How to Build Financial Freedom and Independence of Purpose through Strategic Real Estate Investing with Clint Harris

Are you a successful medical professional or leader trapped by the "golden handcuffs" of your high-income, high-demand career? In this episode of The Willpower Project, host Will Humphreys welcomes Clint Harris, a former medical sales professional who built his own off-ramp to achieve financial, time, and location independence.

Clint, who spent 16 years selling medical devices, realized the unsustainable nature of trading time for money. He and his wife strategically invested in real estate—starting with single-family homes and eventually building a portfolio of short-term rental properties and a property management company.

Now, as the co-founder of Nomad Capital, Clint has shifted focus to a high-scale, less-headache model: converting vacant big-box retail buildings (like Kmart) into climate-controlled self-storage facilities using syndication.

Listen in as Clint breaks down the powerful, yet often misunderstood, world of real estate syndication. Learn why seasoned investors, including the "Sharks" on Shark Tank, consistently point to real estate as the ultimate foundation for wealth creation and generational financial velocity. Clint offers a transparent look at the pros and cons of passive real estate investing and how busy, high-net-worth individuals can leverage their capital to grow wealth without sacrificing their valuable time.

Key Takeaways You'll Learn:

• The Problem with Golden Handcuffs: Understanding the cycle of trading more time for more money, and why it's a barrier to true freedom.
• The Three Components of Real Estate Success: Why you need a combination of time, experience, and money, and how syndication allows you to leverage other people's time and experience.
• Syndication Explained: What it is, why it's a powerful tool for diversification, and how busy professionals can get started without becoming real estate experts.
• The Power of Conversion: Why Clint's strategy of converting old retail spaces into self-storage is so lucrative, yielding potential double to triple returns on asset valuation.

1. The Difference in Valuation: Learn why commercial real estate, unlike residential, is valued by Net Operating Income (NOI) and a market cap rate—and how operators can force appreciation by increasing rents.

• Passive Investor Returns: What a typical investment profile looks like, from minimum investment amounts to projected annualized returns (often in the 15-20% range) and how the "general partners" (like Clint) make their money.
• Focusing on Independence of Purpose: Clint shares the deeper motivation behind his financial goals: creating a life of freedom, travel, and empathy to raise better humans.
• Don't Invest Blindly: Clint's crucial advice on vetting operators based on their ethics, transparency, and communication—not just the glossy deal sheet.
• Leveraging Retirement Funds: How you can use self-directed 401ks and IRAs for alternative investments to diversify beyond volatile paper assets.

As Will wisely notes, "If you have any money that's sitting in a bank account, you're losing money with inflation." This episode provides an actionable roadmap for medical professionals who are ready to make their money work for them and start building a life defined by purpose, not just practice.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Breaking The Time-For-Money Cycle
• 0:44 Meet Clint Harris And His Background
• 1:10 Burnout In Medical Sales And An Off-Ramp
• 2:09 Short-Term Rentals And Lessons Learned
• 3:16 Pivot To Self-Storage Conversions
• 4:19 Syndication And Physician Investors
• 5:13 Why Real Estate Builds Generational Wealth
• 6:36 Financial Velocity Explained
• 7:16 Time, Experience, Money: The Triangle
• 8:13 What A Syndication Really Is
• 9:20 How To Vet Operators The Right Way
• 10:55 Define Life Goals Before Returns
• 12:06 Choosing Asset Classes And Deal Timelines
• 13:18 Example Deal: Costs, Buildout, Exits
• 14:20 Creative Value: Mezzanines, Outparcels, Roofs
• 15:52 Returns, Risk, And Deal Structures
• 17:07 Development Timeline And Preferred Returns
• 18:07 Track Record And Scaling Ambition
• 19:22 Think Bigger To Make Life Easier
• 20:13 Diversification And Self-Directed Retirement
• 21:48 Control The Outcome In Commercial Real Estate
• 23:08 Forcing Appreciation And Cap Rates
• 24:12 Big-Box To Storage: Community Flywheel
• 25:20 Matching Investor Goals To Deals
• 26:18 How To Engage With Nomad Capital
• 27:15 Radical Fit, Transparency, And Alignment
• 28:10 Goals Change: Communication Matters
• 29:30 Closing Thoughts And Host Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:00

The financial velocity that we're talking about is how do you break the cycle of trading time for money? If you are a high earning income individual, then you have golden handcuffs. You have likely fallen into a situation where coming out of med school, you could have saved your way to retirement. But you went from not making any money to all of a sudden making a lot of money and you're catching up on getting the house and getting the cars and getting settled. And a lot of these people, five, six, seven, eight years into that career, figure out that maybe they don't love it or that they're spending a lot of money and it's hard for them to put themselves back on a track of saving their way to retirement.

SPEAKER_00: 0:43

All right, Clint. Well, welcome to Will Power. I'm so grateful for the audience to get to know you. Obviously, our audience is medical professionals and leaders wanting to learn how to increase their income impact and freedom. But give us a little background on you first.

SPEAKER_03: 0:57

Thanks. Will appreciate that. I'm excited to be here. Appreciate your time today. My name is Clint Harris. Most importantly, I'm happily married for 14 years with two little boys, six and two. We live in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, right outside of Wilmington. I spent 16 years in medical sales. I'm not a physician, but I was a sales rep implanting pacemakers and defibrillators, so working in surgical sales. That is a young man's game. Heart problems are not nine to five Monday through Friday. And I was getting called, you know, two or three in the morning, up to a couple hours away a couple times a week, and it was uh young man's game, right? And so you have two options in that line of work. It's got a high ceiling, um, but your options are to save your way to retirement or to create your own off ramp. Uh, and for 14 of those 16 years, my wife and I were uh investing in real estate because we were creating our off-ramp from that lifestyle. I didn't want to be 60 years old still slinging devices. Um we started with single-family homes, we made a lot of mistakes. We we started flipping a few properties, we made a few mistakes, but less of them. Uh in 2017, we moved to Wilmington for me to take over the medical sales territory. And that was the first time we moved into a market that really had um a robust short-term rental market because it was at the beach. We started buying small multifamily properties, buying um we have three quadplexes and a duplex that we bought and converted from underperforming long-term properties to short-term Airbnbs. Um, that led to building a property management company. We still have we had 14 Airbnbs. We've recently sold a four-pack, we're down to 10, and we own a property management company with some partners that manages ours and another 75. And through that process and a lot of mistakes, I realized that I'd done something wrong for the second time. And I built a portfolio specifically focused on financial independence. And when I achieved it the second time uh and was replacing my income of what I was making at the hospital, even though I was still doing both, I realized that what we really all are looking for is financial time and location independence combined. Because those create an independence of purpose, which is where we go where we want and when we want, we spend our lives in the way that we want, hopefully doing something positive for the people that we care about, for our family, for our community around us, right? But that's going to look different for everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 3:25

Sure.

SPEAKER_03: 3:25

And it was at that point in time that I went back to the drawing board for the third time and um through counsel from wise people that I really looked up to, and being completely burned out on Airbnb short-term rental tenants, uh, we decided to go in the direction of self-storage because it meant renting someone a box of air that had no kitchens and bathrooms in it.

SPEAKER_00: 3:49

Right. You're not talking about heavy and ten tenant improvements, you're just simplifying that to the more basic, you know, construction.

SPEAKER_03: 3:56

That's it. We're we're dumbing it way down. Uh and from the time that my wife and I had taken small quadplexes and converted them into Airbnbs, that would three to four X the gross potential riddle income of that property. And so when the concept of that conversion strategy in storage was introduced to us, it leapt off the page.

SPEAKER_00: 4:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 4:19

And so with my partners, we started a journey of buying old vacant big box retail buildings like Kmart's grocery stores and warehouses and converting those into climate-controlled storage using syndication to raise capital from investors, most of which are the physicians I used to work with. Yeah. Uh, and building wealth together as a vehicle. And so far, we're at 150 million in assets. How many physicians are you partnered with? That's a great question. We have 160 investors across our different projects. It's 120 and then 40 that have just come in recently on a big project that we're working on. I would say we actually don't have a ton of the physicians I used to work with, probably a two to three dozen, but a lot of repeat investors. So a lot of them are in three, four, five, six deals. So that's really helped.

SPEAKER_00: 5:09

You know, uh, Rockstar, as you're listening to this, I want to be really clear on something. Clint, like the last thing he wanted to do, he's like, the last thing I want to do is pitch this to people. The problem with that is this is that your company is gonna be the model for them to learn from. So, like, I'm giving you permission to openly talk about your business because my clients, my clients, my my friends who are listening to the show, the rock stars who are tuning in, these are leaders and owners in healthcare.

SPEAKER_02: 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

They all struggle with what you said before we hit record, which is that as they continue to get more successful, their time becomes more limited. So it's this like paradox of like, how can I get freedom of time and money when my time my time is worth so much money? Or or like some people honestly are just struggling to break and break even in their practices. So this is huge because um I was recently listening to I forgot which of the sharks on Shark Tank it was, but it was a it was a reel. And the guy asked him on a podcast, he said, uh let's say it's Kevin O'Leary. He's just like, hey, if you had to start over from scratch, you had a million dollars. You have a million dollars, but you have to start your empire over again, where would you start? And he said, real estate. He said, No question, real estate. Clint, why would why would the shark from Shark Tank say that?

SPEAKER_03: 6:26

Because for a thousand years, it's created more wealth and generational differences in terms of financial velocities for families and individuals across the country that speak a hundred different less languages.

SPEAKER_00: 6:37

Yeah, hundred financial velocity. Dig in on that. What's what does that term mean?

SPEAKER_03: 6:42

Yeah, so that's a great question. I mean, how far can you take your capital, right? How how if you're getting up like all the all of your listeners, right? And because of that, your listener base, let's let's unpack this a little bit. What we should talk about today is all the bad stuff about my offerings and syndication. Let's just uncover the ugly stuff and then talk about it as a vehicle and why it makes sense for your listeners or why it may not, but either way, why it's a tool that they should have in their tool belt.

SPEAKER_00: 7:10

And then be aware of, because I guess the problem when they have such limited time and all they can do is listen to a podcast at the gym or walking. I want to create the most value in education. So to your point, it may not be for everybody, but this is something they should know about.

SPEAKER_03: 7:22

That's why we're here, right? So let's get into the part that they need to know and and and cut through a lot of the fluff. Love that. And uh a lot of what you just said is really valuable because there's something this can be really daunting. This is a big subject with a lot to talk about. Most syndication and alternative investment strategies came about because of the Jobs Act of 2017. So this is really uh still fairly young in its infancy but quickly maturing marketplace. Um I think one thing to keep in mind, a conversation I find myself having over and over is the law of a hundred hours, which means that if you have something big, like the topic we're about to get into and you need to learn about that, the law of a hundred hours says that if you spend a hundred hours focusing on that topic, you're gonna know more about that than 95% of the population of the world. Sure. 90 and and that amount is comes down to 18 minutes a day, which is less than the average physician's commute to the hospital.

SPEAKER_00: 8:23

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 8:24

I would just point out if you are on call or if you are a hospitalist or you are driving to your office and you have an 18-minute commute, either nine there and nine back or one way or the other, you have capacity to use that time to know more about this in a year than 95% of the population of the planet.

SPEAKER_00: 8:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 8:40

And I encourage you to use that time as an investment into yourself. The financial velocity that we're talking about is how do you break the cycle of trading time for money? If you are a high earning income individual, then you have golden handcuffs. You have likely fallen into a situation where coming out of med school, you could have saved your way to retirement. But you went from not making any money to all of a sudden making a lot of money and you're catching up on getting the house and getting the cars and getting settled. And a lot of these people, five, six, seven, eight years into that career, figure out that maybe they don't love it or that they're spending a lot of money and it's hard for them to put themselves back on a track of saving their way to retirement, especially when inflation is eroding the value of those dollars out the back door faster than they can put them away.

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

They're just changing, they're exchanging time for money. Like that's the problem, is that you can be exchanging a lot of money for time, but when you're in that stuck mode of exchanging time for money, you're not really a business owner. You're self-employed. And that's what that's the difference. When we can exchange money for money, that's investing, right? Investing people and process for money is is actual business ownership. So what you're talking about is diversification of how they can invest so that they actually can create time.

SPEAKER_03: 9:55

That's right. And you made a good point before we started recording of we're, you know, we have to have what we're talking about here is real estate investing, and you have to have three components for anybody to have success. And this has been true forever. It's time, it's experience, and it's money. You don't have to have all three of those things, but you have to have some combination of those three things, which is why it usually is not a great idea for a physician to start making bandit signs that say we buy ugly houses or to start flipping properties. Your time is worth more than that.

SPEAKER_00: 10:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:23

Let somebody else do that. Now, if you can partner with somebody where you put in the capital and they're using their time and their experience to execute the project, that likely could make for a good partnership. That's what syndication is. Syndication is where it's a group of people pooling capital together to take on a project larger than what any one individual could do on their own. The benefit for your listener base is that it gives them the opportunity to place capital or money, which is a representation of their store of life energy and time that they likely spent away from people that they love or doing things that they didn't want to do, that capital can be invested with someone else's time and experience to grow. And I don't think many people realize that every day you likely drive by multiple syndication offerings. Anytime you drive by a hotel, an RV park, a mobile home park, or a car wash, or a vineyard, or a retail strip mall, or a hotel, or you know, anything like that. You almost anything can be a syndication offering. It's just a group of people that have pooled capital together and are executing a business plan. So it's it's very rarely an individual owner. Sometimes it is, but usually it's not. It's a group of people that have pulled capital together. Now the good part of that is that it breaks the cycle of trading time for money. The bad part is that there's a lot of opportunity, and with that it's daunting. And how do you choose what to invest in or who to invest with? Once you're exposed to this marketplace, there's so much, and it can be a risk. So I would say, first of all, don't listen to someone like me on a podcast and be like, that guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about, their website looks clean, like boy, everything is checking the boxes. This looks good. Hey, honey, come look at this. What should we invest in self-storage? Don't do that. That's backwards. That's the wrong way to do it. So what's the right way?

SPEAKER_00: 12:32

What's the right way?

SPEAKER_03: 12:33

Will I'm glad you asked.

SPEAKER_00: 12:35

No, I'm being serious. I'm not trying to, I didn't think you were setting me up. I I legitimately am like listening, going, I love it when people I will typically do that as well. By the way, I have a company behind this, and when I'm on shows, I'll say, listen, don't hire me if you can do these things, because it really isn't you know this as well as I do, is that if we're just in the business of getting business, then we get the wrong business. Yeah. And it hurts everybody. So it's easier to build trust by just being transparent. And then for the people who are gonna be a fit to work with, then it becomes a lot easier to gain that relationship and build success. So for you, what if someone is starting from scratch, and I'm a good example. I'm a healthcare provider, I have zero knowledge in what you're talking about, uh, apart from some minor businesses that are buildings I've bought that used to be a part of my practices. So, how would I get started in this space with understanding what I should do? Because obviously I'm not gonna become the expert, but how do I minimize that risk of investing with the right people or companies?

SPEAKER_03: 13:27

Well, you know, there's a book by Benjamin King and Dan Sullivan called Who, Not How. You don't need my favorites.

SPEAKER_00: 13:32

You don't need I am obsessed with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. I get to be with him in January, by the way. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_03: 13:38

Really? That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 13:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 13:39

I'm I'm legitimately jealous. Um, first of all, you don't need to know how to be the expert. You just need to know who you have in your life that is that that you can trust and you understand their ethics and transparency, and it matches up with yours. But most importantly, like you just need to know that there is a vehicle for passive investing into real estate projects and just start with that baseline understanding. And it can be pretty much any asset class that you are interested in. You very likely oil and gas or whatever it may be, you likely can find an offering there. But here's where I don't know that I know the right way. I know the right way for my family and for my wife and I. And what we think the right way for us is, is that we are talking and communicating about what we want to do with our time on this planet and about the lives that we want to create for our family, and about the character that we want to instill in our sons who are six and two. And we live at the beach, and I I'm one of six children, and I grew up in a lower middle class family without a lot of money, and we don't live in the richest area ever, but we certainly live around more wealth than I saw growing up. And one of the concerns that I have is raising a couple little jerks, right? I don't want to raise kids around wealth and opulence and then grow up to be bad people.

SPEAKER_02: 15:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 15:03

So because of that, one of the ways that my wife and I would like to offset that is having a life goal of not just focusing on financial independence like we did before, but by focusing on financial time and location independence to create an independence of purpose. And with that purpose, we would like to raise good kids, we would like to be good members of our community, we would like to do things that we enjoy, continue to build value, and we would like to travel because I think travel outside of where we live and travel outside of the US is the best way to create uh empathy, character, and gratitude.

SPEAKER_00: 15:40

There is no there's no stronger endorsement I can give to what you just said, other than from personal experience. And to put it in perspective, I leave for Kenya in two days. Oh, this is we we and honestly, the poorer the country, the greater the perspective.

SPEAKER_01: 15:55

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00: 15:56

Because, you know, we have this world where on social media, this is a side note, but just kids are suffering as they're going through no matter what their income level, and they're sitting there online thinking everyone's richer and happier. And so if we can go to other places and see where people are legitimately happier who have less, you start like it totally rocks your world. It's just a complete, you know, the kids' world and mine included. So I love that you're saying that because, you know, on the surface, we could look at this as like an investment strategy to help people get more time. But what we're really talking about is life, the limited number of hours we get on this earth. What can we do with it to impact the world and still enjoy this experience so that we're not just like out there with our millions of dollars, but we're really leveraging it for in for improvement across the globe while we raise better humans. Like that to me is what it's all about, right?

SPEAKER_03: 16:42

Everything you just said is the reason I do podcasts. Like I get to connect with people like this in a meaningful way across long distances. And um, yeah, you you just cut right through it. I love that. It's amazing that we're connecting right before you're going to Kenya for something just like that. But that's that's exactly and that's exactly what I'm talking about. That purpose is is gonna look different for different people, but to back to basics. What my wife and I have decided is that that's the goal that we're trying to pursue. So we want to start with that goal in mind, and then we want to decide if that's what's important to us, and these are the things that are important to us in terms of the communication of whoever we're operating with. These are the types of return profiles that we're looking for. We're looking for cash flow, or we're looking for growth, or we're looking for accelerated depreciation to offset our income from these other active gains, or whatever it may be. There's multiple different strategies that you can be after of. You decide what's most important for you that's going to help you meet the financial goals that hopefully are part of a bigger life goal of what you're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01: 17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 17:46

Then you're looking at operators and you're getting to know people. And yes, you're looking at what the offerings are, but more importantly, you're looking at what's their communication style, what are their ethics, what's their background, what's their transparency, what's their morality? Do I believe in the causes that they believe in?

SPEAKER_00: 18:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 18:06

Then you're looking at, oh, well, these people are multifamily, these people are in self-storage, these people are in car washes, these people are in oil and gas, these people are in RV parks or whatever it may be. And then you're looking at, okay, well, this is the return profile. This money's gonna be locked up for three years, this monthly, this is giving a little bit lower return, but it's giving monthly distributions. These, if I leave the money locked up for five to seven years, we're gonna get this kind of return. And when we have different some of our deals, that one of the current deals we're just wrapping up is a seven-year deal, which is long for us. And I had someone come to invest and be like, hey, I'm gonna put money into this deal because I know you guys have closed a little early on some of your other deals. And I'm retiring in four years, but I have a hunch that you guys are gonna close this early because of where we are in the market. And I said, Yeah, that would be cool to close early. Also, do not invest with us. That's a horrible idea. Like, if you're not okay with the conservative timeline, then don't do it. There, there's no amount of money that makes it worth it for us to take investments from the wrong investor because ultimately, if they're disgruntled two, three, or four years from now, I'm still the one that has to take that phone call.

SPEAKER_00: 19:19

Yeah, it's in a bad position. So as you're listening to people, as excuse me, as people are listening to this right now, they're obviously very like think, they're very mindful of this idea of like, how can I invest in this different way? So just using your business as an example, what does it look like? If someone's going to invest with you, what does a typical process look like? What does return on investments look like? Kind of cutting through it to the audience. I know they're going, wow, this is great, but what does it even look like? Like break down in your example of when you work with physicians or you know, physical therapists or whoever's trying to you know diversify their portfolio, what does that look like from beginning to end? If you can just give a very brief overview of the different steps and then kind of what you typically see.

SPEAKER_03: 20:00

Absolutely. So we're connecting with investors. We've got a pool of about 2,400 investors that have connected with us through our website or podcast or whatever that are just kind of getting our monthly newsletters and updates of what's going on and what we're offering. As we come up with an offering, let's say we find an old Kmart building and we put it under contract and we spend several months spending a lot of money and due diligence, and we know that we're gonna convert this to climate-controlled storage. We've got the permitting, the engineering, and everything else done. This is ready to go. We are launching out that out to our investor base. We're letting everybody know, hey, this is what the project looks like. And this is gonna be a little bit of an oversimplification, but it's typically something like this. Hey, we're gonna buy this building for two to three million, we're gonna put two to three million into it, we're gonna be into the whole project somewhere in the four to six million. It's gonna take us a year to build it out and about two years to hit cash flow positive. So it takes a couple years to get going, but you're earning a return that whole time that it's backhoed. And then as a stabilized self-storage facility, we're into the project somewhere in the four to six million range, and they're typically appraising in the 12 to 15 million range, sometimes as high as 17.

SPEAKER_00: 21:08

So double, yeah, or trip double to triple in that return. Are they did you think that they're getting a they're getting some some cash flow while you're still not cash flow positive? Uh, maybe you're a misunderstood that.

SPEAKER_03: 21:19

It depends on the property. So some of the projects already like the one we're closing right now is a Kmart 100,000 square foot Kmart building in a giant retail strip mall with 24 other retail shops, yeah, half of which are occupied in generating sixty thousand dollars a month in rental income. So that one's gonna cash flow a lot sooner. Uh, but the long and short of it is that there's a lot to blast through here. We're buying the building for two to three million. We put two to three million into it. It's gonna praise somewhere in the 12 to 15 million range, and we have a couple options. We can obviously sell it, everybody gets a great payday. We could refinance the property, we could pay everybody out by way of refinance, which means it's non-taxable because we didn't sell anything, so there's no capital gain, and then we can all stay in and hold it long-term forever, and it becomes an infinite return and it continues to cash flow.

SPEAKER_00: 22:11

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 22:12

We can chop it up. We've got one of our projects right now is in Goldsboro, North Carolina. It's a 40,000 square foot furniture store. We bought the building as 40,000 square feet, and we're building a mezzanine. It's got really tall ceilings, so we're cutting it in half horizontally and we're adding a mezzanine and we're turning that 40,000 square feet into 80,000 square feet, wow, which is going to yield around 60 to 65,000 square feet of net rentable climate-controlled storage. And then we have a giant parking lot of two to 300 parking spots, and when we convert it from retail to storage, we only need about 12 to 15 parking spots. So we have outparceled the parking lot. We listed it for sale, and we currently have two offers on it. One is to buy the outparcel for 750 grand to put a Biscuitville restaurant on it. Yeah. And the other is a$65,000 a year land lease for them to lease the outparcel, build their restaurant on it, and it's$65,000 a year for 10 years with a 3% escalation clause for inflation, and then multiple 10-year extensions after that. And in that situation, we're in first position even over the bank. And if they ever miss a payment, we take the land back with the building and everything else.

SPEAKER_00: 23:30

So dang.

SPEAKER_03: 23:32

And then we haven't talked about the roof space. I'm currently our group is sitting on 700,000 square feet of roof space that could be converted to solar when and if the federal dollars come back. So my point is it when you're converting from one asset class to another, what you're really doing is you're changing the formula by which the asset is valued.

SPEAKER_02: 23:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 23:53

And it it's changing up how the consumer uses that building. And it it changes the formation of the square footage, the parking lot, the ways in, the ways out, the rooftop. We can fence parking lot off, and we can do boat and RV storage. We can do tractor trailer parking, we can do co-working space. It creates a lot of opportunity for us to pull different levers. So I feel like I'm muddying the waters here, but my point is.

SPEAKER_00: 24:19

No, I think you're doing a great job, Clint. You're you're so I am, I'm honestly, this is exactly where I think my audience wants to go. They want to understand it, they want to understand this type of situation so that they can be equipped to take their money and invest it in something that doesn't require more of their time that's going to return on investment in a way that is like life-changing. And so I will tell you, you know, for me from personal experience, I don't have a very much real estate, but I have three buildings that I've purchased over the years that my businesses were in. I sold my medical practice. So it's very, very small. But the the return on investment that I've received from the little real estate holdings that I have is my favorite money because it takes the least amount of my time and it continues to appreciate in a way that nothing else I've ever invested it in has. And I know, you know, real estate has I've done, I've kind of timed it well. There's definitely downturns and so on, but for the most part, it has been my favorite money that I've had, and it's had the most to do with increasing my net worth. And I think there's just so much to be said about that piece alone. So in your case, if I can maybe this is too personal, and that's okay if not, just let me know. And we can edit it out if that's the case. But like, what is a typical investment amount? If someone's going to come to the table and say, and you guys both have interviewed and you're like, yep, this is a mutual fit. What is, I'm sure that range is dramatic, but what does that range look like? And then what is their ROI and some what are some of the examples? Is it just some examples of ROIs that are like, wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03: 25:46

So our average investment about six months ago was around 135 grand, but it's a little misleading. We started off with a lot of$50,000 investors because we allowed people in our company and friends and family to invest in this. We opened up as 506B. We want it's so funny. Our some of our project managers, guys in their 20s, get amped when they find screws for like one dot one cent less per screw. Because it's money in their pocket. Yeah, they're invested. They have skin in the game, and I love seeing that. And so because of that, we have a lot of smaller investors,$50,000 investors that kind of pull the average down. But we're around that$135,000 mark. If you didn't factor that in, it's closer to the it's probably low$220, something like that. But we have different share classes. We have a$50,000 minimum, a$250, and then a million dollar share class, and they each go up in$1,000 increments. Those are just the minimums. But a typical return profile, depending on the offering, is going to be something like an annualized return of 15 to 20% per year, something like that. We just paid out. Um, we bought a Kmart in Danville, Virginia for two and a half million, and then 37 months later, we sold it for 9.53. Uh, and we beat our projected returns on that one. They're not all gonna do that. Um sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But you have to keep in mind what this is. The operator of this deal is raising money from investors, and the investors are the bank. You are the bank for this, right? So if the interest rates with the bank are really low and there's a lot of money out there, you probably don't have to offer as competitive as rates. But then when 2022 happens and the interest rates shoot up higher and faster than they ever have, it's been a lot more competitive raising capital. So right now you have people offering, you know, 15 to 17 percent, 17 to 20 percent, 18 to 22 percent. The the return is typically correlated with the risk in the project or how long it's gonna take. A longer project is typically gonna pay out more because it takes longer to get there. The way our projects work is they're basically development deals. We are developers and you have to think about it that way. You can go make 15% per year by a self-storage operator who's buying existing facilities and doing some operational turnaround. If you want to do better than that and have significant equity, it you probably need to be in something that's longer term. Like we're buying an old building. The day that we close, we usually have a couple million dollars worth of equity, but then we still have to build it out. It takes us a year.

SPEAKER_00: 28:24

It's on paper at that point. It's not something you can realize. It's you it's leverageable, but it's not something that you're like putting in your pocket.

SPEAKER_03: 28:30

Right. So one of our projects recently, we were all in for$7 million. And the day that we got the certificate of occupancy, it appraised for$11.3. So we've created a lot of value, but that building is empty. It's not cash flowing. So now we got to fill it up, right? And this is a big building. So it may take us two years sometimes to get to cash flow positive. Now, the good news is our cash flow positive is way lower than a new development because new development is$130 a square foot in three years to build. Ours is$65 a square foot, and that includes the land, the parking lot, the construction, everything. And it takes 10 to 12 months. But still, like you got to build it out and then you got to fill it up. So during that time period from the day that our investors' capital goes in, they start earning a back owed preferred return. So usually six, eight, ten percent, something like that. From the day your money goes in, you're earning that return, but it is back owed. As soon as the property becomes cash flow positive, all of the money coming out goes straight back to the investors. Amazing. Catch them up. After they are caught up, then it's a 70 30 split with the money coming in, with 70% going to the limited partners and 30% going to the general partner. That's when we finally start making some money.

SPEAKER_00: 29:47

I see that. And that might that was my next question. Where do you guys make your money?

SPEAKER_03: 29:50

It's on that 30% on the back end. Yep, exactly. 70 30 split until we hit a certain return profile, and then it goes usually 50 50. Each deal may be different. And then we could refinance and all have an exit that way and stay in and hold it long term, or if we get some crazy offer that's enough to peel the white knuckles off the steering wheel, it it may be worth it to trade the property.

SPEAKER_00: 30:12

Man, you've done this a lot. So how how many years have you been doing this? How many properties would you say you've done that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_03: 30:19

So we bought our first Kmart as a joint venture uh in 20 into 2020. I was selling pacemakers at the hospital, and the doctors I was working with, a bunch of them uh were ones that invested in the project. That one went really well. So then we did another one, and then we did another one, and then we did another one. And I think we had done eight, seven or eight projects when I turk took off my surgical scrubs for the last time in November of 2022. Wow. Been doing it full time ever since. We uh we've done 12 projects so far. We've got our 13th in the in the pipeline, 14th and 15th are letters of intent or under contract somewhere in the process, currently sitting at 150 million in assets under management. Our five-year goal is 500 million and 10-year goal of a billion. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00: 31:09

I like to hear people dream big. I, you know, it's one of those things where um Benjamin Hardy, best book I've read this year, is his newest book called The Science of Scaling. Oh this this book has game-changed it for me. And it's it's a really powerful book for anyone who's listening because um what Clint is doing here is right in alignment with that. It's his first book that since he broke away from Dan Sullivan. And it's all focused on this concept that like the higher the target, the more unrealistic and almost impossible it may seem, the easier life becomes. It's the most counterintuitive concept, but it's all backed in science and research and actual application. And so it's fun because once we start to really believe in something and we can really see that we're making an impact and that profit and purpose go back to go, you know, no money, no mission, that kind of thing. Once we align those two things, then it becomes sky is the limit. It's up to us as visionaries to really hit something as a of a big target because until then, everything becomes equally exciting. You know, all these things that we could be spending time on. You could have tried to balance your previous job with this side hustle instead of making it the main thing. And as a result of that, you could have lost so much opportunity. And that's opportunity cost is a big part of this. So I think that that's really important as a side concept for our listeners to understand is that like whatever we're building, there is there's something about thinking big that isn't just like this fun business term. It's an actual application base that would make it easier for us. And so when we look at growth, I mean, yeah, man, like you look at go back to the Shark Tank comment I made. When people are starting over, the first place to start would be in real estate because of all the things that you and I have already said. So if we're building a big vision, how how much more realistic is it for us to be able to get there if we are in invested in some real estate with people who know how? So that's powerful stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 33:06

I'm really glad you brought up scale. That's amazing. The the one downside of doing podcasts is that I blow my book budget every month. I you just cost me another one, I'll become buy that immediately when we're done here. I I do audio books. So uh that one's free.

SPEAKER_00: 33:20

That's so the science of scaling is free. It's a podcast, and it's just the all it is is the book. So you can put the book for free.

SPEAKER_03: 33:27

Oh, thank you. I saved you some money. I paid 20 bucks. All right. That's great. Yeah, I'm like four books behind. I I don't have enough time to read everything I want to read, mainly because of my little boys. But um that's great. Thanks for that. It's so in terms of scaling, this is a great example. You know, you can it's you can invest in single family homes or duplexes or flips or wholesaling or Airbnb is popular right now, RB parks, you can do anything you want. But the reality is you're probably not gonna change your life in a way that affects how much time you get to spend with your kids or grandkids or change their character, right, unless you're able to hit a certain level of scale and velocity. And it is probably not wise for you to pursue that because your time is worth too much.

unknown: 34:11

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 34:12

And the learning curve is gonna be so long, it makes more sense to partner with other people and you just keep the main thing the main thing. Right. Keep doing what you're good at. But the idea is like take some of your capital and have it get up and get out of bed and go to work so that one day when you don't feel like getting up and getting out of bed and going to work, that you have created a pathway that there's another income stream for your house that's happening that way. That you're you're increasing, you know, you're doubling that income every seven years or so. One other thing that's really good, important tool to know is that you can invest in opportunities like this with your retirement funds. Oh I've converted one of my 401ks and two IRAs from previous employment to self-directed funds. I'm not allowed to invest those into nomad deals. It's called co-mingling, and it's illegal because I'm one of the general partners. But I do have that invested into other offerings with other people. With I have in storage in Texas with a group called Reliant and with uh some multifamily and in a beverage company, and like I've got different diversified assets. Even you. Yeah, even me, right? I I want to spread that out because we're all just taught that investing means paper assets and it's stocks and bonds. And it's it's just not. And I've seen a lot of the cardiologists that I worked with were trying to retire, like a whole wave of them in Columbia, South Carolina, where I was at at the time, were trying to retire when the 2008 market crashed.

SPEAKER_00: 35:46

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 35:47

And you had people that lost a lot of their liquidity options rapidly and had to keep working for another three, four years to get back to where they were. So, yes, the stock market is an incredible way to continue to grow wealth, quote unquote, passively. And as long as the market's up when you're trying to retire, that's great. If it's not, it can really create some volatility that people don't see coming. And so diversification into other asset classes, I just I think there's a reason they call it real estate and not real stocks.

SPEAKER_00: 36:23

Totally. And it's just the idea that you hit of like if if anyone listening has any money that they're just looking to invest, you know, this isn't for the private practice owner who's barely breaking, even who has no expendable funds. This is if you're in that place, you have to get that business under wraps for invest in yourself, totally. Yeah. Once we get to a point where and maybe we don't live the life that we want, but we have money, but we're just not sure how to use it to buy back our time or use it for freedom creating tools or or investments. This is a great one. And I I you know, my one of my favorite books on finance, not trying to give you something else to read. You've probably read this one. It's the um The Richest Man in Babylon.

SPEAKER_03: 37:03

Oh yeah, I give that recommendation out a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 37:06

It's a good one, right? It's a super simple read. My I'm not I'm not an avid reader, but like you, I love what I learned from it. So, like, that's a great book. And in it, it goes over the five laws of gold or seven laws of gold. But one of the main ones is that you invest with people who've proven that they're they know what they're doing if you're in an area that you don't know. And then number two is that you should take your money and get it to work for you. And that concept isn't brand new, but the way the book describes it is exactly how you said it is that like if you have any money that's sitting in a bank account, you're losing money with inflation, especially recently. You could go crypto, you could go stock. There's various pros and cons to that. But listen to the Shark Tanks again, the Shark Tank leaders, those guys who are just like, no, I'd get back into real estate. And there's, I would argue, I don't know anyone who's not super successful financially who doesn't have a significant real estate portfolio. I think these types of ventures, you know, this isn't technically a REIT, is it?

SPEAKER_03: 38:05

Uh no, ours are not. A lot of times that may be who we're selling to or that we may roll up to that. But yeah, the real estate investment trust is usually kind of the institutional level person that's the end buyer of a lot of facilities like that.

SPEAKER_00: 38:17

I get it. So that's cool because again, you know, you look at like private equity, what is that? Most doctors don't know, but private equity is nothing more than a bunch of people pulling their money together for a fund that then with great bri brains and minds go and invest it and get way more than 10 to 15% returns. This is that in a real estate space where people cannot have to be experts in their field, but they can put money in and then watch it grow. And it's cool about what you're offering, in my opinion, is that it's it's it can be long-term. Like if I was investing with you, I would that's where I'm at. I'm not looking for that in that three-year double to triple uh return on investment. I'm looking for passive income. I love my real estate investments for my buildings, it's my favorite money. It's like, and then what's cool about that too is as you know, with$150 million under under management, is that that just every year, just having that asset, you know, it's it grows. And so your net worth becomes more and more, and then you have leverage capabilities you wouldn't have had before. It's not necessarily sitting in the bank, but it is it is doing way more for you than it is if it was liquid in the bank. If anything, it would be losing in the liquid, you know, the bank sink. So, how do people so Clint, let me wait before I start asking that next question, any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03: 39:32

Yeah, first of all, you're a really good podcast host. Uh, you're unpacking a lot of different things in different directions we could go here. But like, real quickly, you just you really cut through the mist there on that one because you know what your goals are. Like, oh, no, I'm not that type of investor. I am this type of investor. And that's why I know that this resounds, this fits with me, and this doesn't. That's a great example of why it's so important to know where you are, what your goals are. And my recommendation is to do that with your family. So I love that. You also mentioned stocks and crypto. Well, the one thing you can't do there is control the outcome. You can't control the valuation. What we can do, we are buying properties that we are not buying on a cap rate. We're buying them per square foot. We're buying nasty old buildings, typically that have been empty for eight to ten years. They are worth basically what we're willing to pay for them. And instead of building a new facility from the ground up for the cost of the land plus$130 a square, we can buy a nasty old Kmart for$10 to$20 a square foot, and we can put$40 to$45 a square foot into it. And our average across our portfolio is just under$65 a square for the building, the construction, the parking lot, the land, all of it, and we are converting it, right? The beauty is we are now converting it into a different asset class. And that asset class is valued by the net operating income. The rents coming in on the property minus the expenses, but not including the debt, divided by the going cap rate in the market is what determines the valuation. Don't get lost on that. But my point is there's a multiplier in there. There's a multiplier inside that equation. And an example is this. One of our is actually one of our competitors, but he's a guy that I look up to and respect a lot also in storage. He has an analogy where he takes his kids to the Walmart parking lot and he has them get out of the car and walk around the parking lot looking for change until they find a dollar. And it's hot and it's taking them 30, 40 minutes, and they don't want to be there, and they're whining, but eventually they find the nickels, the pennies, the quarters, and they come up with a dollar. And then he sat them down, and this was the lesson. He said, Listen, this is one of our facilities right across the street from this Walmart. That looks like a dollar to you, and you just worked hard for that dollar. But here's how commercial real estate works. On that self-storage facility over there across the street, if we increase the rents on that entire facility by a dollar per month, just a dollar, at a five cap, which is the going rate that that property is trading at at the time, it increases the value of the property by two hundred and forty dollars. So he's got this kid and he's like, Look, you have a dollar here, but this dollar represents two hundred and forty dollars worth of value that you created here. So what does that translate to? If we increase the rents just a little bit on that facility across the street by$1,000 a month, which is very easy to do across 500 units, sure, the value on that property immediately went up$240,000, and the bank will immediately let you tap into that and borrow that money and pull it out without paying taxes on it and take that and invest it into the next property and move on. The value of commercial real estate is that you can control the outcome because the outcome is the net operating income that hits a multiplier. And the multiplier is really what jumps things up. And if we we are changing the asset into the formula that we can control, and then we maximize the net operating income, and that forces up the value. How do you put value onto a residential property? What like if you're flipping a house, what is the value? The value is the bricks and the sticks and what the neighbor on the street paid for theirs. It's a comped-based system. Totally. Comparative market analysis. If these properties on the street are selling for this per square feet, this property is worth this per square feet. That's not how you determine the value of commercial real estate. Commercial real estate is valued based upon a cap rate in the market and a multiplier. And so the more you can increase that rent, even if it's just a little bit, it's hitting a huge multiplier. And so you can force that appreciation. So when you buy an old Kmart that got put out of business because Amazon and Walmart are smarter in that space and they're gone, it doesn't mean that that building is a bad location. You still have the same residential density in a one, three, five, and seven mile radius. You still have the same vehicle traffic count. And it still is a great place for the same people in that community to drive back to the same building. Now the difference is instead of going there to buy their home goods, they're paying us to come put the same stuff back inside the same building.

SPEAKER_00: 44:25

All their Amazon and Walmart purchases are going back into the facility and they're paying you to store it and with little to no human human capital.

SPEAKER_03: 44:33

It's QR codes on the door, it's touchscreen kiosks, it's automated for the most part with a little bit of on-site personnel.

SPEAKER_00: 44:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 44:39

And it's it's just an inverse flow of that local microeconomy.

SPEAKER_00: 44:43

So brilliant. Yeah, and it's funny because like you mentioned one of your investments, the entire strip mile is already built out. Like it's just Kmart suffered because of Amazon and Walmart. So they have this one individual location that failed. So the real estate then has all this massive potential. But you know, it's a very niche thing in the sense that like there's not a lot of other applications that are out there fighting for 100,000 square feet. So it's it's it's understanding. I think what you've really hit upon is this next wave potential. You know, there's all this opportunity around what you're doing versus what's available. And it's it's gonna that discrepancy is so big, it's gonna sustain for decades longer, like minimally. I'm in in my personal business without you know transitioning to that. My audience already knows anyway, but like I hit the same stride where I found the right thing at the right time that it applies my skill set and it creates maximum value for people. To be in that spot is so special. The difference between you and me is that I can invest with you. I can't invest, no one can become clients of mine, but you can't invest with me. Mine's a typical service business. What you're doing that's so cool, is that it's a rising tide for lots of people. And so I really want my audience to understand this concept, and I'm learning about it obviously in real time. Um, listen, I this has been such a phenomenal episode, Clint. I I don't just say this loosely, you are an ideal guest. Not just in terms of what you're talking about, but who you are, your passion. I've rarely, if ever, had someone outsell them like sell the like, hey, you don't want to work with me just because you heard me on the podcast. I love that. And that's that's why I think people should trust going to you to learn more, even if it's not a fit. So if people wanted to learn more about this, and maybe they could potentially work with you, how would they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_03: 46:30

The best way is through our website, nomadcapital.us. Um, there's videos on there about that in the show notes. Yeah, that'd be great. Uh, our portfolio, what we've done in the past, our core values, our ethics, our beliefs. I'll talk to anybody about anything. I'll talk about Airbnb, raising capital, property management. I will tell you this though, my wife and a lot of her friends call me a dream crusher. Because at the end of the day, like at the end of the day, the numbers are the numbers and like the performance of the business plan and our ability to execute it is is gonna be what it's gonna be. And it's your job to know what your goals are. And if they don't fit up with what we're doing, I'll try to be the first one to tell you that. But if you don't know, if you have this fanciful idea of what you're looking for, we're gonna need to drill into that a little bit more. And for you to really know what you're trying to accomplish. Because in order for me to accomplish what I want to accomplish for my family and for our tribe of real estate nomads, we all got to be in the same boat rowing in the same direction. And if we're not, there are thousands of other places for you to go find opportunities that match up with what you're looking for with your family. And I think that that brutal honesty, candor, and accountability is just the best way to do it if you want to do it for a long time.

SPEAKER_00: 47:46

I I well, all I hear from you, Clint, is commitment to this one concept. We all win together, or none of us win. Yeah. I can see that. Like your win is so closely tied to your client's win that like there is zero motivation to bring someone on who's not going to be a fit. Like you just would be in a position where it would shoot you in the foot and your investors in the foot. That's a lot of pressure. So you are a good guy and you're val and you're incentivized in the right way. Those are the two magic combos of knowing who to work with. You can get both of those together, then there's just no need to worry, other than being clear on your goals.

SPEAKER_03: 48:20

Yeah, that's true. And let's let's be honest. Like sometimes goals change, right? Like your family's gonna change, or life circumstances is gonna change. That's fine. It's not about when things happen, it's about how we deal with them. We always say, you, you know, we can't change the wind, but we can adjust our sales. That's not what I'm talking about. Things like that are gonna happen, and that's when you really want to have a relationship and that you have communication and that you can talk through things like that to how are we gonna navigate this together to the best outcome? And that's again, like that's why the relationship and the communication is more important than the deal because your goalpost might move in your life, and that's okay. If you have different goals than than the what we're trying to accomplish, then that's kind of a you problem for getting involved, and it's kind of a me problem for letting you get involved. But if we are involved and something does happen or shift for you, you want to have that communication and transparency that that we can navigate it together. And that's why I think those goals and the relationships are the great place to start before you start getting shiny object syndrome and looking at return profiles or deals.

SPEAKER_00: 49:27

Clint, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been very educational, very fun. And I'm gonna shoot you actually an email with a few questions I have on my end, if that's all right.

SPEAKER_03: 49:35

Happy to help any way that I can. Thanks for your time. I appreciate you having me here.

SPEAKER_00: 49:38

Rockstars, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, this is Will Humphreys, really encouraging you to lead with love and remember to never give up. Thanks, Clinton.