Investing Through Volatility | Ryan Garland E42

In this episode, Ryan Garland shares a strategic breakdown of how investors can navigate today’s volatile market using data-driven real estate opportunities.

Drawing from his experience managing a distressed asset fund and operating through previous downturns, Ryan explains why capital preservation, risk mitigation, and smart positioning are more important than ever.

He walks through two current investment opportunities from Paradyme Companies:

• Barn Caves — A multi-use, mixed asset development in Lake Havasu combining residential living with high-demand RV/boat storage and a revenue-generating wellness facility.
• The Flats — A centrally located townhome project designed for shorter-term returns and strong buyer demand.

Key topics covered:

• The real impact of current global and economic volatility
• Migration trends and the rise of lifestyle-driven real estate
• Why baby boomers and IRA capital are reshaping investment demand
• The explosive growth of boat/RV storage as an asset class
• How vertical integration and low/no debt structures reduce investor risk
• The role of health & wellness in modern real estate development

Ryan also explains Paradyme’s phased development model, projected returns, and how investors can structure their participation for both cash flow and long-term asset ownership.

This episode is designed to give investors clarity, confidence, and a framework for navigating the next 10–15 years of wealth-building opportunities.

Paradyme

Transcript

A New Solo Format

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hey guys, I'm sitting here in my latest and greatest Family Office Health and Wellness Center. And I wanted to share with you, I'm going to go a different direction with some of my podcasts. I think I want to talk a little bit more from a solo side, not just continue to bring people on and interview them and their backgrounds and what they do. But I think it's really important, given the volatility in the market, that you guys understand what we're doing and what we're seeing to navigate the waters. For those of you that don't know, in 2008, I cut my teeth in the distressed asset market and I currently manage a distressed asset fund, which is ultimately a$100 million debt fund. And I have taken back over 15% of my portfolio as distressed assets and I'm repurposing those as we speak. That is a massive conversation piece because there's a lot of PR out there that's not being pushed to let you know exactly where our economy actually stands, and it's not being noticed or projected in the world. I'm gonna bring you guys real life data that you guys can use this as an educational platform to navigate the waters and where you want to invest, where you should spend your time, how to navigate, building wealth for your family, how to hand that over to your family, taxes, locations, migrations, spending habits of boomers, health and wellness. I'm gonna go over all of the largest items that are gonna be the most impactful assets in the next 10 to 15 years. So I'm gonna give you guys as much information as I possibly can and then what it is we're doing to navigate these waters. So I hope you guys can come along with me. I hope there's a benefit for you, and this will be a uh something that you can really pollinate into your family. So I'm looking forward to sharing more with you. Hi investors, my name is Ryan Garland. I'm the founder and chairman of a private equity firm called Paradigm. And I'm gonna give you kind of a rundown on both offerings that we have. And I actually have a third one called the SIF, but we'll talk about that here in a bit. But one of the things that I wanted to do by sharing this video with you is kind of share where we came from, where we are now, where we're going. And I think that's really important with all the volatility in the market today, which I believe is what's the 31st. Um, and you know, we now have boots on the ground when it comes to, you know, what's going on in Iran. And I think there's a really big mislead on what's happening in the world and how that's gonna have a direct impact on your wealth. But you need to position yourself to, in essence, withstand that turmoil and try to ride that wave through because it's not a matter of if, it's when it ends and what's that mean for you when you're when you're primed and you're positioned. So I'm gonna give you two uh offerings that we're raising equity for today. One's called the barn caves, another one's called the flats. We're doing marketing for both. So you may have came in through one of those uh portals, whether you saw the flats or the barn caves on some sort of social media, meta, YouTube, what have you. We're trying to build awareness for raising equity for these two projects. I'll start with the barn caves. And I'm gonna kind of talk your ear off. So bear with me because I think this is important for you to know all of these things that we've created so you can understand how we navigated the uniqueness of migration trends, uh, spending habits, baby boomers wealth, healthcare, all of these things have to pollinate on decision making regarding the investment strategy on the barn caves. Now, I'm located in Lake Havasu, Arizona, which in my opinion is one of the most desired locations on the West Coast for retirement. Mostly baby boomers are all coming out of first responders, Southern California, but it's now becoming a beacon for people all over the country, from snowbirds to just lake life and recreational. Clearly, what happened with the 2020 uh pandemic, people were just getting driven out here, like and by the loads because of the lockdowns that were happening in California. But that momentum kind of stuck with people spending time with their families, people realizing as inflation, you know, started kicking off, rates hikes started in 2022, cost of living was going up, taxes, the list kind of goes on. A lot of boomers were getting into a position where they didn't want to put their head in the sand like 2008 and allow the uh GFE situation to impact your wealth. So people are becoming more bullish and making decisions faster than they ever had before. And a lot of people are kind of going into the retirement, which by the way, the baby boomers' middle of the retirement age is in 2033. So we still have another eight more years before we're in the middle of that retirement uh generation. With that said, people have a lot of 401ks converting to IRAs, and those IRAs are one of the most popular investment vehicles to mitigate taxes. And I'm sure most of you know how that works. Most of our investors are looking at vehicles to accumulate more wealth, not necessarily looking for cash flow, but how can they outpace the cost of inflation but position themselves where they can start acquiring assets and cash down the road when they're ready, whether it's full retirement, their spouse retires, but they're positioning themselves in a community that is focused on healthcare. The cost of living is low. It's amongst friends politically, let's not, let's not, you know, bullshit. And I think it's really important that you understand that we look at things from a perspective of what people really want, safety, and how you're going to be able to pass over that wealth to the next generation, whether it's your kids or grandkids or what have you. And I'm in that same boat. So right now, our firm is set up where we can acquire assets, manage everything in-house from an asset management and protection. And then we go and develop the project. So we're more vertically integrated than most operators or even private equity firms that are specific in a sp in a niche or an asset class. So let's stay on the barn caves for a second. So the barn caves is a multi-use product. So it's in essence a uh mixed-use asset class. You have 93 units of townhomes that are detached single family. The units are 10 feet apart, and these are three-story products that are pitched roofs like barn dominum. So you also have the larger garages on the bottom and what we call man caves, because we just got done building paradigm storage, which right next door is 225,000 square feet of boat and RV storage man caves. Excuse me. So what people are looking for are asset classes that they can invest into, get 1031 exchange, focus on bonus depreciation, but they love having that large garage where they could put all their toys. And in Lake Aviso, that's all there is out here. You got the boating community, you got the Razor community, the off-road community, and you have the golf cart side, you know, things, you have, you know, uh uh what the jet skis, you just have just a plethora of toys that people want and they need the space to park their toys. So when you look at the data supporting the uh boat and RV storage product, that's one of the fastest growing asset classes for investors, not only because the strike price is so low from a 1031 exchange example, the lowest you know, purchase price is$125,000. So you can get into something like that with no maintenance, you don't have to deal with rentals and you know, regular residential rentals, but you have a box that you're renting out where you invest, you know,$125,000 and you're renting it to somebody who has a million-dollar asset in there, or a coach RV, or a really expensive boat that are going to make their$650 payments per month, right? So your cash flow is consistent, you don't have as much turnover like apartments or residential rentals, you don't have nearly as many moving pieces where you have to fix as a owner or a landlord. So that is a very, very fast-growing asset class. But Lake Havasu is the mecca for boat and RV storage and man caves. And I won't bother you or bug you as to how why that is, but a lot of it has to do with just the more bang for your buck when you go from Vegas, California, um, Phoenix, and Scottsdale down to you have the lake life, you have all of these other things that you can actually have fun here, along with uh um uh what do you call it, mechanics, and you have all of those things for pretty much every uh RV type, boat type, or what have you. So this is kind of that hub for people to travel to and kind of enjoy their outdoor lifestyle. The barn caves, though, again, is 93 units of townhomes with an RV garage at the bottom. The second story is the living space, which you typically have two or three bedrooms because these are four and three bedroom options. The second floor is two to three bedrooms, with each bedroom has its own bathroom and a powder room for guests, along with your uh kitchen, your laundry room, a living room, and a patio overlooking uh the larger driveway and over the RV garage. And then your third floor is a master suite, separating all of the rest of the living space to your master suite. Your master suite actually has more of a private uh deck out the back. And then you also have more of the European style finish work from uh bathrooms, showers, flooring, what have you. And we'll go ahead and give you some renderings for consideration as well or to look at. Uh with that said, you're looking at 93 units of townhomes. This is a six-phase project. The very first phase is the gymnasium, which is ultimately the community center with the residential. Now I want you to sit back and think about this for a second. Any residential out here in the desert needs to have a pool, right? So if you have a community of 50 homes, 100 homes, whatever have you, you need to have a pool. The pool is a must during the summer. For insurance, it's much cheaper from a builder's risk policy, from a construction management side, all the way down to what the insurance policy will be for the end user or the homeowner when it's time for them to take ownership of the home. But in regards to the gym, what we decided to do is very similar to like the lifetime fitness model. Lifetime fitness, if you think about the big gyms and like high dense areas, they by trade are actually multifamily builders. They actually started building multifamily homes and then they would, but they like primary markets. And what they realized is that a lot of the larger gyms, like the EOSes, the uh LA Fitnesses, the Lifetime Fitnesses, were getting all of the energy in that high dense area is because communities like to come together and go to those types of spaces, but there's also more amenities in those spaces. You got cold plunges and you got pools and you got a lot more equipment, what have you. So it's just a nicer product that people will go to. So if you are building apartments and those apartments also have a little fitness center, that fitness center in those areas won't really be busy and you have a pool that won't be used because those the community, the residents are gonna go to the gym across the street and they're gonna use that because they like that energy, they like the community component to it. So that changes absolutely everything from a maintenance side, from a cost, and you're losing uh rentable space. So, as a builder, a developer, you want to get every inch to generate income. And if you eliminate a pool and you eliminate a little fitness center that nobody uses, you can build more units, generate more cash flow, create more sustainability, and the likelihood to scale your business goes up. But what they did is they realized that that community center makes no money. So if you're able to build a gym that's open to the public, and as most of you guys know, commercial real estate is based on income approach. What can that commercial building generate in income, which will give you value on the building? Now think of it this way: if you have a residential community and you have a little fitness center and a pool, it's just an amenity to the residents. It's just a selling feature. And it's a cost, right? And it has to be spread out to the HOAs. You have to maintain it, you have to get insurance. And by the way, out here in the heat, these insurance carriers know they're not stupid. They're getting smarter. They know people get drunk and they bump their heads and people get sued, which now means the HOAs get sued. It's a big ordeal. So what we did is we separated the community center from the residential, which now we open up the community center to the public and we generate income now, which gives us value to the building. So instead of that building being built and having no value and just being a cost to the project, and then the management and maintenance of it has to get pawned off to the HOAs and to the unit owners, along with all the liability. We removed all of those aspects, opened up a larger gym, making it much more desirable for the overall community to come and join. You're gonna generate income. That building now has value, which mitigates risk. It's it's the income's gonna manage the building, which is not sitting on the HOA balance sheet for the residents. And then you have your own insurance policy to cater to that, which removes the liability. When you look at it from that perspective, that right there has been one of the largest, most desirable features from an investor is always managing risk and not just risk on the exit and where the world is going. Managing risk throughout the process of development and how you're structured to make sure that our investors are secure and we're mitigating as much risk as possible. So, with that said, that's the phase one of six phases. After that phase one starts, which we're about a month or month and a half out. So, by the way, this is the beginning of April, is when this video is shot. Within the next few months, we're gonna get the final approvals for the residential and we're gonna start the mass grading for the residential. So we're getting ready to pull the permit for the gym. So we're that close. So if you as an investor are seeing this video, it may be too late to invest, but it is also early on, and we're a lot farther along through the risk process of entitlements and planning. So if you get in now, your risk is lower. With that said, our first phase of the residential, we're shooting for July, but we have to do all the masquerading first. Mind you, this is on 18 acres. So three acres is where the gym's gonna be with a parking lot. We have pickleball courts, we have a pool that's designed, it's designed like a Dubai-inspired design pool like Club Drift in Dubai. So if you want to take a look at that or Google that, you'll see it's one of the number one beach clubs in the world. And it's pretty funny because it's not a complicated pool, it's just a big rectangle pool. We're just making it look exactly like that and using the PR for marketing. So it's taken root, as you can imagine. But it's a really cool kind of feature to bring to Lake Avisu, and people like that kind of thing, right? You're bringing that kind of product and class to the community. So we've gotten a lot of support. So going into the mass grading, mind you, we got to pull all the water, all the power. We have to bring all of that into all the horizontal improvements for where the residents are gonna go. And those are 93 units of townhomes, and that'll be five phases. The financial structure, we're raising 20 million. We're at 10 million now, early April. Okay. At 10 million now, we're trying to close the rest out. So we're in we're in a hurry up and rush kind of scenario. Once we raise that capital, we're gonna rotate that capital with very minimal debt or no debt at all. And this is very important. The reason why people lost so much money in 2008 is because of how leveraged their assets were. They had a big bank debt on there, a big loan on the first trustee. And when they weren't able to make the payments or construction stopped, foreclosure started. If we remove the foreclosure risk, given the volatility in the market, we remove the foreclosure risk and we build this in cash using our investors' capital, the likelihood of us not losing money goes up high, meaning we don't want to lose money. The first rule of thumb is try not to lose money at all. The mindset due to the volatility is not just making a ton of money right now, but it's about preserving the wealth that you've created. That's the volatility in the market. People are just worried about where the world is going. And I need to retain capital. I don't want to lose it. And if I can make profit, great, but you need to look at those again, that structure uh for your for consideration. So again, no bank debt. We're gonna rotate. That's why we have so many phases. This is a four-year investment. So every time we deliver a phase, we recapitalize and we move the rest of that capital into building phase two, phase three, and on and on. Okay. This right now, our projected returns are 30% IRR per year. What that means is that let's say you invest$100,000 and this is a four-year investment, you're gonna make$120,000 in profit on the back end. Now, there's two ways you can secure your investment. One, you can just be an investor because you like the merits of the investment. Or two, you can choose a lot and pick a lot. So when the lot in the home is delivered, you can take ownership of that property, which is a very common uh practice. And in fact, we have roughly 40 of the 93 units of investors who have already chosen their lot and chosen their floor plan and are starting to look at certain finish work. So when we do deliver, they take ownership, they pay the rest, depending on what they've put out for an investment for the down payment. And they take ownership of the property with no capital gains and no recognized gains because they're just taking ownership of a unit without making the profit. We're just gifting the profit to them. So that's a more complicated either Matt or myself will jump on a call and talk that through further. But that's something that we want you to consider. Right now, again, four-year investments, 30% projected return, four years. And at year three, we pay back your principal. So you get some cash flow at an eight pref throughout the years. You get your principal back at year three, and then year four, you get all of your capital back along with your or sorry, you get all of your equity kicker. So again, year three, you get your principal black plus eight pref. And then year four, you get your equity kicker. Okay, so that's how that's set up. Now, that's just the barn caves. Okay. We can talk about what you know when we're gonna liquidate the gym, how does that look, how we're rotating the capital. I can talk about the data on health and wellness. We can talk about the fastest growing um industry right now is health and wellness. We can talk about big pharma, people go into more of the holistic approach, gym memberships, and the data is booming, private equity, bought gold's gym. That's the EOS. So we can talk more of where that position is going, which only gives more security to the investors on the barn caves. So that's the barn caves. I'm gonna talk about the flats. Now, the barn caves, I'm a let me sum it up with this. The barn caves is on the north side of Lake Avasu, right next to the shops. The shops are 730,000 square feet, and that also has uh a Walmart, a Dillard's, JCPenney, all the big box stores, movie theaters, Buffalo Wild Wings, more restaurants are coming into town. The the airport is directly across the highway, which just the two FBOs just got bought out by a private equity firm called Velocity, and they've done a big hire, and they're all bringing these people into into uh Temecula, or sorry, into Lake Havasu as well. And so you're seeing a big uh you're seeing more employers bringing in more employees into the into the city, which is a big metric. Right next the the 18 acres where the barn caves is, I bought that land right next to paradigm storage. It was the same landowner that I delivered paradigm storage. What I have not told you yet is paradigm storage is 225,000 square feet right next to the 18 acres. So we've already developed a huge project right next door. And inside your this pitch deck, you're going to see some data supporting a$10.6 million purchase from another home builder called Apex. They just bought 623 acres directly west behind the shops and between the shops and the water, which is uh two left-handed rock throws away from me. That developer just sold 300 acres to another builder called um uh North Point and Viewpoint, which they already have 800 lots there now, already built out, and they're gonna expand that product over, and then Apex is gonna build more homes. I'm projecting about 2,000 more homes being delivered in the next 10 years in that area. And the only way to get to those homes is right past our project. Right down the 95 uh on the on the highways, the 95. As soon as you come onto retail center drive, you have Home Depot. Home Depot, I share a property line with Home Depot, which is Paradigm Storage. And then Paradigm Storage shares a property line with the Barn Caves, and then right around the corner, you're looking at you're looking at Dillard's from the property. So you have the all that retail there. So that's the barn caves, and that's the location. So that's very important for you to know. All of the building, all of the development is going north because that's the only land still available. And that 10 that that 600 acres was just acquired by the auction from the state. And that's how, so as you can imagine, that was a five-year play to get through all of the planning and you know, surveys and and the uh reporting that it takes to even get into an auction position from the state to buy land. So that's all done. Now let's talk about the flats. Now, the flats is the same similar townhome product, but shared walls. So it's a little bit more affordable. Uh, it's right in the heart of town. So we are the we were the largest land buyers in the last 10 years in the city. So we bought the 18 acres, and then this four acres was the last larger parcel. And this is downtown. So this is on Swanson and Smoketree, right next to McCulloch, and Smoke Tree crosses into Old Town, and you literally can walk less than 100 yards to Old Town where all the restaurants and all the bars are and all the kind of nightlife and kind of daylife as well. Is that a 68-unit product, shared walls? We have seven different buildings, and that is all going to be anywhere between$380,000 uh sales prices to$850,000 sales prices. It's a two-story product, RV garage at the bottom, and you have the living space on the second floor. And then the third floor is actually a uh rooftop deck with views of the lake. Pretty much every single lot has a view. That every one of these, including the barn caves, also has an elevator. Just so just for reference, because you remember you have an RV garage, which you have a 16-foot lid. So you're for the most part like two and a half flights up before you even get to the second floor. So it's you you need to kind of have an elevator, and given them the market and you know, the the age groups here, having an elevator is very important. So we're actually going to be the largest residential elevator producer in the entire West Coast. So it's kind of a funny thing to talk about. Um The uh return profile on that one's only a two and a half year investment. It's one phase. We're kind of just rolling the buildings. Uh that one we're looking at a 22% IRR, and you're getting your equ, you're getting your principal plus your equity at the very end. You can also choose a lot if it's something you want to invest into. We'll talk to you a little bit more in depth about that. But it is a little shorter term. A lot of people like the shorter term. The returns aren't as high, but it is something that people like because again, it's the shorter term, it's in the heart of town. We're gonna have tons of buyers for that as well. We've had people already choose lots. And then to give you an idea on the barn caves, because we've been actively marketing that more, we have close to 1200 buyers on a list between the broker and our list and our CRM of people that just want to buy these things. So we do have do not have a shortage of home buyers and this product being desirable. So that's the flats. We'll send you the renderings if that's something you're interested in. We can book a call. You can either talk to Matt or myself andor my CEO, and we'll dive into the weeds for you. But I'm hoping that shares you know a little bit of color and what we do and how we're uh navigating the financial structure of both projects. The the flats is a little bit more complicated, and we are going to go after debt on that, but it is a smaller term, so we can we don't need as much debt, but we're raising 9 million for that, and we're roughly about 3 million raised already, so we need to go out after the rest. So we're hoping to close that out in the next 60 to 90 days. So thank you very much for listening to this 20-minute video. Hopefully, I gives you some uh oversight and some detail about both investment opportunities. My background is also in uh short-term bridge loan financing. I currently manage a$100 million debt fund now. I know what it's like to be a lender and lend on developers who are getting construction financing. We've taken back properties over the years. I've had to find out where the bodies are buried in these projects, finish them, fix them, turn them around, sell them, and keep a profit on the table for our investors. So I have a vantage point of what it's like to be the developer and builder and also what it's like to be the bank. So again, our structure is really set up for mitigating risk and navigating these unique times. So hopefully that's a value to you. We do have a data room for you to cut through all of this information from floor plans to site plans to approvals to you know proformas to all the things that you may need to look at for consideration. Uh, but we do appreciate your time. Hopefully, again, this was fruitful and we look forward to speaking to you soon.