Ben Reinberg - $500M+ Real Estate Empire | The "Smart" Decision That Keeps You Broke

When I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, the premise was build cash flow through assets, hard assets. Commercial real estate is a great asset to produce cash flows. I saw all the icons in commercial real estate in Chicago, and I said, this is what I want to do, I get it. In business, most people chase the deal. Few understand the discipline behind the deal. Ben Reinberg has spent decades mastering the art of commercial real estate investing, building, scaling, and structuring multi-million dollar portfolios with precision and long-term vision. When I tied up that first deal, my mental state of being was, what is the worst thing that could happen? God forbid you failed. What happens? You just go back to where you started. What I see as people give up. If you don't take the risk, you'll regret. And regret is the worst medicine you have to swallow in life. The biggest misnomer is they think that by moving quickly, they'll be able to get more work done, make more money. It's the opposite. When you can slow things down and see the chess board, things will speed up. As the founder of Alliance Consolidated Group and the leading voice in commercial real estate strategy, Ben doesn't just invest in buildings. He invests in systems, in discipline, in asymmetric opportunities. Learn how to control your emotions, learn how to be calm under pressure, and really enhancing your communication skills. Communication equals wealth. Nothing happens overnight. Success doesn't happen overnight. You have to grind, you have to show up, you have to be persistent, and it's not easy. It just doesn't happen overnight. I appreciate you coming on. It's going to be a lot of fun. You started off as an accountant, but somehow you ended up building a massive $500 million plus real estate portfolio. Tell me about the moment when you realized that commercial real estate was your path. Well, Scott, first of all, it's so nice to be here. Thank you for hosting me in Miami. I always love and joy coming to the city. It's really a treat to come down here all the way from California. Accounting was special to me because when I graduated from Indiana, my mom said, get a job. It was a deep recession going on in 1992, but I always knew I was an entrepreneur. I always knew I wanted my own business. I just didn't know how to get there. I work for this accounting firm. They do entertainment accounting. I was the youngest associate they've ever hired. It was a small firm out of Chicago. That's where I'm from. The goal was, I want to have enough money saved so I can move downtown because that's where the girls were. Everything revolves around women. The goal was make good salary, be able to buy a car, move downtown Chicago, find a way. I'm on an audit for the firm. It's the first couple weeks I'm there. They throw me on audit with a billionaire who owned cable vision in the New York Knicks and very successful family. I'm doing the audit. I'm seeing his office for weeks and he comes up to me and we're having dinner multiple times. I'm getting to know him. I don't realize who he is and how successful he is. I see as a client of ours, but I looked him up and understood who he was and I read newspaper articles and my boss told me how significant he was. I saw the trusts and returns and work we did for him. He pulled me aside. He said, you're doing not much of an account. I was 22 years old. I said, what do you mean? And he said, you're really more of an entrepreneur. You're someone who should have your own business figure out what you want to do and go start your own business. So I came back from Chicago up that trip and I took it to heart. I said, he's right. And I ended up I was watching an infomercial. There was no internet at the time. It was 1992, 93. And I ended up watching this infomercial and it's Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. And it's really Sharon Lecture story. And so and there's a full circle story behind this, which I love telling is so with Sharon and Robert, they wrote this book. You had to order it on the TV. It came 10 days later. I kept looking in the mailbox. When's it coming? You know, this is old school. How old I am. I'm dating my son. Book finally comes. I take two days off of the counting firm. Okay. We're in tax season. I was miserable. I hated taxies. I was working seven days a week. I still work seven days a week, but I hate what I was doing. And so then I read the book twice in a 48 hour period and Scott, what I realized was this is what I want to do. I have a financial background. I understand numbers well. It's a good industry commercial real estate and that side of real estate for me. I like the numbers. They're bigger numbers. There are things I treat me was growing up in Chicago, all the biggest icons in commercial real estate were from Chicago, the Pritzker's, the Crown, Sam Zell, the list went on and on. And so I said, wow, this is a way to build wealth. It's been proven. It's an old tested formula. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I need to get in this industry and figure it out. So I left accounting. One of our clients from Los Angeles inspired me and said, go buy a deal. I'll help you structure out. I'll get one done. Just get one done. Yeah. Get your feet wet. So I walk into this business as a principal, never a broker. Always a principal, always that landlord that the key top person in the transaction. So I go and tie up a 95,000 square foot industrial building. I decide I'm going to do industrial in office. That's where I'm going to cut my teeth in Chicago. I'm not getting into multifamily like a lot of my colleagues do in the city. I want to get involved in industrial in office. I find this industrial though 95,000 square feet. It's in North Brook, Illinois. It's next to Glenview, Captains of Industry. One of the best suburbs in the United States, Nero Harrier Airport. And it's got a great story to it. So I tied up. I go and I raise a couple million bucks in equity. I remember I'm young. Yeah, it's your first deal. I don't have track record. I have a track record. I got to put together a package, which I did. And then I have to go raise equity. I was paying like an 8% preferred return. I gave away a store. I structured an 80 20 deal. First week, well, we go through due diligence. And I have to negotiate a $250,000 credit with two icons that were home builders in the United States. And they bring me into the conference room and I'm in a suit. And they turn up the temperature on me on purpose. Secretary walks in serving coffee on fine China. I mean, this is dating myself. This is how cool it was. If they want to they want to make sure they're going into business with the right guys. Exactly. Put them in the pressure cooker. So they put me in the pressure cooker. They have this conference table. That's probably like twice the size of this studio, right? And they're on one end. I'm on the other end. They just put me on the end to intimidate me. And they're just kind of staring at me for like a minute before we get started. And they said, are you Ben Reimberg? And I said, yes, I am. I was young. I looked younger. No gray here at the time. And they said, are you buying this deal from us? Like they didn't know like how young I was, you know, because the broker's dealing with it. And so I'm like, yes, I am. I'm the sponsor. It's my company and alliance and bubble bath. And they go, so what are you doing here? What do you need? I said, well, back then, we'd do things in person. It was a relationship business that still is. I showed them the numbers. I said, I need to earn $50,000 credit. It was for the roof and the parking lot and different viseley. And they they looked at me and they gave me a stare. And they said, man, young kid, you have a, you have a, they called me a kid. They go, you have a lot of nerve coming in here, asking for a credit. And I said, they said, do you have your equity rates? I said, I have about 80 percent of it. I'll have it done next two weeks. Okay. Great. What about a loan? Because I heard your financing. Yep. Here's the bank. I got the term sheet, the commitment. We're ready to go. I said, the biggest challenge for me is the improvements that you guys haven't fixed replaced in a while. You got a roof that needs to be replaced. You got some HVAC that needs to work. You have a parking lot in shambles. Yeah. It's 250,000. Here's the quote. You're this kid. And I'm this guy now. And they looked at me and they said, you have a lot of nerve walking in here. That was their speech to me. And I said, well, we have a choice. Either I could walk out of here. And you're not selling the building to me and you got put back on the market. And by the way, you got to, you got to tell everyone now what needs to be done to this property because now it's public. That's how it works. And so I walked out of there. They gave me the credit of 250,000. One of the partners between the two guys walks up to me and puts his arm around me and he whispers in my ear and goes, you know what? Kid, you're going places. Keep pushing forward. So I buy the building at close a few weeks later. We raise the rest of the equity. We close my first deal. First week, we lose 45% of the income of the building. Tenant moves out in the middle of night. It's an, it's an automotive tenant in 45% of the square footage. So within a year, I backfill it. I make, instead of a two tenant building, I make a three tenant building. I renew the largest tenant. I have new leases. I end up putting the property on the market. And I decided, I said, you know what? Instead of hiring a broker, I'm going to sell it myself and learn how to sell a deal. That way, when I hire brokers in the future, I understand the process better. So I end up aligning myself with the first war room that's ever was created in commercial real estate, where it was evolved and you don't upload documents and people can go online and download stuff. It was way better. This was way before this type is common. I find it so interesting. A couple of things that I picked up on. First of all, it seems like you had, even though you said the first deal with a three X gave you confidence, it seems like you had an incredible amount of confidence even before that deal. I think it also just gave you a track record. And I'm curious why, curious because of two things. And maybe you can take the question wherever you want. First of all, I'm curious why so many people read rich dad, poor dad, and they all get different lessons out of it. And not everybody reads that book is like, I want to go into commercial real estate. There's a variety of different pathways. So I think the first question is, how did you decide what was right for you versus all the other ways you can interpret that book and go into different kinds of real estate or whatever you want to do. And the second question is very simply, how did you get over the imposter syndrome or just like the terror of doing that first deal and having the balls to go into that room and actually have those conversations? Well, first I'll answer both great questions, by the way. The first one you said was the different interpretations of rich dad, poor dad, and why you chose this versus all the other. When I read rich dad, poor dad, to me, the premise was build cash flow through assets, hard assets, which has been my career. And Scott, when I was, I didn't come from money. So for me, the only way I knew was, you know what, this makes a lot of sense. So what are assets that could produce cash flow? Well, commercial real estate is a great asset to produce cash flow. So, and then I took step out, like I said, and I saw all the icons in commercial real estate in Chicago. And I said, this is what I want to do. I get it. And so how I interpret that book was, by assets that produce cash flow, that's how you build wealth. That's how you make a living. That's how you can live. So when I tied up that first deal, my mental state of being was, what is the worst thing that could happen? And everyone out there listening is that whether you're getting started or you've been in business a long time or you're about to go in the working world or you're starting a new company, God forbid you fail. What happens? You just go back to where you started and you could try again and do the same thing or do something different. What I see is people give up. And being from Chicago, I'm a fighter. When people challenge me, I fight. When people debate me, I'm fighting. That's my nature from Chicago. That's why I am. And so when I said to myself, look, I have a couple million dollars. I got a raise bed. You got to go get done. So to me, that's seven days a week. It's shoe leather. It's meeting people at a breakfast place. There was no Starbucks at the time. So I'm meeting someone for breakfast or lunch, pitching them. Who else do you know? Who else can refer me this? I met my health club talking to people. I'm out there. And I'm an introvert and I'm out there at the age of 23. And I am pushing myself mentally saying, just go talk to people because what's the worst thing that they could say? No. And it's the same thing in life. It's it's if you don't take the shot, you'll never know. The key to buying any hard asset is really packaging. Explain what that means. Well, packaging means, especially in commercial real estate is understanding the numbers and commercial real estate, it's understanding the market, vacancy rate, absorption rates, supply and demand. Same thing with buying a company or any other asset. So for me, I took the approach of if I get my arms around the market, get my arms around the deal, no market rent. I can explain to anyone in any conference room. And the lesson here is, and anyone out there listening, especially if you know numbers, the person that knows the numbers can sit in any meeting at any time. They're the most important person in the room. And that was always a staple in my in my company. And for me, when I know the numbers, and I can explain the story and the real estate fundamentals and the risk and how to protect the downside, the upside took care of itself. And so tell me what just based on that lesson, because I grew with everything you're saying, I think that's it makes so, it's such common sense to know your numbers to prove to if you're going to try and do a deal, make sure that the people on the other end of that deal are clearly communicated, to understand exactly what's happening. There's no ambiguity. How do entrepreneurs screw this up? The ones that you see right now, I'm sure you have a lot of entrepreneurs that you mentor and you work with people in real estate, probably people outside of real estate too. What is the average entrepreneur not getting right about communication about presenting all of it? Well, there's a couple of things. Number one is they don't put the time in. And I'll tell you why. And I see this with my kids. I see this with the younger men and women that work for Alliance is everything is moving so quickly now. Text messaging, DMs with Microsoft Teams, we do Zoom calls, everything is quick. It's not like it used to be where I'd have to go fly and meet Scott Claire and go towards property and have a conversation, raise equity in person. And people are moving so quick that they don't slow things down. They don't think. And so the biggest misnomer is they think that by moving quickly, they'll be able to get more work done, make more money. It's the opposite. When you can slow things down and see the chess board and see what you have to do and be more efficient, things will speed up. That's the first thing I see in this generation. The other thing that's missing is listening is understanding exactly what the truth is so insane to you. So you make their time in your time efficient. So you might look at that wall and see white and I see it's a beige. So my opinion is different, but you should understand the truth of why I think it's beige. Just like I should understand the truth of white, when you could seek the truth and what someone's saying, you can engage and build rapport and building rapport is something that's lacking in this marketplace. I see it with the younger acquisition guys and my company as well as some of the equity razors. What's missing is taking time to give a shit about the other side, listening, understand where they're coming from, seeking the truth and what they're saying. And so putting in the time is important. And to go back to my first point is when you're younger, you're getting started in business for everyone out there. Okay. The reason why I say be the first one in the last one to lead, it's not you want to impress your superior, your boss and whatever in a company. It's because you need the extra time to be able to get your arms around more variables that you're not accustomed to. So for example, for me to underwrite a deal or look at a property commercial real estate and say next door, yeah, let's put it in offer at this rate. I could do it instantly because of where I've been doing this for three decades. A younger gentleman or woman in my company, it might take them four days to get to that decision. So guess what? You need to put in the time. I always say when you're younger, you're new in business, put in the time, the hours, you need to get up on the learning curve. And a lot of people are willing to do that because they're being pulled in a thousand directions. And it leads to, are you going out for a beer on Friday night? What are you doing that would pull you away from your dream? If your dream, Scott, is to be wildly successful in business and life. Why would you let social pressures or anything else mess with that life you're want to create? It's the biggest thing I see in people. They're not willing to do what it takes to be successful. I go, I don't even have to do what I do. I go to work a new poor beach on a Saturday. I am the only one in this monstrosity building. Security knows me. I pull into the parking garage. They are following me to the door to make sure I get it. And they'll call me by my name. And I'll do that on a Sunday if I have to. But out of everyone in that building, you're one of the only ones is going, I am right. You don't, you don't have to do that. I don't have to. But you know what? I do it because one I care. I have responsibilities. I want to continue to grow. I want to be different. And that's how I learn life is putting in that extra work if I need to. And I think part of that is if you're not willing to do what it takes, you can't complain. What was me? I didn't get there because especially when you're younger and for everyone out listening there, how you can differentiate yourself is putting in the work because I guarantee you like all of us, we don't know everything. And so you got to be vulnerable. You got to build up your resources. You got to ask questions. And maybe if you had some space and quiet time because you spend a little extra time maybe at the office later at night, you'll have the ability to think. And that's the other thing that's got no one really does anymore is they don't take the time to think. So for example, what I've done in my career, and I do a lot of personal development, I'm very open about it is in order for me to think and process and be more aware, which is so important is awareness is I meditate twice a day. And I do that because it allows me to be more aware, more present like I am with you. And guess what? We build rapport. We potentially I might help you. You might help me. You might drop some knowledge on technology that I have no idea what it is, but changes my life, changes someone that works for me. And so it's why I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I eat healthy. I work out. I'm physically fit. I do all these things because they give me a competitive advantage because that's how bad I want it still. I never forget the day I started. And so for everyone out there listening, you're getting started in business or you're getting your MBA or whatever you're doing, whatever you're going after, ask yourself, am I getting in the deep water and I'm going to actually not do things half-ass or am I going to go for it so I don't regret. And regret is the worst medicine you have to swallow in life. People look back and say, well, I wish I would have done that. Why not do it? And just to go back to failing, God forbid something happens. God forbid someone makes fun of you. God forbid you have an issue. It will pass. I promise you. And failures are inevitable. You're going to fail in business. You're going to have bad conversations. You're going to write an email. You're not proud of. You're going to have a conversation. You're going to treat someone you wish you wouldn't have treated that way. That's growth. That's learning. You observe. You grow from it. You step up and you keep moving forward. And a lot of entrepreneurs out there or even people getting into business is they're so worried about what other people think when no one really cares. Everyone's so focused on themselves, especially in my business, a commercial real estate broker, they all have amnesia. They sell you a deal and then a month later it's like, hey, remember that deal we bought in Delray Beach that you sent me stakes for the closing? Oh yeah, that's right. What else do you have? They forget about you. And that's everything in life. So my point to everyone out there is harness your craft. Decide how bad you want it. And if you want it, go for it and be very careful. Yeah, and be very careful. You know, there's a saying one of my mentors says, show show me your friends. I'll show you your future. And it's a true statement because who you surround yourself with will uplift you to where you want to go. Do you want someone criticizing you like, hey, Joe, went in on a Saturday. Why didn't you come out with us on Friday? Well, Joe's on his mission. But that person should be like, you know what? Joe, you should be really proud of yourself. That's that's a lot of discipline. Great. You know what? Maybe I'd love to go to a coffee shop with you and talk to you about what you do. And I was going to say it's tough to find people like that though. It is. But that's why you have to focus on your inner circle, especially when you're young. I just want to touch on some of the ideas that you had. But I guess really you mentioned so many good life lessons. pertaining to, you know, discipline and putting in all of yourself into your work and surrounding yourself with the right people. One idea that I love that you that you sort of touched on is I think a younger generation is focusing on these big milestone moments as opposed to putting in the work every single day. And this is not this is not a hard and fast rule for everyone. So I don't want to make it sound like that. But I noticed that people are trying for the next viral hack or the next big win or that like it's always like they look for these huge milestones that are going to catapult their career or their business or they're following or whatever their businesses. And they don't focus on every day just being exceptional. And I think that that is I think that that is a lesson that I've heard repeatedly from people that have already built as exceeded that are older my mentors. They don't optimize for the milestones optimized for being excellent every single day. However, that looks for you. And I think that's a really important idea. But outside of all the lessons that you taught. What was the hardest one for you? And why? Well, the hardest lesson for me was taking a look in the mirror and knowing I had to learn how to communicate better and improve my communication. Understand how to listen better. Understand how to interact with different types of people. Not get emotionally aggravated by people if it didn't go my way. Because when I was younger, I didn't I couldn't control my emotions. I was this hard-nosed kid from Chicago hustling doing deals. You know, I sold cigarettes at the age of eight. I mean, I was I was this crazy tough kid. And then I get in the business world with sophisticated people. And I got to learn how to regulate my emotions. And that was a tough pill this while. Be like there's something wrong with me. I'm not I'm not perfect. I'm not I'm successful. You know, I had to take a step back and learn how to communicate better with people and how to inspire people and how to influence people. And and so that was hard for me because when I was younger, I had a battle everyone. I was the young kid. I was a kid who, you know, didn't come from money. I was the kid that had to prove himself always. And when you constantly have to prove yourself, you lose yourself. And so I had to take a step back and figure out who I really was and improve my communication, prove my listening, become more empathetic, you know, come from a state of love instead of fear sometimes. And so I had to change the way I looked at things. And personal development was a huge thing for me because when I was younger, there was no personal development. There was no, hey, figure out what's going on with you. Figure out how to communicate better. Figure out what triggers you. How do you regulate your emotions? I was a complete mess. And so for me, the lesson I learned most was I have to I have to work on myself in order to make my environment around me better. Quick question. What's your go to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab, which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage. That's why I'm partnering with Hule. This black edition ready to drink is a complete meal. So it has 35 grams of protein, six grams of fiber, 35 essential vitamins and minerals. It is no sugar added, gluten free under five bucks. I always keep a few of these in my fridge. And honestly, it's solved the whole back-to-back meetings, go, go, go, non-stop, no time to eat problem. Super well. And this one's new for me. It's Hule's daily greens. I had the blueberry this morning, honestly, first impression. It was way better than I expected. It's developed by registered nutritionists and dieticians. There are 42 vitamins, minerals and superfoods, only 25 calories, four grams of fiber, and just one gram of sugar. I throw one back first thing before my morning calls every single morning. Look, if you're running a business, time is the most valuable asset. Hule makes healthy eating simple and they also just launch into target source nationwide so you can get it everywhere. Try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code, Scott at Hule.com slash Scott. Try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code, Scott at COTT at Hule.com slash Scott. Use my code, fill out the post checkout survey to help support the show. That is Hule.com slash Scott. They really make healthy living case amazing. Even if you're on the go, healthy eating, healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bad. It doesn't have to suck. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP. It's trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It's a unified suite that pulls your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM into a single source of truth. That connected data is what makes the AI smarter. It doesn't just guess it knows. It can automate routine tasks, it can deliver actionable insights and it can help you cut costs and make fast decisions with confidence. And now with the NetSuite AI connector, you can use the AI of your choice to connect to your actual business data and ask every question you've ever had. This isn't just another bolted on tool. It's AI built into the system that actually runs your business. So whether your company earns millions or hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you stay ahead. If I needed something like this for my business, I'd use NetSuite and you should too. So if your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get our free business guide, demystifying AI at NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. The guide is free to you at NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. NetSuite.com slash Scott Clary. Let's talk about hard assets for hard times. So a lot of people on this podcast are entrepreneurs, but a lot of people have also made some money, and they're trying to figure out where to put their money. And a recurring theme is you can make money anywhere as long as you understand that particular asset class better than anything else. I think what a lot of people end up doing incorrectly is they become great entrepreneurs and they find a way and not all entrepreneurs through investing entrepreneurs like through building a business or selling your skills or whatever their version of entrepreneurship is. But then they make some money and they think that just because they're a good entrepreneur, they're a good investor. And they put money into like startups and real estate and commercial, residential, crypto, stocks, they put money everywhere and they don't really know anything very well. So I always am curious about your advice for somebody just starting out and investing. Where should they put their money? Obviously the argument is hard assets. But first of all, why hard assets over all the other types of assets you can put money into? Obviously disclaimer, not investment advice. But then the second thought is the way you started, you just started on your own. You didn't put money into a fund to learn. You just did it. That's right. Is that the way that people should start? Oh, if you want to live through torture, then start the way I did, Scott. But in all reality, if you're going to go into commercial real estate and if someone asks me a day, I would say starting brokerage, don't do what I do. And the reason behind that is you could do more deals, see more deals that make some money, save some money and then decide to go out and you're on start buying deals. That's why I would recommend the way I did it was different. Okay. I guess I had a lot of balls and a lot of guts and last stones, people say I had a last stones. But that was me growing up. The book, hard assets and hard money for our times is special to me. I started a year ago. And the reason why I wrote it was there was hundreds of people throughout my career. It seemed like it was every week. How do I get into commercial real estate? How do I buy real estate, commercial real estate or any type of real estate? Can you look at my portfolio? I'm going to invest in this deal with this sponsor, whether it's real estate or a company. Can you review a for me and give me your thoughts? And I started going through these questions for a long time. And last year, I took a step back and I said, someone on my leadership team, I said, I need to write a book about this. People keep asking me, no one knows how to build wealth. No one understands it. No one really teaches it the right way. So I took a step back and I developed the blueprint. It's called the hard asset blueprint that anyone can use, whether you're a young man or woman starting in business or a kid all the way up to someone that's a trillionaire, a billionaire can use it. And so what I do is I end the blueprint, it looks like a castle. There's capstones and keystones and walls and there's a foundation and different vaults to put assets in. And I show people, when I teach them how to allocate assets in each of the different sectors of your castle, how to protect it, how to deal with data and privacy, a state planning asset protection, taxes, we touch it all. We talk about different hard assets and why hard assets? Well, hard assets, why I love hard assets and it's been staple my career and I'm biased towards it. And by the way, I'm not giving any legal advice or investment advice. The reason why I like it's got is because one, they could deal with economic uncertainty, political, geopolitical unrest going on in our world. I can have more certainty buying hard assets that produce cashful than any other investment, especially in commercial real estate. I can kick the bricks and mortar, which is important to me. So I tell everyone out there, whatever your hard asset is, whatever your investment is, make sure you diversify. But for me, if your business is in one of those hard assets like commercial real estate or you're making a living from crypto or you're doing something in insurance, whatever is producing your hard asset or maybe you have a brand, which is a hard asset. Focus on that. I tell people when you invest, you want to invest with smart money. So what does that mean? Take my company Alliance Alliance Consulate Group of Companies, where I had Gordon Chicago, I sit in our West Coast office, we're all over. We have 200 plus years of leadership team experience outside of Ben Ryan Burke. That's a lot of experience in commercial real estate. We know how to deal with challenges. We have an upper 20s IRR track record. We've been business for three decades. That's smart money. So when you're building your castle, your kingdom, your empire, when you want to get into different sectors, which is great and diversify, if you want to learn about cryptocurrency, invest with someone that's an expert in it. If you want someone that understands, hey, I'm going to build a brand and have it be worse, leverage into someone. Leverage is so important. That's why the first season my TV show is called leverage, because it's relationships, it's technology, it's knowledge, it's beyond that in our business. So what I want everyone to know is hard assets can sustain themselves through times. They can produce cash flow. They can deal with economic uncertainty. And it's been proven, the old age formulas, all the wealthiest families in the world own hard assets. And being from Chicago where it's the crowns, the Pritzker, Sam Zell, you know, Al Topman in our business, the Dolans, the Rockefellers, they own oil and gas, they own hard assets, commercial real estate, they own silver and gold and all the Encrypto and all these different things. And so there's a reason behind it. And so what I did for the book was now do I share my experience in hard assets, which been tested for over three decades. I interviewed and brought in 20 billionaires and all of us have proven the exact steps that I outlined in the book. So you're hearing from experts that have been there and done that. And then you can feel confident of I need to build my hard asset empire. So we show people how to build it. We talk about what where you put different sectors. We talk about where you where you put your focus is important and invest in smart money. We also talk about your mindset. When you have to build the hard asset empire and subprime assets, just like I did as a young man buying that industrial building, you got to get your mind right. You have to be focused. You have to be disciplined. You have to become resource rich. And you have to show up every day. And you really have to push forward. And I'm honest in the book. And I say it on podcast and TV shows. I'm on is that, you know, it's not easy building a hard asset empire. It nothing's easy. It wasn't easy for me. It's taken me years to get to this point over 30 years. Yeah. So I don't sugar code it saying it's going to happen overnight. You got to work at it. You got to manage the reason why I like the book is because I give you a hard asset blueprint in the book. And what I want everyone to do is when someone asked me to write my story in a book as I'm not telling my story, I said, I'm writing a book that's actionable that people all over the world can use any point in time for the rest of their lives. So you'll buy the book. You put it on the bookshelf a month later, you say, you know what? I'm going to start investing in this. Where should it go in my in my hard asset empire? Where do I put it? Because the hard asset empire was designed to defend, retain, compound, and grow your empire. That's why I created it. So if you have to do some asset planning and pull out the book, say, okay, here's my blueprint. What needs to be protected? You know what? I have everything in keys or in a wallet or and I got to protect the data, which is part of my foundation. I'm going to pull out the book and look at my blueprint and see where do I have to put that? What do I need to do? It's a way for you to stay in touch and to be actionable and visible to what you need to do because Scott pictures are worth a thousand words. I'm a visual guy. And so I was like, well, I'm a visual guy. What would I want? So I said, I want a blueprint. I don't need someone telling me in a book by paragraph by paragraph. I'm saying here it is. We're going to do it together. Okay. And by the way, if you want to gain commercial real estate, we have a new course is coming online where you'll be able to tell my AI because it's been following me for a year, then I want to learn how to negotiate in industrial lease. I want to learn how to buy a multifamily deal. We will design a course specifically for whatever you need. That's how great it's going to be. So with the book, I wanted people to be able to walk away and say, how do I get started? How do I build my empire? And people always ask me like, when they always say to me, well, Ben, when I get money like you, I'll get started. And the first thing I say to them is, no, I don't care if you have $10 to your name, put a dollar in something and get started. Pull the trigger and get started because you want to develop habits. Habits are huge in life. And no one talks about it because people say to me, well, why do you work out with a trainer five days a week? Why do you still go in the office at the same time every morning? You might leave later, but you have a routine. You go to bed a certain time. When you have a routine in habits, everything else makes it easier in life, especially business because you want to take the stress off the little things. You want to stay healthy. You want to have energy. You want to be aware. So like I said, to go back, if you're going to double down on business and say, I want to become wealthy, I want to become successful. I want to have options. I want to grow as a person. Unless you commit and get in the deep water and do it, then don't say you want to do it. No, I agree fully. I'm curious. A couple thoughts. First of all, I love how the concept of the book revolves around not just investing, but building the empire, building all the different pieces, because yes, it's great to take action and put your first dollar in. And I don't want to diminish that at the same time after you've put your first dollar in and start to realize that there's all these other things that you can do. So there's like the legal, the financial. You start planning for your kids and everything, like the full 360. So it's important because a lot of people just say, okay, invest in your first deal, put money in the stock market, put money in crypto, buy a, do the burn method to go buy a, like a residential real fine, but there's all these other components so that you're optimizing not just one piece of your wealth, you're optimizing everything. And you just want to do it sooner than later. So you don't have to learn all these hard lessons. Now, a couple other things. You interviewed a whole bunch of people for your book. I mean, you've dropped some really valuable wisdom from your own life. I'm curious if there's something out of all the different lessons that people sort of spoke to you about while you're putting the get of this book. Was there anything that stood out that maybe you weren't even aware, something that you thought was like, wow, this is really interesting and a novel way to look at this particular idea that you think would be a huge help for people listening. One of the things I saw that was a common thread, which I knew, but it really resonated was learn how to control your emotions, learn how to be calm under pressure, learn how to deal with challenges, and know that it shall pass. And that was a common theme of a lot of people successful in business is controlling your emotions, being a good listener, and really enhancing your communication skills. Communication equals wealth. And that was the sentiment with everyone is how you communicate, how you inspire people, how you lead. And leadership had a large meaning because in building your hard-asset empire is if you're going to build the empire you want, you're going to have to lead in certain respects. And so every day I have to lead in what I do. That's why I am. And so leadership is not only being a good listener, but it's also inspiring people. How do you inspire people? You seek the truth and what they're saying. You can understand what their lens is and collaborate with them to have a conversation about, I never thought about that way. Or, you know, let's try it this way. Or you know what? Let's do your way and figure it out. And if it doesn't work, let's figure out how to change it. So communication and understanding how people are thinking and listening and understanding and processing information is so critical. It's a success. And the hard-asset empire you build, the other thing that came out of it was you get rewarded for focus, which is something I always say. So I focus on commercial real estate. That's my expertise. That's how I build my empire. But when I have capital, like I said, and I invest in crypto or I invest in technology, which I loved investing, I invest with smart money. So I want to invest with people have been there done that. I'm not the expert. It's like when we buy a medical office building, okay? The cardiologist group don't want to own real estate because it's a pain in the ass for them. And I'm not getting involved in doing heart surgery. It's not my niche. So you pick your lane, you pick your focus. And the sentiment with everything is you get reward for focus, manage your expectations, communicate very well and enhance your communication work on it. Those were the three common things that came out of this. I want to go a little bit deeper into sort of your expertise and some lessons with commercial real estate because I've never really had somebody that's completely focused on commercial real estate before. And I think that obviously this is what you've done your whole career. You kind of made an argument before for why commercial real estate over residential. But I mean, even at the beginning, you niche down a little bit more into medical in particular. So if somebody is very interested in commercial real estate, what are some ideas that they should be aware of? Should they niche down that much? I'm sure there's recession proof in some of these ideas. There's maybe how long or what's the word I'm thinking of. If it's like a sticky tenant, if they don't leave and the second you buy the property kind of like that first tenant that took off, you probably focus on people that want to stay in the building for long term or there's a reason why they would. So maybe that's one of the reasons. But somebody going to commercial real estate, what is the first piece of advice that you give them? There's a couple of things. If you're going to buy commercial real estate and take the road I did, what I say is stay local or regional like I did. Even though we have the internet and you can live in California and buy in Wichita, Kansas, my suggestion you is start local and regional where you could drive to your properties. It'll make your life easier because you're going to go on a learning curve. And when you go on that learning curve, you want to maximize time. Time is our biggest asset in life. It always will be. So when you're younger and you're learning and you want to be a principal and do what I did start locally. Now when you start locally or regionally, like I was in Chicago. So Chicago is a big city. I have a choice multi family industrial office self storage. I have options. But you might live in Montgomery, Alabama and you're listening to this and maybe it's good self storage market. Maybe it's good mobile home market, which is commercial real estate. So I would look at a niche that's conducive to your area that you can start with. Why shorten the learning curve as much as possible, mitigate your time. You're going to have to go tour properties. You got to build resources with brokers, attorneys, lenders. You're in that area already. Maximize your time. When you develop your expertise, you have capital start expanding. Then you go from Alabama to Mississippi to Tennessee to Florida, all the things we do and all the states were it. Start small if you're going to be a principal. Now, if you're out there and you're into mergers and acquisitions or a hedge fund or you're in technology, my suggestion is invest in smart money like my company alliance. Pick your poison. If you're like, I'm going to I'm in mergers and acquisitions. I'm in private equity. That's what I'm doubling down on. Don't divert your time. Focus on your niche. That's your empire. Focus on that niche and then leverage into talent to start building your hard asset empire. That's how you do it. That's what everyone does. That's extremely successful. They focus. They don't they don't divert because their times are the biggest asset, significantly wealthy people. What also comes out of this book and all the people I talk to for years and decades is time. We do an exercise in my office and at my company, which I think is fascinating. I'll teach everyone out there. When we did this about three years ago, the average A's were about 77. Now, it could be more. You probably debate with me out there, but just roll with this example. Okay. So I'm 55 years old. I turn 55 in January. If the average life is 77, if it took 77 minus 55, that's 22 years. If there's 52 weeks in the year, it's like 1000, whatever, 1400, whatever it is. That's how many weeks I have left. So if I'm out there getting started and I'm 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, however, all your audiences, and I subtract that 77 multiply 52, that's how much you have to live in your career. So you have to say to yourself, well, am I going to spread myself thin and get involved in a thousand different things and not become an expert because you need to become an expert at something. That's how you build a poor. That's how you get credibility. That's how you get loans, equity, because you're the expert. People will give money to people that are experts. How you become an expert. You put the time in. You develop your craft. You know the numbers. See how this all ties in together. Communication improves. And so if you're going to spread yourself thin, which isn't what I talk about in the hard asset empire and hard assets and hard money. That's the other the wrong direction. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You got to be focused. You get word for focus. So for people that want to get in commercial real estate, start local, pick a niche, focus on the one niche. Don't do like multi-family and industrial and office and retail. And you buy different deals throughout the year, focus on a niche, develop those resources, leasing brokers, appraisers, lenders that focus on that asset class. But if you're in a different business or you don't have the the thick skin to stay in commercial real estate or any type of real estate, leverage into someone like Alliance, leverage into someone else. Because if you're if you're not full in the water and you don't love this business, it will eat you alive. That's so smart. And I think that, you know, even listen, any business you go into most business are going to be difficult. Commercial real estate is one beast. Any other business people try and build is going to be another beast. But I think that you only have it's already difficult enough. And you do only have so many hours in a day. And even if you devote all your focus on a niche and all your hours and energy and attention into a niche niche, it'll still be difficult. So stop shooting yourself in the foot by diversifying your attention everywhere. I think that's such an important lesson. Think about the most stressful or the most high risk deal that you've ever done. Something that sticks out when I say that. And then what would be the lesson that you learned from that that was useful to you. But you hope no one else ever has to learn the way you learned it. Oh, it's such a great question. When I was younger, I bought a 300,000 square foot office campus. And it was a huge equity raise when I was younger. And my fear was, okay, well, I'm going to put debt and then mitigate how much equity you have to raise. So I know I can close because I really want. I thought my career was where Sam Zell was buying skyscrapers. I was like, I'm going to be this mega office owner. And then the internet came into play. And then office space, you know, downsize and became more efficient with technology. And we need as much office space. And so suburban office really took a hit. So I buy this 300,000 square foot suburban office in the Midwest. And we end up getting a 75% loan to value. I signed with recourse. There's a couple of things that come out of this story. Now that I'm talking about it. And then I put on a 10% mes piece. So for anyway, it doesn't know I took out a first mortgage of 75% of the purchase price. I added a second mortgage in the form of a mezzan debt with Canadian pension fund, speaking at Canada. And it was additional 10. I was 85% leverage on a deal. Okay. I bought it right before the right before 07 0607 for the market change. And we end up buying the deal. And Warren Buffett has this trucking company on two floors and one of the buildings, those two buildings, 150,000 square feet, 17 acres, gorgeous campus, great. They leave my debt service covenants get triggered. We don't have as much cash flow. We pay the mortgages, but something changes. Loan goes into default. We're overlaberaged. We have to now negotiate with the Canadian pension fund. You're not getting you're not getting anything out of this. So we had to negotiate with them. We went into workout with our first mortgage. I was on the hook for about 50 million dollars. I was younger at the time. So we end up working out the deal. We end up selling it. We had investors in it in the deal. And we end up breaking even we end up moving on. But what I learned in the business, and I knew up before is the key to commercial real estate or any business hard asset is the ability to hold ability to hold the ability to hold and commercial real estate. What that means is we're going to ride through cycles. And so you need reserves. You need to look at the real estate fundamentals. You need to underwrite it and have flexibility in your loans. So you have the ability to hold. So any loan we do, I don't sign with recourse anymore. I learned that a long time ago. I don't overlaberage properties. I bring in great resources to help us when we need it. And we do enough due diligence to know how to make sure this asset survives well. So to get back to all types of asset is understanding that you have the ability to hold and ride through a cycle. And the economic cycle is tremendous value. And it could be you're buying a company. You're buying an asset. You're developing a product. Because at the end of the day, the more runway you have to deal with issues and challenges and you have the capital to do it, you'll be fine. It's when you have that short wick that you have to make decisions you're not happy with. And so for us in that deal, we overlavered. I signed with recourse. We had no leverage. And the market changed. And all of a sudden values dropped, rental rates dropped, our value of property dropped. And it was a nightmare. But I learned never overlavered overlaverage property. Look at the real estate fundamentals when you're underwriting a front and have the ability to hold have enough reserves. And just be very careful with leverage. So we always do low leverage on deals now. We have enough reserves in the bank. We make sure we have the ability to hold to ride through storms. Because real estate cash flows are like moccles. Everyone thinks like, oh, there's just going to send in the air. Sometimes they do in our deals and we look great. But if you're in business long enough, you see everything, you see ups and downs in your deals, cash flow change. And you have to be able to the other thing I learned in that deal, which I get how about everyone listening is that if you're going to get financing and a piece of real estate or a company and put that on a hard asset. When I talked about don't overlaverage, but number two is know your lender. So for example, people say, well, how do you find I finance through banks, especially local banks? Why? I want to build a relationship. If I have an issue, I could pick up the phone or someone from my staff can pick up the phone and go over that challenge with them and have success. If I'm dealing with a lender like on Wall Street and I don't have access to lender at CMBI sorts, it's alone where someone's servicing and I have no one talk to make decisions. If I have an issue, how do I protect my investors? How do I protect the asset? So flexibility and relationships and debt is really important. And people, people don't realize it. And there's there's another lesson you could take out of this is that let's say you go to a bank to get a loan to buy a company or construction or improvements or a startup loan, SBA, whatever you're doing out there. If a lender says we want you to sign recourse, just say it on you'll take less leverage and sign non-recourse. The only reason Scott people have you signed recourse, they don't want to hang your overclip and shake out the paintings. They want to keep you vested. We want to know that Scott Cleary is not walking away from this deal. God help him. No, instead it's okay, I asked for 65 LTV non-recourse. Can we do 55? Oh yes, Scott, we do 55. You know what? If you're raising money, your investors know that if you're protecting the asset and protecting yourself and you're going to pay instead of a seven or eight preferred return, it comes a five or a six, it's okay. It's okay because what are you going to do on the back end for the profit? Look at the thing from a holistic basis, not what is it right now on a current cash basis. And the other thing for everyone out there, okay, is that wherever you invest, if someone tells you that they didn't have a deal where they had challenges or they didn't make a profit or they lost money, they're lying to you. If they've been business long enough, I'm telling you this, people are going to go through ups and downs. It's just the way life is. Nothing's going to be perfect. And so look at someone when you're investing is look at the relationship, look at the report you build, look at how you feel about this situation. Because one thing that we provide that lie in some extreme proud of is we give investors a seven star experience that wake love service. Because if you invest with us, I never want you to worry. I want you to be able to turn focus on your niche, if you're a doctor, whatever you do, and you're going to get overly communicated by us and reports and financial statements and returns. But I want you focusing on what you do best. And so if you're going to invest with someone and they can't provide you that white glove service, look at different alternatives. Indeed is a success story partner. If you're hiring, indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio, I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with indeed sponsor jobs. I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes the difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to indeed data, sponsor jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. And people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on indeed, according to indeed data worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes, less stress, less time, and more results now with indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help you get your job. The premium status it deserves at indeed dot com slash clary. Just go to indeed dot com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. Indeed dot com slash clary terms and conditions apply hiring do it the right way with indeed. Hubspot is a success story partner. Now if you're looking for a new podcast, one of my favorite shows right now is demand to code it. If you're in the B2B marketing space, you need to be listening to this. It's hosted by the team at Blent. They are a demand gen agency. They know what they're doing. They're also part of the Hubspot podcast network. What I love about it is they skip all the theory and they just tell you what's actually working today. So demand gen marketing content linked in ad attribution. They talk about real strategies that they are using that you can use today that are working. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, if you're really selling anything to anyone, go search demand decoded wherever you get your podcast. Right now we're in a market cycle. Obviously we just had a change in administration. What are some economic indicators that you look for when you're trying to figure out where I should be investing, what I should be investing in does market how much is market cycle impact, how much is administration impact, how much does global geopolitics impact some of your decisions? Well, geopolitics will definitely impact our decisions, interest rates do as well. So for example, we opened our multi-family division in 2024. That's recent, which is recent. About a year and a half ago, I kept watching it and saying, well, there's trillions of dollars coming along. There's a lot of multi-family sponsors that got into the business that took on short term debt at at a low rate that's going to turn within a short period time. So what happens is as the rising interest rate was happening, I said, this is going to trigger loans. People are going to have to sell and there's going to be opportunities in multi-family. So just being aware of the marketplace and again, having a focus and being knee deep in commercial real estate, I was able to see that opportunity. There's other opportunities. You might be looking at cryptocurrency and digital assets and there's opportunities like, for example, the blockchain is going to be big in commercial real state, which is one of the things we're focusing on. You want to? Yes. I hear a lot about it, but I don't, I know I'm property is trying to, do you know them? No, I don't know. They're trying to sell homes with with blockchain and whatnot, but I know that I've heard that it's going to be very big, but I haven't seen a lot of people actually transacting yet. Now, yeah, it hasn't happened yet, but so looking at things and saying, okay, well, what's out, what needs to be solved? And understanding the, so for me, when I look at commercial real estate, I say, well, what are challenges? Well, the quiz a challenge. Good sponsorships challenge. So what I do, Scott, is in my specific niche, I'll look at what are the problems historically and can I solve them? And so if you're in a certain industry, right? And I was with the gentleman today and he's in commercial real estate, but he's also getting into buying companies and he's big into government backed contracts. So what he's doing because it's his space, he sees a need and saying, you know what? There's a route between the bi companies that have government, government execute contracts and explain me the whole rationale. That's his niche. That's what he's focusing on. And so he sees an opportunity. So for everyone out there is that I think commercial real estate is going to be a great opportunity next two years to buy. I think there's going to be companies, if you buy companies, they're going to have to sell. They're going to be great opportunities. I feel the base on my book coming out, hard assets are the way to go in the next few years. And that's why we have so much demand to invest in Lion's Medical Fund, our multifamily fund. We're also doing hard money lending, which there's not a lot of liquidity. The market, that's another good niche we're doing. So to me, hard assets are critical, especially in uncertain times, geopolitical unrest. Not knowing where cash flow is going to come. And so that's why I created this blueprint for everyone is say you can start building it and feel comfortable that you can deal with turmoil and uncertainty in your life. So if you're out there listening and you feel uncertain or you're wondering, how do I build myself financially? Pick up the book. Look at the blueprint. Pull the trigger and start working on it. And it will give you clarity of where you need to go in your life. And also it makes you think. And the reason I wrote their book also is that I wanted you to take a step back. Everyone out there around the world and really think, just take time to think about how do I plan for my kids? How do I protect my assets? What assets am I focusing on? Who's the smart money I need to invest with? What are the resources I need to do all this? And so how do I build that foundation? Because no one comes up with a roadmap or a blueprint to do all this. And that's why I did it because I knew as a young man, I'm like, what's it been nice? Have someone told me this? And so I'm going on this learning curve. And so it's my way to get back. And I say that everyone out there is there's going to be a tremendous amount of buying opportunity for hard assets next to yours. That's my opinion. You can have your own opinion. I'm not giving you investment advice just to make a disclaimer. But I will tell you from my personal opinion, what I'm looking at is I'm looking at hard assets. What would be a belief about yourself that you once had that you think now is completely false? A piece of your identity that you had to improve or you had to change? I didn't think I was good enough. I came from, you know, I didn't come from money. I was really intelligent, but I wasn't a great student. And I had a reading comprehension problem when I was a kid. And so I'm my worst enemy. I would beat myself up. And I didn't think I was good enough. I didn't love myself. And so I had to learn that that everyone's different in the world. And it's okay to love yourself. It's okay to love who you are and to own who you are and your deficiencies and work on them and everything else. And I had to learn that. And it was a hard pill to take. And so for me, for everyone out there listening and is that if you're honest with yourself, you'll grow. And you'll become an incredible businessman or woman. You'll become an incredible person to have a relationship with. You'll be incredible friendships and colleagues and resources. And it starts when you're happy within yourself, your whole environment will change. And what I learned was for a long time while I was younger, I wasn't happy. And I kept saying to myself, I learned from mentors. They said, the reason why you're not happy is because you're not happy with yourself. If you're happy with yourself, everyone around you is going to gravitate to you. And you create this energy and frequency that people will come into your universe and your environment. That was something I had to learn. But it was the best lesson because to share it with people that I went through was tremendous. And so for people that feel they're not good enough or they don't love themselves or they beat themselves up, I encourage you to kind of look at how you can work on that and do the work. And when you do the work, you'll notice a big change in everything you do on your sort of your success journey. What do you think people sacrifice? Hopefully not you, but something that other people sacrifice that is the most detrimental thing on the on the way to success, the thing they should not sacrifice on the way to success. They don't celebrate the wins and something I didn't do enough on. Now I do. They don't have gratitude. They don't appreciate the people that help them on a daily basis. The employees, the team leaders, the resources outside the people that help them get on go along the way. It was interesting. I was watching someone on the news there today. And he said, you know, he's a broadcast. We said, never forgot the first radio station I was on. And he is gratitude for every step. And he's right. And so if you can have gratitude of, you know, my wife made me dinner this night, that way it allowed me to work later or I didn't have to worry about it or someone folded my clothes or or someone I was speaking and this happened. I was speaking, some young lady came up to me and hand me a bottle of water and said, oh, you look thirsty. I was wanting it. It was a great networking move. She wanted to meet me and she was in commercial real estate. So being grateful for the things that happen in your life, the simple things is so important because what we do is we take everything for granted in life. Oh, I'm entitled to that. That should happen to me because I'm this person. Well, no, it's that's not the way life works. Is if something does nice like I'm grateful that you invited me on your podcast. I get to share my story. How great is that? And I get to meet you and network with you. That's gratitude. That's taking a step back and saying, what am I aware of what's really going on? And we're not aware we're speeding things up. We're not paying attention. Right. And we take things for granted. And so for me, for everyone out there is that take a step back, take a breath, understand how you got to a place and be grateful. And if that's your approach, everything else in life will be easier. What's the biggest misconception about your success story? Oh, we laughed about in this office just like on social media. It's easy. It happened overnight. Ben just wrote that book overnight. He got all these followers overnight. My social media sucked when we started and I'm the first one to tell you because my original vendor thought it was just the vanity is what's important. No. It should be a cohesive strategy for the business and the brand. And so for me, nothing happens overnight. It's a big misconception. Success doesn't happen overnight. You have to grind. You have to show up. You have to be persistent. You have to be resilient. All the stuff we talked about today is a culmination of what needs to happen. And it's not easy. It just doesn't happen overnight. Yeah, I mean, that's a common thread across everyone who I bring on this show. We always live for the Instagram highlight reel and we don't realize the energy and the effort that goes into it. I mean, you've put over 30 years into, that's what people understand. So they see the book and they'll see the Instagram and all the ideas that you have, that's 30 years in the making. On top of the fact that even those, even building out those platforms took a ton of energy and time and resource and effort. You have to have a lifetime of experience to be able to teach and to be able to show up and to be able to sort of articulate some of the ideas that you have. So you can't just fast track that overnight. Well, and for me, it was, it was different because I was array successful in business and I decided to get online. Yeah, that's what I mean. So people are trying to be online before they're successful in business. Yeah, I wasn't like, I got online and said, okay, let's see if I can become successful. I had a grind and do everything saying. So what's great about is when I go online, I'm living these stories. I've lived on. I've lived events. I could tell you it's not easy. I could tell you tough people don't let tough times on last tough people do because I've been through it. And so it's real. It's authentic. And that's why I love about social media is that when you could hook on to someone that has experience and knowledge and that gray marriage between years, that to me is priceless. That's a good thing about social media. Yeah, I think that's, you know, we didn't really speak about this, but we touched on how important sort of structuring your life is not just for yourself but for your family and your kids and obviously massively successful. And I like to just have a little bit of insight from how you look at structuring life for your kids or also people that are trying to figure that out because that's not a conversation that people have a lot. And I think it gets confusing for people when you make a little bit of money. How do you protect your kids both financially, but also so that your kids can learn the same lessons that you've learned. And I don't think there's forget about a playbook for hard assets. There's zero playbook for that. No, everyone's kind of that's why I touch on it in the book saying, you know, so for me, asset protection, life insurance, one thing I taught my kids, I'll teach if anyone has kids are going to have kids, I'll teach you something I did for my kids, which I thought was priceless was when my kids got into high school. I wanted to teach them the value money. I wanted to know that mom and dad aren't just eight times because it was like that when they're in junior high, you know, hey, could I have a 20, a 10, I'm going, going skating, going out with some friends. And I said, this has to stop. And so what I did was I taught them the value money. So what I did was your kids start driving here in the United States at the age of 16. And one thing that I decided to, I wanted to get my kids the things I didn't have. I didn't have, you know, to where I had my own car. I didn't have, you know, the ability to go get clothes and at free will and go out to dinner all the time with friends. I didn't have that, but I had to bought that lifestyle for my kids. So I said, okay, well, I got to pick my poison. If I'm a spoil, I got to teach the value money. So what I did for everyone that listening out there is my oldest son, Joey, he's my oldest and at the time, he's 25 years old at the time when he was, you know, a teenager starting off in high school is in Chicago. I said, okay, we're going to put you on a budget. We're going to give you a certain mom money every month to pay for gas. If you go out with friends, eating, and so on, so forth, there's a fine am I for the month. And that's how you get. So you got a budget. So now it gets really interesting because Joey's spending money and all our accounts are linked. You know, I'm looking at Chase and I could see the money spending. Now, let's just say it's a 31 days in a month. Day 25 comes. Joey's got like eight bucks. What's he going to do? Guess what? He starts eating at home. He starts making decisions because he's not getting more. And so what ends up happening is you learn about the value of the dollar and how to budget. And so I tell everyone is don't just give your kids a blank check. Let them earn it. Let them understand the value of the dollar. It doesn't matter how successful you are. I'm successful. I could give money. But what am I teaching them? Because when they become adults and God forbid, I'm buried in the ground. They got succinct themselves. They got to learn about money. And I see that with the live friends and people. People are afraid to teach their kids money. And I'm not. We talk about it. I talk about what I do. I talk about the challenges. I talk about financing. I talk about crypto with my sonies and the blockchain business. I mean, we talk about these things. And I learn from them. Hey, how would you deal with this? So I encourage everyone. If you have kids or you're going to have kids, give them a safe place to engage with. Give them a safe space to talk about money and put them on a budget. And you'll see because when you start having these conversations about money, by esmosis, they start learning about the value of the dollar. And guess what? They're more grateful. They appreciate they don't take advantage of you. And you feel better. You're like, wow, they really appreciate me. And appreciate how hard I work. And I also think I mean, I've seen obviously this is not an issue that applies to everyone. But when parents are super wealthy and they just hand their kids money, those kids are messed up because they are some value of the dollar. No. And I've seen, you know, I'm not old enough to have friends close friends that actually some of my friends are a little bit older than me. And their kids are like teens. But I have some sort of work business peers that are much older than me. And they have kids like, you know, mid 20s, early 30s. And some of them have like overdosed through drugs and just like reckless spending and reckless lifestyle and like, it's very sad. It's very, very sad because again, the kid never really understood the value of hard work and everything was just handed to them. And then all of a sudden, you do, you hand a kid anything they want for years at a time. And I just, worst case scenario, something like what I just mentioned. I mean, best case scenarios, really, they're just entitled assholes. But regardless, it's just not good across the board. No. And the problem is when you start earning money and you start becoming wealthy, you're living in these areas where there's high expectations on the kids. And so how you manage your kids is important. And again, it goes back to that root thing of communication. And so the space you allow them to communicate with them without making, they feel they're going to get hammered for mistakes. The more you allow them to develop, the easier it is. And that goes with money too. What do we not go into? Why buy the book? Go buy the book. Who's it for? It's for anyone in the world. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire. It's for you to understand of how can I produce consistent cash flow to allow myself the independence I deserve to have control and security over my life, which is what everyone wants, which is part of the reason I wrote the book. And so I want everyone to know that it's visual, it's actionable, and it was written for you. It wasn't written for me. I didn't have to write this book. I'm fine. I'm not making any money. I'm operating for not a lot of money. But I'm doing it because Scott, I took a step back and said, what would I would love when I was younger? I was like, if I had this blueprint and someone giving me guidance and the ability to go on his website and create a course if I wanted to buy assets, how great would that be? I said, well, let's create that. Because that's my way to give back. And so that's why you buy the book. If you're feeling uncertain or you want control or security or you're extremely wealthy, but you want to look at your playbook and say, where am I at in life? I got this. I got that. How about data? I didn't think of that. So everyone can use it. It doesn't matter who you are. Man, woman, child, billionaire, millionaire, broke, whatever. It gives you the tools you need and it's visual to help you build the hard asset empire. That's why you buy the book. It's for you where obviously it's going to be Amazon everywhere else. You get books. We'll put a link and show notes. Any other websites or even your social. Sure. So if you go to BenRymeburg.com, you follow me on all the platforms. If you go to BenRymeburg.com slash book, you can pre-order the book. We've had thousands of people pre-order it to get there. And so if you want to invest with us, because I invest in our deals too, that's all I build. Well, go to alliancecgc.com. That's alliancecgc.com. That's my company. You click invest now. You put in your information. So in front of my office, we'll personally call you. And what they do is we don't sell. We educate. So for example, we're going to want to know what are you investing in? Are you a credit investor? What do you like? How do you like risk this and that? We're going to find out information because we're going to interview you to make sure you're a good fit for us and we're a good fit for you. That's where our relationship. Because when investors come in our universe, they don't want to leave. And so we want to make sure that there's that relationship and that we're a good fit for you. It's important to us. And so at the end of the day, that's how you get ahold of me. I'm on all those social media platforms. We're very engaging. And when you follow me on social media, if it's on Instagram at the real Ben Reimberg, or you go take all these things, I'm on social media to give value. That's it. I'm not selling you something. I'm not doing this. It's all about what can I do to help you? And if you want invest in commercial real estate, great. If you don't, that's okay too. Even if you don't, you'll learn some life lessons exactly along the way. That's what it's about. Think of the most important lesson. Maybe something we even haven't touched on yet. Do you do want to pass onto your kids? What would that be? And why? Be humble and grateful. Appreciate everything that God gives you that resources provide for you that knowledge you obtained. Be grateful for it and be humble. And it will carry you through life. I mean, I can give, you know, and obviously, I'll give you guys a bonus. And don't criticize him because this is important is that I would also go back to when I was younger to say to my kids or anyone out there if they're young listening or you're getting started is be a master communicator because communication rules everything we do in life. And if I would have known that when I was younger, oh my God, who knows where I would be? So, that would be another good piece of advice. So I gave it to just to give a bonus because I think communication's so important. I didn't want to leave it out.