Wealth Formula by Buck Joffrey

Personal finance is personal. However, there is a type of conventional financial wisdom that leads us to believe that there is one right way of doing things.  That becomes very confusing to people…especially in our alternative investment world. After all, financial advisors are the experts, right?  In reality, financial advisors are usually most interested in your money going into traditional investments such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds so that they can charge you for assets under management. I’m not vilifying them for it. It’s just the way it is. Furthermore, traditional advisors tend to know very little about our world of real estate and other tangible assets. There are some out there who offer coaching as a way to navigate the alternative space. But in my experience, these coaches are not wealthy. After all, one-on-one coaching takes a lot of time. If you are really wealthy, would you spend your time coaching or focusing on what makes you a lot of money? Whenever I try to learn something new in this space, I try to learn from people who are wealthier than I am. I don’t take financial advice from people with less money than me. I am unaware of anyone who makes more money than most of us who is offering one on one coaching. So, what do you do? It’s a very good question. To me, the single best resource for learning personal finance in the alternative space is through peer groups.  As you may know, we have our own private peer group called Wealth Formula Network. I can honestly say that I have learned more from this group over the past few years than any other resource. Collective intelligence is very powerful. If you have friends and family of like mind that can help you navigate through this space and feel confident, then good for you. Otherwise, I strongly suggest you consider finding a group of peers for collective learning. There simply is no better way to increase your financial IQ and to feel confident about your decisions. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid because someone else will likely have the same question, but is afraid to ask for fear of looking stupid. But everyone has the same questions at some point in their journey. Speaking of questions, this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast begins the latest series in our “Ask Buck” episodes. Make sure to tune in as we have got some great topics. I can pretty much guarantee you will learn something. I know I did! P.S. If you want to submit your question to the show, click HERE!

When I first read The Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki (the purple pill), I was fascinated by the concept of using earned income to produce streams of passive income, that would eventually become a great river that would replace ones earned income all together. That concept is what I now call Wealth 1.0. You see, while the concept is appealing, the math is not. Let’s do some simple arithmetic to understand the challenge. Say for example you make 500K per year. Let’s assume that at a 30 percent tax rate, that leaves you with $350K. Let’s be generous here and say that, out of that remaining $350K, you invest $200K per year into something that yields a consistent 8 percent cash on cash. How much would you have to deploy to replace your $500K? (.08x=500,000). The answer is $6,250,000. If are investing $200K per year, how long would that take you? It would take you about 31.25 years. By that time, with inflation, your 500K wouldn’t be worth nearly as much as it is today. Ok, I know this is a very simplified model, but I think you get the point. Linear cash flow growth is not particularly efficient. When I realized that, I knew there had to be a better way. That better way is what I call Wealth 2.0 and can be described with the mathematical Wealth Formula: Wealth=Leverage(MassXVelocity) Mass is simply how much you invest. In the above example, if you invested $400K per year, you would get there in half the time.  Velocity is the amount of time it takes to get your money back from your initial investment and redeploy into the next opportunity. Leverage is good debt. We can amplify our results with using bank money or anything else that can lever our investments. Practically speaking, significant growth in your wealth can be obtained by deploying as much capital as possible into leveraged assets that can quickly be refinanced or divested. This allows you to recycle capital rather than simply using new earned income to grow your wealth. A well-known example in our investor club is from an early investor with Western Wealth Capital who deployed a total of $750K across multiple offerings. Through a series of refinances and divestments with quick redeployment of capital, his principal is now worth over $4 million. In our earlier example of Wealth 1.0, had he simply gotten 8 percent on that initial 750K, he would be looking at about $60,000 per year. But now, if he deployed that $4 million into simple 8 percent cash on cash investments, he would be making $320,000 per year. The idea is to grow that principal rapidly until you are ready to flip the switch into linear cash flow. Again, I know the modeling is simplistic but it is illustrative of the power of a Wealth 2.0 model. The difference between the two approaches is the difference between checkers and 3-dimensional chess. Of course, this is not to diminish the value of straight up cash flow investments. You may want to have some of those in your portfolio as well. Mailbox money does certainly make you feel good. Speaking of cash flow, my guest on this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast spends a lot of his time looking into cash flow investments. His name is MC Laubscher aka the Cash Flow Ninja. Make sure to tune in to this week’s podcast to hear what he has to say on the topic! Listen HERE M.C. Laubscher is a Husband, Dad, Podcaster & Cashflow Coach. As a cashflow investor & serial entrepreneur, M.C.’s passion is to assist investors & business owners to create, recover, warehouse & multiply cashflow through advanced strategies. Having figured out how to escape the rat race and replace his income through cashflow investing, he shares how highly paid professionals and business owners can replace their incomes through cashflow investing strategies to escape the matrix. M.C. is a member of the Forbes Finance Council and has shared his strategies on Forbes Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Grant Cardone TV, and Biggerpockets. M.C. is the creator & host of the top-rated business and investing podcasts, Cashflow Ninja & Cashflow Investing Secrets and Chief Cashflow Coach at Cashflow Ninja LLC. The Cashflow Ninja Podcast has been downloaded over 4.5 million times in over 180 countries and has been featured as one of the top 48 podcasts for entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine & is regularly featured as one of the top 100 podcasts by Apple Podcasts. M.C. is also the President & Chief Executive Officer at Producers Wealth, a virtual wealth creation firm that assist investors, and business owners to set up and implement Infinite Banking.

There is a saying, “People grossly over-estimate what they can accomplish in a year and grossly under-estimate what they can accomplish over five years.” As I write this to you on my 48th birthday (September 8th), I look back on the last 5 years and it’s hard to argue the point. Five years ago, this podcast did not exist. Today, Wealth Formula Podcast gets about 25K-30K downloads per month and we have an Investor Club with over 2000 members that control over $800 million in assets. I am in awe of what we have created together. But the bigger lesson here is that even though it may not seem like it, all the little things you are doing now DO make a difference over time. If you don’t like change, you are out of luck. Change is inevitable in life. You can either fight it or guide it in the direction you want to go. The same can be said about investing. The type of investing we do in our community requires planting seeds today and waiting patiently for a few years in most cases. Just think about those people who sat on the sidelines over the past 5-6 years while Western Wealth Capital delivered average annualized returns of over 30 percent to its investors. Indeed, time IS money. Understand that investing in real estate requires some level of faith. You can’t track your net worth daily on an app. However, once you are in it a few years, you start to see things come to fruition in a big way. Once you’ve been through the cycle a few times, it really gets exciting. But again, the choices and investments you make today are for 3-5 years from now. The longer you wait to start, the longer it will take to get results. It’s time to get off the sidelines. While you take action today, it is also important to keep contemplating your next move for the future. In my case, I have been interested in the hotel industry for a while and have been collecting data and looking for the most opportune time to get involved. On this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast, I reconnect with hotel broker, Steve Usher, to get an update on the hotel investing landscape. Listen in as I get the scoop on whether it’s time to buy! TITAN Hospitality was founded by Steve Usher. Prior to starting the company, Mr. Usher was the Pacific Northwest Representative for CB Richard Ellis’ National Lodging & Hospitality Services Group in San Francisco. He serves on the Board of Directors of San Luis Obispo-based Martin Resorts and is a licensed California real estate broker. Shownotes: How have the markets have changed since the last time Steve was on the show? Different kinds of hotels that people can invest in? Possible barriers to success for independent owners who are not franchising Types of things are good for a buyer to consider before going into the hotel business

As a flaming entrepreneur I had a serious problem when I was a young man: Shiny Object Syndrome. After surgical residency, I had a couple of major business successes. Having never failed in business before, I kept pushing the limits. It wasn’t about the money back then. You see, natural entrepreneurs like me enjoy money—no doubt. But we use it mostly as a way to keep score. If you create a successful business, you make money. That means you win the game. If you don’t make money, you lose. At first it wasn’t a big deal. I was tinkering with businesses that were costing me thousands of dollars but I was already making seven figures. Then, I made a major mistake. I pushed the limits on the goose that was laying the golden eggs. I tried to expand a highly successful business way too fast while financing it entirely myself. It was a big gamble. In fact, had I won that one, it would have been game over. But I lost. And losing this one was a big deal because I killed that gold laying goose! I was millions of dollars in debt and things only seemed to get worse (it’s a long story).  In fact, the reason I survived that big mess was because of something boring I was doing on the side.  You see my dad has been a real estate investor all his life. I grew up thinking that real estate was the only conservative investment. So while I was tinkering with shiny objects, I also decided I would buy apartment buildings like a grown-up the way I was taught. Admittedly there was some luck involved, but the buildings I bought during those early years ended up yielding about 500 percent return in less than 5 years—enough for me to sell them and bail myself out of the big mess I had made. The whole thing was a big lesson for me. Sure I saw cash flow from those buildings but I only truly appreciated the equity growth that had occurred at divestment. It was a real eye opener. Too bad I had to spend it all paying off the sins of bad decisions made by me and my management team. This all happened pretty quickly after residency so I was fortunate to have plenty of time to recover and re-build myself. When I retired from medicine and became a full time investor 4 years ago, I still had to control my impulses. Shiny objects existed not only in the business world but with investments as well. I made some stupid investments in exotic things early on as well but quickly learned that the only asset class that was consistently making me money was real estate. I had to keep repeating a mantra to myself that I continue to do every day: “boring is good”. There is nothing sexy about working class apartment buildings. You’re not going to brag to your friends about owning them or drive by them with a ton of pride. They are often ugly and in areas you might not even want to drive through. But in the right hands, they consistently make money. In many cases, the returns themselves are quite sexy. My lifetime annualized returns on real estate are probably 40-50 percent all in.  So, even though it seems boring, every year the vast majority of my investable income goes into apartment buildings. Do I invest in riskier stuff? Yes but it’s calculated.  10-15 percent of my investable assets now go into things that could potentially create a meaningful change in my quality of life. What’s a meaningful change? Well, it’s going to be different for everyone but it usually means adding some zeros to your net worth. On the other hand, I approach those investments knowing and being ok with the possibility that there will be no return of capital at all—like the Maserati I bought last year. There are some people, however, who make their living entirely on the asymmetric side of the investment world. This week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast features one of those guys: Jonathan Hung. If you are curious about the world of angel investing, make sure you tune into the show! Jonathan Hung is a transformative Los Angeles angel investor and venture capital partner who believes in a bright future for businesses seeking to broaden their horizons in North America and Asia. One of the most active angel investors in Southern California, his mission is to drive value creation within each portfolio company. In support of this mission, he serves as Co-Managing Partner at Unicorn Venture Partners and Senior Venture Partner and Head of Due Diligence at Expert Dojo providing a hands-on approach to supporting companies by offering strategic expertise in operations management, finance, business development, multinational business strategy, entrepreneurship, networking, data analysis, and leadership. Jonathan and his team target investments in US companies that have global market potential with a focus on long-term growth expansion to East Asian markets. In addition to providing venture capital funding and advisory support, he also provides business mentorship based on his experience running U.S. and China offices as the President of United Overseas Textile Corporation. Jonathan was also a Managing Member for his family office fund, J Heart Ventures, which made investments in start-up companies such as Gyft, ChowNow, Miso Robotics, Clover Health, Bitmain, etc. He also leverages various degrees from the University of Southern California, London School of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Jonathan believes that every start-up/portfolio company regardless of industry and size can take full advantage of his genuine approach to mentorship. Jonathan specializes in early-stage investing and the formation of strategic business partnerships. He invites connections with any professional who shares his passion for the technology and consumer market sector, entrepreneurship, and venture capital. Shownotes: Angel investor vs. venture capitalist How to choose companies to invest in How much does Jonathan actually participate in running the companies that he invests in? What kind of projections would you typically see from an angel fund?

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”. The older I get, the more I am convinced that he was right! I believe that mindset is the single most important element to success in life—be it financial or otherwise. Mindset is a broad term but the way I think about it is as a thermostat for your expectations of the world. In my experience, there certainly is a wealth thermostat.  You are highly unlikely to make a lot more money than you think you can. You are also highly unlikely to make a lot less. Part of thinking you can involves what you visualize for yourself everyday.  What do I mean by visualize? I’m not talking about meditating or doing anything else other than what we do everyday on autopilot that results in various images of who we are in our mind’s eye. If you are around a bunch of people who make a lot more money than you do on a daily basis, you are more likely to see yourself in that position. If you know people personally who have accomplished various exceptional milestones your subconscious will be more likely to allow you to accept that you, too, can achieve such things. A wealth mindset is a prerequisite to actual financial wealth. That doesn’t mean that you will get there for sure if you can see it. But if you don’t, you can be pretty sure you will never get there. If the world around you isn’t pushing you, you need to find other stimuli that do. That’s where a lot of people who actively manifest their futures use image boards and other tools to train their subconscious. I don’t actually do that myself but I certainly understand how it might help. I’m not an expert on mindset nor am I a coach of any kind. I’m just an armchair quarterback with some observations. My guest on this week’s podcast is Kim Daly—and she is sort of an expert at this mindset stuff. Kim is also known best as an expert on franchises. That’s a pretty good combination because, if you want to succeed as a business owner, you have to really focus on the mental part as well. Kim’s enthusiasm is infectious. If you want to learn about franchises or just how to be a more fulfilled person, make sure to listen to my interview with her on this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast.  P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for our Wealth Formula Meetup in Dallas on Oct 1-2.  Click HERE to learn more! Kim Daly is one of America’s top franchise consultants. For almost two decades, she has been educating, motivating and inspiring dreams of business ownership through franchising as an independent consultant with FranChoice. She co-authored, Franchising Freedom, an international best-selling book, and in 2012, she built the largest consulting practice in the history of franchising consulting. Today, she continues to help thousands of people explore their investing and business ownership dreams through her individual consulting, podcasting and online motivational programs. Prior to becoming a franchise consultant, Kim was a highly sought-after health & fitness consultant working with Denise Austin, Dr. Denis Waitley, eDiets.com and Gold’s Gym. She launched the first health & fitness marketplace at USATODAY.com and co-founded her own martial arts school. She has been self-employed since she was 25 and loves to boast that she has a life MBA and is completely unemployable because her freedom has no price! As she travels the country hosting live franchising and motivational events and creating videos for her Youtube channel, she shares her heart, knowledge, passion and experiences with the goal of helping others to live their best life. Kim graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Biochemistry and a minor in Sports Nutrition. She worked as a personal trainer and had medical school dreams before entrepreneurship and franchising found her. She grew up on the seacoast of southern New Hampshire where she still lives today with her two boys, her parents and siblings. When she is not inspiring other people’s dreams, she is working on her own! She is a Christian, a personal development junkie, a health & fitness enthusiast, an avid skier and a soccer mom. She is the marketing chairman for the board for St. Thomas Aquinas High School and is actively involved in her Catholic church community. Kim is a small- town girl who achieves world-class dreams! She aspires to help YOU achieve yourdreams! Shownotes: What is a Franchise? Is Franchising for you? The process of finding the right franchise What happens after a client is matched with a Franchisor?

Once you realize how much you don’t know, you always feel like you’re playing catch up. At least that’s how I feel when it comes to personal finance. Wealthy families often implement family offices to help keep things straight. Theoretically, that’s a great solution. However, from what I’ve seen, family office structures often leave clients with a false sense of security. No matter what your level of wealth, YOU need to be the CEO of your own finances. No one else cares as much about your money and your legacy.  What that means is that you need to be educated on personal finance one way or another if you are going to be successful in this realm. For most high-paid professionals that means not only surrounding yourself with competent CPAs, lawyers, and investment advisors. It also means being active in designing strategies and making sure they get implemented. I have one of the best CPAs in the world but I am far from passive in my interactions with him. I’m constantly challenging him and providing him with new ideas. After all, I know my finances better than he does. And every time I acquire a new asset or make a new investment, I have to be the one who understands how it fits into my portfolio. It can be exhausting at times but at least I can be confident in the decisions I make. That’s why so many people find Wealth Formula Podcast to be a useful resource. This is a platform for me to learn about things and share them with you in real time. Nothing about the show is theoretical. It’s the information I use every day in my own financial affairs. Because of that, you often hear from my advisors. After all, what better way for me to communicate these concepts to you than having you listen in to the conversations that guide my own decisions? This week’s episode features one of those discussions as I chat with my own asset protection attorney, Doug Lodmell. I highly encourage you to listen. This might be the most comprehensive but understandable podcast on the topic of asset protection you’ve ever heard and, hopefully, will leave you with a clear understanding of what you need to do in this area right now. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, attorney Douglass S. Lodmell has excellent knowledge and the highest level of experience in estate planning, taxation and strategic asset protection for domestic and international clients. In addition to a Juris Doctorate from Cardozo School of Law, Douglass has a Bachelor of Science degree in finance as well as an advance law degree (LL.M.) in taxation from NYU School of Law. He has authored numerous articles for professional journals as well as a popular book about the explosion of lawsuits in America called The Lawsuit Lottery: The Hijacking of Justice in America. Doug’s extensive experience in asset protection make him a frequent guest speaker at medical, and professional conferences and seminars throughout the country, as well as teaching concepts of asset protection to other attorneys at continuing legal education seminars throughout the country. Shownotes: What is Asset Protection? Why do you need to protect your assets? How does an LLC protect you? What is a bridge trust? The differences between estate planning and asset protection

Over the last three weeks, you have heard actual members of our Wealth Formula Community talk about their financial journeys. A recurrent theme through these interviews was the concept of Wealth Formula Banking. In case you didn’t notice, all three of these individual investors are essentially using Wealth Formula Banking as the cornerstone of their investor strategies. You might, therefore, be wondering what exactly Wealth Formula Banking is. Well, it’s actually an investing strategy that utilizes permanent life insurance. Now you might be thinking: “My financial advisor told me to buy term and invest the rest”. Believe me, I’ve heard that one a million times. In fact, I used to believe it. But then, during my own financial journey, I noticed that pretty much all of the high net worth individuals that I met were utilizing some kind of permanent life insurance in their own portfolios. If permanent life insurance was not a good strategy, then why were all of these smart people who made a lot more money than most doctors doing it? After some digging, I had the answer. Permanent life insurance, the way it is presented to most people, is not a good strategy at all. However, the devil is in the details. Structured appropriately—-maximizing cash value and minimizing fees, these policies are extraordinarily powerful in amplifying wealth creation. Perhaps the best book on this concept is written by Nelson Nash called Become Your Own Banker. This is an older book but drives home the fundamentals of this wealth-building concept in an easy to understand format. Nash’s concept is further optimized for active investors by the Wealth Formula Banking concept. In short, Wealth Formula Banking involves an asset protected, tax efficient vehicle that allows you to invest the same money in two places at the same time.  We call that double-dipping. And while it may sound too good to be true, I can tell you from my own personal experience that it’s not. That’s why, at the very least, you need to learn about it and decide if it’s right for you. There is no better way to do that than to hear fellow Wealth Formula community members like you discuss the concept and how they are using it in their own portfolios. So… that’s what we are going to do on this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast. LISTEN NOW!

In June of 2008, I had just completed my surgical residency and gotten married the day after graduation. There was already quite a bit of change in my life. On the way back from my honeymoon, I looked for something to read at the Puerto Vallarta airport—not many choices as you can imagine. Most people heading back stateside are too hungover to read on the plane. There on the shelf, I grabbed one of the three available books and the only one that did not have a picture of buff dude with long hair appealing to romance novel enthusiasts. It was called Cashflow Quadrant and the author was, of course, Robert Kiyosaki. I read that book on the plane and my life has never been the same. I’ve heard lots of stories like this over the years. Something about Kiyosaki’s way of explaining concepts really inspires people. To this day, I am quite sure that he has been the impetus behind more millionaires around the world than any other individual in history. The funny thing is that some of those concepts that resonated with me like “cash flow” were nothing new. My dad used to call himself a cash flow investor long before Kiyosaki wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad. The point is that sometimes it’s not about what is said but how it’s said that matters. Guys like Kiyosaki know how to communicate important concepts. When that happens, you can get quite an aha moment that sends you down a rabbit hole. After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, Ryan Stieg set out on his journey to figure out how to make sense of his own purple book experience. Part of that journey led him to the Wealth Formula Community. On this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast, he takes us down his path from W2 wage earner towards his trajectory as a full-time investor. Ryan’s story could sound a lot like your own if you want it to! LISTEN NOW! Ryan Stieg started down the path of passive investing like many of us did, after he picked up a little purple book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The problem was that he did that in college and didn’t take action on it to start investing passively until many years later when that itch to invest passively crept back up. Since 2016, Ryan has focused (or should we say lack thereof) on all different kinds of investing, always coming back to real estate and business being his mainstays. Ryan has a small portfolio of one to three unit rentals across five different markets in the US. He has also invested in nearly twenty real estate syndication investments individually or with an investment group that he co-founded with fellow Infielder, Jim. Outside of that, Ryan has investments in note funds, mobile home park funds, life settlements, a development project, cryptocurrency, and a few other items that further cement his self-diagnosis of “shiny object syndrome”. However, with all of those reaches over the years, Ryan still believes in the long-term success and tenets of passive, cash-flow focused investing with proven syndicators and shared knowledge in investing. When he’s not working on passive investments, he is working in the transportation insurance industry or found with his wife watching whatever sport one of their two boys is involved in during that particular season. Shownotes: How did Ryan discover the Wealth Formula Podcast? Connections he has made through Wealth Formula Network Why go down the franchise route? How important Wealth Formula Network has been to his growth?

“Coming out of left field” is a slang derived from baseball which basically references something unexpected. What does that equate to in personal finance? Well, the opposite of something unexpected would be something expected or… conventional. Conventional financial wisdom includes stocks, bonds, and mutual funds as the foundation of a solid, responsible portfolio. Conventional finance has even labeled investments out of this core set of products as alternative. I wonder why? Well, when you think alternative, what kinds of images pop up in your mind? Purple hair? Nose rings? Well, that’s not by accident. The conventional financial apparatus would like investors to think of investing in real estate and other non-paper assets the same way you might think of those alternative images: unstable, unsafe? It’s a rather clever use of language for marketing purposes I must say. But it’s disingenuous all the same. After all, how could real estate be an alternative investment?  The ownership of real estate and other real assets far outdate the more modern phenomenon of paper assets and certainly any kind of public equity market. Owning stuff is the only way investing existed just a few hundred years ago! Nevertheless, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve witnessed genuine anxiety from investors first realizing that they ought to be investing another way other than the way they had been conditioned their whole life. I get it. That’s what our alternative investing communities, like Wealth Formula Network are for. We are kind of like support groups for recovering paper asset investors and we provide each other the support and courage to do what is in our own financial interests. Of course, ours isn’t the only support group (or cult) out there. Jim Pfeifer’s Left Field Investors is another one. It just so happens that he’s part of our community as well. Listen to this week’s episode Wealth Formula Podcast to learn how Jim’s journey from high school teacher to financial advisor ended up leading him into podcasting and a career as a full-time investor. These intra-community shows are a great chance to reflect on your own financial journey. Make sure to listen NOW. Jim Pfeifer is one of the founders of Left Field Investors and the host of the Passive Investing from Left Field podcast. Left Field Investors is a group dedicated to educating and assisting like-minded investors negotiate the nuances of the passive investing landscape and world of syndications. Jim is a former financial advisor who became frustrated with the one-path-fits-all approach of the standard financial services industry. Jim now concentrates on investing in real assets that produce cash flow and is committed to sharing his knowledge with others who are interested in learning a different way to grow wealth. Jim not only advises and helps people get started in passive real estate syndications, he also invests alongside them in small groups to allow for diversification among multiple investments and syndication sponsors. Jim believes the most important factor in a successful syndication is finding a sponsor that he knows, likes and trusts. He has invested in over 45 passive syndications including apartments, mobile homes, self-storage, private lending and notes, ATMs, commercial and industrial triple net leases, assisted living facilities and international coffee farms and cacao producers. Jim is constantly looking for new investment ideas that match his philosophy of real assets producing cash flow as well as looking for new sponsors with whom he can build quality, long-term relationships. Jim earned a degree in Finance & Marketing from the University of Oregon and a Master’s in Business Education from The Ohio State University. He has worked as a reinsurance underwriter, high school finance teacher, financial advisor and now works exclusively as a full-time passive investor. Jim lives in Dublin, Ohio with his wife, three kids and two dogs. In his free time, he loves to ski, play Ultimate frisbee and cheer on the Buckeyes. Shownotes: What Jim thinks about “Alternative Investments” Managing property managers Are Alternative Investments safe? Left Field Investors

In the last few episodes of Wealth Formula Podcast, we have had some serious specialists in the area of Real Estate and Natural Resources.  These shows are important because you, as an investor, need to know what’s going on out there so you can make educated decisions about where to deploy your capital. Solid information from experts is important, but the actual implementation of personal finance strategies is often daunting for individual investors in the alternative space. If you follow the conventional financial path, it’s easy. You just keep dumping your hard-earned money into stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and help your financial advisor retire comfortably. However, easy does not mean wise. Blind faith in conventional financial wisdom can be hazardous to your financial health and catastrophic for your retirement plans. In my 47 years of life, I have come to realize that nothing worth doing is ever easy. Taking charge of your own finances requires some work. The good news is that, if you are a listener of Wealth Formula Podcast, you are probably already a high-paid professional doing something that requires a great deal more brain power than personal finance. Yes. Managing your own money takes work but it’s not that difficult. In fact, the hardest part is overcoming the fear of making the wrong decisions. That said, letting someone else make those decisions for you doesn’t guarantee success either. The reality is that if you are managing your own money, at least you know for sure that the decisions you make are in your own interest and they are decisions you made. So how do you become confident about making your own financial decisions? Well, for one thing, it takes some time. The only way I know how to speed up the process is by learning from others. And it’s not just the good stuff you need to learn either.  It is true that the best way to learn is through mistakes. However, they don’t need to be your mistakes. Learning through your peers is priceless. That’s why the next few episodes of Wealth Formula Podcast will feature interviews with real investors just like you. This week I interview a guy who worked for Boeing for three decades and went through a divorce before his personal finance journey really took off. That’s real stuff. So if you’re curious about the financial journeys of your Wealth Formula peers, make sure to listen to this interview and learn why Chris Odegard now feels more confident than ever in his financial future! Chris Odegard’s prolific investing journey began in 2008, ten years before he departed Boeing. He experienced a huge illiquidity event where he lost 55% of his assets. In this case, the event was the end of his nineteen-year marriage. After that, he went from living in a beautiful house in the suburbs to what he fondly refers to as the van-down-by-the-river apartment, a run-down studio in a shabby part of town. No small burden was the thousands of dollars in alimony and child support going out the door each month. Shortly thereafter, he read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and his mind was opened to a whole new world of investing, and a way in which he might extricate himself from this financial abyss. One day in the down-by-the-river apartment, he heard an advertisement on the radio for a free real estate seminar put on by Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Company. Having recently finished the book and still filled with the resulting excitement and emotion, he eagerly registered for the event. On the day of the class, his beloved truck wouldn’t start. He felt like he was at a turning point, and there was no way he was going to let this stumbling block deter him. He managed to find a rental car company that would deliver a car to his apartment, and he was off to the seminar. He made his first real estate investment in 2010 when his daughter decided to move off-campus following her freshman year. Not wanting to pay someone else’s mortgage for the next three years, they purchased a duplex near her university, moved her in, and sublet ¾ of the building. They received an $8,000 check as part of President Obama’s first-time homebuyer tax credit, the cash flow and appreciation that followed, and she received some real-world business education while simultaneously managing the building and going to college. Subsequent investments have included: single-family rentals, apartment buildings, notes, health care startups, movie licensing, private lending, craft-beer brewing, self-storage, ATMs, life insurance policies, and cryptocurrencies. He had varying degrees of success and some failures in these endeavors, as one does with any investing. The most important thing he learned, however, was which investments are the best match for him in terms of his skillset, interest, risk tolerance, tax situation, and how much of his time they consume. In the end, his investment of choice ended up being apartment syndications. Through these alternative investments, he climbed out of his post-divorce financial setback and increased his net worth many times over in a relatively short period. It’s noteworthy that the above list does not include stocks, bonds, ETFs, and mutual funds. His stock holdings are limited to small investments in companies with explosive upside-growth potential and limited downside. He left Boeing at the end of 2018 at the age of fifty-six and started The Prolific Investor in an attempt to share what he’s learned so that others might benefit, especially young people who have the benefit of time on their side. Making smarter financial decisions and investments will keep them from leaving millions of dollars on the table as he did and allow them to retire in their thirties or forties instead of their fifties or sixties. His children are grown and blazing their paths in the world. He currently lives in Kent, Washington, with his personal and business partner Marnye Moore. Shownotes: Chris and his investment portfolio How finding Wealth Formula changed his life Wealth Formula Banking Being part of the Wealth Formula Network theprolificinvestor.net