Chris Larsen - Financial Freedom By 40

What if you stopped waiting until retirement to start living? Chris Larsen, founder of Next-Level Income, made it his mission to achieve financial freedom after losing his father at a young age and his best friend at just 18. While building a successful career in medical device sales, Chris quietly built a real estate portfolio, starting with his first rental property at age 21 with less than $3,000 down. Over time, his passive income grew to the point where his paycheck became optional.

Today, Chris helps investors build wealth through commercial real estate investments across multifamily, self-storage, car washes, and senior housing, with more than $2 billion in acquisitions since 2016. In this episode, he shares the principles behind his new book, How to Be Financially Free by Forty, and the strategies he used to create financial freedom, lasting wealth, and a life lived on his own terms.

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Transcript

Higher Returns With Real Estate

SPEAKER_00 0:00

But what I learned, Mike, was I could get better returns. My returns were going to double. I could get better tax benefits. I could get the depreciation that came through with those multifamily investments. And it was passive. So I didn't have to deal with it. Now it wasn't perfect. That first investment I made actually had a capital call because a hurricane came through the area where the apartment was in Houston and it blew the roof off of uh 20 of the units. And you know, things kind of stalled. It ended up working out. We still made money on that investment.

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Welcome to the Real Freedom Show.

Mike Swenson 0:35

We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom, where we talk about different ways that people build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website freedomthroughrealestate.com. It's where we put all of our content, all of our great podcast episodes for you to be able to learn, listen, and hopefully be inspired by other people's stories of how they're pursuing that inside of their real estate career. Today, super excited. We've got an amazing guest, Chris Larson. Chris has, I'm sure you'll share in your story, you know, gone through some some tough times early on, and you were able to see that people waiting till 65 to enjoy their retirement might not be the path that uh is worth taking. And so you got into real estate early, as well as the sales industry and and being able to see how high earners, you know, aren't really focused as much on building great assets and you are. So you run next level income, helping accredited investors put their capital in commercial real estate syndications across multifamily self-storage car washes, senior housing, over $2 billion in acquisitions since 2020 six. Also author of the book How to Be Financially Free by 40. Excited to hear from you, Chris, and have you on the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Mike, thanks for having me on. Yeah. Love what you're doing with your podcast here and excited to talk about it. And yeah, this is uh one of the first episodes here. We're talking about our new book. So thank you for mentioning that.

Mike Swenson 2:15

Well, take us back a little

Why Chris Chased Freedom Early

Mike Swenson 2:16

bit. I I love to hear people, you know, kind of the question why real estate and kind of what took you down that original path, and and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Absolutely. And uh if you're listening, that book's free. It's an ebook. You can go to nextlevelincome.com forward slash financial freedom book and get your free copy. Um and it really it walks through Mike step by step what I've learned through, you know, successes, but also mistakes since I started at 21. And yeah, I bought my first property at 21 and really, you know, kind of looking back through my life, you kind of mentioned some of the losses and some of the things that as I looked back over time, I realized it it really became ingrained in my brain and put an urgency behind, you know, really not only my my search for financial freedom, but really, like you said, really making the most out of every day. Um, you know, my my father passed away when I was five, my best friend passed away when he was 18, I was 19. Um, I watched my mother pass away from cancer in 2011, and I watched how she was trying to get to retirement as a teacher, and but she got too sick too fast and wasn't able to take advantage of that. So, you know, what we teach at next level income is a lot like what what you do, Mike, which is you know, teach people how to use investments that create passive cash flow to really replace you know their expenses, you know, their income, their active income, so that they can really live life on their own terms. And, you know, for me, that started like you in residential real estate, and then you know, moved into commercial. We became um passive investors back in 2013 in multifamily, specifically value add deals, which we're still a huge fan of. Um, and you know, by by about mid-30s, you know, we were able to hit that point where I was still working, you know, sometimes 60, 80, 100-hour weeks in medical device sales, but I didn't have to do it anymore. And that really gave me the opportunity to step back from being on call for 12 years, spend more time with my family. My boys are now 16 and 14, and you were we're able to make sure that we're focused on you know the priorities in life. And, you know, we started syndicating deals um back in 2016, and we try to offer those to our investors as well so they can, you know, pursue the same life of freedom that we did as

Replacing Income Beats Waiting For 65

SPEAKER_00 4:30

well.

Mike Swenson 4:30

Talk to us a little bit about you know, call your colleagues in sales. You know, obviously you were you were focused on real estate, you had been exposed to it. But for people that maybe haven't, where are they kind of putting their eggs? What baskets and kind of what are they thinking of in terms of how am I building this nest egg for the future outside of of those real estate opportunities?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, absolutely. And and this is exactly what I wrote the book about, which is you know, we're taught, you know, as Robert Kiyosaki says in Rich Dad Poor Dad, you know, go to school, get a degree, get a good job, invest for 40 years until you're 65, and then you know, hope that your money doesn't run out so you can, you know, enjoy the years you have left. As I mentioned, my that didn't work for my mother. You know, she had a great pension, she had great health care, you know, she had a great retirement plan, but she didn't even get to the point where where she could enjoy any of that, unfortunately. So, you know, even if you were like me, where you're in a sales career, where you have a lot higher earning capacity, you know, making, you know, two, three, four, five, six hundred thousand dollars a year, you're you're working a lot. And one of the things I've heard from so many investors over the years, Mike, is I I just don't know if I can do this another 20 years. You know, you hit that point where, you know, you're in your late 30s, 40s, early 50s, and you say, well, I I enjoy what I'm doing, but I don't know if I can do this another 10 or 20 years, you know, and I'm I'm missing my kids' events. I'm like me, I miss like Mother's Day or birthdays, and it just it just wears you out. And you just say, Well, I don't know if I can do this. And, you know, what what I found is if you take that old broken way of, you know, working towards retirement, which we hate, we hate that word in our house, it's a four-letter word, you know, and move towards financial freedom, what happens is you you say, wait a minute, I don't, I don't have to do this. And a lot of times when you don't have to do something, you either enjoy it more or maybe you can take a slightly different option. We've got a lot of surgeons that are investors, and they say, Oh, I'm working less hours, or maybe working part-time as a doctor, or they don't have as much pressure on them. So maybe they can, you know, take a different role with a different institution and those sorts of things. So I think, you know, if you go from focusing on, you know, save, save your income, put it into a 401k versus taking your excess savings and putting it into cash flow investments, real estate is our favorite, as it sounds like is yours, and probably a lot of you all listening here today, that creates true freedom, not this you know, accumulation, but this replacement of income is what we talk about.

Mike Swenson 7:04

I

Real Estate Risk And Better Questions

Mike Swenson 7:05

was uh meeting with a group of of people last week and people that maybe had invested in a single family home or a duplex, maybe had a bad experience. And so they are heavily invested in 401ks and stocks and things like that. And when I was talking about real estate, they were, I guess, skeptical in their approach, like in their questions, like, well, what I argued is you know, stocks out of your control in some ways. You know, you've got C-level employees making decisions and shareholders and boards of directors that you have to answer to. And so they're not always making decisions in your best interest. In real estate, you're more in control of that. And they had said, well, but what you know, the market's been tough. Interest rates are high, you know, values can go down. Why would I want to invest in that? And and so for people out there that aren't ready to take that initial risk, how do you approach those questions with people about why real estate is a good option to be able to create that cash flow? Because they might hear, shoot, with interest rates as high as they are, I don't know if I can get cash flow.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah. No, that's a that's a great question. So let me let me break that into a couple pieces with the answer. So, number one, you know, the stock market goes up and down. You know, we have record high P multiples, you know, market could drop, you know, 20, 30, 40 percent. Um, you know, we got central bank intervention, we could go on and on about, you know, that sort of thing. But you know, there's so many risk variables when it comes to owning a stock or, you know, the stock market. And look, real estate has its risks as well. You know, whether you're talking about single family, right now prices are super high, interest rates are super high. It's hard to make a piece of single family real estate cash flow today. Um, multifamily, yeah, it's been a tough market the past few years. We're seeing some really great discounts right now in the market, as you probably are as well, Mike. So, you know, we're picking up a deal right now with assumable debt in uh Houston, Texas, and it's gonna be great cash flow from day one. Um, you know, it's uh it's gonna have a heavy value, uh, a pretty large value add component, but you know, low LTV. So I think as you're getting into those initial investments as an investor, you have to walk before you run. You have to understand the different components. And what I would say to you know, anyone like you were mentioning, Mike, is you know, don't invest before you're you're you know, have an understanding or have a degree of comfort. You're going to have to, you know, take a leap of faith to a certain degree at some point. But the other thing is, you know, there are different areas. Like we have a debt fund, it's a hard money lending fund. So investors can get um six to 10%. The money's liquid, they can get their money back in 90 days. That's a way for a lot of our investors that, you know, say, well, I'm not really sure yet. They can kind of dip their toe in, they can get cash flow from day one. Um, we actually have a private credit fund, you know, so it allows investors to invest throughout the capital stack. So, you know, there's what I would say to an investor like that is there's single family, there's multifamily, there's other commercial properties out there, but you can also invest on the debt side. So when rates are really high like they are now, and you're the bank, as we are in in in those two funds that I mentioned, you know, you can get double-digit cash flow and you know, not necessarily have to lock your money up. Now, that doesn't necessarily have all the same benefits that we love, you know, with your traditional multifamily where you get you know longer-term appreciation, you get depreciation on that. But what I would say to those investors is there's there's other options out there where you can kind of walk before you run in these investments. And again, when rates are high, you can you can be the bank in in a lot of ways, and you can take advantage of the high interest rates and the equity that's in those properties.

Building Wealth While Working 100 Hours

Mike Swenson 10:44

Bigger question that I was uh planning on getting into kind of early on, but take us back a little bit to your early days. You know, obviously you're you're in medical device sales, you talked about that, you've got your peers running in one direction, you're kind of thinking about a different direction. Um, talk about being able to balance your starting slow, you know, picking up momentum while working your 60, 80, 100 hour a week job and uh kind of trying to do both paths at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah. So I think I I had a benefit. I had somebody hand me a copy of Rich Dad Bordeaux in a bookstore back in uh 2000 and I read it, and Robert Kiyosaki talked about, you know, becoming accredited and he was a sales guy and got into real estate, which really resonated with me. I'd already bought my first single family property. So a lot of people ask me, Mike, when they learn about my story, they say, Well, when did you move from medical device sales to real estate? However, that's that's wrong. I actually got into real estate. I bought my first piece of property at 21 in college. I bought the next one the following year. I continued to acquire properties after that, but I ran out of money. So I needed a career that would fuel my investments. And that led me to look for careers that would help me to become accredited, um, which again, I I've read that in Rich Dad Porta. I was like, well, hey, I want to be accredited, I want to get access to you know these syndications. I know you guys do um 506B offerings, which has a little more leeway for investors that might be a little bit earlier on in their journey, which is awesome. That's how we we started as well. But um, so my focus, Mike, was if I can buy a property or make an investment every year for 10 years, within 10 years, I should have enough, you know, passive income to you know support my lifestyle. Now, what I will say is it took us a little longer because the great financial crisis hit, you know, kind of right in the middle of that. So that kind of you know slowed it down. But if you take a long-term approach, you say, hey, I'm gonna make one fifty or a hundred thousand dollar investment a year for 10 years, it's incredible what that compounding effect does over time. So, you know, I think you have to take a long-term view of that, which is what I did. I said, Hey, you know, I actually looked at 15 years because I bought my first property at 21. My goal was to be financially independent by 35. So I said, hey, 15 years, if I can buy these single family properties and pay them off in 15 years, I'm I'm set off 10 grand a month coming in. We eventually moved into multifamily because it was easier to scale. Um, there was less work. We didn't have to, you know, sign our personal credit for those properties. I didn't have to get the phone calls like I did on my honeymoon in Costa Rica, you know, from the from one of my tenants and have to deal with some headaches with respect to that. Um, so again, what what I what I did was I took a long-term view. You know, I'd say five, 10, 15 years is a great timeline. And then when you focus on that, it's very motivating because you see that cash flow build, you know, every quarter, every year. And, you know, you're you're motivated to save more and make more. And, you know, in my book, I talk about kind of the steps you can take to automate that savings, save before you spend, and you know, really hypercharge that savings and that investment.

Scaling Into Multifamily For Taxes

Mike Swenson 13:49

So talk about, you know, as as people start small and scale big, you know, obviously you mentioned you know, starting small for you and picking up properties. When and kind of how did you get into some of the the larger multifamily, or maybe kind of mid-size into the larger multifamily?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah. So um, you know, during one of those pivotal points, um, you know, my mom had passed away a year later. My wife and I um she she gave birth to our second son. And we did this assessment and I was looking at all my my portfolio, and I was getting like a 7% return on the equity in my single family properties. And this was back in 2012. I was like, man, after paying tax, because I'd phased out of some of the tax benefits I got when I was making less money. And after I really after I got married, our tax rate, you know, doubled. So, you know, if you think about that, you know, my tax rate was like 10%, then it went to 20%, but we were making three times more. So, you know, I was paying, what is that, like 60% more tax than I was when I was single. So I was like, okay, this is great. We're making more money, but we're paying so much in tax, we're paying six figures in tax. Um, there's gotta be a better way. And I was talking to somebody in a meeting, um, like a mastermind meeting that I was with with my wife, and he said, Oh, you should look into you know multifamily in res uh investments. And this was um end of 20 end of 2012. And I was like, Yeah, I've looked into it a while back. It's a little different. He goes, Well, there's some cool tax benefits, and I was like, All right, I need to take another look. So he introduced me to his friend that um is still a friend of mine. We actually did our first uh acquisition as a JV partnership with them in 2016 on a hundred unit property we bought in Atlanta, um, which we're actually selling. By the time this podcast airs, we'll probably sell it. It's been 10 years, which is kind of exciting. Um but what I learned, Mike, was I could get better returns. My returns were gonna double. I could get better tax benefits, I could get the depreciation that came through with those multifamily investments, and it was passive. So I didn't have to deal with it. Now, it wasn't perfect. That first investment I made actually had a capital call because a hurricane came through the area where the apartment was in Houston, and it blew the roof off of uh 20 of the units, and you know, things kind of stalled. It ended up working out. We still made money on that investment. Um, but I wanted to highlight that because you know, you're you are investing in in real property, which has inflation benefits, it has cash flow benefits, it has depreciate depreciation benefits. But you know, there's real world risks out there. We live in Asheville, North Carolina. We got hit by Helene, Hurricane Helene, and it it really had a really negative effect on our local properties. So, you know, I think as long as you're going into things eyes wide open, you know, that's really important. But, you know, I still still am a believer in multifamily. I sold all my single family rentals um, you know, since uh since that first investment. And, you know, it's overall been a very positive experience. And, you know, we started syndicating deals, but even when I was working, you know, it was a lot easier to scale our investments without having to go and you know manage the single family rentals and deal with tenant turnover and um, you know, do all of those things myself where I could go make more money, you know, improving my business in the medical device side.

Mike Swenson 17:09

It's a challenging piece, you know, working with investors because you know, you're trying to project a future that you don't know what's gonna happen, and you're you're basing it on, you know, percentage of income increase, percentage of expense increase, and you know, this and that and the other. And then, like you said, life happens. Hopefully, most apartment buildings don't have hurricanes that come through. So that's probably on the high end in terms of the risks that can happen, but you do have tenant issues and you know, whatever it might be. And so that's the tough part is you're trying to make an investor feel safe and secure in their investment, and yet knowing that life happens, and it's I, you know, the phrase I kind of use is this is real people, right? Real people are managing the properties, living in the properties, and stuff happens. And so we're not trying to, it's that balance of not wanting to over-promise and under-deliver. You want to try to underpromise and over-deliver, but yeah, you're trying to get an investor to be excited about putting their money with you. And so it's it's that happy medium of trying to project positivity and yet let them know the risks that are are in play there.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Exactly. And and you bring up a great point, which is you know, you need to you need to invest with an operator that you trust and that can say, hey, here's our track record. You know, if you're an investor, great questions are hey, like, you know, tell me about some, you know, some of the downsides that could happen. Like what how would you deal with those? Like, what did what did you all do when the roof blew off of the apartments? Okay, well, this is what happened and this is what it looked like. And, you know, it's like, okay, like I can, I can manage that because they communicated to me. They told me what was going on. And that, I'll tell you what, that is a lot better than if you're invested in the stock market and there's a CEO scandal or you know, the market drops because you know, somebody bombs Iran. Um, you know, there's there's all these things, you know, there's all these variables out there with the stock market. You know, we're we're kind of used to it because we've we've seen it if we've been investing for for a long time. So, you know, if you're new, you know, it's good, it's good to ask those questions. And I think you know, you need to be comfortable with the uncertainty that's that's out there. Um, just like anything. If you get in your car and you drive to the store today or you drive to work today, you know, there's that's probably the biggest risk you're gonna take today in anything you do. You know, there's a lot of uncertainty there, but we're comfortable with it because we know that there's a real benefit to having the freedom and the ability to move around with the risk of potentially getting into a car accident and having something like that happen. So there's risks in all areas of life, and you just need to be, you know, comfortable with those. But, you know, and you know, as I talked about in my first book, you know, the risk-adjusted returns in multifamily are superior or the same or superior to anything else out there. So, you know, even with that risk baked in, the returns are still fantastic.

Diversifying With Value-Add Strategies

Mike Swenson 19:50

Now, uh, you've dipped into other asset classes, self-storage, car wash, senior housing, things like that. You mentioned, you know, kind of the the debt funds, different things that you have. Talk about kind of that expansion from single family, small, multifamily, you know, mid-sized multifamily to now looking at some other some other asset classes and some other things that you guys are doing.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah. So if if you if you had to pin me down, Mike, and say, hey, what's what's your favorite asset class? It would still be multifamily residential real estate. I think that the demographics are are terrific. It's still way more affordable to rent than it is to buy right now. Um, you know, for mobility, for you know, multiple different reasons. Renting is still, you know, very popular in this country, and we we don't have enough supply. We're still under supply, especially in terms of affordable product that's out there. Um, but we've got a lot of investors with a lot of investments in multifamily. And, you know, I personally have branched out to you know, some of those other asset classes, and some of those we did offer to investors as well. You know, so if if you've been investing for a period of time, I would say, first off, you want to invest in what makes sense to you, as I mentioned earlier. So if you say, hey, you know, I've been talking to Mike, these multifamily properties make a lot of sense from demographics. I understand the cash flow, the tax benefits, that's great. But let's say you've been investing for five or 10 years and you say, Well, I've got all this money, just like in the stock market, I've got all this money in large cap stocks. Maybe you diversify into some small cap stocks, maybe you diversify into some international stocks, you know, maybe you have some bonds in your portfolio. You know, I have an MBA and portfolio management, and that's what you do to lower your risk. So you diversify. And, you know, as we grew our investment portfolio, we diversified into some of these other complementary asset classes. Now, I will say, still at the core of all of those investments is the value add strategy. You know, what we love to do is we love to go in, I think, as you guys do too, Mike, and you know, buy a property, um, either either fix it up physically, as we're doing with this property in Houston, or improve it operationally. And when you do that, you can get great cash flow from the outset. You can increase cash flow over time and you can force appreciation upward when you do that. So you know whether it's been multifamily or self-storage or the or the car washes or the or the senior housing, they all for the most part have that value add component across those different asset classes. So again, I would say if you're if you're getting started, I think multifamily is a great place to start out, again, given given the risks. But even in multifamily, you can invest in ground up development. You can buy brand new like lease up deals. You can buy a value add deal like we're buying that's not that old. It's never been, you know, never had any repairs. Or you can buy something that maybe is is 30, 40 years old. You can um we've done some different projects with the city of Houston where we go in and we have an affordability component where we put it in different tax programs as is a part of our value add. So I would say even if you're investing in you know one specific type of asset, there's a lot of different flavors in that. So I don't want to don't want to dump too much on on the listeners here today. But but pick an asset class that you're interested in, learn about that. Work with an operator like yourself, Mike, that understands it you know deeply in a specific area, you know, make make your investments there when you feel comfortable. And maybe that's all you do. Maybe you only invest in multifamily or single family. But if you have a large portfolio and you want to start diversifying out then you can start looking into those other asset classes as well.

Easy Button Investing And Final Links

Mike Swenson 23:30

Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence and managing properties on top of it? Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to hand pick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've at large off-market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio or you just did an analysis by paralysis. To find out more visit freedomthroughrealestate com and click on invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side that's freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on invest. And I think the key is you know for people to remember is it takes time you know just like you had mentioned um you know your 15 year plan there are some some quicker wins that you could have in real estate but in general if we're investing in these types of assets it is we're playing the long game you know taking advantage of those tax benefits things like that cash flow is going to grow the value of the asset's going to grow but it's not a quick win and so you do take a long term approach just like if I'm saving for retirement my 401k I'm planning on 15 20 30 years of doing that in real estate we're we're looking for the same so it's not hey year one, you know, what's what's happening how quick of returns am I getting it's it's a different approach, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

It is. Yeah and I I like to say real estate's a get rich slow strategy. I mean if you buy and hold real estate for a long period of time you pay off the debt you're you're probably going to make a lot of money. It might be 20 years down the road um like that first property I bought Mike we sold it in 2015 we did a 1031 exchange now I paid $90,000 I put $3,000 down I sold that property I took that equity I bought an an office in downtown Asheville and paid paid no tax because it was a 1031 exchange my cash flow each month from that property was $3,000 a month. Now that was 15 years later but I turned a $3,000 down payment over 15 years into $3,000 a month and we just sold that property last year and um you know more more than it was for more than double what we paid for it. So you know again if you take a longer term approach and you're patient and you're not looking for those quick pops, you know, is it going to take you 15 years? It doesn't have to it could take you like I I talk about in the new book you know in seven years if you can save 50% of your income at a 15% IRR which you know a lot of multifamily deals do that, you can replace your current income, your current expenses so I think seven years is is a is an actual achievable timeline if everything is going well. Five is is really quick. 15 is is quite conservative but you know I think if you set that 15 years and you get there in 10 or seven then you're gonna be pretty happy with that.

Mike Swenson 26:35

Yeah for sure. Well thank you Chris so much for for coming on and and sharing your story. For people that do want to reach out to you learn more about next level income and your books how can they do so?

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah check us out at nextlevelincome.com our new book just launched is you know how to become financially independent by 40. Go to nextlevelincome.com forward slash financial freedom book and download your free copy uh you can also book a call with our team if you want to learn about our investment opportunities that are out there as as we talked about the debt fund the private credit fund as well as our multifamily offerings.

Mike Swenson 27:07

Awesome well thank you so much for for coming on and sharing Chris and just a great story and it's it's fun to see people that do prioritize this and and don't follow the trend of you know sales and obviously there's a lot of great things that sales and I've had a ton of people on here that they're in sales and like wait a minute that's all right this isn't good or they end up getting into real estate and it turns into a second job for them and then they're like oh geez now I've got my sales job and my real estate job so excited to see you take the path less traveled and one that produced some success for you. So congratulations on on all of that.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Well Mike thanks for thanks for doing this podcast. Thank you for listening today and yeah thanks for letting me share a little bit about my story