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You Don't Need To Be Special To Succeed in Real Estate Syndications with Chad Ackerman

• Ed Mathews • Season 2 • Episode 162

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Episode Resources:

  • Book: Invest Smart Spotting Red Flags in Real Estate Syndications by Gary Lipsky 
  • Email: chadackermanrealestate.com

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Chad Ackerman:

I'm a regular guy. I was an HR person for crying out loud. That's about as normal as it gets. But I want people to understand that it doesn't take something special. Anybody can do this. It takes due diligence. It's called passive investing but it takes activity to do it, so we always called it. You got to be an active passive investor. But I just want to get people over the hump of thinking it's not for them. They don't fit the criteria. People over the hump of thinking it's not for them.

Ed Mathews:

They don't fit the criteria. So the big question is this how do real estate investors who don't have a ton of free time, don't have access to off-market deals and didn't start life on third base, how do we conservatively grow our real estate business to support our families, finally leave the corporate rat race and build a legacy? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Ed Mathews and this is Real Estate Underground. Greetings and salutations, real Estate Undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews with Real Estate Underground. Thank you so much for joining us again today. I really appreciate you making us a part of your day.

Ed Mathews:

And one favor to ask if you're getting good information or value out of these shows. I would greatly appreciate if you follow us on the platform in which you download your podcasts. Leave us a comment if there's a topic you'd like us to talk about. I read every single one. I swear I do. And also, if you really are getting a lot of value, tell a friend. It helps us grow. So with that I am joined by Chad Ackerman. Chad is a Cincinnati Bearcat which I you know. Most of the people I meet from Ohio are usually Buckeyes, because there's more of them I don't want to break your heart.

Chad Ackerman:

But paid money to go to Cincinnati. But my heart belongs to the Buckeyes.

Ed Mathews:

That's okay. That belongs to the Buckeyes as well, that's okay, that's fine.

Chad Ackerman:

You see more Ohio State memorabilia back here than Bearcat.

Ed Mathews:

Chad. Welcome to the show and congratulations on your national championship.

Chad Ackerman:

Thank you you beat a national championship team this year, so you got that to brag about.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah.

Chad Ackerman:

I like to think my yelling accommodated for 2% of the victories.

Ed Mathews:

Value in some small Somehow. So welcome to the show. So, Chad, you and I actually follow someone very closely and that is Brian Tracy, and I know you've got a ton of experience in his works and his consulting firm, Focal Point, and I also know that you are a heavy duty real estate investor and one of the things that was really exciting and intriguing about your story and I'm going to make you tell it not me, but how you are joining your very deep and broad real estate experience with your business training that you got from the Brian Tracy world Welcome. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, absolutely. So. My journey started like a lot of people go through. I was a career W2 guy. I was in human resources, of all things, so it wasn't like I was in finance or something. It is the number side of HR, if you will a lot of spreadsheet work. But I was chasing the W-2, filling out my 401k, doing all the things we were taught to do as Gen Xers, and it hit that point. I actually changed jobs at one point in time and a gal that I was working with dropped the little nugget on me of of she was trying to come up with multiple income streams and real estate was one of the things she was looking at. I was like I used to be in real estate years ago. I've always liked it. I get it. It makes sense. I'm going to start studying this.

Chad Ackerman:

And I had windshield time that I started listening to. Podcasts, turned into listening to books and I got bit by the bug and I was ready to go. And the podcast turned into listening to books and I got bit by the bug and I was ready to go. But there's a lot of shiny objects to go through and so I didn't act on anything for a long period of time and studied and ended up finding a local group to join and just learn more, meet some people in the space. Went to a few of those meetings and the last one I attended, the founder of that group got up and talked about how he had left his W-2 because he was investing passively in real estate and syndications, and that was like the switch that needed to flip for me that I met him afterwards found out we lived in the same suburb of Columbus, ohio, so we got together for a beer and I learned more and within a couple months I was writing a check for my first syndication deal.

Chad Ackerman:

I was ready to go and I got bit by it so bad that I was like the only thing this takes is capital. Where do I have capital? I've got it sitting in that 401k and talking to some of my mentors, they're like you're going to pay tax on that money no matter when you take it out. So you can almost scrub that idea as being an issue. You're really just confronted with the 10% penalty that you're going to take.

Chad Ackerman:

I was 49, 50 at the time. I'm like the next 15 years I can make more than 10% on that money, I feel like. So I pulled the trigger on that as well and liquidated the 401k, moved it all into real estate and it got me to a point where I was able to leave my W-2. Along that timeframe. We also started saying, hey, we should start a meetup that's focused on syndications, business as well, teach people how to be limited partners and just share experiences. And we started a group called Left Field Investors and the quick story on that one was our first meeting was scheduled to be March 18th of 2020. The world shut down three days before that.

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, so we were a pandemic baby because we wanted to be a local meetup and just get 10 or 12 of us around a table. That put us on zoom, that allowed us to invite people that we knew that weren't local and as many people as we could get. And it grew and grew to where we ended up with about 2000 people in our community when we were said and done. We didn't collect capital, we weren't capital raisers, we just wanted to have a place for little peas to come and share experiences. But we tried to track what they invested with our group anyway and we had over $50 million invested out of our community in a year and a half timeframe. Wow, it was a very engaged group it was, and we learned a lot. It was great and it went so well that we ended up catching the attention of BiggerPockets. And last year we sold Leftfield Investors to BiggerPockets and it's now branded as PassivePockets instead.

Chad Ackerman:

And we had a great time with that. It was a great journey. It was good to see resources put to it that were bigger than what we had. So we sold it. I'm still on as an advisory committee member helping advise it along the way for the next few years.

Chad Ackerman:

But I wanted to go out and do something else. I wasn't ready to be done. I still wanted to be active in this community, in this environment, and that's when I went out and bought a franchise with Brian Tracy's group Focal Point. I thought what a great blend to take coaching skills blended with my experience and be able to bring that back and give back to the community that I was just with and try to introduce people to it. That was my biggest energy. Out of Left Field Investors was meeting new people and inviting them in to educate them on this space. I want to continue to do that because I really enjoy that side of this. Now here I am as a business coach setting up my own business called CARE Chad Ackerman Real Estate to coach new aspiring limited partners on what this space is about and how to navigate it and get going, build the confidence to take action and write that first check.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's a hell of a journey. I'll tell you Congratulations.

Chad Ackerman:

There is a book in the works as we talk about it.

Ed Mathews:

So when that comes out, we'll have you back and first off, I can't wait to read it, or probably listen to it, and and the fact is that it's you've done quite a bit in this space and I always tell people I liken it to reading a book, right, and you may be a few chapters ahead of me.

Ed Mathews:

I may be a few chapters ahead of somebody else. The beauty of that shared experience, whether it's through a community or social media or a book, is you're boiling down years and years and years of, frankly, some mistakes and a whole bunch of successes and hopefully it's that way and not the other way and boiling that experience down to something that's digestible in a few days worth of reading, and it's. It's an amazing thing, because we'll talk about mentors a little later in the show, but one of the one of the things that being a mentor does is it warms your soul, right. I've had plenty of mentors out there who have been very kind and very generous, and I met some of them through the local RIA or other meetups. They didn't want anything from me, they just wanted to see me succeed. The only thing they asked of me is hey, when you figure it out, teach other people and done Happy to do it 100% Right.

Chad Ackerman:

No, that's exactly it. I come from a family of educators. Anyway, both my parents were, or half my relatives are that it's just in my blood to go give back and educate and teach to fish rather than fishing for them kind of thing. So it just comes organically to me and it just seemed like a good time, with all that we've done with left field, to go back into that community and introduce more people to it.

Ed Mathews:

That's my natural progression right. So you are educating limited partners, and I find that very in this world, because most of the people out there are teaching people how to syndicate, how to flip houses, how to actually be an operator on some level within this real estate world, but there is no education on how the heck do you take 50,000, $100,000, whatever the number is, hand it to somebody that either you just met or you've known for a long time and be able to evaluate a syndication or a project and then hopefully receive passive income over the next three, five, seven years and get it back?

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, a hundred percent. I think the biggest thing that almost is a book of itself is like a myth busters book about being an LP. I think there's so many misnomers about well, you've got to be rich or no, this is for private equity or this is for institutional. No, this is. I'm a regular guy. I was an HR person. For crying out loud, that's about as normal as it gets. For crying out loud, that's about as normal as it gets.

Chad Ackerman:

I want people to understand that it doesn't take something special. Anybody can do this. It takes due diligence. It's called passive investing, but it takes activity to do it. So we always called it. You got to be an active passive investor. But I just want to get people over the hump of thinking it's not for them. They don't fit the criteria. Even that $25,000, $50,000 check that it takes to get in. There's ways to get around that. There's companies like TribeVest that we've worked with for years where you could pull money together with friends or family or something, and maybe you're only putting $5,000 in per deal instead of $25,000. So I want to help people get over the hump.

Chad Ackerman:

Our name Left Field Investors came from the fact that our financial advisors and people we knew said oh, that syndication stuff that's out in left field, you don't want to do that. No, it needs to be a part of this and, to your point, it's exactly why we started Left Field. There wasn't enough education out there. We could Google it, we could find how to flip houses or we could find how to become a general partner. We couldn't find a lot to teach us how to be an LP and that's why we started building Left Field the way we did. I always thought a great legacy for Left Field, or now maybe for me and my own business, is if I could build content that was taught in community college, in high school, in whatever level.

Chad Ackerman:

Have content out there to educate people at an early age. I'm trying to do it with my kids. My kids are 19 and 21 now. I've got them in a tribe with me. I invest with them together, I walk them through my due diligence so they understand at a much earlier age than I discover it and they can make better decisions down the road. I don't think everybody should liquidate their 401k and jump in like I did. I think there's a diversity amount there. Have your Wall Street. We called it left field, center field, right field. Right field was Wall Street, was the stock market. We thought center field was really where you want to play, where you've got some money on both sides, so you got diversification. I just want to get out and meet the common guy that's looking for something else and let them know hey, here's an avenue that can go. And then, if I can get them to the conversation about tax benefits of it, that seems to really open up their eyes quite a bit more too. They get excited about that.

Ed Mathews:

Especially come April, they're writing a big honking check.

Chad Ackerman:

And even more if we get some laws passed here soon. That might bring back 100% bonus depreciation as Christmas comes early. So that's my motivation.

Ed Mathews:

Excellent, and how do you go about it? What's the way to deliver this training? Is it workshops? Is it meetup groups? Like, how are you doing it?

Chad Ackerman:

yeah, no, my goal is I'm going to offer a free webinar. It's going to try to offer a webinar a month just to give some tidbits, introduce people to some of it, give them a little nugget or two, and then off of that I've got workshops that I'm going to dig in a little bit deeper around and structuring it like an educational one-on-one, two-on-one, three-on-one kind of content. So, depending on the skill level if you're brand new, versus if you've been doing this for a while and you want a deeper dive I want to be able to offer that kind of content for anybody, and then I'm absolutely happy to do one-on-one coaching. If somebody needs that interaction or wants to really hey, let's look at something together. I'll definitely offer that kind of flexibility to them as well just to see what I can do to help.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's interesting, and I've talked about this on previous shows as well. I regularly meet people who stop me at the local coffee shop or the grocery store because I live in a small area, so we all know what everybody does for a living. They're like oh man, I wish I knew how to get into real estate and do what you do. And the question I always ask is what's stopping you? And the big three that I usually find are yeah, I don't know where the money is, I don't know how to find the deals, and all three of those in my mind. When I hear any of those three, I think, okay, you're afraid.

Chad Ackerman:

And it's a ton of responsibility.

Ed Mathews:

Of course you're afraid, but the way to get over that and the way I got over it took me three years to get the courage to pull the trigger on a deal. It sounds like it took you a little bit of time as well. Was education right and if you can offer a process to say, okay, ed Mathews, operator at Clark street, is handing you Chad Ackerman, a potential limited partner, a private placement memorandum, evaluate that deal, see if Ed and his team know what they're talking about or if they're just full of it, cause there's a whole bunch of snake oil in this part of the world as well. Absolutely, what is the process that you'll take them through? I know you'd said 101, 201, 301. So that's high school to postgraduate studies.

Chad Ackerman:

There you go, phd yeah.

Ed Mathews:

What is? How do you? Two questions actually. One, how do you decide, as a potential LP, which level is right for me, and then how do you help them with that? And then, secondly, what is the kind of core focus of each of those levels?

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, Now what I want to do is offer up some one-on-one discussions if they're interested, to get started and feel out their skill level and recommend where it might fit best for them to help guide them on my material. Would it be valuable to them? But I always go back and start with goals, Like I made a mistake with my first investment. I didn't know what I was trying to do. I got sucked into the shiny object syndrome and I pulled the trigger on a 17 story building in Cleveland that was going from office to multifamily. That just looked awesome 7X kind of pro forma. Just it was clicking on all the boxes that I was excited about.

Chad Ackerman:

I was really looking for cashflow because I wanted to leave my W-2. I wasn't even thinking about cashflow, I was chasing the shiny object. That was a terrible investment to get into if I want cashflow, Cause it didn't it. Sadly it ended up going out. He couldn't get the construction loans figured out and ended up losing it because his bridge loan ran out of time. So it ended up my worst case scenario. But I shouldn't have been in the first place because it didn't align to my goals. It wasn't going to cashflow for years.

Chad Ackerman:

So it takes some time to spend energy on that first step of what's your strategy. What are you really trying to do with this? Because that filter is huge at the top, where there are so many things to do. The more you can get those goals in place at the beginning, then you can trim out a lot of that and it's a lot less distracting so you can get focused. And then it is about due diligence and we'll talk about how we say bet the jockey, not the horse.

Chad Ackerman:

So it's spend time vetting the operator before you look at their deals, Understand who you can know and trust. And a way we say to build that is to get into a community of limited partners. There's a few of them out there. Passive Pockets is the one that we transpired into. There are other ones out there. Join multiple of them, because you're just going to be able to get that data. I won't invest with an operator now that I can't go into Passive Pockets and say, hey, have you ever heard of Chad Ackerman Real Estate before? And if nobody replies, it doesn't mean I'll never invest with them, but it means, hey, I want to watch you for a year and see what you're doing. Uh, cause everybody I know nobody spoke up and said they know you. So I want to know somebody that knows you before I'm going to invest with you or I'm going to watch you for a period of time.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's interesting because you know the world like I liken it to buying a car. So we just bought my daughter a car and time was when I went to go buy. She's graduated from college, so I had kids. Basically the same age.

Ed Mathews:

And time was when I went to go buy my first car. I went in and they gave me the shiny brochure and I thought about colors and options and all this stuff and then I bought basically what I got cajoled into buying. I'd like to say I did a good job negotiating it. Maybe I didn't, but whatever that was these days. My wife found that car online. We shopped the living daylights out of it. We had a Carfax report on it because it had six miles on it, but it was a 2024. I'm not sure, but yeah, my wife is like a dog on a bone with this stuff and by the time we walked in we knew I don't want the white one.

Ed Mathews:

I want that VIN number. I want that car and it's worth this and this is what I'll pay for it. Instead of a four hour negotiation, drive around, pick a color, let me see if I can find that one and all that it was. We want that one for this number. Okay, I can't do that number, but I can do this number. Turns out there's another program. We can do that number. Fantastic, where do I sign? 45 minutes later, everything was done and they washed the car and an hour after that we were gone. We were there for 90 minutes. Maybe it's a different world, different world, and I think that the limited partner real estate world is very similar in that, like you were saying, if you don't know a guy who knows me or you or whatever, tap the brakes, because the best and most efficient way to evaluate somebody is by following somebody who's already done that work and succeeded.

Chad Ackerman:

Agreed, and I tell people all the time right now there's no better time to be an LP than right now, because a lot of those GPs that were new and didn't know what they were doing, that were the risk that we didn't realize, have gotten exposed because they didn't structure, they didn't know all the lessons. Yet you have a list of GPs that made it through the past several years, fine. If you have some that even date back to 2008, all the better. They've been through a couple of financial crises and if they've made it through it, then that makes me feel a lot better about them. Hopefully people that have worked with them, and you can get some direct contact from them too. But all of that, I think, just feeds into it, which, just like I said, makes it easier to be an LP now, because five years ago anybody could start up a syndication and they were doing well.

Chad Ackerman:

I got burned. I got caught on a couple of them that they didn't. Everything flipped on them and they weren't prepared for it, and we didn't either. I study deals a lot better than I usedureen Miles, and it was a 4M real estate.

Ed Mathews:

I think, and the reason I mentioned it is because it was resoundingly successful. I knew people that knew Maureen really well and those people I trusted implicitly because they were smarter than me and high integrity type people and they're like, if I'm putting my money down, it's going to be on Mo, and so I put a little chunk of money in that and two, three years later it came back in 2X and it was wonderful. I'm pretty sure she retired, damn it. I got lucky. But the key that you mentioned earlier was really important for that success, which was I knew a whole bunch of people that knew her really well bunch of people that knew her really well.

Chad Ackerman:

It's too risky not to know people and it doesn't mean we always get it right. There have been tried and true GPs that have been running for years, really profitable, really good situations that have turned up recently with getting exposed that something wasn't correct. We all got burned, but you're minimizing that risk by getting in a community and getting feedback from people that have been investing with them for some time Absolutely. The other thing we're just scratching the surface on is how AI can assist with a lot of this LP work as well, To be determined still. There's constant stories and podcasts about it these days, but all of them say the same thing it's not going to tell you whether the deal's a go or no go still it hasn't got to that degree. But can it help you do due diligence and you give it your buy box and it tells you if it's in or out. That's great and to me, it's understanding that criteria of your buy box. That takes the emotion out of this, so you can make a better decision on this.

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, it's red, light green light and get over the fear of missing out, because there's going to be another deal coming around the corner. So don't make one squeeze in to your buy box. Take the time, be patient. Without a doubt, save yourself a lot of headache if you do.

Ed Mathews:

And a whole lot. Yeah, headache being hey significant other, I lost $50,000.

Ed Mathews:

That's what and we'll figure it out. Nobody wants those conversations Great way to get a frying pan smacked over here, exactly and so you're going to basically create this by the time this show comes out. This will all be live, which I'm excited for. I also think that it would behoove general partners to go through this process as well, because one of the things that I'm always interested in is how people evaluate me. Interested in is how people evaluate me.

Ed Mathews:

One of the things that I like to do after an investment's made is have lunch or buy a cup of coffee and ask them what did we do right? What can we do better? What should we continue doing? What should we stop doing? And just help me and help our team get better right, and the feedback we get is, most of it's people, very nice, but I don't want to hurt my feelings or anything like that, but every once in a while I get somebody that was a look. This went really well until you or one of your people did this, and then I caused me pause and then I had to sit down with you and figure that out and we figured it out and we moved forward. I didn't have to go ask those questions. It would be much better and more transparency. Okay, no problem, we can definitely do that, and so it's. I think that general partners would be blown away by how people evaluate their properties, because I think there's I've met so many of these GPs over the years there's a whole lot of confirmation bias floating around in the air, right.

Chad Ackerman:

A hundred percent.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah.

Chad Ackerman:

So I think it's funny you bring that up. When we sold our company to BiggerPockets, I told one of my partners. I said you know what our spinoff company out of this is, somebody that goes and coaches GPs. Because it said there's very few people that have had the access to LPs that we've had, have had the access to LPs that we've had and the blind transparency that we had unfiltered kind of feedback that we received. I ran it past a couple of GPs too and they were like we talked to hundreds of GPs every week. But so how honest do you think they were with you versus how honest they were with me? I said you do it well, you probably get 80% of it, but I bet we get 10 or 20% that you don't know or hear all the time. That's probably valuable to you too.

Chad Ackerman:

So I haven't figured out how to work that out necessarily yet, but we had the exact same idea. I think there's value there to help GPs and, if nothing else, every GP I've ever met has said I like educated LPs so much better than the non-educated one, cause they just know the process. I'm like that's what I want to do is help educate that LP so they're better LP for you. Part of my approach will be to go back to the GPs that I know really well and say, hey, I'm doing these courses. Put this out to your people, see if any of them are interested.

Ed Mathews:

But maybe on that list. Absolutely. I think there's value there for both sides on that list.

Chad Ackerman:

Absolutely. I think there's value there for both sides. That's always what it felt like we played at left field was the middleman role of trying to help GPs with what we could, but educate LPs as well, so that they all got together and there's enough place to space to play in this space that we just wanted to get people together and then make the most of it. So I'm still trying to maximize.

Ed Mathews:

But of it. So I'm still trying to maximize, but the education on both sides is the really key. All right, chad, I could talk for days.

Chad Ackerman:

This is what tells me that I'm doing the right thing, because I get into these conversations all the time. Now I lean into my chair and I'm pumped up about it. I'm glad you think so too.

Ed Mathews:

I wholeheartedly agree and I think it's something that really needed. I follow. There's a community on Twitter on retweet that is just for LPs and there's an attorney that runs it. I'm trying to remember his name. I can't remember it. I can see his face but it's invaluable, right, because that's what he does is. He represents limited partners To connect. He's absolutely Andrew. It starts with a C, but I can't remember his last name. The information shared is invaluable and I wasn't there as an LP, I was there as a fly on the wall. I just want to see what people care about and what works for them, what bothers them, what stresses them out, what makes them feel good, what provides value. That's what I was looking for.

Chad Ackerman:

So it's an interesting community. Yeah, I think there's so much green space here that you can make it as big as you want to make it. If I can start introducing people to the space and get them excited about it, like I am, I call that a victory.

Ed Mathews:

That's success for me. Amen, yeah, all right, so let's talk about victories, then We'll get into the final five. And so first one is all about getting out of bed on Monday morning. Right, I'm curious. You've obviously done very well with your real estate and the sale of left field and now you're building care. So clearly, people get to a point in life where the mortgage is getting paid, kids' college is all set, the cars are paid off, right, no credit card debt, but you still get out of bed on Monday morning. And I'm curious in my the way I define that as purpose, right.

Ed Mathews:

So I'm curious about your purpose. What gets you out of bed on Monday morning?

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, I honestly it's what we're doing right now. It's these conversations of just talk real estate with people, introduce them to the space. That's huge to me. I could go work at Lowe's right now and I'd be just fine, but would I be excited to get out of bed to do that? No, the fact I can still talk about real estate with people and introduce new people to it, it's still new enough. That LP is still there's just few enough of us that you can't go talk to your neighbors, you can't talk to your family typically about this. So I want to introduce people to it and help them find other like-minded people that they can just grow on, and so if I can start and introduce people to it, that covers my purpose in a heartbeat.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, for sure. That's interesting. You get together with family and everything. Hey, how's your business? Oh, it's good. They have no idea, they really don't know, and it's fine. I remember my youngest, who was much smaller than saying something about my dad has something to do with dirt. I have no idea what it is.

Chad Ackerman:

I guess I actually thought I should run my family through my material and see what, if any, light bulbs go on or not. Oh, I'm sure that's what you've been doing all this time, exactly.

Ed Mathews:

So I'm always interested in mentors and the folks that have given you advice and help over the years. What's the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you?

Chad Ackerman:

I think one of the ones that's been the most important to me, and I heard it from a buddy and I've read it in a couple books. But it was you're the product of the five closest people that you you're next to, and I literally had to not separate myself, but I purposely went looking for five better people to be around, if you will. I knew where I wanted to go. I talked to friends about it and they just didn't quite get it either yet. So I knew I wasn't going to get the support I needed there, that I went and sought out people that were like-minded, that were to your point earlier, a few steps ahead of me, so that I could learn off of them, and that just skyrocketed what I did.

Chad Ackerman:

I really I fed off of them. They had great information. I probably asked them way too many questions that burned them out, but it was great and it was a dichotomy of people that were a couple steps ahead of me and people that were several steps ahead of me. I knew several steps was hard because it was pie in the sky for me at the time. It was too far away. So I liked having that mix of what are the next few steps going to look like. I like that mix of people to lean on and learn from. Having that mixture really worked out well for me.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it does, because they see different types of deals, right, exactly. Somebody who's got a thousand plus units is seeing entirely different deals. The person that you're meeting at a local meetup who's got a couple hundred units, exactly, and both have their challenges and they're probably similar, but there's different stuff to talk about yeah, yeah, and I want to meet both sides.

Chad Ackerman:

I want to meet that non-accredited. I want to explain to them what non-accredited is and help them understand. Hey, you can grow in this space as a non-accredited person too, and then you'll reach that threshold and the sky will open up even further for you at that point.

Ed Mathews:

So let's talk about. We had alluded earlier about GPs falling, stepping on their ties, as they say. Over the course of the last few years it's been a rough hoe. I was at a conference Raised Masters down in Phoenix and the theme was survive to 25. And one speaker, tom Dilley, came in. He goes 95% of the people in this room right now won't be here next year.

Ed Mathews:

I was like oh really, I'll let you know, I'll be back next year, I'm going to be okay, so see about the rest. But it's always interesting about mistakes because I actually think I fundamentally believe, actually, that we learn so much more from the mistakes we make than from our successes. And here at my company that's a huge thing. No one gets in trouble for making a mistake. It's a matter of, okay, what did we do? What were we thinking at the moment? Was that the best decision we could make with the information we had?

Ed Mathews:

What's the process we went through and it just didn't work out. If we skip steps or something, then we fix it and don't do it again. But the fact that we're human beings nobody's perfect, right, it's a constant process. I'm a techie guy, so I'm process oriented. Anyways, everything has a checklist and if the checklist is wrong, then let's fix it. I tell people all the time. I'm like, hey, I don't need to be right, we just need to get it right. So let's figure that out. So I'm curious about a mistake that you made in your professional travels, that decision you'd like to have back, and what'd you do to fix it?

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, I'd go back to that original investment again of pulling the trigger on something that I should not have gone into because my criteria was not set right. Goal with my business is to help people find clarity first around their goals that they have, build their confidence to be able to go, then ultimately take that action. I 100% agree. Taking action is going to serve you so much more than analyzing to death you might get it wrong. You don't want to get it wrong too often. Obviously it's not our goal here by any means. But getting wrong hopefully isn't the end of the world that you can learn from it and then not make similar mistakes the next time. But mine was definitely that first investment and my lesson learned was pause, take the time to study what I really want out of it and then use that as a filter to trim down all the deals that I was getting in my inbox so that I could go find the ones that really worked for me and what I was trying to do.

Ed Mathews:

Begin with the end in mind. Right, you hit the target when you're aiming.

Chad Ackerman:

It's amazing. The analogy I got was how fast do you want to run in the dark anyway?

Ed Mathews:

You run into that light pole that is sitting out there somewhere, a random tree or something Okay. So I'm also always interested in leaders like you who are obviously you're an educator, but I would I'm fairly confident in assuming that you're also somebody who values education yourself, and so I'm curious about how you take in information. And really what I'm driving at is what's the book on your nightstand, physically or virtually? I'm curious what you're reading and who you're paying attention to.

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah. So because of where I am with this business now, I've actually gone back and trying to find material of books that are out there to introduce people to this space. So I've got a book by Gary Lipsky here that's Invest Smart Spotting Red Flags in Real Estate Syndications. So I've gone back to try to find some of that core material that's out there for beginners to help see that it reinforces my message and my education that I'm doing so I can provide something more meaty. I'm a data collector, so I don't like to think I've got the answers. Let me ask, Ed, what would you talk to a newbie about? Let me make sure I've baked that in so that I can build the best quality stuff that I can to share with people.

Ed Mathews:

One of my favorite questions is what question am I not asking that I should?

Chad Ackerman:

Yes, yeah, so that's where my logic is these days.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's Gary Lipsky.

Chad Ackerman:

L-I-P-S-K-Y. He's with Today Capital Okay.

Ed Mathews:

All right, I'll make sure that we put that in the link as well. Cool, all right. So the last one is success. I kind of where you are in your station in life. How are you defining success today?

Chad Ackerman:

Success today to me is twofold. It's education related, but it's, first and foremost, trying to teach my kids about this as much as I can, giving them as much information that they can have. That feeds into them making better decisions earlier on than I did my son's 19. He's passed on the college idea. He was done with school. He actually came to me when he was 17, starting his senior year, and said I think I want to become an electrician and I want to flip houses. Won't that help me be able to flip houses? I'm like absolutely I love this idea. And he started into his job. He filled out a Roth IRA last year, filled one up. He's got one on par to go up this year and he's saving money like crazy. And I'm like he's starting to look at houses now and I'm like great, let's talk about it.

Chad Ackerman:

What is a good investment for you at your age and everything, and what can we do together? How can I help? What can you get into? So it's education around my kids. They're the biggest thing to me. They're the most important thing. Further education of the community to introduce more people to this space. If I can introduce a person a year, I hope it's a lot more than that. But that's success to me of just bringing people into the fold, showing them there's something more than Wall Street and being stuck in the grind and burning out in a W-2 because you got to work for those dollars and everything like that. I had a buddy who was in his early forties, had a heart attack and couldn't work for a year. There's my test case of exactly why I want my money working for me, just in case because you never know what's going to happen that I want that insurance of money working for me rather than me working for the money all the time.

Ed Mathews:

Absolutely, and your son is really smart. I was just talking to somebody not three days ago about if and I let's just say I didn't take advantage of the college educational opportunity that I probably could have. Right, I had fun, but the thing is that if I had to look back on now, if I were 17, I would give a trade a very serious look, especially because the return on investment for college it's debatable. Right, you're going to spend. There are colleges. You and I are probably in a similar station in that or a similar point where you know at least one of our kids were looking at colleges. There are schools out there. My wife and I went to the same college where we met and that school is, I want to say, 85 or $90,000 a year and the average for a non-technical degree coming out, the average income, is like in the seventies. So you're going to get more $500,000 in debt for a $70,000 a year job. What do you do? What do we do?

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, no, I was so proud of it, it was the most mature thing I'd ever seen him do to that point was to have that thought and feel, that strategy, which I'm like hey, I'm glad you're not going to waste my money in college and burn through it, which he's 95% me, so I know how he's going to act, but the fact that he came up with it I was so proud. Now he and his sister she's in college, she's studying architecture they have this little battle of who's going to be happier, who's going to be more successful. So define success. What does that mean exactly? You got to find happy, but I love it. Both of them are doing great. I'm proud of both of them.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you. And the other thing I'll tell you is that up until about my early forties, the richest guy I ever met was a plumber. Hand to God, his name was Bill Templeton and he was a local plumber who he would charge a certain amount of money for his time and his guys, and a certain amount of it went into a little savings, actually, and he showed me, I would guess, a small portion of his portfolio. We went driving around and I was like that's $20 million worth of real estate and just a regular guy worked hard for a living. That's it.

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah. So to me that's the education that's missed is we're growing up. We were at least assuming we're similar age. We were taught go to school, get a job, work there for 35 years, put your money in the 401k. Or, if they have a pension at the time, great, get the pension and work with it. But as I studied wealthy people this is a little hobby I went through Real estate was in every one of their portfolios and whole life insurance programs were in a lot of those portfolios and all these tools that nobody had ever explained to me that I'm like that's what I want to help people just understand so they can make their own decisions around. At least know, hey, you don't have to be a multimillionaire to get into this space. You can do this as a regular W-2 and grow it like he did. Do one at a time, take your time to save some money up, keep it in the machine for a while and it'll do well for you.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and it's not everything right. I don't know about you, my family's assets. We have a portion of our stuff in real estate and a portion in the stock market and things, but most of it's in the stock market and I don't know about that anymore. Actually, I take that back, but the fact is that it's not everything right. It's just a little piece of your, within your financial journey that gives you, hopefully, outsized returns and downside protection when the inflation bubble pops. It's going down. It's great. It's cheaper for me to buy now this is fantastic.

Chad Ackerman:

But then, as I started getting older, I'm like what if I need that money at some point? And it's in the down, and that's where diversification kicked in for me, or that desire to get to it, that's all it is. And I'm like, yeah, let me hedge, just in case.

Ed Mathews:

I feel like real estate, more often than not, is steady up versus the stock market. That could be up, could be down, who knows.

Chad Ackerman:

Take your chance with riding the wave at the time, and the reason I say that is it's not the net worth that sets you free from UW2, it's the cashflow, and those are two entirely different and education around that to understand that of when you're talking about, oh, I want financial freedom, what are you really talking about? What does that mean to you? Let's understand that so you understand. I can explain it to you, maybe more so that you can make good decisions then about what you're investing in.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, when I asked the question about success almost to a person. They talk about time freedom, right that's, I don't have to ask anybody other than my wife or significant other where I'm going. But the fact is that's being able to live life on your terms without having to ask permission of anybody.

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, I had reached that point where I was still in my W-2. They knew what was going on. They knew I was short-term. I never felt more empowered Like they literally went through.

Chad Ackerman:

I was at a big company, cardinal Health and they started going through a little bit of layoffs and a person in our department got laid off and I went to my boss and my boss's boss and I said, look, I'm short term, fire me, give me a packet, I'll take the package and go anyway. But there are people here that need a job or want their job still. I'm on my way out, so just take me. But I was in such a specialized job focused on sales comp they're like we can't, unfortunately, we need you here still that I negotiated down. I was working one day a week for a while, keeping full benefits, just because they wanted to keep me on. I'm like I'll stay for that for a while longer. That's fine Financial freedom to me. I wasn't totally free, but it put me in a spot where I had that ability to negotiate things. I'd never been able to negotiate before.

Ed Mathews:

It's amazing. That was a great feeling. It's amazing how clear your head gets when you don't need that gig. It's not, oh my God. I need that paycheck on Friday or on the 15th and the first, in order to pay the mortgage. I want to try to help people get there.

Chad Ackerman:

Do what I can anyway to lead them down a path.

Ed Mathews:

I'm a fan, so good luck, and let me know how I can help.

Chad Ackerman:

And with that let's talk about something non-real estate related, and with that let's talk about something non-real me somehow. So I'm trying to focus on that. But golf's there Trying to chase the kids a little bit still, or let them know I'm still around anyway. Those kind of things, those keep me busiest these days.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, yeah. If you play golf like I do, I find the water a lot.

Chad Ackerman:

Yeah, see, I combine two things in one.

Ed Mathews:

So, chad, if folks want to learn more about you individually, or what's the best way to do that, yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn Chad Ackerman on LinkedIn.

Chad Ackerman:

I also have my website up. By the time this airs That'll be ChadAckermanRealEstate. com, so come find me there. I'm happy to reach out, do one-on-ones with people that are just curious. See if I can help nudge them in the direction, give them a little confidence and get them on their way. Love to be able to do that for people.

Ed Mathews:

Awesome, Chad. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, continued good fortune. Thank you for carving out time in your busy schedule to meet with me and do this show.

Chad Ackerman:

Absolutely. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for the time.

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