July 23, 2023 • 50 mins
Have you ever wondered how to turn your side hustle into a stream of passive income? Look no further, as we got you covered in our enlightening conversation with Martin Saenz from Bequest Funds. Martin, with his vast experience and wisdom, demystifies the process of becoming a successful cash flow investor. From understanding your assets to setting financial goals, he delivers a comprehensive guide to financial independence.
In this heartening discussion, Martin shares his personal journey of managing finances and how he overcame the challenges of being a business owner. As we navigate through his experiences, we learn about the significance of having a living financial statement, being prepared for unexpected opportunities, and the importance of having monthly passive income. We also delve into the necessity of having an accountability partner to keep track of your financial goals.
Our conversation with Martin concludes on a profound note, touching upon his personal transformation and his experience. We explore Martin's life-changing moments, his discovery of faith, and how he found a business partner through his book, "Note Investing Made Easier". We discuss the importance of service and finding something bigger than yourself, and how it plays a significant role in personal and professional growth. Join us in this captivating discussion and learn how to transform your life financially and personally.
As you're inspired to embark on your own side hustle journey after listening to this episode, you might wonder where to start or how to make your vision a reality. That's where our trusted partner, Reversed Out Creative comes in.
Specializing in strategic branding and digital marketing, Reversed Out Creative is an advertising agency dedicated to helping you turn your side hustle into your main hustle. With a team of experienced professionals and a track record of helping clients achieve their dreams, they are ready to assist you in reaching your goals.
To find out more about how they can elevate your side hustle, visit www.reversedout.com today and start your journey towards success. Our blog is also full of great information that we work hard on to provide you with a leg up on the competition. We also recently launched our YouTube Channel, Marketing Pro Trends, which summarizes all of our blog posts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right?
(00:32):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Special guest today MartinSines.
Hey, martin, thanks a lot forjoining us.
Thanks for having me on Adam.
Bequest Funds.
Tell us about BeQuest Funds,martin.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, so BeQuest Funds is an asset management
firm that's focused on buyingreal estate-related assets that
produce monthly passive income.
So the heart of it is, if webuy assets that you know buy
assets at a discount and weperform all the necessary due
(01:07):
diligence, then we can have agood level of predictability
around the monthly passiveincome that it generates.
And that's really the heart ofwhat we're about improving our
lives, as well as our investorpartner's lives, with
predictable and consistentmonthly passive income.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I love it.
So is this a syndication or isthis evolved from?
You know your typicalsyndicator who's going to go out
and try to raise money frompeople to buy an apartment
building.
How is this different from that?
Explain that to people.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, so BeQuest is set up as a 506C Reg D income
fund, so our investors investalongside us and we serve as
both the GP and the LP.
We actually invest on the LPside as well, so we're generally
(02:00):
the largest investors on anyparticular deal.
But it's an open-ended,evergreen fund, so it's not a
syndication as in somethingthat's just kind of closed-end,
where you invest and it getslocked up and you're there for a
five-year term.
This is constantly open to newinvestors or new investments and
(02:24):
with no expiration date.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh, wow, I love that.
That's how do you managesomething like that, like how
does that get with money comingin, money going out constantly?
Does that add a layer ofcomplexity?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Not really, because a bulk of the assets are
performing mortgages and theaverage duration is about 21
years on those mortgages.
So we keep buying pools ofperforming mortgages.
So that pushes out that theaverage duration for the
(02:57):
portfolio.
So we have a lot ofpredictability around that.
Someone can just place onesimple investment and receive
monthly passive income for therest of their life.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, I think a lot of people would like to sound of
that.
So I mean, there's people outhere that don't know what to do.
They don't know what kind ofthing they should invest in.
They like the idea of realestate.
We have people on here who aredoing syndications and doing
sub-two type of stuff and thesecomplicated things that sound
(03:34):
like they're really really hardto do.
You don't have to be the personthat goes out here and does
this stuff.
If that's not your personalitytype, if you're not the type of
folks they're going to go outhere and hustle and grind and do
all this stuff.
The idea of side hustles soundsvery complicated and very scary
to a lot of people.
You do a lot of that hard work.
You're the one that's out herelooking, finding deals.
(03:57):
You've been in the DC area itsounds like investing since 2009
.
You are the ones that are doingthis hard work and people can
just lay back, relax, not worryabout what to do with their
money, and earn themselves anice return 9%, whatever.
That is in most cases.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So I would just say to that well, we actually
relocated the firm down toSarasota, florida, in 2020.
So we're down here in theSunshine State.
But, with that said, I think theproblem is, or the ambiguity is
(04:40):
generated, with a lot of folksthat are having a challenge with
how to get started and whatinvestments to invest in,
because there's so manyopportunities, so many options.
So I'd say everybody needs toput in a level of effort upfront
, even when you're investing ina passive income vehicle.
(05:03):
So, for one, you should have agood grasp of the type of asset
that companies invested inbefore you invest in any kind of
opportunity.
So for us, it's reallyresidential, owner-occupied
housing.
So if you're someone that ownsa mortgage yourself you live in
(05:25):
the suburbs, you're raising yourfamily then you can appreciate
what an owner-occupied propertywith 39% equity cushion on the
portfolio, like what that,actually means, and so, as an
example, so, but if you'relooking at any type of
opportunity, you shouldunderstand all the assets that
(05:48):
are being invested in and youshould have a comfort level with
that asset class, and if youdon't, then you should become a
student of that asset classbefore investing in it.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Totally makes sense.
Totally makes sense.
Well, I mean I'd say you're theexpert in the field here.
I mean you've written fivebooks now.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Five books, three of which are on-note, investing
itself.
And my last book is Cash FlowDojo, which is more of a general
book on being a cash flowinvestor and building your home
on multiple streams of income.
So I actually touch on a lot ofside hustle topics in that book
.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Oh, I love it.
We'll talk about a few of them.
Let's explain to people whatthey can find if they read the
book.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah.
So I mean, let's just take theexample of someone who's an HVAC
technician.
So this individual, you know,they're well-trained, they know
what they're doing, they'rewell-compensated, but they
exchange their time for moneyand they're in the rat race, as
Kiyosaki puts it.
(06:53):
And so how does someone likethat go out and create multiple
streams of income when they haveone type of expertise and that
is doing HVAC technician work,working on heating and air
conditioning units?
Well, this individual may havean expertise in a particular
(07:15):
type of HVAC unit or certainsystems that are employed, and
they can create training videosat a very low cost.
You can record yourself on Zoom.
You can have Fiverr, which isan outsourced online company,
edit those videos for a fewhundred bucks and you can put
(07:35):
them up on Udemy and get paidmonthly income.
If the better the videos, themore the demand is in the
marketplace, the more you'regoing to get paid.
But that's just one example ofways to look for monthly passive
income and, I think, any typeof side hustle.
You should have some type ofexit strategy that involves
(07:59):
converting the active income orthe activity into a passive
stream of income.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, and actually it's funny that you mentioned
that, because my wife owns a spaand right now she is day-to-day
working in the spa.
She's trying to figure out howdo I get out of this, how do I
just hand all that over to myemployees and do something
bigger, right?
So she's doing a facial fitnesscourse.
She's doing building in Kajabi.
(08:25):
And if people if you don't knowwhat Kajabi is.
Kajabi is a way that you cancreate a course.
It gives you an outline or youcan develop your outline, but it
gives you all the tools and youcan put your videos in there.
You put content in there, youcreate workbooks, you do all
this stuff and then you putthose up on Udemy and you know,
just like Martin just mentioned,you do the videos, you send
them over to somebody on Fiverr.
(08:46):
They edit the videos if youneed to.
I mean, obviously you want toget a good camera and probably a
nice little road mic orsomething that you could you
could put on and make sure youraudio quality sounds good, but
you create this evergreen courseright For her.
It doesn't change Like a lot ofthe stuff she's talking about
is like ancient, ancientmedicine and things like that
right.
(09:06):
So, yeah, that's not reallygoing to change anytime soon.
So she puts that up there.
Now she has something that shebuilt.
Maybe took her a week, week anda half, to build the thing and
plan it out and get it All upthere, and now you got chat GPT
that you could put in some, someinfo and it'll it'll fill in
the blanks for you, kind of.
So you get this, this course,up there and actually we had a
(09:27):
lady on who teaches people nowhow to do this.
She made four million dollarsand four years off of one of her
courses.
Oh yeah, it's just talking about, you know, paper-click
advertising on Google, right?
So, whatever your specialty is,you just mentioned it,
everybody's got something thatthey know about that other
people are probably gonna wantto learn about.
You create this thing,especially if you've got the
(09:48):
credentials and you could say,hey, look, I ran a.
I ran a spa for you know, eightyears, I know about this
subject and here you go, here'ssome information.
Now you can make money, do you?
What tactics, martin, do yousee people using?
So, once you've got thisevergreen course that you
created, have you seen whatpeople do to promote that course
(10:11):
?
Is it?
Is it paper-click advertising?
Is it, you know, facebook ads?
Is it affiliate marketing?
You know what are some of themost, and I don't know how far
you've gone down the path ofthis.
But after I create the course,how do I get it out there?
How do I get people to find itand buy it?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah.
So I think that you know,perhaps I'm old school, but I
think writing a book is criticaland you know, as a way, as a
way of getting your message outthere, and you know, having
written five books, you know Ican tell you that for one, the,
the process is spiritual, soyou're really kind of delving
(10:55):
into your creative side and andyou just Creating something that
doesn't exist in the world.
Now, whether the world rewardyou for it or not, that depends
on how good you know the, the,the, the value of the content
that you're producing.
And so, in my case, when Iwrote my first book, I started
(11:15):
having people reach out becauseit became a bestseller in the
mortgage note, investingindustry or category, if you
will, on Amazon.
And so I created a Facebookgroup, I started offering
workshops, I had a mentorshipprogram and I just, and I
created an online class and Ijust, you know, saw revenue
streams come from differentdirections, but I've kind of I
(11:38):
haven't done that in a whilebecause I'm just at a point
where, you know, we have a good75 million assets under
management.
I'm just very busy, you know,managing, just making sure
everything goes how it needs togo, and so, but I always look
back at that time is just justan incredible experience because
(11:59):
it wasn't so much the revenuestreams, which are awesome, but
it was just the amount ofservice that was given back to a
lot of people that use thatinformation to create businesses
for themselves.
In this note investing spacethat I'm in and the book is note
investing made easier.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
How to buy profit from distressed mortgages.
Correct so, but in just kind ofwhat?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
we're talking about.
I mean you can create aFacebook group.
You can.
That provides, you know,ongoing content, ongoing
discussion, which people likedialogue.
You have to please that group.
But, you know, if you buildenough of an audience, you can
create workshops.
You can promote your Udemyvideos, you can use teachable
(12:47):
and, just you know, go outsidethe Udemy platform.
If you can self promote your,your, your programs, you can do,
like you said, the digital ads,digital marketing for for your
work, for your online courses aswell.
So number of ways you can takeit.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Well, I don't think somebody who's written five
books you know if you wouldn'thave known how to promote
yourself, you probably wouldhave gave up after one year.
If you wouldn't have known howto promote yourself, you
probably would have gave upafter one book.
So the first must have doneokay for you to say, hey, I'll
be right another one, and thenthat one must have done okay for
you to say, yeah, now you're onfive.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, yeah, and I think, I think, I'm, I think I'm
done, um, at that point, I'm,I'm, I'm delivering value in
other ways.
I see, and uh, but I still havea lot of people to reach out on
the books and the one thing I'velearned is probably something
you've learned and um, doingdoing the side hustle podcast
(13:41):
here is that Is that, um, I havepeople to reach out constantly
and they're 50 60 years old andand they have no monthly passive
income.
They have no, uh income sourceand they're very limited but yet
their expenses are just growingall around them and, um, it
doesn't even have to be.
(14:01):
You know, I had a call, an hourcall, with Someone who had in a
law degree and a medical doctordegree, fellowships.
Um, you know, this guy was asintelligent as you get and, uh,
he has, he has Very, very, hehas very little to show for
where he's at in life in his 60s, and she's asking me, you know,
(14:23):
for help on on creating monthlypassive income, and I was glad
to give him the little that Iknow.
But there's just too many ofthese individuals that are out
there that that are looking foranswers.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I agree, and you know what.
There's a lot of things thatsay you go to a financial
planner they may not be able touh plan for.
I mean, if you live in floridaright now, your insurance bills
are going up, right, ever sincethat disaster they had down
there with that apartmentbuilding.
There's huge assessments onsome of these condo buildings
(14:55):
now that were built prior to1980.
How do you plan for that?
You know, you don't.
You don't know what's going tohappen.
You don't know when the nextrecession is going to hit.
You don't know what's going on.
You don't know what's going tohappen with the stock market.
You don't know when the nextmortgage crisis is going to be
that's going to or or covidSituation, that's going to drop.
(15:17):
So you need to be diversified.
You need multiple streams ofincome great book, by the way.
You need multiple streams ofincome to, you know, in
different, diverse categoriesthat may not be affected as much
by different things, right?
So covid affected certainthings, right?
Uh, you know, the mortgagecrisis affected certain things
(15:38):
the stock market.
But what?
What else do you have?
Do you have anything elseoutside of the stock market?
Do you have anything elseoutside of, say, a fixed income.
Uh, you know you're earningfour percent on some, on your
money in a cd or something likethat.
Right, you need to think aboutthese things because when you're
in retirement you can't justsay, hey look, I've got this
(16:00):
much money coming in from socialsecurity, I got this much money
coming in from dividends all mystocks, I'm good.
Here's how much money I'mspending every month.
That's going to change andinflation could go crazy at any
time.
And next thing, you know, youknow you thought three thousand
dollars a month was great tolive on in the 1980s, right, but
now $10,000.
(16:20):
I just read a report.
In Los Angeles County, $78,000is considered poverty.
Yeah, that's low income, you'relow income.
And in neighboring OrangeCounty it's like $82,000.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah, yeah yeah.
There's a real epidemic that'sout there in terms of monthly
income, and the thing is that,as you get older, you have less
energy and you're less active toearn the income that you're
earning, so you need somethingthat's going to supplement or,
(16:58):
at some point, replace theactive income that you're
working so hard for, and so thething with planning, though, is
that I have a living financialstatement that I created and
I've been using for over 10years, and it really breaks out
monthly passive income andactive income, breaks out living
(17:20):
expenses and business expenses,and it helps you kind of
organize and plan for yourself.
You cannot let anyone else planfor you and take control over
your financial future, for youand your family.
That's for one and then two.
You need to be invested inassets that you either control
and, as in, control the outcomecontrol the purchase and control
(17:44):
the outcome or you have someinfluence over.
So, even if you invest in asyndication like you mentioned
multifamily, whatever it is youneed to be able to know that you
can go and talk to the ownersof the firm.
You need to know that theowners of the operators, the GPs
, have money in the investmentthat they're asking for you to
(18:06):
put money into.
You need to know that you cango to their office Monday
through Friday, 9 to 5, and justsay hello and just touch them
to know that they're real.
All these things are veryimportant and you need to
understand the underlying assetthat they're invested in as well
.
Otherwise you have no businessinvesting in that asset.
(18:26):
So taking control andresponsibility over the planning
as well as the execution, withwhat assets to buy or what
endeavors to undertake thenthat's on you as a person,
howard.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Baetjer, I love that I'm talking to you right now
because I feel like doing what Ido and being in the.
I'm in the real estate space aswell.
You go to conferences, you goplaces, you hear all these
people.
It's always like some18-year-old kid who's like I'm
raising money for a fund and youknow people that are like I
don't know looky-loose kind ofthat are, you know showing up
just kind of dancing aroundseeing what works, what doesn't
(19:04):
work.
I mean there's a lot of peoplein the real estate investing
world that I don't think I wouldnecessarily trust with my money
, just to put it that way.
And it's great to have you on.
I mean you guys even sent meover a sheet, said you had 42
million under assets but you gotover 70 million under assets.
I mean it's even moreimpressive and you know to be
(19:25):
around as long as you've beenaround in this industry, you
know lends itself to yourcredibility, obviously.
But also what I like is thefact that if I look at your
education, I look at you're inSan Antonio, you were at Drexel,
you were at George Washington,you were in DC.
Now you're in Florida.
(19:45):
You've had an opportunity inyour life to see different
places to be, different placesto see different economies.
Every one of those places hasits own thing Cincinnati its
marketing, its packaged goods,its CPG, right.
You go down to Houston, it'soil and gas.
You go to Atlanta, coca-colaruns the place you know, and
(20:10):
finance runs Florida.
So, just based on yourexperience, how has that helped
you be a better asset manager,be able to forecast things that
maybe somebody who's kind ofbeen stuck in a you know, justin
Florida or Justin New York,yeah, how's that changed for you
(20:32):
?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So we buy pools of performing mortgages all over
the US, so we're diversified inthat regard.
But understanding how thingswork in the urban market versus
the suburban, versus tertiarymarkets and rural markets, just
understanding that thosedynamics, is very important.
(20:58):
And actually there's just a lotof parallels, state by state,
city by city, regardless ofwhere you are in the country.
But you know, it all comes downto jobs.
So it helps us understand wherethe jobs are at and that helps
us make better decisions from avetting standpoint when we're
vetting the notes that we'rebuying in pools, because we
(21:21):
actually we vet each oneindividually and then roll it up
for the whole pool before wetake down a tranche.
So just understanding thedifferent parts of the country
visually having lived there orvisited or what have you as well
as understanding the dynamicsfrom an urban market out to
(21:41):
rural, helps us make gooddecisions when we're buying
assets, because we're not justbuying a mortgage, we're not
buying a mortgage in its presentday form.
We're buying it with a goodlevel of predictability that
it's going to be performing forus for many years on out.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
How do you even find these mortgage?
Are you buying these from banks?
Are you buying them from FannieFreddie, Like, how does that
work?
Speaker 1 (22:09):
We're buying them from secondary mortgage market,
so they were bank-originatedmortgages.
They were kicked out, they hadsome defect to them and sold off
into the secondary mortgagemarket to a company like ours.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Interesting.
So these banks, or whoeveroriginated the loan, is looking
to sell their loans and theyhave a list of companies and
you're one of those companies onthe list that they would reach
out to, or is there an actualplatform or something that
companies like yours use to findthese mortgages?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, so it's a secondary mortgage market, which
is also referred to as a shadowindustry, so you wouldn't find
any platforms or any type ofretail environment where you can
see these pools.
They're transacted between,mostly in negotiated trades from
(23:08):
trusted partners Interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
And is there something that exists?
I'm just thinking.
It sounds like there's anopportunity to create a startup
here, like a software startup,to make it easier for them to
transact.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, but it's intentional.
They're not looking for it tobe in a retail setting.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Gotcha, yeah, yeah, okay.
Well, what are some of the?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, If it's retail then you're overpaying.
That's just kind of generalrule of thumb.
If you want to go buy a houseto rehab, you're better off bird
dogging, knocking on doors orsending mail outs than you are
looking through the MLS, kind ofthing.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh, 100%, I haven't really heard of anybody.
I mean, I've gone to a lot ofconferences real estate
conferences and a lot ofsyndication ideas have been
thrown around out there but Ihave never really heard too many
people investing in mortgagenotes.
It just doesn't seem like anoption that comes up, probably
because it's not available toretail.
(24:14):
But even people offering theopportunity for people to invest
in these things, I just haven'tever really been approached by
anybody that's doing this.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, it's really like an alternative way of
investing.
There's very few players in theindustry and a lot of them
aren't taking on retailinvestors like BeQuest, like our
company, BeQuest Funds there'sGoldman Sachs is in this game.
They don't need your $50,000.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
They're Goldman Sachs .
I mean they've got yeah, yeah,yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
There's countries that are funding, they're
bankrolling them, and so it'sjust not a well known or defined
industry.
But I've written three books onnote investing and I lay out a
plan if you want to start a noteinvesting business for yourself
.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So I don't even know if I want to do that.
I think I'd be better off justgiving you some money and having
you do it for me.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So that's what I have found over the years is most
people are like well, they readthe books and they're like, okay
, well, you sound like you knowwhat you're doing, so I'm going
to give it to you.
But, in all honesty, whateveroperator you invest in, I
mentioned knowing the assetclass, so that helps you with
(25:41):
capital preservation risk, butyou should also have there's
also operator risk.
So you need to be able to vetthat the operators.
Do they have any civiljudgments against them, criminal
backgrounds?
How much money do they have inthe game?
How can they prove that?
Are they out there to be seen?
(26:03):
Are they visible?
Many people that or are theyhiding?
Are they hard to find?
And so you should do as much aspossible to vet who the
operator is that's going to bemanaging the assets that you're
invested in.
Howard.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Baetjer-Massey 100%.
So I mean you obviously knowwhat you're talking about.
You've run a successfulbusiness.
You run a successful business.
You've written books on runningsuccessful businesses.
How does somebody run asuccessful business Like if you
are out here and you're thinking, oh, I'm not the right kind of
person.
What is there an outline thatyou would suggest people go by?
(26:38):
Is there something that theyshould read?
Is there, are there sources outthere that people should go and
find?
You know what helped you?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah.
So if what I would say iseverything starts with a living
financial statement and peoplecan email me at martin at
bqfundscom, and I mean I mayemail that out for free, I think
everyone needs to have afinancial statement with income,
(27:07):
expenses, assets andliabilities.
They should have it completedand they should be reviewing it
on a weekly basis with anaccountability partner, and I've
tricked this template out in away that helps you from a goal
setting standpoint as well as aswell as you know, a historical
reference of where you're at.
(27:28):
But it gives you your pictureof where you know where you're
at, where you're at and whereyou need to be, helps you set
goals so that you can striveforward and work on your your
acquiring assets with monthlypassive income lower in your
expenses and so forth.
But I think that's the startingpoint for anyone.
They need to get theirfinancial house in order before
(27:50):
they go out and take on newventures or new, new efforts.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Is this also called a living balance sheet, or is
that something else?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
No, that's, that's yeah, it's good living financial
.
It's something I created.
I don't, I don't, I have neverseen anything like it.
That's out there, but I send itout to.
We send it out to all thepeople that we have connection
with.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Oh, wow, that sounds super valuable.
Yeah, I mean you gotta have aplan.
I mean, at the end of the day,if you don't have a plan, what
are you doing?
I mean you, you gotta knowwhere you're going, where you're
coming from, like what assetsyou have to work with.
If an opportunity to investpops up which you know, if we go
into a recession and everythinggoes to crap, there's going to
be people trying to unloadassets.
There's going to be peopletrying to get rid of things.
(28:37):
I've got a buddy down in FortLauderdale.
He grew up in orphan, built ayacht building business, came to
America.
He was in Australia, livedunder a bridge, came here when
he was like 12 as an orphan,sold his business years ago for
around 60 million.
He was the only owner.
Wealthy guy now, you know,lives up in Fort Lauderdale, has
(28:59):
got a yacht in his backyard.
You know he's right on thewater, you know how it is, you
live in Florida.
But he said he's in the miserybusiness.
I said what are you talkingabout?
You're in the misery business.
I was over at his house.
He opens up his garage.
There's a McLaren, there's aPhantom.
He's got three or fourunbelievable cars.
Right, you're like man.
I mean, I know you got money.
(29:19):
You know how'd you get allthese cars?
He said.
Everybody in my neighborhood, hesaid that every every several
years somebody gets into taxtrouble.
The market takes a dive.
Something happens.
You know, people need to selloff stuff he's like, and I've
got cash and I just wait for itto happen.
They come to me.
So people in his neighborhoodeven know that he does this.
(29:39):
And they come to him and theysay, hey, I want to sell my
Phantom.
What do you?
What do you?
What can you give me for it?
He bought a I was like a$350,000 car for a hundred
thousand bucks off some guy.
So you never know when thesethings are going to come up.
And do you have, do you have,resources?
And this is how people getwealthy in these kinds of times.
People get wealthy indepressions and recessions and,
(30:01):
yes, it's just the way it is.
So if you don't know where youstand financially, how can you,
how can you take advantage ofthese situations?
You can't.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
You need to have self-awareness and, even if your
situations really dire, evenmore so you need to be able to
see it on paper and and I know alot of people that that just
may be struggling or just they'drather not know and, and so
this, this podcast, thisfinancial statement, isn't going
(30:32):
to help those people.
If you've hit rock bottom, ifyou've had enough, if you're fed
up, if you're seeingrecessionary times which many,
many folks are then then youshould be scared.
You should be scared intoaction and and this is the way
you start you start byunderstanding your financial
(30:53):
house and where it sits, and itshould make it, should burn
something in your soul to wantto get up and take some action.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Well, I'm sure, mark, you've you've been through some
stuff.
I mean, everybody looks atpeople like you as always
written five books.
He's, you know, he's gone tothese great schools.
He's, you know, always had it.
He's got it made right.
Talk about some.
Talk about some of the lessonsyou've learned along the way and
the bumps in the road you'vehad to get where you are now.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, so you know, first three years of getting the
business off the ground in 05,just were very painful times.
My wife and I, we we started agovernment contracting company
selling to the federalgovernment in the DC area and in
05.
And we bled money for the firstthree years.
(31:41):
And so there was just countlesstimes we made payroll, the day
of payroll being due.
And I remember one time, youknow, payroll was due at noon,
all the checks go out to all theemployees and and I literally
got a check, a customer check,in the mail at 11am, an hour
(32:03):
before the payroll check wentout, and I just sat in my car
and cried and it was just like,and that wasn't the only time we
made payroll day of and justthe times of making, you know,
paying vendors with credit cardsand paying credit cards with
credit cards.
It's just just, just, just toget, just to get moving.
(32:25):
So three years of of a lot ofadversity, and you know that was
just to get off the ground.
Even when you're making moneythere's still lots of adversity
that comes your way.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Well, and cash flow issues.
Every company deals with cashflow issues, especially early on
.
You know a bunch of moneylaying around.
Hopefully you can get a line ofcredit from the bank or
something to cover some of thosethings.
But one of the scariest thingsis being a business owner and
having a responsibility ofcovering other people's bills.
I mean, you are responsible forthese people's lives.
(32:59):
I mean, if you don't pay them,they can't.
You know their kids go hungrypotentially.
You know they, they may losetheir house.
You know they may.
They may get into financialhardships.
It is a lot.
It's a huge burden to bury.
These are to bear these.
These are like your children ina way.
That's the kind ofresponsibility you have.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, their livelihoods arebased on, you know, really
dependent upon you and you haveto take that seriously and that
should be a motivating factor.
But what happens in businessownership is, as I'm sure you
know, is that you know there's awear down effect.
So so, like business you knowI've been a business owner for
(33:42):
20 years but there's dog yearsto that, you know, that's like
more, like 50 years, it feelslike.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It definitely does.
I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'm at about 13 years right now, but yeah yeah, it's
dog, yeah, it's, it's brutal, itis brutal.
So even more the reason why, ifyou're a business owner,
entrepreneur, you need monthlypassive income, because the wear
and tear on your body and soulis that much greater and you
don't have the number of yearsthat that, say, someone you know
(34:14):
in a government job or whathave you has.
So you need to have your.
As your active income decreases, your monthly passive income
needs to increase so that you,you're, you're working because
you want to work, and that's thebest situation you can be in.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Oh yeah, I mean you've got people that are nine
to fivers that are doing great.
I mean I've got a cousin.
He's, you know, worked forProcter Gamble.
He was in the military, in theAir Force, for I think he
retired after 24 years and thatwas just maybe two years ago.
So you know he's got, he's setup because you know he's he's
going on.
You know he could leave work.
I think every year they wouldship him off to Iraq or Guam or
(34:51):
somewhere, and you know, forseveral months.
And so you know Procter andGamble would have to let him go.
And you know he's playing pingpong or whatever he's doing,
fixing planes, and I thinkthat's what he told me they did
most of the time.
But you know he's getting hispension right.
He was in the army or he's inthe Air Force.
So he gets a military pension,you know, because of his service
.
And then on top of that, thewhole time he's working at
(35:13):
Procter, he's getting stock,he's, you know he's gonna, he's
gonna retire with a nice littlething from them too.
So you know, if you went thenine to five route, there's ways
you can go and be well off anddo great and everything else,
but you don't have full controland I think there's folks like
you and I out there who theyjust can't be told what to do,
(35:34):
and it's it's hard.
You know, you could leave yourwork right now, after this
podcast, go down to Starbucks,sit there for a couple of hours,
read a book, if you feel it.
I mean, maybe not.
You probably got stuff to do,but I got four kids.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I got four kids 11 to five.
So that ain't half that ain'thalf it, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
You did that to yourself, so but but you don't
have a boss, except for, maybe,the wife, the wife's probably
the boss.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
She's definitely the boss.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
But that's your boss, right?
You don't have two bosses.
You got one boss, it's the wife, right, and then your boss are
the kids.
But but you know, when you'retalking about that too, talk
about your family, and you'vegot to have support.
If you're gonna go down thisentrepreneurial path, you're
gonna forego that safety of ajob that we just talked about
potential.
You know the safety of thisnine to five life.
(36:19):
You know this pension thatyou're gonna get someday, all
that stuff.
You know people are sold thatdream.
If you're gonna go down thisentrepreneurial path and have
full control and say, look, I'mgonna be what decides my future,
you gotta have support.
You gotta have a wife that'syou know or a husband, or you
know whatever that is willing togo through those ups and downs,
(36:43):
those three years of justmaking payroll and then raising
kids at the same time.
It's tough Talk about that.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, no, no, you're the.
This is what the reason Imentioned accountability partner
.
Oftentimes, when it comes to afinancial statement, you should
be reviewing it every week.
You should be looking at yourgoals and how you're working
towards them every week and havesomeone that's gonna hold your
feet to the fire.
Hopefully that's a spouse orpartner.
(37:14):
If you don't have that support,then you need to find it with a
business coach.
I do business coaching, I dolife coaching, so you need to
have those individuals that willhelp you along the way.
I you know sometimes they canbe therapists.
(37:34):
Right To like yeah, my businesscoach is also a therapist with
me, you know, like Polly so, butyou just need that because,
also, business ownership can bevery lonely.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Very true, very true.
I just matter of fact, I justgot a real estate license.
So I don't know.
We people on the show know wecreated a real estate software.
We sold it to Zillow back in2015, which was great, you know.
It's a big blessing.
I was able to do other thingswith that once we once that
happened, but I never got myreal estate license.
(38:09):
And you know, we built thistransformative software, changed
the industry, never had my realestate license the whole time.
So I'm like you know what?
It's one of the things like Iwant to learn a second language
kind of thing.
It's like one day I'll just getmy real estate license for GP,
you know.
But then I realized once I gotmy real estate license and I
joined this EXP.
They have meetings all the time, they have events, they have
(38:32):
expos, they have all this stuff.
Now I have a community.
Now I have access to thishealthcare thing that I was
paying for by myself before,right, and people don't know
about that.
You start, you know, have thiscorporate healthcare access
anymore?
So now I got corporatehealthcare access.
It's cheaper than what I'mpaying for.
Now I've got a community ofpeople.
(38:52):
So, even if it's just like, hey,look, I've got a co-working
space, I've got a softwarecompany, I've got a digital
marketing agency, I meet peopleall the time for lunches and
coffees and all that, but youstill feel like you're not part
of a community and it's kind oflike, hey, I may never sell a
freaking house, but it's fun togo to these events.
Right, it's fun to go to theseevents, it's fun to feel this
(39:15):
camaraderie.
It's kind of the rah, rah, rahkind of thing.
You know, get you motivated.
So, even though I may not beselling a house, the stuff, the
people that these folks bring into speak and everything, kind
of motivate you for the otherstuff you're doing too.
So it's almost like if you're abusiness owner, maybe try to
reach out and find a community.
You know you've got a coach andall that good stuff you were
talking about, but maybe there'sa community, a larger community
(39:36):
of entrepreneurs or whatever,that you can join to feel like
you're part of something bigger.
And I don't know.
Do you have something like that?
Have you run into that?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah.
So what's interesting, one ofthe outlets that I use is I
normally speak at a lot of theindustry conferences on mortgage
investing.
So I'll go there and then I'llmeet with peers and people that
have other funds and otheroperations and I'll go that I've
(40:07):
known for years and I'll gomeet with them and we'll
commiserate or we'll celebrateor whatever the case is, and so
that's very helpful, but it'snot.
I don't have like a communityof entrepreneurs.
I have a social club that I'm apart of here in Sarasota.
That it's a private social club, so, but they're mostly
(40:29):
business owners.
So you can go there and you cankind of network with those
individuals and but, to behonest with you, I'm really just
focused on growing our fund,making it the best it can be,
and then going home and havingenough left in the tank for my
family.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
That's right, and we've made people, we've kind of
depressed people a little biton this, like we've given them
more warnings.
We've given them more warningsand things to look out for.
That we have that.
People are probably like man,I'm never starting a business.
This sounds like awful.
This sounds like I need allkinds of help.
But talk about some of the yourgreatest accomplishments, some
of the things you're proud ofand maybe the things that you
(41:12):
couldn't have done if you weremaybe working a nine to five.
I mean you could probably.
You could easily left collegeand went and got a job at
Fidelity and been a fund manageror, you know, manage people's
portfolios or whatever.
I mean you're over qualifiedfor that.
But you know what are some ofthe things that you've done
where you're like I could nevergo back and I could never have a
nine to five.
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
I would say just a few highlights is when we
started buying.
My wife and I started buyingreal estate properties.
We started with theircommercial building that we
operated the company out of Idon't know.
I mentioned I sold a company, agovernment contracting company.
We sold that one.
Oh, you sold that one.
Okay, we sold in 2013.
Yeah, so selling that businesswas a big achievement.
(41:57):
But more than that, I had beentraveling a lot for work to
various military bases, and so Iwas not living the life that I
needed to live.
So I gave my life to Jesus in2013.
And so that was a very soselling the business, finding
(42:21):
God, and was a very big,transformative part in my life.
And actually, a month after Idid that, I stumbled into
someone with note investing andI got involved in this
incredible world of noteinvesting.
A month after all that happened,so it was a really life
(42:42):
changing point in my life.
And then I was in church in2017.
And I've received a message towrite my first book, and so
that's when I wrote noteinvesting made easier, and so,
after writing that andpublishing it in May of 2017, my
(43:04):
business partner now was thefirst one to read that book
after buying it off Amazon andwe connected and I mentored him
and then we sent, since becamebusiness partners, so that was
also so just I think the amountof service that has been given
back is what I'm really proud of, well, and, I think, finding a
(43:28):
relationship with God.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well, I'm part of a group called Legatus, which is a
Catholic business ownersorganization, and I was just
literally at a meeting lastnight listening to a nun from
Ireland talk about all theservice trips she went on and
the things that she saw aroundthe world.
That just blew her mind.
And she grew up in NorthernIreland in a country that was.
She grew up during the troublesright Like where you had the
(43:53):
division up there betweenCatholics and Protestants, and
now she leaves there and shegoes to some of these countries
that are war torn and they'renot gonna send a nun to a nice
place, they're gonna send her towhere the problems are right.
And it's just some of thestories and some of the
unbelievable miracles she talkedabout and things that she's
(44:13):
seen.
It's hard to believe and if itwasn't a nun saying it I almost
wouldn't believe it, you know.
But it's wild that it happensand in the camaraderie you get
with that kind of stuff andfolks that have decided that
they cause you deal with a lotof egos in business.
You do.
You just deal with a lot ofegos.
It's not about me, it's aboutsomething bigger than me.
(44:37):
It's about me making adifference and helping others
the way Jesus told us to right.
But you see an actual change inthe personality of people that
have foregone their ego.
Let's just say that.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Yeah, I was ego driven, I was materialistic, and
then I found humility and sothat kind of changed the lens by
which I view the world and I'vejust been service driven since
and it's just been much moregratifying.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Well, I mean the fact you're on the podcast, you're
sharing your story, you go onother podcasts.
Obviously you talk about thisstuff.
You're willing to help businessowners.
You're willing to talk aboutthis stuff, shepherd people
through life and in theseexperiences they're going to
have with business be it goodthings, bad things, just being
there for people.
(45:39):
Obviously being there for yourfamily.
It sounds like you've got agreat family, a strong family, a
supportive wife.
These are the things we talkabout.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and so I think that,
yeah, I keep in touch with themacroeconomic factors that are
going on and just world politics, and I do that, but the bulk of
my focus is on me and thecompany and the value that we're
(46:08):
delivering and making sure thatthe assets we buy are
performing how they need toperform, and then we're growing
our portfolio and all thesethings that are within my power
and control to work on, and Ithink that's the thing.
I think a lot of people arecaught up in the distractions,
and that's one of the firstthings.
(46:30):
Like you do your financialstatement, you get an
accountability partner and thenyou start weeding things out of
your mind that don't need to bein your mind.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Well, and with all the stuff that's going on in
society right now, I kind ofit's hard to ignore some of the
things that are happening.
Put it that way to even focuson some of the stuff that you
know is way more important thatyou should be focusing on and
that's a topic that's adiscussion for another day.
But being able to have theability, the willpower to block
(47:04):
a lot of that stuff out andfocus on what you know you
should be focusing on, that'ssomething people I think need
help with, not just hey, how doI do my books every month for my
business, but how do I ignoreall this nonsense that I really
have no control over and it'sjust going to get me upset.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Yeah, yeah, and I think even ones that have a good
control or they have adisciplined mind, they have to
fight it daily.
And you know, because you haveto fight it daily, you have
thoughts that come in your mindand then you have to immediately
address them, right?
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
You need to be balanced out.
That's right.
And so if you let things kindof fester and you know doubt,
discouragement, fear, you knowany kind of distraction, even
like mediocrity, like there'sjust so many things that are
insignificant that you thinkabout, well, you just need to
bounce those out and just stayfocused on doing what your
(48:10):
purpose is on this earth to do.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
That's right.
That's right.
Well, martin, I appreciate it.
You're giving us so much time.
You're a busy guy.
Your kids are probably waiting.
You're on East Coast time.
Sometimes I talk to people ontheir side of the world so I
don't know what they got goingon but your kids are probably
waiting for you to get home.
I really do appreciate yourtime.
This has been great.
You're obviously awell-decorated person.
You know, the five books areawesome.
(48:33):
How do people find you?
How do people reach out and getahold of you?
If what they heard on thepodcast today inspires them and
they want to talk to somebodylike you, how do they reach out?
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, so I'd love to send you a living financial
statement template, and you canemail me at martinfbqfundscom.
Myself or someone will respondback with the Excel spreadsheet
template for you.
To get started, you can look upmy name on Amazon and get any
(49:05):
of the books and if you'refeeling frisky, you can get on
note to be a note investor.
I wrote the how-to book on itand you can check that out.
Cashflow Dojo is about variousside hustles that you can create
in your life and you can checkthat out as well.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Unbelievable.
This is great.
Well, guys, everything's goingto be in the description for the
podcast, so if you want somelinks and everything, we'll link
off to all the books and Martin.
Again, I appreciate it.
Thanks for being on the showand thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Adam, all right, thanks for joining us on this
week's episode of Side HustleCity.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Thank you.
Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for
joining us.
Our goal is to help you connectto real people who found
success turning their sidehustle into a main hustle, and
we hope you can too.
I'm Adam Kaler.
I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, myco-host.
Let's get started, all right?
(00:32):
Welcome back everybody to theSide Hustle City podcast.
Special guest today MartinSines.
Hey, martin, thanks a lot forjoining us.
Thanks for having me on Adam.
Bequest Funds.
Tell us about BeQuest Funds,martin.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yeah, so BeQuest Funds is an asset management
firm that's focused on buyingreal estate-related assets that
produce monthly passive income.
So the heart of it is, if webuy assets that you know buy
assets at a discount and weperform all the necessary due
(01:07):
diligence, then we can have agood level of predictability
around the monthly passiveincome that it generates.
And that's really the heart ofwhat we're about improving our
lives, as well as our investorpartner's lives, with
predictable and consistentmonthly passive income.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I love it.
So is this a syndication or isthis evolved from?
You know your typicalsyndicator who's going to go out
and try to raise money frompeople to buy an apartment
building.
How is this different from that?
Explain that to people.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, so BeQuest is set up as a 506C Reg D income
fund, so our investors investalongside us and we serve as
both the GP and the LP.
We actually invest on the LPside as well, so we're generally
(02:00):
the largest investors on anyparticular deal.
But it's an open-ended,evergreen fund, so it's not a
syndication as in somethingthat's just kind of closed-end,
where you invest and it getslocked up and you're there for a
five-year term.
This is constantly open to newinvestors or new investments and
(02:24):
with no expiration date.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Oh, wow, I love that.
That's how do you managesomething like that, like how
does that get with money comingin, money going out constantly?
Does that add a layer ofcomplexity?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Not really, because a bulk of the assets are
performing mortgages and theaverage duration is about 21
years on those mortgages.
So we keep buying pools ofperforming mortgages.
So that pushes out that theaverage duration for the
(02:57):
portfolio.
So we have a lot ofpredictability around that.
Someone can just place onesimple investment and receive
monthly passive income for therest of their life.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, I think a lot of people would like to sound of
that.
So I mean, there's people outhere that don't know what to do.
They don't know what kind ofthing they should invest in.
They like the idea of realestate.
We have people on here who aredoing syndications and doing
sub-two type of stuff and thesecomplicated things that sound
(03:34):
like they're really really hardto do.
You don't have to be the personthat goes out here and does
this stuff.
If that's not your personalitytype, if you're not the type of
folks they're going to go outhere and hustle and grind and do
all this stuff.
The idea of side hustles soundsvery complicated and very scary
to a lot of people.
You do a lot of that hard work.
You're the one that's out herelooking, finding deals.
(03:57):
You've been in the DC area itsounds like investing since 2009
.
You are the ones that are doingthis hard work and people can
just lay back, relax, not worryabout what to do with their
money, and earn themselves anice return 9%, whatever.
That is in most cases.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So I would just say to that well, we actually
relocated the firm down toSarasota, florida, in 2020.
So we're down here in theSunshine State.
But, with that said, I think theproblem is, or the ambiguity is
(04:40):
generated, with a lot of folksthat are having a challenge with
how to get started and whatinvestments to invest in,
because there's so manyopportunities, so many options.
So I'd say everybody needs toput in a level of effort upfront
, even when you're investing ina passive income vehicle.
(05:03):
So, for one, you should have agood grasp of the type of asset
that companies invested inbefore you invest in any kind of
opportunity.
So for us, it's reallyresidential, owner-occupied
housing.
So if you're someone that ownsa mortgage yourself you live in
(05:25):
the suburbs, you're raising yourfamily then you can appreciate
what an owner-occupied propertywith 39% equity cushion on the
portfolio, like what that,actually means, and so, as an
example, so, but if you'relooking at any type of
opportunity, you shouldunderstand all the assets that
(05:48):
are being invested in and youshould have a comfort level with
that asset class, and if youdon't, then you should become a
student of that asset classbefore investing in it.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Totally makes sense.
Totally makes sense.
Well, I mean I'd say you're theexpert in the field here.
I mean you've written fivebooks now.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Five books, three of which are on-note, investing
itself.
And my last book is Cash FlowDojo, which is more of a general
book on being a cash flowinvestor and building your home
on multiple streams of income.
So I actually touch on a lot ofside hustle topics in that book
.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Oh, I love it.
We'll talk about a few of them.
Let's explain to people whatthey can find if they read the
book.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah.
So I mean, let's just take theexample of someone who's an HVAC
technician.
So this individual, you know,they're well-trained, they know
what they're doing, they'rewell-compensated, but they
exchange their time for moneyand they're in the rat race, as
Kiyosaki puts it.
(06:53):
And so how does someone likethat go out and create multiple
streams of income when they haveone type of expertise and that
is doing HVAC technician work,working on heating and air
conditioning units?
Well, this individual may havean expertise in a particular
(07:15):
type of HVAC unit or certainsystems that are employed, and
they can create training videosat a very low cost.
You can record yourself on Zoom.
You can have Fiverr, which isan outsourced online company,
edit those videos for a fewhundred bucks and you can put
(07:35):
them up on Udemy and get paidmonthly income.
If the better the videos, themore the demand is in the
marketplace, the more you'regoing to get paid.
But that's just one example ofways to look for monthly passive
income and, I think, any typeof side hustle.
You should have some type ofexit strategy that involves
(07:59):
converting the active income orthe activity into a passive
stream of income.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, and actually it's funny that you mentioned
that, because my wife owns a spaand right now she is day-to-day
working in the spa.
She's trying to figure out howdo I get out of this, how do I
just hand all that over to myemployees and do something
bigger, right?
So she's doing a facial fitnesscourse.
She's doing building in Kajabi.
(08:25):
And if people if you don't knowwhat Kajabi is.
Kajabi is a way that you cancreate a course.
It gives you an outline or youcan develop your outline, but it
gives you all the tools and youcan put your videos in there.
You put content in there, youcreate workbooks, you do all
this stuff and then you putthose up on Udemy and you know,
just like Martin just mentioned,you do the videos, you send
them over to somebody on Fiverr.
(08:46):
They edit the videos if youneed to.
I mean, obviously you want toget a good camera and probably a
nice little road mic orsomething that you could you
could put on and make sure youraudio quality sounds good, but
you create this evergreen courseright For her.
It doesn't change Like a lot ofthe stuff she's talking about
is like ancient, ancientmedicine and things like that
right.
(09:06):
So, yeah, that's not reallygoing to change anytime soon.
So she puts that up there.
Now she has something that shebuilt.
Maybe took her a week, week anda half, to build the thing and
plan it out and get it All upthere, and now you got chat GPT
that you could put in some, someinfo and it'll it'll fill in
the blanks for you, kind of.
So you get this, this course,up there and actually we had a
(09:27):
lady on who teaches people nowhow to do this.
She made four million dollarsand four years off of one of her
courses.
Oh yeah, it's just talking about, you know, paper-click
advertising on Google, right?
So, whatever your specialty is,you just mentioned it,
everybody's got something thatthey know about that other
people are probably gonna wantto learn about.
You create this thing,especially if you've got the
(09:48):
credentials and you could say,hey, look, I ran a.
I ran a spa for you know, eightyears, I know about this
subject and here you go, here'ssome information.
Now you can make money, do you?
What tactics, martin, do yousee people using?
So, once you've got thisevergreen course that you
created, have you seen whatpeople do to promote that course
(10:11):
?
Is it?
Is it paper-click advertising?
Is it, you know, facebook ads?
Is it affiliate marketing?
You know what are some of themost, and I don't know how far
you've gone down the path ofthis.
But after I create the course,how do I get it out there?
How do I get people to find itand buy it?
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah.
So I think that you know,perhaps I'm old school, but I
think writing a book is criticaland you know, as a way, as a
way of getting your message outthere, and you know, having
written five books, you know Ican tell you that for one, the,
the process is spiritual, soyou're really kind of delving
(10:55):
into your creative side and andyou just Creating something that
doesn't exist in the world.
Now, whether the world rewardyou for it or not, that depends
on how good you know the, the,the, the value of the content
that you're producing.
And so, in my case, when Iwrote my first book, I started
(11:15):
having people reach out becauseit became a bestseller in the
mortgage note, investingindustry or category, if you
will, on Amazon.
And so I created a Facebookgroup, I started offering
workshops, I had a mentorshipprogram and I just, and I
created an online class and Ijust, you know, saw revenue
streams come from differentdirections, but I've kind of I
(11:38):
haven't done that in a whilebecause I'm just at a point
where, you know, we have a good75 million assets under
management.
I'm just very busy, you know,managing, just making sure
everything goes how it needs togo, and so, but I always look
back at that time is just justan incredible experience because
(11:59):
it wasn't so much the revenuestreams, which are awesome, but
it was just the amount ofservice that was given back to a
lot of people that use thatinformation to create businesses
for themselves.
In this note investing spacethat I'm in and the book is note
investing made easier.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
How to buy profit from distressed mortgages.
Correct so, but in just kind ofwhat?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
we're talking about.
I mean you can create aFacebook group.
You can.
That provides, you know,ongoing content, ongoing
discussion, which people likedialogue.
You have to please that group.
But, you know, if you buildenough of an audience, you can
create workshops.
You can promote your Udemyvideos, you can use teachable
(12:47):
and, just you know, go outsidethe Udemy platform.
If you can self promote your,your, your programs, you can do,
like you said, the digital ads,digital marketing for for your
work, for your online courses aswell.
So number of ways you can takeit.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Well, I don't think somebody who's written five
books you know if you wouldn'thave known how to promote
yourself, you probably wouldhave gave up after one year.
If you wouldn't have known howto promote yourself, you
probably would have gave upafter one book.
So the first must have doneokay for you to say, hey, I'll
be right another one, and thenthat one must have done okay for
you to say, yeah, now you're onfive.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, yeah, and I think, I think, I'm, I think I'm
done, um, at that point, I'm,I'm, I'm delivering value in
other ways.
I see, and uh, but I still havea lot of people to reach out on
the books and the one thing I'velearned is probably something
you've learned and um, doingdoing the side hustle podcast
(13:41):
here is that Is that, um, I havepeople to reach out constantly
and they're 50 60 years old andand they have no monthly passive
income.
They have no, uh income sourceand they're very limited but yet
their expenses are just growingall around them and, um, it
doesn't even have to be.
(14:01):
You know, I had a call, an hourcall, with Someone who had in a
law degree and a medical doctordegree, fellowships.
Um, you know, this guy was asintelligent as you get and, uh,
he has, he has Very, very, hehas very little to show for
where he's at in life in his 60s, and she's asking me, you know,
(14:23):
for help on on creating monthlypassive income, and I was glad
to give him the little that Iknow.
But there's just too many ofthese individuals that are out
there that that are looking foranswers.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I agree, and you know what.
There's a lot of things thatsay you go to a financial
planner they may not be able touh plan for.
I mean, if you live in floridaright now, your insurance bills
are going up, right, ever sincethat disaster they had down
there with that apartmentbuilding.
There's huge assessments onsome of these condo buildings
(14:55):
now that were built prior to1980.
How do you plan for that?
You know, you don't.
You don't know what's going tohappen.
You don't know when the nextrecession is going to hit.
You don't know what's going on.
You don't know what's going tohappen with the stock market.
You don't know when the nextmortgage crisis is going to be
that's going to or or covidSituation, that's going to drop.
(15:17):
So you need to be diversified.
You need multiple streams ofincome great book, by the way.
You need multiple streams ofincome to, you know, in
different, diverse categoriesthat may not be affected as much
by different things, right?
So covid affected certainthings, right?
Uh, you know, the mortgagecrisis affected certain things
(15:38):
the stock market.
But what?
What else do you have?
Do you have anything elseoutside of the stock market?
Do you have anything elseoutside of, say, a fixed income.
Uh, you know you're earningfour percent on some, on your
money in a cd or something likethat.
Right, you need to think aboutthese things because when you're
in retirement you can't justsay, hey look, I've got this
(16:00):
much money coming in from socialsecurity, I got this much money
coming in from dividends all mystocks, I'm good.
Here's how much money I'mspending every month.
That's going to change andinflation could go crazy at any
time.
And next thing, you know, youknow you thought three thousand
dollars a month was great tolive on in the 1980s, right, but
now $10,000.
(16:20):
I just read a report.
In Los Angeles County, $78,000is considered poverty.
Yeah, that's low income, you'relow income.
And in neighboring OrangeCounty it's like $82,000.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Yeah, yeah yeah.
There's a real epidemic that'sout there in terms of monthly
income, and the thing is that,as you get older, you have less
energy and you're less active toearn the income that you're
earning, so you need somethingthat's going to supplement or,
(16:58):
at some point, replace theactive income that you're
working so hard for, and so thething with planning, though, is
that I have a living financialstatement that I created and
I've been using for over 10years, and it really breaks out
monthly passive income andactive income, breaks out living
(17:20):
expenses and business expenses,and it helps you kind of
organize and plan for yourself.
You cannot let anyone else planfor you and take control over
your financial future, for youand your family.
That's for one and then two.
You need to be invested inassets that you either control
and, as in, control the outcomecontrol the purchase and control
(17:44):
the outcome or you have someinfluence over.
So, even if you invest in asyndication like you mentioned
multifamily, whatever it is youneed to be able to know that you
can go and talk to the ownersof the firm.
You need to know that theowners of the operators, the GPs
, have money in the investmentthat they're asking for you to
(18:06):
put money into.
You need to know that you cango to their office Monday
through Friday, 9 to 5, and justsay hello and just touch them
to know that they're real.
All these things are veryimportant and you need to
understand the underlying assetthat they're invested in as well
.
Otherwise you have no businessinvesting in that asset.
(18:26):
So taking control andresponsibility over the planning
as well as the execution, withwhat assets to buy or what
endeavors to undertake thenthat's on you as a person,
howard.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Baetjer, I love that I'm talking to you right now
because I feel like doing what Ido and being in the.
I'm in the real estate space aswell.
You go to conferences, you goplaces, you hear all these
people.
It's always like some18-year-old kid who's like I'm
raising money for a fund and youknow people that are like I
don't know looky-loose kind ofthat are, you know showing up
just kind of dancing aroundseeing what works, what doesn't
(19:04):
work.
I mean there's a lot of peoplein the real estate investing
world that I don't think I wouldnecessarily trust with my money
, just to put it that way.
And it's great to have you on.
I mean you guys even sent meover a sheet, said you had 42
million under assets but you gotover 70 million under assets.
I mean it's even moreimpressive and you know to be
(19:25):
around as long as you've beenaround in this industry, you
know lends itself to yourcredibility, obviously.
But also what I like is thefact that if I look at your
education, I look at you're inSan Antonio, you were at Drexel,
you were at George Washington,you were in DC.
Now you're in Florida.
(19:45):
You've had an opportunity inyour life to see different
places to be, different placesto see different economies.
Every one of those places hasits own thing Cincinnati its
marketing, its packaged goods,its CPG, right.
You go down to Houston, it'soil and gas.
You go to Atlanta, coca-colaruns the place you know, and
(20:10):
finance runs Florida.
So, just based on yourexperience, how has that helped
you be a better asset manager,be able to forecast things that
maybe somebody who's kind ofbeen stuck in a you know, justin
Florida or Justin New York,yeah, how's that changed for you
(20:32):
?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
So we buy pools of performing mortgages all over
the US, so we're diversified inthat regard.
But understanding how thingswork in the urban market versus
the suburban, versus tertiarymarkets and rural markets, just
understanding that thosedynamics, is very important.
(20:58):
And actually there's just a lotof parallels, state by state,
city by city, regardless ofwhere you are in the country.
But you know, it all comes downto jobs.
So it helps us understand wherethe jobs are at and that helps
us make better decisions from avetting standpoint when we're
vetting the notes that we'rebuying in pools, because we
(21:21):
actually we vet each oneindividually and then roll it up
for the whole pool before wetake down a tranche.
So just understanding thedifferent parts of the country
visually having lived there orvisited or what have you as well
as understanding the dynamicsfrom an urban market out to
(21:41):
rural, helps us make gooddecisions when we're buying
assets, because we're not justbuying a mortgage, we're not
buying a mortgage in its presentday form.
We're buying it with a goodlevel of predictability that
it's going to be performing forus for many years on out.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
How do you even find these mortgage?
Are you buying these from banks?
Are you buying them from FannieFreddie, Like, how does that
work?
Speaker 1 (22:09):
We're buying them from secondary mortgage market,
so they were bank-originatedmortgages.
They were kicked out, they hadsome defect to them and sold off
into the secondary mortgagemarket to a company like ours.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Interesting.
So these banks, or whoeveroriginated the loan, is looking
to sell their loans and theyhave a list of companies and
you're one of those companies onthe list that they would reach
out to, or is there an actualplatform or something that
companies like yours use to findthese mortgages?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, so it's a secondary mortgage market, which
is also referred to as a shadowindustry, so you wouldn't find
any platforms or any type ofretail environment where you can
see these pools.
They're transacted between,mostly in negotiated trades from
(23:08):
trusted partners Interesting.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
And is there something that exists?
I'm just thinking.
It sounds like there's anopportunity to create a startup
here, like a software startup,to make it easier for them to
transact.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, but it's intentional.
They're not looking for it tobe in a retail setting.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Gotcha, yeah, yeah, okay.
Well, what are some of the?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, If it's retail then you're overpaying.
That's just kind of generalrule of thumb.
If you want to go buy a houseto rehab, you're better off bird
dogging, knocking on doors orsending mail outs than you are
looking through the MLS, kind ofthing.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Oh, 100%, I haven't really heard of anybody.
I mean, I've gone to a lot ofconferences real estate
conferences and a lot ofsyndication ideas have been
thrown around out there but Ihave never really heard too many
people investing in mortgagenotes.
It just doesn't seem like anoption that comes up, probably
because it's not available toretail.
(24:14):
But even people offering theopportunity for people to invest
in these things, I just haven'tever really been approached by
anybody that's doing this.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, it's really like an alternative way of
investing.
There's very few players in theindustry and a lot of them
aren't taking on retailinvestors like BeQuest, like our
company, BeQuest Funds there'sGoldman Sachs is in this game.
They don't need your $50,000.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
They're Goldman Sachs .
I mean they've got yeah, yeah,yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
There's countries that are funding, they're
bankrolling them, and so it'sjust not a well known or defined
industry.
But I've written three books onnote investing and I lay out a
plan if you want to start a noteinvesting business for yourself
.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
So I don't even know if I want to do that.
I think I'd be better off justgiving you some money and having
you do it for me.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So that's what I have found over the years is most
people are like well, they readthe books and they're like, okay
, well, you sound like you knowwhat you're doing, so I'm going
to give it to you.
But, in all honesty, whateveroperator you invest in, I
mentioned knowing the assetclass, so that helps you with
(25:41):
capital preservation risk, butyou should also have there's
also operator risk.
So you need to be able to vetthat the operators.
Do they have any civiljudgments against them, criminal
backgrounds?
How much money do they have inthe game?
How can they prove that?
Are they out there to be seen?
(26:03):
Are they visible?
Many people that or are theyhiding?
Are they hard to find?
And so you should do as much aspossible to vet who the
operator is that's going to bemanaging the assets that you're
invested in.
Howard.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Baetjer-Massey 100%.
So I mean you obviously knowwhat you're talking about.
You've run a successfulbusiness.
You run a successful business.
You've written books on runningsuccessful businesses.
How does somebody run asuccessful business Like if you
are out here and you're thinking, oh, I'm not the right kind of
person.
What is there an outline thatyou would suggest people go by?
(26:38):
Is there something that theyshould read?
Is there, are there sources outthere that people should go and
find?
You know what helped you?
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah.
So if what I would say iseverything starts with a living
financial statement and peoplecan email me at martin at
bqfundscom, and I mean I mayemail that out for free, I think
everyone needs to have afinancial statement with income,
(27:07):
expenses, assets andliabilities.
They should have it completedand they should be reviewing it
on a weekly basis with anaccountability partner, and I've
tricked this template out in away that helps you from a goal
setting standpoint as well as aswell as you know, a historical
reference of where you're at.
(27:28):
But it gives you your pictureof where you know where you're
at, where you're at and whereyou need to be, helps you set
goals so that you can striveforward and work on your your
acquiring assets with monthlypassive income lower in your
expenses and so forth.
But I think that's the startingpoint for anyone.
They need to get theirfinancial house in order before
(27:50):
they go out and take on newventures or new, new efforts.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Is this also called a living balance sheet, or is
that something else?
Speaker 1 (27:59):
No, that's, that's yeah, it's good living financial
.
It's something I created.
I don't, I don't, I have neverseen anything like it.
That's out there, but I send itout to.
We send it out to all thepeople that we have connection
with.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Oh, wow, that sounds super valuable.
Yeah, I mean you gotta have aplan.
I mean, at the end of the day,if you don't have a plan, what
are you doing?
I mean you, you gotta knowwhere you're going, where you're
coming from, like what assetsyou have to work with.
If an opportunity to investpops up which you know, if we go
into a recession and everythinggoes to crap, there's going to
be people trying to unloadassets.
There's going to be peopletrying to get rid of things.
(28:37):
I've got a buddy down in FortLauderdale.
He grew up in orphan, built ayacht building business, came to
America.
He was in Australia, livedunder a bridge, came here when
he was like 12 as an orphan,sold his business years ago for
around 60 million.
He was the only owner.
Wealthy guy now, you know,lives up in Fort Lauderdale, has
(28:59):
got a yacht in his backyard.
You know he's right on thewater, you know how it is, you
live in Florida.
But he said he's in the miserybusiness.
I said what are you talkingabout?
You're in the misery business.
I was over at his house.
He opens up his garage.
There's a McLaren, there's aPhantom.
He's got three or fourunbelievable cars.
Right, you're like man.
I mean, I know you got money.
(29:19):
You know how'd you get allthese cars?
He said.
Everybody in my neighborhood, hesaid that every every several
years somebody gets into taxtrouble.
The market takes a dive.
Something happens.
You know, people need to selloff stuff he's like, and I've
got cash and I just wait for itto happen.
They come to me.
So people in his neighborhoodeven know that he does this.
(29:39):
And they come to him and theysay, hey, I want to sell my
Phantom.
What do you?
What do you?
What can you give me for it?
He bought a I was like a$350,000 car for a hundred
thousand bucks off some guy.
So you never know when thesethings are going to come up.
And do you have, do you have,resources?
And this is how people getwealthy in these kinds of times.
People get wealthy indepressions and recessions and,
(30:01):
yes, it's just the way it is.
So if you don't know where youstand financially, how can you,
how can you take advantage ofthese situations?
You can't.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
You need to have self-awareness and, even if your
situations really dire, evenmore so you need to be able to
see it on paper and and I know alot of people that that just
may be struggling or just they'drather not know and, and so
this, this podcast, thisfinancial statement, isn't going
(30:32):
to help those people.
If you've hit rock bottom, ifyou've had enough, if you're fed
up, if you're seeingrecessionary times which many,
many folks are then then youshould be scared.
You should be scared intoaction and and this is the way
you start you start byunderstanding your financial
(30:53):
house and where it sits, and itshould make it, should burn
something in your soul to wantto get up and take some action.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Well, I'm sure, mark, you've you've been through some
stuff.
I mean, everybody looks atpeople like you as always
written five books.
He's, you know, he's gone tothese great schools.
He's, you know, always had it.
He's got it made right.
Talk about some.
Talk about some of the lessonsyou've learned along the way and
the bumps in the road you'vehad to get where you are now.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, so you know, first three years of getting the
business off the ground in 05,just were very painful times.
My wife and I, we we started agovernment contracting company
selling to the federalgovernment in the DC area and in
05.
And we bled money for the firstthree years.
(31:41):
And so there was just countlesstimes we made payroll, the day
of payroll being due.
And I remember one time, youknow, payroll was due at noon,
all the checks go out to all theemployees and and I literally
got a check, a customer check,in the mail at 11am, an hour
(32:03):
before the payroll check wentout, and I just sat in my car
and cried and it was just like,and that wasn't the only time we
made payroll day of and justthe times of making, you know,
paying vendors with credit cardsand paying credit cards with
credit cards.
It's just just, just, just toget, just to get moving.
(32:25):
So three years of of a lot ofadversity, and you know that was
just to get off the ground.
Even when you're making moneythere's still lots of adversity
that comes your way.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Well, and cash flow issues.
Every company deals with cashflow issues, especially early on
.
You know a bunch of moneylaying around.
Hopefully you can get a line ofcredit from the bank or
something to cover some of thosethings.
But one of the scariest thingsis being a business owner and
having a responsibility ofcovering other people's bills.
I mean, you are responsible forthese people's lives.
(32:59):
I mean, if you don't pay them,they can't.
You know their kids go hungrypotentially.
You know they, they may losetheir house.
You know they may.
They may get into financialhardships.
It is a lot.
It's a huge burden to bury.
These are to bear these.
These are like your children ina way.
That's the kind ofresponsibility you have.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, their livelihoods arebased on, you know, really
dependent upon you and you haveto take that seriously and that
should be a motivating factor.
But what happens in businessownership is, as I'm sure you
know, is that you know there's awear down effect.
So so, like business you knowI've been a business owner for
(33:42):
20 years but there's dog yearsto that, you know, that's like
more, like 50 years, it feelslike.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
It definitely does.
I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'm at about 13 years right now, but yeah yeah, it's
dog, yeah, it's, it's brutal, itis brutal.
So even more the reason why, ifyou're a business owner,
entrepreneur, you need monthlypassive income, because the wear
and tear on your body and soulis that much greater and you
don't have the number of yearsthat that, say, someone you know
(34:14):
in a government job or whathave you has.
So you need to have your.
As your active income decreases, your monthly passive income
needs to increase so that you,you're, you're working because
you want to work, and that's thebest situation you can be in.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Oh yeah, I mean you've got people that are nine
to fivers that are doing great.
I mean I've got a cousin.
He's, you know, worked forProcter Gamble.
He was in the military, in theAir Force, for I think he
retired after 24 years and thatwas just maybe two years ago.
So you know he's got, he's setup because you know he's he's
going on.
You know he could leave work.
I think every year they wouldship him off to Iraq or Guam or
(34:51):
somewhere, and you know, forseveral months.
And so you know Procter andGamble would have to let him go.
And you know he's playing pingpong or whatever he's doing,
fixing planes, and I thinkthat's what he told me they did
most of the time.
But you know he's getting hispension right.
He was in the army or he's inthe Air Force.
So he gets a military pension,you know, because of his service
.
And then on top of that, thewhole time he's working at
(35:13):
Procter, he's getting stock,he's, you know he's gonna, he's
gonna retire with a nice littlething from them too.
So you know, if you went thenine to five route, there's ways
you can go and be well off anddo great and everything else,
but you don't have full controland I think there's folks like
you and I out there who theyjust can't be told what to do,
(35:34):
and it's it's hard.
You know, you could leave yourwork right now, after this
podcast, go down to Starbucks,sit there for a couple of hours,
read a book, if you feel it.
I mean, maybe not.
You probably got stuff to do,but I got four kids.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I got four kids 11 to five.
So that ain't half that ain'thalf it, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
You did that to yourself, so but but you don't
have a boss, except for, maybe,the wife, the wife's probably
the boss.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
She's definitely the boss.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
But that's your boss, right?
You don't have two bosses.
You got one boss, it's the wife, right, and then your boss are
the kids.
But but you know, when you'retalking about that too, talk
about your family, and you'vegot to have support.
If you're gonna go down thisentrepreneurial path, you're
gonna forego that safety of ajob that we just talked about
potential.
You know the safety of thisnine to five life.
(36:19):
You know this pension thatyou're gonna get someday, all
that stuff.
You know people are sold thatdream.
If you're gonna go down thisentrepreneurial path and have
full control and say, look, I'mgonna be what decides my future,
you gotta have support.
You gotta have a wife that'syou know or a husband, or you
know whatever that is willing togo through those ups and downs,
(36:43):
those three years of justmaking payroll and then raising
kids at the same time.
It's tough Talk about that.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, no, no, you're the.
This is what the reason Imentioned accountability partner
.
Oftentimes, when it comes to afinancial statement, you should
be reviewing it every week.
You should be looking at yourgoals and how you're working
towards them every week and havesomeone that's gonna hold your
feet to the fire.
Hopefully that's a spouse orpartner.
(37:14):
If you don't have that support,then you need to find it with a
business coach.
I do business coaching, I dolife coaching, so you need to
have those individuals that willhelp you along the way.
I you know sometimes they canbe therapists.
(37:34):
Right To like yeah, my businesscoach is also a therapist with
me, you know, like Polly so, butyou just need that because,
also, business ownership can bevery lonely.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Very true, very true.
I just matter of fact, I justgot a real estate license.
So I don't know.
We people on the show know wecreated a real estate software.
We sold it to Zillow back in2015, which was great, you know.
It's a big blessing.
I was able to do other thingswith that once we once that
happened, but I never got myreal estate license.
(38:09):
And you know, we built thistransformative software, changed
the industry, never had my realestate license the whole time.
So I'm like you know what?
It's one of the things like Iwant to learn a second language
kind of thing.
It's like one day I'll just getmy real estate license for GP,
you know.
But then I realized once I gotmy real estate license and I
joined this EXP.
They have meetings all the time, they have events, they have
(38:32):
expos, they have all this stuff.
Now I have a community.
Now I have access to thishealthcare thing that I was
paying for by myself before,right, and people don't know
about that.
You start, you know, have thiscorporate healthcare access
anymore?
So now I got corporatehealthcare access.
It's cheaper than what I'mpaying for.
Now I've got a community ofpeople.
(38:52):
So, even if it's just like, hey,look, I've got a co-working
space, I've got a softwarecompany, I've got a digital
marketing agency, I meet peopleall the time for lunches and
coffees and all that, but youstill feel like you're not part
of a community and it's kind oflike, hey, I may never sell a
freaking house, but it's fun togo to these events.
Right, it's fun to go to theseevents, it's fun to feel this
(39:15):
camaraderie.
It's kind of the rah, rah, rahkind of thing.
You know, get you motivated.
So, even though I may not beselling a house, the stuff, the
people that these folks bring into speak and everything, kind
of motivate you for the otherstuff you're doing too.
So it's almost like if you're abusiness owner, maybe try to
reach out and find a community.
You know you've got a coach andall that good stuff you were
talking about, but maybe there'sa community, a larger community
(39:36):
of entrepreneurs or whatever,that you can join to feel like
you're part of something bigger.
And I don't know.
Do you have something like that?
Have you run into that?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah.
So what's interesting, one ofthe outlets that I use is I
normally speak at a lot of theindustry conferences on mortgage
investing.
So I'll go there and then I'llmeet with peers and people that
have other funds and otheroperations and I'll go that I've
(40:07):
known for years and I'll gomeet with them and we'll
commiserate or we'll celebrateor whatever the case is, and so
that's very helpful, but it'snot.
I don't have like a communityof entrepreneurs.
I have a social club that I'm apart of here in Sarasota.
That it's a private social club, so, but they're mostly
(40:29):
business owners.
So you can go there and you cankind of network with those
individuals and but, to behonest with you, I'm really just
focused on growing our fund,making it the best it can be,
and then going home and havingenough left in the tank for my
family.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
That's right, and we've made people, we've kind of
depressed people a little biton this, like we've given them
more warnings.
We've given them more warningsand things to look out for.
That we have that.
People are probably like man,I'm never starting a business.
This sounds like awful.
This sounds like I need allkinds of help.
But talk about some of the yourgreatest accomplishments, some
of the things you're proud ofand maybe the things that you
(41:12):
couldn't have done if you weremaybe working a nine to five.
I mean you could probably.
You could easily left collegeand went and got a job at
Fidelity and been a fund manageror, you know, manage people's
portfolios or whatever.
I mean you're over qualifiedfor that.
But you know what are some ofthe things that you've done
where you're like I could nevergo back and I could never have a
nine to five.
This is awesome.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
I would say just a few highlights is when we
started buying.
My wife and I started buyingreal estate properties.
We started with theircommercial building that we
operated the company out of Idon't know.
I mentioned I sold a company, agovernment contracting company.
We sold that one.
Oh, you sold that one.
Okay, we sold in 2013.
Yeah, so selling that businesswas a big achievement.
(41:57):
But more than that, I had beentraveling a lot for work to
various military bases, and so Iwas not living the life that I
needed to live.
So I gave my life to Jesus in2013.
And so that was a very soselling the business, finding
(42:21):
God, and was a very big,transformative part in my life.
And actually, a month after Idid that, I stumbled into
someone with note investing andI got involved in this
incredible world of noteinvesting.
A month after all that happened,so it was a really life
(42:42):
changing point in my life.
And then I was in church in2017.
And I've received a message towrite my first book, and so
that's when I wrote noteinvesting made easier, and so,
after writing that andpublishing it in May of 2017, my
(43:04):
business partner now was thefirst one to read that book
after buying it off Amazon andwe connected and I mentored him
and then we sent, since becamebusiness partners, so that was
also so just I think the amountof service that has been given
back is what I'm really proud of, well, and, I think, finding a
(43:28):
relationship with God.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well, I'm part of a group called Legatus, which is a
Catholic business ownersorganization, and I was just
literally at a meeting lastnight listening to a nun from
Ireland talk about all theservice trips she went on and
the things that she saw aroundthe world.
That just blew her mind.
And she grew up in NorthernIreland in a country that was.
She grew up during the troublesright Like where you had the
(43:53):
division up there betweenCatholics and Protestants, and
now she leaves there and shegoes to some of these countries
that are war torn and they'renot gonna send a nun to a nice
place, they're gonna send her towhere the problems are right.
And it's just some of thestories and some of the
unbelievable miracles she talkedabout and things that she's
(44:13):
seen.
It's hard to believe and if itwasn't a nun saying it I almost
wouldn't believe it, you know.
But it's wild that it happensand in the camaraderie you get
with that kind of stuff andfolks that have decided that
they cause you deal with a lotof egos in business.
You do.
You just deal with a lot ofegos.
It's not about me, it's aboutsomething bigger than me.
(44:37):
It's about me making adifference and helping others
the way Jesus told us to right.
But you see an actual change inthe personality of people that
have foregone their ego.
Let's just say that.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Yeah, I was ego driven, I was materialistic, and
then I found humility and sothat kind of changed the lens by
which I view the world and I'vejust been service driven since
and it's just been much moregratifying.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Well, I mean the fact you're on the podcast, you're
sharing your story, you go onother podcasts.
Obviously you talk about thisstuff.
You're willing to help businessowners.
You're willing to talk aboutthis stuff, shepherd people
through life and in theseexperiences they're going to
have with business be it goodthings, bad things, just being
there for people.
(45:39):
Obviously being there for yourfamily.
It sounds like you've got agreat family, a strong family, a
supportive wife.
These are the things we talkabout.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and so I think that,
yeah, I keep in touch with themacroeconomic factors that are
going on and just world politics, and I do that, but the bulk of
my focus is on me and thecompany and the value that we're
(46:08):
delivering and making sure thatthe assets we buy are
performing how they need toperform, and then we're growing
our portfolio and all thesethings that are within my power
and control to work on, and Ithink that's the thing.
I think a lot of people arecaught up in the distractions,
and that's one of the firstthings.
(46:30):
Like you do your financialstatement, you get an
accountability partner and thenyou start weeding things out of
your mind that don't need to bein your mind.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Well, and with all the stuff that's going on in
society right now, I kind ofit's hard to ignore some of the
things that are happening.
Put it that way to even focuson some of the stuff that you
know is way more important thatyou should be focusing on and
that's a topic that's adiscussion for another day.
But being able to have theability, the willpower to block
(47:04):
a lot of that stuff out andfocus on what you know you
should be focusing on, that'ssomething people I think need
help with, not just hey, how doI do my books every month for my
business, but how do I ignoreall this nonsense that I really
have no control over and it'sjust going to get me upset.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Yeah, yeah, and I think even ones that have a good
control or they have adisciplined mind, they have to
fight it daily.
And you know, because you haveto fight it daily, you have
thoughts that come in your mindand then you have to immediately
address them, right?
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Oh, my God.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
You need to be balanced out.
That's right.
And so if you let things kindof fester and you know doubt,
discouragement, fear, you knowany kind of distraction, even
like mediocrity, like there'sjust so many things that are
insignificant that you thinkabout, well, you just need to
bounce those out and just stayfocused on doing what your
(48:10):
purpose is on this earth to do.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
That's right.
That's right.
Well, martin, I appreciate it.
You're giving us so much time.
You're a busy guy.
Your kids are probably waiting.
You're on East Coast time.
Sometimes I talk to people ontheir side of the world so I
don't know what they got goingon but your kids are probably
waiting for you to get home.
I really do appreciate yourtime.
This has been great.
You're obviously awell-decorated person.
You know, the five books areawesome.
(48:33):
How do people find you?
How do people reach out and getahold of you?
If what they heard on thepodcast today inspires them and
they want to talk to somebodylike you, how do they reach out?
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, so I'd love to send you a living financial
statement template, and you canemail me at martinfbqfundscom.
Myself or someone will respondback with the Excel spreadsheet
template for you.
To get started, you can look upmy name on Amazon and get any
(49:05):
of the books and if you'refeeling frisky, you can get on
note to be a note investor.
I wrote the how-to book on itand you can check that out.
Cashflow Dojo is about variousside hustles that you can create
in your life and you can checkthat out as well.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Unbelievable.
This is great.
Well, guys, everything's goingto be in the description for the
podcast, so if you want somelinks and everything, we'll link
off to all the books and Martin.
Again, I appreciate it.
Thanks for being on the showand thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Adam, all right, thanks for joining us on this
week's episode of Side HustleCity.
Well, you've heard from ourguests.
Now let's hear from you.
Join our community on Facebook,side Hustle City.
It's a group where people shareideas, share their
inspirational stories andmotivate each other to be
successful and turn their sidehustle into their main hustle.
We'll see you there and we'llsee you next week on the show.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Thank you.
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