Welcome to The Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and your investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

Josh: So, hey, guys, welcome back. Hey, this is Josh, I am super excited to be back with you as always. And I just want to say thanks to all those people who have left us ratings reviews, engaged in our emails that we send out that have registered on our website to be a passive investor. You know, we don’t have a business without you guys. So you really are a big, big, big part of the machine. And we appreciate you being part of the community. Listen, today I’m interviewing a new friend of mine. His name is Ruben Greth. And Ruben is the host of the Multifamily Syndication Show. It’s actually called the Capital Raiser Show. So check that out in iTunes. He and his company have gone full cycle on eight hundred and fifty units in Arizona, meaning they’ve bought them, stabilized them, increase the rents and then refinance them and or sold them. Ruben got his original start, raising six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a joint venture on a small multifamily deal in the Phenix area before the crash. He then got out of the business for roughly five years. 

Josh: You’re going to hear the story about how he disappeared and went to Mexico and was actually camping on the beaches of Mexico for a while. And now he’s come back and is actually taking the lead in the social media campaigns, the marketing and raising capital for his company, which is called Bakersons. So you can check them out. Bakerson.com. And Ruben does a great job of telling us about his story, but also some tips and tricks that he uses to raise capital, the importance of having a thought leader podcast or a thought leader platform in order to raise capital for your deals and to meet new people and build networks. This is really an amazing show with Ruben. Check it out. Here we go. 

Josh:So hey, Ruben. Hey, man, listen, I’m so excited to have you on the Accelerated Investor podcast, we just got done recording for your podcast, had a great conversation. So welcome. Welcome to Accelerated Investor. 

Ruben: Yeah, we had a sick conversation and I’m super pumped to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Josh: Yeah, you bet man, so I love it here from my guests. Obviously, covid everyone’s like hearing all these mixed signals, especially last year with the political cycle. How ugly that was. Everyone’s getting mixed signals about the economy’s good, the economy’s bad, real estate’s good, real estate’s bad. I’d love to hear what you’re up to today that you’re really excited about going into 2021. What are some things that are getting your gears turning your juices flowing, whether it’s deals with it, your podcast. What are you just excited about that you’re like, man, this is going to be a great year for these reasons.

Ruben: Yeah, man, momentum. So getting into the capital,] raising space and starting to see those millions of dollars of coming in is hell of exciting. Right. So I’ve pretty pumped up about that. And I think that you’re talking about the general public and their perception of what’s going on in multifamily, I guess depends on the market. 

Ruben: But like here in Arizona, like we’ve done better throughout covid in terms of rent collections, which is, I think, a lot of people’s fear. Right. Oh, so with covid, no one’s going to pay their rent because there’s all these different benefits that they can take advantage of in our state. It’s a very landlord friendly state and people have to jump through a hell of a lot of hoops in order to not pay their rent and still stay there. But I know that it’s not the same thing in California, New York, but here in Arizona, man, we’ve done really well throughout covid. So I think a lot of syndicators that are in the space don’t have the same perception about what’s going on as the general public. So I think for a lot of us in the syndication space, we have this moral imperative to share with people that we’re actually doing really well and creating generational wealth for ourselves, for our bloodline and for our investors while we’re making an impact. Right. 

Ruben:So I know that you do have value add or heavy lift properties. We do the same thing that we think that we can create the biggest impact there, get it so that people can raise families in their environments, in the properties that we’re taking a part of and get rid of like these slumlords or these people that are not taking care of the resident or even focus on them or even refer to them as a resident, because so many people are just focused on tenants and making money for themselves and for their investors and really not making an impact. So we’re excited about all those things in our business. 

Josh: Yeah, nice. So you referenced that you left real estate and came back. Tell me more about that. What was the story around like your initial attraction to real estate and then leaving real estate? We talked about that during the preshow. What happened there? 

Ruben: Yeah. And you mentioned, I think either before the podcast or on my podcast that your father or grandfather died at a young age. Same thing happened with me. My father died at fifty-seven years old. But before he passed, he was a doctor, a corporal in the military, a politician. He had all these crazy things going on, but he used to drive me around to his properties in his blue Ford Explorer truck, and I used to see him collecting the rents. And that really planted a seed with me because I wanted to be just like him. So I knew that I wanted to get into real estate at some point and after I graduated college, got into mortgages thinking that would be a stepping stone. I learned finance, but didn’t learn anything other than how to sell a mortgage. So I found this group. They taught me a bunch of strategies and one of the strategies that they taught was multifamily. So I’m like, this is the greatest thing ever. This is so much better than single family dwellings. 

Ruben: And I started a meet up and an investor came in from out of town in San Diego with a bankruptcy because he lost all his money in spec homes in San Diego and started buying all these fourplex plexus during the crash. And we were of the mindset. He was of the mindset that this was going to be the biggest transfer of wealth in the history. And for real estate, it certainly looked like that was the case. So I filmed him at some projects and started posting those videos on YouTube in about 2009 through 2011 and created what now is referred to as a thought leadership platform. I did not know that that’s what I had created, but I use this platform and raised like six hundred thousand dollars to purchase some fourplex is three plexes, twelve plexus and things of that nature. And then he’s like Ruben, you’re so good at the marketing and raising capital. Why don’t you focus on that? We don’t need two machines doing the same thing, underwriting the property and putting locking it down and whatnot. 

Ruben:So I did and we were going to write a book. We were going to do, we were going to go on tour. I got a producer and we were going to film this pilot and pitch to A and E, but. He was so over leveraged by micromanaging the contractors that he started not showing up and we started getting into fights about that and then we split up and that’s when I left real estate because I no longer had anybody to market for the track record was mostly his, although I had some success and I ran it through, I ran into some limiting beliefs, thinking partners are really hard to come by. I can’t do this by myself or I have to do this by myself. And I was spinning my wheels, trying to raise capital without really having anybody to share in the vision. And that just became very frustrating. So I ended up back in corporate America and I can’t be behind a desk. 

Ruben: So after about a year, I quit my job and took off down to Mexico and camped on the beach for about 40 days before I ended up in Playa del Carmen. But somewhere along the way in Acapulco, I met this girl on the streets and we started like becoming friends. Many years later, she asked me to go to New York with her and we started talking a lot. I proposed to her and then about a month later, we got married. And that really inspired me. And I made some changes in my life and was like, I’m going to get back into real estate. And sure enough, I was I was interviewing a bunch of gurus and was about to pay somebody like 30 grand to teach me how to do multifamily syndication. But I interviewed this team here in Arizona, Bakersfield, and I’m like, hey, man, I want to get into syndication. Who do I need on my team? They turned it around on me and they’re like, wait a second. 

Ruben: So you do social media, you’ve raised capital from it. Can you do that for us? And I’m like, well, yeah, I can try it for sure. And I knew that that entailed creating a thought leadership platform. So I started the capital raiser show. And now about 16 months later or 18 months later, I’m starting to reap the benefits of all these conversations that I’ve had. And this exposure and money is starting to come in. And it’s exciting times, man. So I’m about to raise like a million and a half on it on a deal that we’re working on right now. 

Josh: Nice. So tell me about your mindset. What sticks out to me about that is the very last couple of sentences you said where you said you started this thought leadership podcast could be 15, 16, 18 months ago, and now you’re starting to reap the benefits of it. Love the entrepreneurs, real estate investors, e commerce guys. They’re not willing to wait 12 months or 15 months or 18 months to make money. Very similar. What we talked about on your podcast with my long-term vision for me, making investments that I can pass down for generation, a lot of people aren’t even willing to wait a month. You waited 16 months and now that’s really happening. So what’s your feeling now that it’s working? But also, what were you thinking six months ago that gave yourself such a long-term mindset? 

Ruben:Man So I knew that this thing is the train, that it takes a long time to get going. I relate it to the metaphor of the Chinese bamboo tree, which is a seed that you put into the ground and it just sits there for five years. You have to give it fertilizer, you have to give it water and it never breaks the ground. And then in year five, all of a sudden, because it’s got developed, the root system, it grows like 60 to 80 feet in a matter of six weeks. And I knew that this was the same kind of thing in the podcast space, that it’s going to take a long time and a lot of work to get it going. But once it does, man, it’s going to it’s going to create a lot of rewards. And that’s exactly what I’m experiencing now. 

Josh: On a day-to-day basis, Ruben sounds like your primary focus now is podcasting these social media. That’s kind of your swim lane within this larger business, is that right? 

Josh:So I love the marketing side of things, particularly if you’re not selling and you’re just creating relationships. That’s fun. So that’s a lot harder if you’re picking up the phone, dialing for dollars and trying to sell a fifty-thousand-dollar investment on a 30-minute phone call. It’s just very challenging. This long-term strategy is just building relationships and hanging out with people that you like. I kind of relate it to like a high school. This is kind of like a right. So it’s like, you know, there are other people in the multifamily industry. And if you related to high school, it’s like you have some seniors that are like way ahead of you and some other people that are coming up at the same time as you. And you’re just like building relationships and finding out like, who are the cliques? Who are the people that I like? And then once you get in with those people, then all of a sudden you can start doing business with them, raising capital from them. 

Ruben: Or, you know, the other thing, too, is like when I came on board with Bakerson we were raising capital backwards, where we were presenting the deal, thinking that the deal is good enough, the money will come. We had exhausted our friends and family capital. And then as I started the show, I started to realize that at least in terms of limited partner capital, this is a process of nurturing people and educating them and getting them to know I can trust you right away before you can raise capital. So it’s very stress related environment when I walked in, because they’re like, oh, you know, raise capital for us today, I’m like, wait, like we can’t raise capital today if we didn’t plant the seeds yesterday. So I’m planting the seeds the entire time. And now, like I said, 18 months later, it’s starting to starting to come into existence. All nice. 

Josh:So tell me about so I’ve got one investor. You know, I like to hear the story. Like, what’s the investor that you’re working with now that’s finally investing that took the longest to nurture. I’ve got a guy that’s got over a million bucks with us and various apartment syndications. I met him in twenty fifteen. 

Josh: I was introduced through a friend. We played 18 holes. He lived right on Trump National Golf Course. He’s good. If he hears this, he’s going to know who he is and but we laugh about it. So we played golf and he was, you know, was into it, was wanting to invest, wanted what I would say a pretty rich deal from me, like a lot of the equity profit return. And he didn’t invest at all for three years, kept nurturing, sending him emails would reach out to him and text them from time to time, would invite him to webinars. And finally in twenty eighteen made an investment hundred thousand dollars. Now he’s got over a million. You probably have people like that, right, that you’re thinking like that you’re starting to nurture that are you may be kind of slow rolling you. So tell me about people like that and why again long term mindset wins out. 

Ruben: I haven’t been in the business long enough for those people. Right. So like one of one of my focuses, because I understand that limited partner capital takes a long time to build out is really my avatar on this show. It’s a show for active investors has been the code. Right. So bringing somebody in with a database of investors, that’s my avatar is making friends with people like that. Because if we have capital needs right now, we don’t have the time to nurture all these people. But we have to give up a piece of the pie within a co-GP. But that’s better than not doing a deal. Right? So we’re taking down deals with the majority of our capital right now. It’s coming from co-GPs. We did sell off a couple of assets, so our investors freed up some money and they can probably start investing with us again, too. 

Ruben: But, you know, you mentioned in my show the use of psychology and the cell phone beeping a lot in the middle of a presentation. And that’s what I experience way back during the crash even is like, hey, we had we’d get fly somebody into town, take them to the property, let them physically touch it for whatever reason that’s magical to somebody. And then we’d offer them to get in on our deal and they would typically be like, oh, maybe the next one. And then we would close it without them. And all of a sudden we’d be cash flowing astronomically and they’d be like, damn it, I can’t believe I missed out on this deal. I can’t believe how good you’re doing. And then they come back and they’re in on the next deal almost automatically. Right. So. Right. That kind of thing. 

Josh: Yeah. The psychology that you just pointed out is fantastic when you say, hey, by the way, here’s a deal that we presented six months ago or eighteen months ago that you didn’t invest in. I just want to share with you how we’re doing on it, especially when you’re killing it on that property and the cash flow is rich and the preferred return is rich and the equity is good and the rents are going up. We’ve used that for sure. Are on many deals to say like, hey, it’s just a little nudge, right, to say, hey, by the way, you’re missing out, hey, by the way, you’re missing out. That’s fantastic stuff. So help me understand, Ruben. I love to talk to our guests about their structure. 

Josh: So, again, this is not an offer. I want to make the disclaimer. This is not an offer to raise capital. So we got to get that out of the way. Ruben’s building relationships and is a guest on the show. But I would like to hear, Ruben, about the structure of your deals. How are you buying them? Is it is a bridge financing? Is it permanent financing? Are you buying buildings in the pathway of progress in the pathway of growth, or are you doing a heavy value ads? And what are some kind of bullet points around a typical LP structure? What do they get for returns? Again, we’re not making anybody an offer. Let’s make that clear. But what does that kind of structure look like for you? 

Ruben: We could talk about the business model, which I will state right up front, that it’s been evolving. So over the last four years, we’ve been purchasing a lot of properties in Phenix and in Tucson that are very heavy lift kind of properties. In some cases, we’ve gone all the way down to zero vacancy. Now, obviously, you’re not going to get agency debt on anything that’s less than 90 percent occupied. So we use bridge financing. We purchased the property. We go in and we have a construction manager oversees everything. We rebuild. It cannot occupy it yet. I’ll get it into a situation where residents can grow and have a family there. Right. So clean up the neighborhood, have an impact that way. And then basically we sell it to the next investor, like in eighteen to twenty-four months with a lot of meat on the bone, still never going into full blown agency debt financing and keeping it. 

Ruben:So we’ve kind of gone through this mindset shift where, you know, a lot of the team members are like, why do we keep on selling these? We should start keeping some of these. But like our CEO has been an adrenaline junkie, and every time he sells a property and gets that big amount of cash, a return of investment, that gets him really excited the same way like a gambler in Vegas would. Yeah, but so a lot of us have been telling him, hey, let’s keep some of these. So we’ve shifted our focus to what we now refer to as legacy investing, where we buy an asset, fix it with using bridge financing, fix it resident, occupy it and then basically keep it forever. So some of our investors are used to investing the old school way and they may not. 

Ruben: They want their return pretty fast or their money back pretty fast. And we have to have a different class of investors or a different style of investors to come in. And the way that we’ve addressed this, because some people are like, I don’t want to put my money into something forever. I’m like sixty five years old. I don’t know if in forever I can really reap the rewards of this. So what we do is we create a structure where in year two or year four or a combination of both of those, we refinance, get the investor, the majority of their principal back, or maybe after the second refinance the entire principal back and they get that back because it’s principal, not profits. And they can redeploy it into a new deal. 

Ruben: But we keep those investors in the deal so they cash flow with us into the sunset, but they can redeploy their original investment into multiple deals with us or with whatever they want to do. So that’s been exciting because now instead of saying, hey, we’re going to keep your money forever, they just keep it in for a little while and then get their money back and can redeploy it into new deals. So typically, you mentioned preferred rates. It’s not too different than what a lot of syndicators do. It’s a 70 30 split or sixty-fivethirty-five, depending on the deal and how much work we’re doing to it and how hard it is to acquire it, things of that nature. And then we just do an eight percent pref and then a catch up. So they basically get paid before we do. And then at some point if we get to a certain waterfall level, like 15 percent return, then the split switches to fifty fifty. And I’m not sure if the audience can follow along with that. There’s definitely lots of webinars on waterfall splits and how that works, but it’s not too different than what a lot of other people are doing. 

Josh: Ruben, now that you’re back in the real estate, doing it primarily on the social media side and raising capital side, if you weren’t doing what you’re doing now, what would you be doing? 

Ruben: Well, I mentioned I think that I went to Mexico. I spent a lot of time down and camping in Mexico, if you weren’t raising capital. Life is so cheap down there, you can get like a two bedroom, three bath condo about a mile from the beach for like a couple hundred bucks and then just basically cruise to the beach, go snorkeling. Like I mentioned, I think in the previous show that, like I’ve been in schools of barracudas is kind of freaky and other places where there’s turtles hanging out and stingrays and things, things that animals like that and all these cool little creatures underwater. And then what I really love about that area of the world is they have these things called Senate this, which are like caves of water where you can go scuba diving or snorkeling and go underneath. And there’s these systems of tunnels that connect the two caves together. And it’s a magical underwater world down there. So the freshwater so not this. And then the beaches where the Corona commercials are filmed and all the archeological ruins like Chichen Itza and Cuba, and to loom like all that stuff is just very fascinating for me. 

Ruben:So I would probably spend a lot of time down there and then see if I can make an impact by raising capital for either myself and my company here in the United States, or create a fund and direct people’s money into a variety of different sponsorship deals. So I think I can do that abroad. And from there, like the passions that I have are on animal abuse, like I love German shepherds. So I probably go into some kind of charity that involves that or maybe even like in Africa, I see a lot of poaching going on. And I’ve seen some graphic movies where people kill elephants and then take a chainsaw and start cutting those tusks. I can’t stand that. So I’d like to make take my generational wealth and make an impact in those kind of environments. 

Josh:So when you think about that, do you ever think, well, because I’m a cancer survivor, we talked about that on your show. So I often think about what can I do now? What parts of that bucket list, what parts of that future lifestyle can I do right now? 

Ruben: That’s another area that I want to explore is the cancer research. I have a degree in chemistry and I have a major research bug. So I learned all these like ten different strategies for curing cancer. And I used to have this mission where I was going to do this, eradicate cancer organization. And then I started realizing that people that cure cancer get murdered because pharmaceutical companies have such a large stake in the game. They don’t want somebody to create a solution that will cut into their profits. 

Ruben: Now, with technology and the Internet, things are changing and people are starting to share new ideas on small levels that are helping people. And it’s, I think, becoming less prevalent where people are getting murdered for curing cancer because there’s too many people to take off the planet to remove from the planet. So it’s something that I need to explore again. Maybe I’ll go back down that road because I know that some of the cures that I know of can absolutely alter people’s lives. Like I’m talking about reversing stage for cancer through natural cures like ketogenic diet, because I believe a cancer cell, the food that the cancer cell gets is from glucose. And if you remove glucose from your diet, there is a process that a certain level of ketone metabolism where you’re just metabolizing fat into energy instead of sugar and energy and cancer cells cannot do that. So they die when there’s no glucose. And you can you can create that system in your body by just going ketogenic. So it sounds crazy. That also cures epilepsy and a bunch of other things. 

Ruben:So we’ll see then I might go down that road and see how many people I can help with some of those strategies that are natural, that don’t cost anybody any money, that will put some pharmaceutical companies in danger of losing profits. But yeah, got to do it carefully because I like my life and I will write one hundred and one hundred and ten years old probably, and still be snowboarding and having a great life. So we’ll see. 

Josh: There you go. So I’ve got some rapid fire questions for you as we kind of wrap up this podcast. Number one, what piece of advice would you give to somebody raising their first hundred thousand or half a million dollars of capital? What’s the one thing you think they should do to get going? 

Ruben: Relax a little bit and focus on creating relationships and building a huge circle of influence? So a lot of people talk about let me figure out how to convert instead of one investor out of ten to two investors out of ten. And really what they should be focused on is getting in front of two thousand people instead of increasing their percentage change. Right. So that’s one of the first things that I learned. I had a mentor that taught me to build huge network. So that’s what I’m doing through the corporate show, through social media is just building out enough relationships where raising capital becomes easier. So, yeah, focus on building a huge network. 

Josh: Got it. Who has been the biggest and best mentor in your life and why? 

Ruben: Wayne Dyer. Even though I’ve never met him and he’s passed, I still study all of his work, whether it’s like CDs or even got a couple of movies just because. It helps me be an approach life from a place of peace and goodness and also from a place of attracting things into your life and believing that you can manifest things. So that has changed my entire life perspective and allows me to talk about spirituality on my show, which is really cool because it’s a real estate podcast. But I get to talk about spiritual things because it’s my platform. But yeah, it’s all about being a good person and being at peace and being happy along the way, because some people are so focused on the science of achievement, achievement and not the artificial filament that when they get their goals are free and miserable. So it’s about enjoying the process along the way. Right. 

Josh: Love it. Favorite book or course training outside of real estate? That has nothing to do with real estate. 

Ruben: The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer. Absolutely love that book. And it does talk about attracting things and contemplating things as though you already have them. You’re already connected to those things. You just have to figure out how to operate in such a way so that you can attract those things into your life. 

Josh: Got it. And final question. What advice would you give somebody doing their first multifamily syndication? 

Ruben: Study a lot, know what you’re doing. I guess the best advice would be if if possible, is to align yourself with somebody that’s already got a track record and either that or have a mentor at some capacity that can help you because it’s a team sport, can’t do it by yourself. And I think a lot of single-family flippers are so of the mindset that I have to do this by myself, that it’s a major roadblock for them to scale their business. As soon as they start embracing the team sport concept, it helps grow and scale significantly. 

Josh: Love it. Now, Ruben, you mentioned you guys are doing a lot of coaching staff, people that have databases or people that you could potentially passive invest in a deal or just really looking to build your network. If people on my show, our audience wanted to engage with you and your company, what could they find you? 

Ruben: Where should they connect with you so they can check me out to capitalraisershow.com or check out our investment company, Bakerson at Bakerson.com. Or reach out to me. I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. My handle on Instagram is at Capital Raiser. Find me on Facebook. I’m pretty much everywhere other than Twitter, so just reach out. 

Josh: Fantastic stuff. Awesome. Ruben, listen, I had a great time on this show as well as your show. Thanks so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor. 

Ruben: Amazing man. Thank you so much for having m. Been honored to be here. 

Josh:So hey there, guys. I hope you appreciate it. And I’d really like that interview with Ruben from Bakerson. Check him out of Bakerson.com. Also check out his show again, The Capital Raiser Show. And if you are interested in seeing some of our deal flow deals that we have that you can invest in passively, go to FreelandVentures.com/passive to register on our platform. And there you can see our deals. You can get our syndication, see our private placements and potentially invest in one of our deals. So check that out at FreelandVenture.com/passive. Also, if you have a deal that you are looking to partner on, we partner with other operators. Go to FreelandVentures.com/criteria and you’ll see the criteria of the deals that we do. 

Josh: And finally, if you are interested in getting coached, you have your own deals. You want to do them on your own. You want to learn more about multifamily syndication, raising money, flipping houses or doing commercial apartment deals. Go to JoshCantwellcoaching.com. Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. We’ll talk to you next time.

You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five-star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear newepisodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up todate on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey towardthe lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.