is, whatever your investment is,
• 31:46
  make sure you diversify. But for me, if your business is in one of those hard assets like commercial
• 31:52
  real estate or you're making a living from crypto or you're doing something in insurance,
• 31:57
  whatever is producing your hard asset or maybe you have a brand, which is a hard asset.
• 32:03
  Focus on that. I tell people when you invest, you want to invest with smart money.
• 32:09
  So what does that mean? Take my company Alliance Alliance Consulate Group of Companies,
• 32:13
  where I had Gordon Chicago, I sit in our West Coast office, we're all over. We have 200 plus years
• 32:18
  of leadership team experience outside of Ben Ryan Burke. That's a lot of experience in commercial
• 32:23
  real estate. We know how to deal with challenges. We have an upper 20s IRR track record. We've been
• 32:30
  business for three decades. That's smart money. So when you're building your castle, your kingdom,
• 32:36
  your empire, when you want to get into different sectors, which is great and diversify,
• 32:41
  if you want to learn about cryptocurrency, invest with someone that's an expert in it. If you want
• 32:46
  someone that understands, hey, I'm going to build a brand and have it be worse, leverage into
• 32:53
  someone. Leverage is so important. That's why the first season my TV show is called leverage,
• 32:57
  because it's relationships, it's technology, it's knowledge, it's beyond that in our business.
• 33:03
  So what I want everyone to know is hard assets can sustain themselves through times.
• 33:11
  They can produce cash flow. They can deal with economic uncertainty. And it's been proven,
• 33:17
  the old age formulas, all the wealthiest families in the world own hard assets. And being from
• 33:23
  Chicago where it's the crowns, the Pritzker, Sam Zell, you know, Al Topman in our business, the
• 33:29
  Dolans, the Rockefellers, they own oil and gas, they own hard assets, commercial real estate,
• 33:35
  they own silver and gold and all the Encrypto and all these different things. And so there's a reason
• 33:41
  behind it. And so what I did for the book was now do I share my experience in hard assets,
• 33:47
  which been tested for over three decades. I interviewed and brought in 20 billionaires and all of us
• 33:55
  have proven the exact steps that I outlined in the book. So you're hearing from experts that have
• 34:02
  been there and done that. And then you can feel confident of I need to build my hard asset empire.
• 34:07
  So we show people how to build it. We talk about what where you put different sectors. We talk
• 34:14
  about where you where you put your focus is important and invest in smart money. We also talk
• 34:19
  about your mindset. When you have to build the hard asset empire and subprime assets, just like I
• 34:25
  did as a young man buying that industrial building, you got to get your mind right. You have to be
• 34:30
  focused. You have to be disciplined. You have to become resource rich. And you have to show up
• 34:35
  every day. And you really have to push forward. And I'm honest in the book. And I say it on
• 34:40
  podcast and TV shows. I'm on is that, you know, it's not easy building a hard asset empire. It
• 34:47
  nothing's easy. It wasn't easy for me. It's taken me years to get to this point over 30 years.
• 34:53
  Yeah. So I don't sugar code it saying it's going to happen overnight. You got to work at it.
• 34:58
  You got to manage the reason why I like the book is because I give you a hard asset blueprint
• 35:03
  in the book. And what I want everyone to do is when someone asked me to write my story in a book
• 35:09
  as I'm not telling my story, I said, I'm writing a book that's actionable that people all over the
• 35:15
  world can use any point in time for the rest of their lives. So you'll buy the book. You put it
• 35:21
  on the bookshelf a month later, you say, you know what? I'm going to start investing in this.
• 35:25
  Where should it go in my in my hard asset empire? Where do I put it? Because the hard asset empire
• 35:30
  was designed to defend, retain, compound, and grow your empire. That's why I created it. So
• 35:39
  if you have to do some asset planning and pull out the book, say, okay, here's my blueprint.
• 35:45
  What needs to be protected? You know what? I have everything in keys or in a wallet or
• 35:51
  and I got to protect the data, which is part of my foundation. I'm going to pull out the book
• 35:56
  and look at my blueprint and see where do I have to put that? What do I need to do? It's a way
• 36:02
  for you to stay in touch and to be actionable and visible to what you need to do because
• 36:09
  Scott pictures are worth a thousand words. I'm a visual guy. And so I was like, well, I'm a visual
• 36:14
  guy. What would I want? So I said, I want a blueprint. I don't need someone telling me in a book
• 36:19
  by paragraph by paragraph. I'm saying here it is. We're going to do it together. Okay. And by
• 36:26
  the way, if you want to gain commercial real estate, we have a new course is coming online where
• 36:31
  you'll be able to tell my AI because it's been following me for a year, then I want to learn how
• 36:39
  to negotiate in industrial lease. I want to learn how to buy a multifamily deal. We will design a
• 36:44
  course specifically for whatever you need. That's how great it's going to be. So with the book,
• 36:49
  I wanted people to be able to walk away and say, how do I get started? How do I build my
• 36:54
  empire? And people always ask me like, when they always say to me, well, Ben, when I get money
• 36:59
  like you, I'll get started. And the first thing I say to them is, no, I don't care if you have
• 37:04
  $10 to your name, put a dollar in something and get started. Pull the trigger and get started
• 37:10
  because you want to develop habits. Habits are huge in life. And no one talks about it because
• 37:16
  people say to me, well, why do you work out with a trainer five days a week? Why do you still go
• 37:19
  in the office at the same time every morning? You might leave later, but you have a routine. You go
• 37:24
  to bed a certain time. When you have a routine in habits, everything else makes it easier in life,
• 37:30
  especially business because you want to take the stress off the little things. You want to stay
• 37:35
  healthy. You want to have energy. You want to be aware. So like I said, to go back, if you're
• 37:40
  going to double down on business and say, I want to become wealthy, I want to become successful.
• 37:45
  I want to have options. I want to grow as a person. Unless you commit and get in the deep water
• 37:53
  and do it, then don't say you want to do it. No, I agree fully. I'm curious. A couple thoughts.
• 38:01
  First of all, I love how the concept of the book revolves around not just investing,
• 38:06
  but building the empire, building all the different pieces, because
• 38:11
  yes, it's great to take action and put your first dollar in. And I don't want to diminish that
• 38:17
  at the same time after you've put your first dollar in and start to realize that there's
• 38:22
  all these other things that you can do. So there's like the legal, the financial. You start
• 38:27
  planning for your kids and everything, like the full 360. So it's important because a lot of people
• 38:32
  just say, okay, invest in your first deal, put money in the stock market, put money in crypto,
• 38:38
  buy a, do the burn method to go buy a, like a residential real fine, but there's all these
• 38:44
  other components so that you're optimizing not just one piece of your wealth, you're optimizing
• 38:49
  everything. And you just want to do it sooner than later. So you don't have to learn all these
• 38:52
  hard lessons. Now, a couple other things. You interviewed a whole bunch of people for your book.
• 38:59
  I mean, you've dropped some really valuable wisdom from your own life. I'm curious if there's
• 39:04
  something out of all the different lessons that people sort of spoke to you about while you're
• 39:11
  putting the get of this book. Was there anything that stood out that maybe you weren't even aware,
• 39:17
  something that you thought was like, wow, this is really interesting and a novel way to look at
• 39:21
  this particular idea that you think would be a huge help for people listening. One of the things
• 39:26
  I saw that was a common thread, which I knew, but it really resonated was learn how to control your
• 39:32
  emotions, learn how to be calm under pressure, learn how to deal with challenges, and know that
• 39:41
  it shall pass. And that was a common theme of a lot of people successful in business is controlling
• 39:48
  your emotions, being a good listener, and really enhancing your communication skills. Communication
• 39:55
  equals wealth. And that was the sentiment with everyone is how you communicate, how you inspire
• 40:01
  people, how you lead. And leadership had a large meaning because in building your hard-asset
• 40:07
  empire is if you're going to build the empire you want, you're going to have to lead in certain
• 40:13
  respects. And so every day I have to lead in what I do. That's why I am. And so leadership is
• 40:19
  not only being a good listener, but it's also inspiring people. How do you inspire people? You seek
• 40:26
  the truth and what they're saying. You can understand what their lens is and collaborate with them
• 40:32
  to have a conversation about, I never thought about that way. Or, you know, let's try it this way.
• 40:38
  Or you know what? Let's do your way and figure it out. And if it doesn't work, let's figure out how
• 40:43
  to change it. So communication and understanding how people are thinking and listening and understanding
• 40:50
  and processing information is so critical. It's a success. And the hard-asset empire you build,
• 40:57
  the other thing that came out of it was you get rewarded for focus, which is something I always
• 41:02
  say. So I focus on commercial real estate. That's my expertise. That's how I build my empire. But when
• 41:08
  I have capital, like I said, and I invest in crypto or I invest in technology, which I loved
• 41:14
  investing, I invest with smart money. So I want to invest with people have been there done that.
• 41:20
  I'm not the expert. It's like when we buy a medical office building, okay? The cardiologist group
• 41:28
  don't want to own real estate because it's a pain in the ass for them. And I'm not getting involved
• 41:32
  in doing heart surgery. It's not my niche. So you pick your lane, you pick your focus. And the
• 41:38
  sentiment with everything is you get reward for focus, manage your expectations, communicate very
• 41:44
  well and enhance your communication work on it. Those were the three common things that came out
• 41:49
  of this. I want to go a little bit deeper into sort of your expertise and some lessons with
• 41:53
  commercial real estate because I've never really had somebody that's completely focused on commercial
• 41:57
  real estate before. And I think that obviously this is what you've done your whole career.
• 42:04
  You kind of made an argument before for why commercial real estate over residential. But I mean,
• 42:10
  even at the beginning, you niche down a little bit more into medical in particular. So if somebody
• 42:15
  is very interested in commercial real estate, what are some ideas that they should be aware of?
• 42:21
  Should they niche down that much? I'm sure there's recession proof in some of these ideas. There's
• 42:25
  maybe how long or what's the word I'm thinking of. If it's like a sticky tenant, if they don't leave
• 42:35
  and the second you buy the property kind of like that first tenant that took off,
• 42:40
  you probably focus on people that want to stay in the building for long term or there's a reason
• 42:44
  why they would. So maybe that's one of the reasons. But somebody going to commercial real estate,
• 42:49
  what is the first piece of advice that you give them? There's a couple of things. If you're
• 42:54
  going to buy commercial real estate and take the road I did, what I say is stay local or regional
• 43:01
  like I did. Even though we have the internet and you can live in California and buy in Wichita,
• 43:07
  Kansas, my suggestion you is start local and regional where you could drive to your properties.
• 43:12
  It'll make your life easier because you're going to go on a learning curve.
• 43:16
  And when you go on that learning curve, you want to maximize time. Time is our biggest asset in life.
• 43:22
  It always will be. So when you're younger and you're learning and you want to be a principal and do
• 43:27
  what I did start locally. Now when you start locally or regionally, like I was in Chicago. So
• 43:34
  Chicago is a big city. I have a choice multi family industrial office self storage. I have options.
• 43:42
  But you might live in Montgomery, Alabama and you're listening to this and maybe it's good self
• 43:47
  storage market. Maybe it's good mobile home market, which is commercial real estate. So I would look
• 43:54
  at a niche that's conducive to your area that you can start with. Why shorten the learning curve
• 44:00
  as much as possible, mitigate your time. You're going to have to go tour properties. You got to build
• 44:04
  resources with brokers, attorneys, lenders. You're in that area already. Maximize your time.
• 44:12
  When you develop your expertise, you have capital start expanding. Then you go from Alabama to
• 44:17
  Mississippi to Tennessee to Florida, all the things we do and all the states were it. Start small
• 44:23
  if you're going to be a principal. Now, if you're out there and you're into mergers and
• 44:28
  acquisitions or a hedge fund or you're in technology, my suggestion is invest in smart money like
• 44:35
  my company alliance. Pick your poison. If you're like, I'm going to I'm in mergers and acquisitions.
• 44:42
  I'm in private equity. That's what I'm doubling down on. Don't divert your time. Focus on your
• 44:49
  niche. That's your empire. Focus on that niche and then leverage into talent to start building your
• 44:55
  hard asset empire. That's how you do it. That's what everyone does. That's extremely successful.
• 45:00
  They focus. They don't they don't divert because their times are the biggest asset,
• 45:06
  significantly wealthy people. What also comes out of this book and all the people I talk to for
• 45:11
  years and decades is time. We do an exercise in my office and at my company, which I think
• 45:17
  is fascinating. I'll teach everyone out there. When we did this about three years ago,
• 45:22
  the average A's were about 77. Now, it could be more. You probably debate with me out there,
• 45:26
  but just roll with this example. Okay. So I'm 55 years old. I turn 55 in January.
• 45:33
  If the average life is 77, if it took 77 minus 55, that's 22 years. If there's 52 weeks in the
• 45:40
  year, it's like 1000, whatever, 1400, whatever it is. That's how many weeks I have left.
• 45:46
  So if I'm out there getting started and I'm 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, however, all your audiences,
• 45:55
  and I subtract that 77 multiply 52, that's how much you have to live in your career.
• 46:01
  So you have to say to yourself, well, am I going to spread myself thin and get involved in a
• 46:06
  thousand different things and not become an expert because you need to become an expert at something.
• 46:12
  That's how you build a poor. That's how you get credibility. That's how you get loans,
• 46:17
  equity, because you're the expert. People will give money to people that are experts.
• 46:22
  How you become an expert. You put the time in. You develop your craft. You know the numbers.
• 46:26
  See how this all ties in together. Communication improves. And so if you're going to spread yourself
• 46:33
  thin, which isn't what I talk about in the hard asset empire and hard assets and hard money.
• 46:39
  That's the other the wrong direction. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be focused. You get
• 46:43
  word for focus. So for people that want to get in commercial real estate, start local,
• 46:48
  pick a niche, focus on the one niche. Don't do like multi-family and industrial and office
• 46:54
  and retail. And you buy different deals throughout the year, focus on a niche,
• 46:59
  develop those resources, leasing brokers, appraisers, lenders that focus on that asset class.
• 47:06
  But if you're in a different business or you don't have the the thick skin to stay in commercial
• 47:12
  real estate or any type of real estate, leverage into someone like Alliance, leverage into someone else.
• 47:18
  Because if you're if you're not full in the water and you don't love this business,
• 47:23
  it will eat you alive. That's so smart. And I think that, you know, even listen,
• 47:29
  any business you go into most business are going to be difficult. Commercial real estate is one
• 47:33
  beast. Any other business people try and build is going to be another beast. But I think that
• 47:38
  you only have it's already difficult enough. And you do only have so many hours in a day. And
• 47:42
  even if you devote all your focus on a niche and all your hours and energy and attention into a
• 47:47
  niche niche, it'll still be difficult. So stop shooting yourself in the foot by diversifying
• 47:53
  your attention everywhere. I think that's such an important lesson. Think about the most stressful
• 48:01
  or the most high risk deal that you've ever done. Something that sticks out when I say that.
• 48:09
  And then what would be the lesson that you learned from that that was useful to you. But you hope
• 48:15
  no one else ever has to learn the way you learned it. Oh, it's such a great question. When I was
• 48:19
  younger, I bought a 300,000 square foot office campus. And it was a huge equity raise when I was
• 48:29
  younger. And my fear was, okay, well, I'm going to put debt and then mitigate how much equity
• 48:36
  you have to raise. So I know I can close because I really want. I thought my career was where
• 48:41
  Sam Zell was buying skyscrapers. I was like, I'm going to be this mega office owner. And then
• 48:46
  the internet came into play. And then office space, you know, downsize and became more efficient
• 48:53
  with technology. And we need as much office space. And so suburban office really took a hit. So I
• 48:59
  buy this 300,000 square foot suburban office in the Midwest. And we end up getting a 75% loan to
• 49:09
  value. I signed with recourse. There's a couple of things that come out of this story. Now that I'm
• 49:14
  talking about it. And then I put on a 10% mes piece. So for anyway, it doesn't know I took out a
• 49:22
  first mortgage of 75% of the purchase price. I added a second mortgage in the form of a
• 49:28
  mezzan debt with Canadian pension fund, speaking at Canada. And it was additional 10. I was 85%
• 49:34
  leverage on a deal. Okay. I bought it right before the right before 07 0607 for the market change.
• 49:47
  And we end up buying the deal. And Warren Buffett has this trucking company on two floors
• 49:53
  and one of the buildings, those two buildings, 150,000 square feet, 17 acres, gorgeous campus,
• 49:59
  great. They leave my debt service covenants get triggered. We don't have as much cash flow. We pay
• 50:09
  the mortgages, but something changes. Loan goes into default. We're overlaberaged. We have to
• 50:17
  now negotiate with the Canadian pension fund. You're not getting you're not getting anything out
• 50:21
  of this. So we had to negotiate with them. We went into workout with our first mortgage. I was
• 50:27
  on the hook for about 50 million dollars. I was younger at the time. So we end up working out the
• 50:37
  deal. We end up selling it. We had investors in it in the deal. And we end up breaking even we
• 50:45
  end up moving on. But what I learned in the business, and I knew up before is the key to commercial
• 50:51
  real estate or any business hard asset is the ability to hold ability to hold the ability to hold
• 50:56
  and commercial real estate. What that means is we're going to ride through cycles. And so you need
• 51:01
  reserves. You need to look at the real estate fundamentals. You need to underwrite it and have
• 51:06
  flexibility in your loans. So you have the ability to hold. So any loan we do, I don't sign with
• 51:11
  recourse anymore. I learned that a long time ago. I don't overlaberage properties. I bring in great
• 51:17
  resources to help us when we need it. And we do enough due diligence to know how to make sure
• 51:23
  this asset survives well. So to get back to all types of asset is understanding that you have
• 51:31
  the ability to hold and ride through a cycle. And the economic cycle is tremendous value. And it
• 51:37
  could be you're buying a company. You're buying an asset. You're developing a product. Because at
• 51:43
  the end of the day, the more runway you have to deal with issues and challenges and you have
• 51:48
  the capital to do it, you'll be fine. It's when you have that short wick that you have to make decisions
• 51:54
  you're not happy with. And so for us in that deal, we overlavered. I signed with recourse. We had
• 52:01
  no leverage. And the market changed. And all of a sudden values dropped, rental rates dropped,
• 52:07
  our value of property dropped. And it was a nightmare. But I learned never overlavered
• 52:13
  overlaverage property. Look at the real estate fundamentals when you're underwriting a front
• 52:18
  and have the ability to hold have enough reserves. And just be very careful with leverage. So we
• 52:25
  always do low leverage on deals now. We have enough reserves in the bank. We make sure we have
• 52:31
  the ability to hold to ride through storms. Because real estate cash flows are like moccles. Everyone
• 52:36
  thinks like, oh, there's just going to send in the air. Sometimes they do in our deals and we
• 52:40
  look great. But if you're in business long enough, you see everything, you see ups and downs in
• 52:46
  your deals, cash flow change. And you have to be able to the other thing I learned in that deal,
• 52:52
  which I get how about everyone listening is that if you're going to get financing and a
• 52:57
  piece of real estate or a company and put that on a hard asset. When I talked about don't overlaverage,
• 53:04
  but number two is know your lender. So for example, people say, well, how do you find I finance
• 53:09
  through banks, especially local banks? Why? I want to build a relationship. If I have an issue,
• 53:15
  I could pick up the phone or someone from my staff can pick up the phone and go over that challenge
• 53:20
  with them and have success. If I'm dealing with a lender like on Wall Street and I don't have access
• 53:26
  to lender at CMBI sorts, it's alone where someone's servicing and I have no one talk to make
• 53:31
  decisions. If I have an issue, how do I protect my investors? How do I protect the asset? So
• 53:37
  flexibility and relationships and debt is really important. And people, people don't realize it.
• 53:43
  And there's there's another lesson you could take out of this is that let's say you go to a bank
• 53:48
  to get a loan to buy a company or construction or improvements or a startup loan, SBA, whatever
• 53:54
  you're doing out there. If a lender says we want you to sign recourse, just say it on you'll take
• 54:00
  less leverage and sign non-recourse. The only reason Scott people have you signed recourse,
• 54:06
  they don't want to hang your overclip and shake out the paintings. They want to keep you vested.
• 54:11
  We want to know that Scott Cleary is not walking away from this deal. God help him. No, instead it's
• 54:18
  okay, I asked for 65 LTV non-recourse. Can we do 55? Oh yes, Scott, we do 55. You know what?
• 54:27
  If you're raising money, your investors know that if you're protecting the asset and protecting
• 54:32
  yourself and you're going to pay instead of a seven or eight preferred return, it comes a five or
• 54:36
  a six, it's okay. It's okay because what are you going to do on the back end for the profit? Look
• 54:41
  at the thing from a holistic basis, not what is it right now on a current cash basis.
• 54:47
  And the other thing for everyone out there, okay, is that wherever you invest, if someone tells
• 54:53
  you that they didn't have a deal where they had challenges or they didn't make a profit or they lost
• 54:57
  money, they're lying to you. If they've been business long enough, I'm telling you this, people are
• 55:02
  going to go through ups and downs. It's just the way life is. Nothing's going to be perfect. And so
• 55:07
  look at someone when you're investing is look at the relationship, look at the report you build,
• 55:12
  look at how you feel about this situation. Because one thing that we provide that lie in some
• 55:17
  extreme proud of is we give investors a seven star experience that wake love service. Because
• 55:23
  if you invest with us, I never want you to worry. I want you to be able to turn focus on your niche,
• 55:30
  if you're a doctor, whatever you do, and you're going to get overly communicated by us and reports
• 55:37
  and financial statements and returns. But I want you focusing on what you do best. And so if you're
• 55:43
  going to invest with someone and they can't provide you that white glove service, look at different
• 55:48
  alternatives. Indeed is a success story partner. If you're hiring, indeed is all you need. Let me give
• 55:52
  you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to indeed and be super specific.
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  Not just can you edit audio, I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at
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  the thing with indeed sponsor jobs. I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through
• 56:10
  resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know
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  sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored
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  clary. Just go to indeed dot com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard
• 56:56
  about indeed on this podcast. Indeed dot com slash clary terms and conditions apply hiring do
• 57:02
  it the right way with indeed. Hubspot is a success story partner. Now if you're looking for a new
• 57:06
  podcast, one of my favorite shows right now is demand to code it. If you're in the B2B marketing
• 57:10
  space, you need to be listening to this. It's hosted by the team at Blent. They are a demand
• 57:14
  gen agency. They know what they're doing. They're also part of the Hubspot podcast network. What I
• 57:18
  love about it is they skip all the theory and they just tell you what's actually working today. So
• 57:23
  demand gen marketing content linked in ad attribution. They talk about real strategies that they are
• 57:28
  using that you can use today that are working. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a
• 57:32
  business, if you're really selling anything to anyone, go search demand decoded wherever you get
• 57:37
  your podcast. Right now we're in a market cycle. Obviously we just had a change in administration.
• 57:43
  What are some economic indicators that you look for when you're trying to figure out
• 57:50
  where I should be investing, what I should be investing in does market how much is market cycle
• 57:55
  impact, how much is administration impact, how much does global geopolitics impact some of your
• 58:02
  decisions? Well, geopolitics will definitely impact our decisions, interest rates do as well. So
• 58:07
  for example, we opened our multi-family division in 2024. That's recent, which is recent. About a
• 58:14
  year and a half ago, I kept watching it and saying, well, there's trillions of dollars coming
• 58:18
  along. There's a lot of multi-family sponsors that got into the business that took on short term
• 58:24
  debt at at a low rate that's going to turn within a short period time. So what happens is as the
• 58:33
  rising interest rate was happening, I said, this is going to trigger loans. People are going to have
• 58:38
  to sell and there's going to be opportunities in multi-family. So just being aware of the marketplace
• 58:43
  and again, having a focus and being knee deep in commercial real estate, I was able to see that
• 58:49
  opportunity. There's other opportunities. You might be looking at cryptocurrency and digital assets
• 58:55
  and there's opportunities like, for example, the blockchain is going to be big in commercial real
• 58:59
  state, which is one of the things we're focusing on. You want to? Yes. I hear a lot about it, but I
• 59:04
  don't, I know I'm property is trying to, do you know them? No, I don't know. They're trying to sell
• 59:10
  homes with with blockchain and whatnot, but I know that I've heard that it's going to be very big,
• 59:15
  but I haven't seen a lot of people actually transacting yet. Now, yeah, it hasn't happened yet,
• 59:19
  but so looking at things and saying, okay, well, what's out, what needs to be solved? And understanding
• 59:27
  the, so for me, when I look at commercial real estate, I say, well, what are challenges? Well,
• 59:31
  the quiz a challenge. Good sponsorships challenge. So what I do, Scott, is in my specific niche,
• 59:37
  I'll look at what are the problems historically and can I solve them? And so if you're in a certain
• 59:43
  industry, right? And I was with the gentleman today and he's in commercial real estate, but he's
• 59:49
  also getting into buying companies and he's big into government backed contracts. So what he's doing
• 59:56
  because it's his space, he sees a need and saying, you know what? There's a route between the
• 1:00:01
  bi companies that have government, government execute contracts and explain me the whole rationale.
• 1:00:07
  That's his niche. That's what he's focusing on. And so he sees an opportunity. So for everyone
• 1:00:12
  out there is that I think commercial real estate is going to be a great opportunity next two years
• 1:00:17
  to buy. I think there's going to be companies, if you buy companies, they're going to have to sell.
• 1:00:22
  They're going to be great opportunities. I feel the base on my book coming out, hard assets are
• 1:00:29
  the way to go in the next few years. And that's why we have so much demand to invest in
• 1:00:34
  Lion's Medical Fund, our multifamily fund. We're also doing hard money lending, which there's
• 1:00:40
  not a lot of liquidity. The market, that's another good niche we're doing. So to me, hard assets are
• 1:00:46
  critical, especially in uncertain times, geopolitical unrest. Not knowing where cash flow is going to
• 1:00:54
  come. And so that's why I created this blueprint for everyone is say you can start building it and
• 1:01:00
  feel comfortable that you can deal with turmoil and uncertainty in your life. So if you're out there
• 1:01:05
  listening and you feel uncertain or you're wondering, how do I build myself financially?
• 1:01:14
  Pick up the book. Look at the blueprint. Pull the trigger and start working on it. And it will
• 1:01:19
  give you clarity of where you need to go in your life. And also it makes you think. And the reason
• 1:01:24
  I wrote their book also is that I wanted you to take a step back. Everyone out there around the
• 1:01:28
  world and really think, just take time to think about how do I plan for my kids? How do I protect
• 1:01:35
  my assets? What assets am I focusing on? Who's the smart money I need to invest with? What are the
• 1:01:41
  resources I need to do all this? And so how do I build that foundation? Because no one comes up with
• 1:01:49
  a roadmap or a blueprint to do all this. And that's why I did it because I knew as a young man,
• 1:01:54
  I'm like, what's it been nice? Have someone told me this? And so I'm going on this learning curve.
• 1:01:59
  And so it's my way to get back. And I say that everyone out there is there's going to be a tremendous
• 1:02:06
  amount of buying opportunity for hard assets next to yours. That's my opinion. You can have your
• 1:02:11
  own opinion. I'm not giving you investment advice just to make a disclaimer. But I will tell you
• 1:02:16
  from my personal opinion, what I'm looking at is I'm looking at hard assets. What would be a belief
• 1:02:22
  about yourself that you once had that you think now is completely false? A piece of your identity
• 1:02:29
  that you had to improve or you had to change? I didn't think I was good enough. I came from,
• 1:02:35
  you know, I didn't come from money. I was really intelligent, but I wasn't a great student.
• 1:02:45
  And I had a reading comprehension problem when I was a kid. And so I'm my worst enemy. I would
• 1:02:51
  beat myself up. And I didn't think I was good enough. I didn't love myself. And so I had to learn
• 1:02:58
  that that everyone's different in the world. And it's okay to love yourself. It's okay to love
• 1:03:05
  who you are and to own who you are and your deficiencies and work on them and everything else.
• 1:03:12
  And I had to learn that. And it was a hard pill to take. And so for me,
• 1:03:17
  for everyone out there listening and is that if you're honest with yourself, you'll grow.
• 1:03:24
  And you'll become an incredible businessman or woman. You'll become an incredible person to
• 1:03:28
  have a relationship with. You'll be incredible friendships and colleagues and resources.
• 1:03:34
  And it starts when you're happy within yourself, your whole environment will change. And what I
• 1:03:40
  learned was for a long time while I was younger, I wasn't happy. And I kept saying to myself, I
• 1:03:45
  learned from mentors. They said, the reason why you're not happy is because you're not happy with
• 1:03:49
  yourself. If you're happy with yourself, everyone around you is going to gravitate to you. And you
• 1:03:54
  create this energy and frequency that people will come into your universe and your environment.
• 1:04:00
  That was something I had to learn. But it was the best lesson because to share it with people
• 1:04:05
  that I went through was tremendous. And so for people that feel they're not good enough or they
• 1:04:11
  don't love themselves or they beat themselves up, I encourage you to kind of look at how you can
• 1:04:16
  work on that and do the work. And when you do the work, you'll notice a big change in everything you
• 1:04:23
  do on your sort of your success journey. What do you think people sacrifice?
• 1:04:29
  Hopefully not you, but something that other people sacrifice that is the most detrimental thing
• 1:04:34
  on the on the way to success, the thing they should not sacrifice on the way to success.
• 1:04:39
  They don't celebrate the wins and something I didn't do enough on. Now I do. They don't
• 1:04:45
  have gratitude. They don't appreciate the people that help them on a daily basis. The employees,
• 1:04:52
  the team leaders, the resources outside the people that help them get on go along the way.
• 1:04:58
  It was interesting. I was watching someone on the news there today. And he said,
• 1:05:03
  you know, he's a broadcast. We said, never forgot the first radio station I was on. And he
• 1:05:08
  is gratitude for every step. And he's right. And so if you can have gratitude of, you know,
• 1:05:17
  my wife made me dinner this night, that way it allowed me to work later or I didn't have to worry
• 1:05:23
  about it or someone folded my clothes or or someone I was speaking and this happened. I was speaking,
• 1:05:31
  some young lady came up to me and hand me a bottle of water and said, oh, you look thirsty.
• 1:05:35
  I was wanting it. It was a great networking move. She wanted to meet me and she was in commercial
• 1:05:40
  real estate. So being grateful for the things that happen in your life, the simple things is so
• 1:05:47
  important because what we do is we take everything for granted in life. Oh, I'm entitled to that.
• 1:05:53
  That should happen to me because I'm this person. Well, no, it's that's not the way life works.
• 1:05:59
  Is if something does nice like I'm grateful that you invited me on your podcast.
• 1:06:04
  I get to share my story. How great is that? And I get to meet you and network with you. That's
• 1:06:09
  gratitude. That's taking a step back and saying, what am I aware of what's really going on? And
• 1:06:15
  we're not aware we're speeding things up. We're not paying attention. Right. And we take things for
• 1:06:19
  granted. And so for me, for everyone out there is that take a step back, take a breath,
• 1:06:25
  understand how you got to a place and be grateful. And if that's your approach,
• 1:06:31
  everything else in life will be easier. What's the biggest misconception about your success story?
• 1:06:36
  Oh, we laughed about in this office just like on social media. It's easy. It happened overnight.
• 1:06:42
  Ben just wrote that book overnight. He got all these followers overnight.
• 1:06:47
  My social media sucked when we started and I'm the first one to tell you because
• 1:06:53
  my original vendor thought it was just the vanity is what's important. No. It should be a cohesive
• 1:06:59
  strategy for the business and the brand. And so for me, nothing happens overnight.
• 1:07:09
  It's a big misconception. Success doesn't happen overnight. You have to grind. You have to show up.
• 1:07:13
  You have to be persistent. You have to be resilient. All the stuff we talked about today
• 1:07:18
  is a culmination of what needs to happen. And it's not easy. It just doesn't happen overnight.
• 1:07:23
  Yeah, I mean, that's a common thread across everyone who I bring on this show. We always
• 1:07:29
  live for the Instagram highlight reel and we don't realize the energy and the effort that goes
• 1:07:33
  into it. I mean, you've put over 30 years into, that's what people understand. So they see the book
• 1:07:41
  and they'll see the Instagram and all the ideas that you have, that's 30 years in the making.
• 1:07:47
  On top of the fact that even those, even building out those platforms took a ton of energy
• 1:07:52
  and time and resource and effort. You have to have a lifetime of experience to be able to
• 1:07:57
  teach and to be able to show up and to be able to sort of articulate some of the ideas that you
• 1:08:01
  have. So you can't just fast track that overnight. Well, and for me, it was, it was different
• 1:08:05
  because I was array successful in business and I decided to get online. Yeah, that's what I mean.
• 1:08:10
  So people are trying to be online before they're successful in business. Yeah, I wasn't like,
• 1:08:14
  I got online and said, okay, let's see if I can become successful. I had a grind and do everything
• 1:08:18
  saying. So what's great about is when I go online, I'm living these stories. I've lived on.
• 1:08:24
  I've lived events. I could tell you it's not easy. I could tell you tough people don't let
• 1:08:30
  tough times on last tough people do because I've been through it. And so it's real. It's authentic.
• 1:08:34
  And that's why I love about social media is that when you could hook on to someone that has
• 1:08:40
  experience and knowledge and that gray marriage between years, that to me is priceless. That's
• 1:08:45
  a good thing about social media. Yeah, I think that's, you know, we didn't really speak about this, but
• 1:08:52
  we touched on how important sort of structuring your life is not just for yourself but for your
• 1:08:59
  family and your kids and obviously massively successful. And I like to just have a little bit
• 1:09:05
  of insight from how you look at structuring life for your kids or also people that are trying to
• 1:09:08
  figure that out because that's not a conversation that people have a lot. And I think it gets confusing
• 1:09:13
  for people when you make a little bit of money. How do you protect your kids both financially,
• 1:09:19
  but also so that your kids can learn the same lessons that you've learned. And I don't think there's
• 1:09:25
  forget about a playbook for hard assets. There's zero playbook for that. No, everyone's
• 1:09:30
  kind of that's why I touch on it in the book saying, you know, so for me, asset protection, life
• 1:09:37
  insurance, one thing I taught my kids, I'll teach if anyone has kids are going to have kids,
• 1:09:43
  I'll teach you something I did for my kids, which I thought was priceless was when my kids got
• 1:09:48
  into high school. I wanted to teach them the value money. I wanted to know that mom and dad
• 1:09:54
  aren't just eight times because it was like that when they're in junior high, you know, hey,
• 1:09:59
  could I have a 20, a 10, I'm going, going skating, going out with some friends. And I said,
• 1:10:04
  this has to stop. And so what I did was I taught them the value money. So what I did was your kids
• 1:10:10
  start driving here in the United States at the age of 16. And one thing that I decided to,
• 1:10:16
  I wanted to get my kids the things I didn't have. I didn't have, you know, to where I had my own
• 1:10:21
  car. I didn't have, you know, the ability to go get clothes and at free will and go out to dinner
• 1:10:29
  all the time with friends. I didn't have that, but I had to bought that lifestyle for my kids.
• 1:10:33
  So I said, okay, well, I got to pick my poison. If I'm a spoil, I got to teach the value money.
• 1:10:37
  So what I did for everyone that listening out there is my oldest son, Joey, he's my oldest
• 1:10:43
  and at the time, he's 25 years old at the time when he was, you know, a teenager starting off
• 1:10:49
  in high school is in Chicago. I said, okay, we're going to put you on a budget. We're going to give
• 1:10:55
  you a certain mom money every month to pay for gas. If you go out with friends, eating, and so on,
• 1:11:02
  so forth, there's a fine am I for the month. And that's how you get. So you got a budget.
• 1:11:09
  So now it gets really interesting because Joey's spending money and all our accounts are linked.
• 1:11:15
  You know, I'm looking at Chase and I could see the money spending. Now, let's just say it's a 31
• 1:11:20
  days in a month. Day 25 comes. Joey's got like eight bucks. What's he going to do?
• 1:11:28
  Guess what? He starts eating at home. He starts making decisions because he's not getting more.
• 1:11:34
  And so what ends up happening is you learn about the value of the dollar and how to budget.
• 1:11:38
  And so I tell everyone is don't just give your kids a blank check. Let them earn it. Let them
• 1:11:45
  understand the value of the dollar. It doesn't matter how successful you are. I'm successful. I
• 1:11:50
  could give money. But what am I teaching them? Because when they become adults and God forbid,
• 1:11:56
  I'm buried in the ground. They got succinct themselves. They got to learn about money. And I see
• 1:12:02
  that with the live friends and people. People are afraid to teach their kids money. And I'm not. We
• 1:12:06
  talk about it. I talk about what I do. I talk about the challenges. I talk about financing. I talk
• 1:12:11
  about crypto with my sonies and the blockchain business. I mean, we talk about these things.
• 1:12:17
  And I learn from them. Hey, how would you deal with this? So I encourage everyone. If you have
• 1:12:21
  kids or you're going to have kids, give them a safe place to engage with. Give them a safe space
• 1:12:28
  to talk about money and put them on a budget. And you'll see because when you start having
• 1:12:33
  these conversations about money, by esmosis, they start learning about the value of the dollar.
• 1:12:39
  And guess what? They're more grateful. They appreciate they don't take advantage of you.
• 1:12:43
  And you feel better. You're like, wow, they really appreciate me. And appreciate how hard I work.
• 1:12:47
  And I also think I mean, I've seen obviously this is not an issue that applies to everyone. But when
• 1:12:53
  parents are super wealthy and they just hand their kids money, those kids are messed up because
• 1:12:59
  they are some value of the dollar. No. And I've seen, you know, I'm not old enough to have
• 1:13:06
  friends close friends that actually some of my friends are a little bit older than me. And their
• 1:13:10
  kids are like teens. But I have some sort of work business peers that are much older than me. And
• 1:13:19
  they have kids like, you know, mid 20s, early 30s. And some of them have like overdosed through
• 1:13:25
  drugs and just like reckless spending and reckless lifestyle and like, it's very sad. It's very,
• 1:13:30
  very sad because again, the kid never really understood the value of hard work and everything was
• 1:13:36
  just handed to them. And then all of a sudden, you do, you hand a kid anything they want for years
• 1:13:44
  at a time. And I just, worst case scenario, something like what I just mentioned. I mean, best case
• 1:13:50
  scenarios, really, they're just entitled assholes. But regardless, it's just not good across the board.
• 1:13:55
  No. And the problem is when you start earning money and you start becoming wealthy,
• 1:14:03
  you're living in these areas where there's high expectations on the kids. And so how you manage
• 1:14:09
  your kids is important. And again, it goes back to that root thing of communication. And so the
• 1:14:16
  space you allow them to communicate with them without making, they feel they're going to get
• 1:14:21
  hammered for mistakes. The more you allow them to develop, the easier it is. And that goes with
• 1:14:26
  money too. What do we not go into? Why buy the book? Go buy the book. Who's it for? It's for
• 1:14:34
  anyone in the world. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire. It's for you to understand of
• 1:14:40
  how can I produce consistent cash flow to allow myself the independence I deserve to have control
• 1:14:51
  and security over my life, which is what everyone wants, which is part of the reason I wrote the book.
• 1:14:58
  And so I want everyone to know that it's visual, it's actionable, and it was written for you.
• 1:15:05
  It wasn't written for me. I didn't have to write this book. I'm fine. I'm not making any money.
• 1:15:11
  I'm operating for not a lot of money. But I'm doing it because
• 1:15:16
  Scott, I took a step back and said, what would I would love when I was younger? I was like,
• 1:15:22
  if I had this blueprint and someone giving me guidance and the ability to go on his website and
• 1:15:28
  create a course if I wanted to buy assets, how great would that be? I said, well, let's create that.
• 1:15:34
  Because that's my way to give back. And so that's why you buy the book. If you're feeling uncertain
• 1:15:41
  or you want control or security or you're extremely wealthy, but you want to look at your playbook
• 1:15:48
  and say, where am I at in life? I got this. I got that. How about data? I didn't think of that.
• 1:15:55
  So everyone can use it. It doesn't matter who you are. Man, woman, child, billionaire,
• 1:16:01
  millionaire, broke, whatever. It gives you the tools you need and it's visual to help you build
• 1:16:09
  the hard asset empire. That's why you buy the book. It's for you where obviously it's going to be
• 1:16:15
  Amazon everywhere else. You get books. We'll put a link and show notes. Any other websites or even
• 1:16:20
  your social. Sure. So if you go to BenRymeburg.com, you follow me on all the platforms. If you go to
• 1:16:27
  BenRymeburg.com slash book, you can pre-order the book. We've had thousands of people pre-order it
• 1:16:32
  to get there. And so if you want to invest with us, because I invest in our deals too, that's
• 1:16:39
  all I build. Well, go to alliancecgc.com. That's alliancecgc.com. That's my company. You click
• 1:16:46
  invest now. You put in your information. So in front of my office, we'll personally call you.
• 1:16:51
  And what they do is we don't sell. We educate. So for example, we're going to want to know
• 1:16:56
  what are you investing in? Are you a credit investor? What do you like? How do you like risk
• 1:17:02
  this and that? We're going to find out information because we're going to interview you to make
• 1:17:05
  sure you're a good fit for us and we're a good fit for you. That's where our relationship. Because
• 1:17:10
  when investors come in our universe, they don't want to leave. And so we want to make sure that
• 1:17:15
  there's that relationship and that we're a good fit for you. It's important to us. And so at the end
• 1:17:20
  of the day, that's how you get ahold of me. I'm on all those social media platforms. We're very
• 1:17:25
  engaging. And when you follow me on social media, if it's on Instagram at the real Ben Reimberg,
• 1:17:32
  or you go take all these things, I'm on social media to give value. That's it. I'm not selling
• 1:17:38
  you something. I'm not doing this. It's all about what can I do to help you? And if you want
• 1:17:43
  invest in commercial real estate, great. If you don't, that's okay too. Even if you don't,
• 1:17:47
  you'll learn some life lessons exactly along the way. That's what it's about. Think of the most
• 1:17:51
  important lesson. Maybe something we even haven't touched on yet. Do you do want to pass onto your
• 1:17:55
  kids? What would that be? And why? Be humble and grateful. Appreciate everything that
• 1:18:03
  God gives you that resources provide for you that knowledge you obtained. Be grateful for it
• 1:18:11
  and be humble. And it will carry you through life. I mean, I can give, you know, and obviously,
• 1:18:18
  I'll give you guys a bonus. And don't criticize him because this is important is that I would also
• 1:18:24
  go back to when I was younger to say to my kids or anyone out there if they're young listening or
• 1:18:29
  you're getting started is be a master communicator because communication rules everything we do in life.
• 1:18:38
  And if I would have known that when I was younger, oh my God, who knows where I would be? So,
• 1:18:43
  that would be another good piece of advice. So I gave it to just to give a bonus because I think
• 1:18:47
  communication's so important. I didn't want to leave it out.