Hey this is the Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell. Welcome back. For many of our listeners, you may be familiar with Strategic Real Estate Coach radio. You know, years ago we adopted podcasting and interviewing not only my students, but industry experts specifically about real estate investing and we’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of downloads and hundreds of reviews and ratings of that podcast. And then we were dumb enough to stop doing it. And what I wanted to do in this episode of Accelerated Investor was to basically relaunch, our podcast, an interview series and relaunch a lot of our trainings under a brand new brand. It’s called Accelerated Investor with Josh Cantwell.

I’m so excited that you’re here. I’m so excited that we could be here with you. Now the whole point of this interview series, this podcast is just to pass along some of my expert, you know, experiences pass along some interviews that I’ve done with some amazing entrepreneurs and it’s really geared for three types of people. One for real estate investors, for you to make better real estate investments. Two for those of you that want to make alternate investments. So we’ll bring you guests and we’ll bring you people who are investing in things outside of real estate like crypto currency, cannabis, options, trading, and other ways to make money in the markets. And finally, number three is for those of you that want to develop either yourself or your business to a higher level, you want to be a better CEO, a better entrepreneur, a better husband, a better father, a better mother.

We’re going to give you specific tips on self management, self development, ways to eliminate, overwhelm, eliminate distraction, become more focus, and build a more amazing life for you and for the people that you love. You know, my entrepreneurial journey actually starts in high school by just observing and watching my father. My father Paul Cantwell started a employee benefits business with just two employees, him and one other person, and eventually built that into a team of 40 people and had, at one time his largest client was Advanced Auto Parts with over 30,000 employees that my father insured. And I got to observe him and how he worked and how he hustled, how he got to work early and stayed late and how he grew his business and grew as employees and the key people that he had in his business.

And I was able to grow that into a multimillion-dollar business. And eventually how I was able to have a condo on the beach and an amazing Thunderbird as his third car, it was his dream car when he was a kid. You know, to be able to take us on amazing vacations all around the world and to be an amazing Christian father. And I was able to watch him and observe him in high

school. You know, I pride myself on the fact that I’ve never had a boss when I graduated from college I got a very expensive, you know, liberal arts degree and, and played college football. My Dad almost lost it when I went into the insurance and financial services business on an all commission position at 21 years old. You know, by the time I was 24, 25, I had bought my first investment property and it’s a duplex that I still own today that is nearly paid off that will pay for my kid’s college education.

You know, so one of the lessons that I want to impart upon you now, it doesn’t matter what you do for a living, whether you’re a CEO, you’re a digital marketing business and ECOMM company, a real estate investor, you know, you invest in the markets in some other way. I’m going to tell you that you don’t wait to buy real estate no matter what you do. You buy real estate and wait, by the time my kids are in college, those buildings and those properties will be paid off and they will pay for my kid’s college education with zero money out of my own pocket because my tenants pay my mortgage and my mortgage got paid down to zero and I own the asset free and clear. And so I fell in love with real estate by watching books and attending seminars. You know, 20, 21, 22, 23 years old.

I realized that my absolute most wealthiest clients in the financial services world didn’t just have assets in the market, they owned real estate. And I took notice I loved it and I fell in love. And by the time 2003, 2004 rolled around, I had, you know, been out of college for about five years and I quit my job cold turkey. I quit my career as a financial adviser cold turkey to jump into real estate full time. Since then I’ve invested in over 700 deals, flipping properties, wholesaling properties, doing rehab flips, short sales, pre-foreclosures, marketing to motivated sellers. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct mail. We flipped hundreds and hundreds of properties. And then in 2011, I got sick. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease with just a 6% to 8% survival rate, the same disease that took the life of Steve Jobs and Luciano Pavarotti and some of our favorite actors and actresses.

And you know, it just destroyed people’s lives because it’s such a devastating terminal disease. Well, for whatever reason, I was chosen to be one of the 6 or the 8 that survive. And so now, 7 or 8 years after my surgery and my recovery, I’m very healthy. Although I don’t have any of my insides, I don’t have my stomach, I don’t have my gallbladder, I don’t have my spleen, I don’t have most of my liver, I don’t have most of my pancreas. But my surgeon, Dr. Matthew Walsh saved my life. And you know, I had to relearn how to eat. I had to relearn everything about my world. And at that time, you know, I had a three year old, a two year old and a newborn. And so you’ll learn in this podcast, you’ll learn about my disease, you’ll learn about my recovery, you’ll learn about my surgery, you’ll learn about what we went through.

But you also learn that at that time I fell in love with real estate all over again. I fell in love with entrepreneurship. I fell in love with being a CEO. I fell in love all over again with being a leader and I fell in love with raising money. I became an expert at raising capital and I originally raised money just to do my own rehab flips and invest in some small commercial properties and, you know, invest in some small rental portfolios. And by 2015, 2016 we had so much extra money that I had raised from private investors that we started our own private equity fund. And so

today I invest exclusively inside my private equity fund. I invest exclusively for passive income. And so we invest in private lender loans and hard money loans. And we own the debt and we earn a 12% to 15%, 19%, 20%, 25% return on the loans that we make.

And we also invest in apartment deals. We invest in value add apartments where we can invest money in equity and within one to three years we can get all of our principal back and remain owners in that building in perpetuity. We also run a private equity fund and that private equity fund creates passive income. And so my passion today is on controlling capital. And because if you can control capital, you can invest in businesses, you can invest from your self-directed IRA, you can invest in real estate, you can become a bigger business, a better CEO when you’re not bootstrapping it. So it doesn’t matter if you own an ECOMM company or you own a manufacturing company, or you’re looking to invest in the markets or invest in real estate, or you just want to be a better leader or a better husband or a better wife, a better father and mother.

The Accelerated Investor Podcast is going to tell you about my insights, my journey as a multi, you know seven figure investor as a multi company owner, as the CEO of multiple businesses in both raising money in real estate and education and coaching in creating digital marketing funnels. We’ve done all of that and we’ve been really successful. We’ve also had tremendous amount of challenges.

So I find it therapeutic to tell you about all my screw ups, all my challenges, all my dumpster fires, all the things that I’ve done wrong, to tell you about those because it reminds me of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. And so I hope through The Accelerated Investor, you know, the people that we bring on, the people that we interview, the times that I’m on just by myself and doing these podcasts, these interviews, these YouTube videos that you can just help you along your journey of being a successful entrepreneur to help you develop yourself and the absolute best version of you that you can be.

You’re going to hear some hilarious stories of things that we’ve totally gotten wrong. You’ll hear some stories of success and things we got right. You’ll probably hear us cry and tell stories about things that nearly destroyed us along the way. But The Accelerated Investor is my way to give back to you to help you along your journey, whether you’re new, intermediate, or advanced. I can’t wait to meet you. I can’t wait to talk to you. I can’t wait to share our stories. I hope that you share your stories with us. So welcome the Accelerated Investor with Josh Cantwell. I can’t wait to be a part of your life going forward. Take care.