Speaker 1: All right, welcome. This is Financial Survival Network and I'm
your host Carrie Lutz. Hey got interesting guests, Hunt, Scott Jared,
wealth management expert, real estate expert and heads up a
billion dollar company. And Scott, it's great to have you
on the show. So how'd you wind up getting into
real estate?
Speaker 2: Oh? Real estate was funny when I went to when
I was a kid, I like, never had really had
any money. And one day we were looking out in
our Section eight housing apartment projects and a guy's helicopter
laying in the backyard, and I'm like, what is the
what are the rules that he's playing that we're not playing,
And so from that moment on, I was like, man,
it'd be really cool to be able to be in
real estate. And I end up going to school for
urban planning in real estate finance, end up getting a
masters in technology and never really had any money to
do real estate early on. So we started a company,
a wealth management company called invest and was helping people
with their money. And not too long ago we work
with a lot of real estate investors, like as they're
helping them with their money and all that, and then
it wasn't we would used to co invest with them
and now we actually do a lot of that, a
lot of that in the house now, So it's really
expanded our reach into the real estate market so that
it became a byproduct of what we're doing. Even though
it's what I wanted to do, it wasn't really what
the company was founded to do.
Speaker 1: So from from section eight to to this amazing business,
What do you think the secret was of your success?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think a lot of it is just like
when you're in a when you're in a scarcity minded
world where your life is just miserable, like meaning like
you just can't do stuff, like you have no freedom,
you can't you're not free to go do what you
want to do, when you want, with who you want.
And I think there's a point in your life where
you just have a mind shift that says, you know,
this is what I want, Like I want this for myself.
So that happened for me where I was just like,
that doesn't matter what it takes, and when it works
really hard to not have to to be able to
live the life that I want to be able to
live it under my own terms, and so just started
grinding it out, worked really hard, and and got there.
So hard work works if you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you know. Edison said what some people see
as luck, I see as overalls, you know exactly.
Speaker 2: We have a shirt like luck means when preparation meets opportunity,
and we say like when preparation when when you meet
invest and then invests the opportunity. So our companies invest,
so like you're prepared, you're ready, and then when the
when the opportunity presents itself, you can take advantage of
that opportunity, whether it's real estate or or in your
business or whatever you're trying to do. Recovering attorney as
as you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you know so, but hard work alone isn't enough.
There's millionions of people out there working their hells off. Yeah,
you really meet with limited success, so there's got to
be something more to with than that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think hard work is you can work really
hard and get no results. And so for me, the
hard work when I started was like how do I
do a paper out? So now, like to get money,
you had to go run papers. So to be able
to build scale, then you have to hire employees to
run the papers for you. So by twelve I started realizing,
well I could go do all the manual physical work,
or I could start to use my brain and start
to think about how do I manage others to be
able to give them opportunity. So when I started to
learn that I could be an opportunity creator for other people,
then the opportunities came back to me tenfold. So then
my whole framework of mindset was like, what if I
could create a world where I could just create more
opportunity and that was my unique ability for other people
and to solve their problems and what they want. And
so then the point you're making is like that hard
work is is a part of it, but now you
got to start thinking smart and how to use your
capability things that you're uniquely gifted that other people aren't
that will help you become more successful. And that was
one of the biggest things that I discovered early in
my life. And I've just been you know that I'm
forty eight years old, just been really honing that skill.
And now you know, we have eighty three employees versus
just a few, and and we're helping entrepreneurs every day
scale grow, make their money work for them so they
don't have to work for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, so hey, on your road, your path to success,
there's always a seminal event for you. It was the
helicopter landing there, right, And but you know, not everybody
sees it that way. If you were if you got
one piece of advice to an aspiring entrepreneur whatever they
want to do to succeed, what would it be?
Speaker 2: Oh? Okay. So, no matter where you are in the
entrepreneurial journey, you're always in an inflection point. It doesn't
matter where you're at, Like for us, from the very
beginning as an entrepreneur to now managing billions of dollars
and overseeing a lot of financial responsibility for people. It's
just a different level a game you're playing, but that
game still goes on. And it's just like you got
to just have good habits and really hone in those
good habits, and if you have bad habits, that's what's
going to kill you. So how do you get your
bad habits to switch to good habits and do them
more consistent over a long period of time. But the
world doesn't get easier. Elon Musk said it best. He's like,
entrepreneurs are like literally staring down a black of this
and eating glass every single day, and you just got
to be super comfortable being uncomfortable in that. And when
you're just about like staring down a black abyss and
eating glass, it's like even as you get so higher up,
the like you get your entrepreneur journey gets high and higher,
the stakes may get bigger, but you may be more
comfortable in it because you're more comfortable of acting and
that way. So for me, it's that that the one
piece of advice is is you're better off. Just be
better than where you were yesterday. Be a better version
of you, and don't quit. Just keep grinding through it,
thinking smart, thinking hard. But the moment you start letting
that abyss and you start letting that grind gets you down,
that's when you lose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, success is a path, and everybody's
path is different. And for you, like growing up in
what sounds like a very disadvantaged you know childhood there, Yeah,
you know what was the family support, Like, how did
they did they help or were they hindrance?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So for me, like my mom and dad were
divorced very young in my life, and so I was
raised by a single mother for the most part. That
was just working table, you know, waiting tables, on end jobs,
on Section eight housing and food stamps. So by the
time I was twelve, like you had no choice but
to figure it out, and that to me is I
think a gift. And also, as an older child, had
a younger brother and sisters, so I was always dialing
down on like how do I make a better life
for myself? So for me to have I mean, obviously
I had a family and and they were there to
support and all that, but financially that was not there.
So it was like, how hard are you going to work?
What are you going to do to get yourself in
a better put yourself in a better environment to succeed
in life. And that's where that skill came from. But
that's that was my background coming out. So to me,
it was actually an advantage growing up that way because
I didn't know what the other side of it looked like.
I just had to like figure it out. And I
think today a lot of things are just handed to
people and they don't know how to how to create
on their own.
Speaker 1: So when you hear people talking like the government needs
to do more to help did the government help you
make your fortune?
Speaker 2: They did not help me get my fortune. But I'll
tell you what was nice is there was a safety
net at some point. There was you know, food stamps,
there was Section eight housing and things of that nature.
There was great college options from student loans, pel grants
and stuff like that for someone like me to be
able to get out, to be able to do it.
But I'll tell you, living in America is the best
country ever because you can have that opportunity, so you
can you can get through. But I think the government
helps you with a certain safety net to be able
to help get through. But we have the best schools,
we have the best education systems. We got a free
economy and a free market that you can go create
whatever you want. So I think that's where the government's
been great, is like letting us letting entrepreneurs thrive. That's
why it's everyone wants to live in America.
Speaker 1: And but that's where it's even this day, with things
going wrong a lot in the country, there's still America
is built on optimism and hope for a better tomorrow. Yeah,
is that still alive here or is it still possible?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Would you rather do it here or somewhere where else?
Would you want to do it. Yeah, I mean, yeah,
I'm telling you. We see entrepreneurship all the time. We
see people grinding and scaling, doing their thing. Whatever is
happening inside the government and the world, it gets and
it goes and swings. We have these things and we
gotta we got to learn how to be in that environment.
But when you do live in a free economy and
a free world, free free country and the way we
do things, it gives you a lot of opportunity. You
just got to know which side to play on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So as far as mentors or people who
inspired you when you were younger, can you give us
a few.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think for me it was like you
just take a lot from everyone you're with, from me
my way out of my situation with sports. So mentorship
for me was like football coaches, the basketball coaches, people
there are just like pushing you to do better when
I was younger, and that that was that. So like
my football coach, coach Scotten, and the linebacker coaches always say,
you know you can be successful, and then when you
see someone in front of you that's doing well, Like
there were some guys that are playing and they end
up going to the NFL and you see what they
were able to do, so you can shadow that. So
when you see someone that's actually doing really well, that
that mentorship really really wants benefit you. And even today
where I'm at now, there's guys that are twenty and
thirty years older than me that have been doing it
for a long time and they'll talk to you and
they'll tell you like, hey, here's how you how you
do things. So there's when you find successful people, they're
very willing to get back and just you just got
to ask the questions. You know.
Speaker 1: I always say if you invest in yourself, that that
to investment will always pay multiple returns, more than a
government handout or anything else. Yeah, whether it's courses or
you know, yeah out there practicing whatever training. What role
do does managing your emotions play in success?
Speaker 2: Scott? So invest like one of the things that we
focus on, and I think you nailed it. The most
important asset is you And no it's not your money,
it's not your portfolio, it's not your real estate, it's you.
So you always invest in yourself. So I think you
nailed that there. And when it comes to financial decisions,
there's three components to it. And the first one is
like your IQ, like how well you know money, But
the EQ, which is your emotional quote, and that's where
things go awry. And a lot of people make decisions
based on their emotions, not only just in the way
they manage money, but the way they get up every day,
the way they show up, the way they deliver, what
their belief systems on what they can do. So we
try to measure like here's your IQ when it comes
to money, here's your EQ, and then here's your experience.
And as you get better experience, like I was saying,
I get more experience now than I did before when
it comes to handling money and doing certain things, but
my emotions are still you still have to manage and
obtain those emotions. So the emotional thing, like literally we
have ten thousand clients here in twenty five hundred households,
and you almost feel like you're a psychologist more than
you are anything. And it's not just for your money
management and like how you manage your emotions. It's the
business owner that's trying to scale and grow and you're
helping them. So we've built these systems out to help
them help entrepreneurs with their help them get inside their
own head and have the discipline is necessary to be
able to scale and grow themselves. So I would say
eighty five percent of it's your mind game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey so, but sometimes the life can get scary.
What do you think it was the scariest moment on
your path to success?
Speaker 2: I think you always. I think every day is a
scary moment in some way. It's like you got to
make you know, you know, I probably make one hundred
and some decisions a day, and you can make them,
you know, are they the right choices? And you got
to make your right your decision right. So even though
I made the decision, you can ever make the decision right.
But as you go through. I think my my biggest
thing was like even being broke as a kid and
coming out of that, I always felt like it was
felt like you were a helpless And I just remember
when I actually made it and I started to be
a little bit successful, and I was. It was in
two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine, and
the whole real estate market was crashing down. I was
in Tampa at the time, and it felt like, wow,
the world's coming down. A lot of people were trying
to spile bankruptcy and all that stuff, and I just
kept that optimism and that abundance mindset. I was like, look,
maybe there's a better way. Maybe there's the way we
can work this out. May there's the way we can
hold on. And I think those kinds of time is
when I've learned so much. So it's like in those
hard times you do better. So then when COVID hit
and everyone's freaking out. During COVID, I was like, man,
this is nothing, this is easy, Like we got this.
So I think you start to go through these really
hard times and they end up becoming that's when you
win the game. It's like when it gets really difficult
and hard, that's when you're are. So when I felt
like it was so helpless and bleak at a time,
I was like, that's where your emotions comes, Like this
is actually when you double down on this opportunity. And
I almost I flipped that around the other way, but
those were But I think that's it happens a lot.
I think we have a lot of hard times every
single day, like and it's just how you deal with them.
But those big economic downturns were really hard for me.
Because it impact a lot of people's lives and that's
what we do for a living.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so you know, I totally can relate
to what you're saying. It's always darkest before the light.
That's what I always tell myself and like you, when
COVID hit, I saw it as one of the great
opportunities in life because cause just myself, going back to
two thousand and eight nine, the GFC, the Great Financial Collapse,
I took the fear mindset. I thought it was the
end of the world and I missed so many opportunities
Scott to really have just made huge sums of money
that I knew were there because I knew the crash
was coming, the real crash. I was in Las Vegas
and this was I think in eight and I looked
around and there was a seat of taxicabs before Uber
really took over, and they had signs on top of them,
you know, three bedroom, two bath townhouse, brand new, interest
only mortgage, no money down. And I said, this is it.
We're at the end because they've run out of buyers
and these are the only people they can get to
buy this stuff. And literally, and I was with my
partners as practicing law, very lucrative law practice. I turned
each other. I said, this is it. Crash is coming,
you know it. But I didn't do anything about it.
I could have, like Solt in my house and you know, Sultan,
my vacation has had enough money. I could have bought
up half of Florida at that point. And it was
only afterwards when I met a guy who was buying
up tax deed foreclosures in Lee County, and he was
buying up bank foreclosures, and you know, he'd done hundreds
of them, and I wasn't like, oh, he just told me, oh,
I did this. I actually went into the property records
and looked up every deal that he had made, and
I saw the money there. There was no question. The
least amount of money you made on flipping one of
these foreclosures was twenty grand. And you know, I realized
I had blown it, and I said, the next time
this happens, I'm not going to miss it. And now
right now I think we're getting another one of these opportunities.
Election uncertainty, you know, the security that you feel out
there in the world is is the equivalent almost of
a mini COVID or a many financial collapse, and yet
that's when the opportunities really present themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I remember nine those years, I had fifteen
condos or something in Tampa, and I think the value
those were like twenty five cents in the dollar because
I thought, oh, and own all this real es state
and I didn't own the right kind of real estate personally.
But I would work a lot of developers, so I'd
help them buy I'd buy condos in their places and stuff.
And I Remembermber in our Yeah, we always protected against
downside downside profection. We use a lot of life insurance
that was uncorrelated to the market, so we had cash
store in those when the market corrected the bond prices
went up, we had trust work. So what we had
done a really good job is we did really good
job with cash management. So when the markets moved, we
are that our clients had money, so then they could
go back and buy those assets on the cheap or
do restructure because the banks would be like, well, you know,
we want that money. It's like, well, the money's protected,
you can't get it, but we'll do a deal, Like
can we work this out? So we did a lot
of workouts and stuff to be able to get there
and you fast forward from there, you know, cor right
now in the exact same hiss itself. So like we
just bought an office tower, like actually bought four towers
in the last eighteen months that were so value written
from COVID, Like we got one A Class A building,
we got a thirty's the net operating incomes three point
five million and it's fifty percent full, meaning you can
literally buy it right now and generate a ten percent
return on your money and you have huge upside. And
not to mention, we have a bunch of leases coming in,
so we literally have built this like massive real estate
portfolio on stuff where the banks are foreclosing, they're writing
it down, they're saying, no one's going back to the office,
none of stuff's ever going to happen. And what we're
seeing is the absolute opposite. We're seeing this thing being
we're resetting basis, we're getting stuff for ten percent of
replacement costs, and we're buying future cash flows. So we're
seeing huge opportunity and these assets and our clients are
in a situation where there uncorrelated to the market. They've
got assets that are able to manage the vault ultility,
so they can take advantage of these opportunities they present themselves.
So now we're like sitting there going, wow, I'm glad
I went through all these hardships to get to here.
So then when the real party starts to your point,
I can take massive action.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. So office buildings, who would think, so you're
really a contrarian contrarian investor.
Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, yeah, because we don't want to follow the
limits off the mountain. So you're you're over there buying
building multifamily projects and you got to exit them at
five caps and four caps. Well, you're safe with draw
rates five right now. In treasuries, there's no way you're
going to be in a lot of trouble if if
you can't make sure that that thing is working at
a very high level. So we're buying stuff where it's
working at ten and twenty caps when we get them
ready to go, So where there's huge margin of error
and margin of safety for when you go into those
things because you're buying them at you can't even get
they're basically geting for land costs. Essentially, what you're doing
and the three keys to the real estate location, location, location.
So now you're buying things in the urban core that
have the most unbelievable desirable locations and you can't even
build the stuff for less than ten percent of replacement costs,
So you're getting it for twenty seven dollars a fifty
bucks a foot. Very contrarian, but that's what we're doing
and we're having huge success in it.
Speaker 1: All Right, So what if people don't go back to
the office. Is there a way to monetize those assets,
because it seems like I guess, you know, it feels
like people just don't really uh, they aren't going to
go back to the office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so zoom is probably what I think. We're on
zoom right now. They just mandated all their employees work
in the office, like come back to the office. They're
mandating at scale, we have a mandate here in our
office where we need people in the office to do
collaboration to build best practices. So certain companies definitely will
be working more of a hybrid. Probably is like I
think what you'll see, But there's something to be said
of actual collaboration and things you can do inside of
your environment. So a lot of these companies need that.
So these law firms. They're taking multiple floors in that
the Indiana Supreme Court rents from us, so we've got
a lot of actual we're seeing the opposite of that
where they're like, we need to get you back in
the office, and we need to start seeing this happen.
But what they need to do is take these spaces
that no one want to wants to be in and
make them vibrant again. So like what we're doing is
we're converting some into hotels, We're creating more retail centers there,
We're building things around it to make it more of
an attraction area, yeah, versus the anti office, which I
hate the office myself. It's like, if you will look
at our office, you doesn't even look like an office.
It's got it's got a gym in, it's got a
basketball court, it's got golf sim it's like it's like
someone's living room. It's like a it's like a house.
It's not really an office. So the way you repurpose
this real estate and make them more of a lifestyle
type of place where people want to be, that's what
we're seeing. It's starting to work in this space, in
these in these buildings that we're buying.
Speaker 1: All right, Hey, really interesting conversation here. I guess you're
following Warren Buffett. When there's blood in the streets, that's
when you buy. When everyone's happy and thinks things can
never go bad again, that's when you sell. Scott, where
do we find you? How do we connect with you
on the web?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my our website's invest i nvst dot com.
We have principles the financial Freedom. So if you want
to want help on this stuff, what we can do
if you go on the website, we can go through
an assessment, which is really like help you clearly define
your why. We help you build out your virtual game
board where you can weigh and measure financial decisions and
really create rules to your money. So you'll see the
six key principles in there. But that's the best way
to reach out, and I'd be more happy to sit
down and just go through a quick Hey here's how
I see the world, and here's how I think we
can help in a big way. But that's the easiest
way to reach me. And then obviously my personal site
Scott Jared dot com, and that's another way to meet.
If you guys want anything, you want me to help
speak or help motivate employees or whatever. I'm good for
all that stuff as well.
Speaker 1: All right, well you motivated, Nie, Scott and good. You
know it's your success or your failure. It all happens upstairs, right, Yeah,
that's where it takes place and then it just manifests
itself in the real world. So appreciate you coming on.
You've got a question for Scott myself, Shoot me an
email k el at Carrie LEDs dot com. Link to
Scott's sites in the show notes to this interview on
Financial Survival Network dot com. While you're there, make sure
you sign up for your free newsletter get information like
this and so much more. Scott, appreciate your coming on.
Speaker 2: Let's go from survival to thriving. Baby, Let's go