Unlocking the Power of Alternative Investments for Retirees with Ben Fraser

Ben and Craig discuss the evolution of alternative investments, highlighting how improved access and transparency have made it easier for individuals to invest in private markets. They explain that investors can benefit from greater diversification and better returns by investing in alternatives, as compared to traditional stocks and bonds. The conversation also covers accredited investor requirements, Roth IRA conversions, due diligence questions investors should ask when evaluating deals, and the importance of educating oneself about investment opportunities.

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Transcript

0:44

Hey, welcome back. This is Craig Weir. As the, uh, intro said, um, hey look, if you are, uh, trying to figure out what's next in retirement, this is the show that it's designed to just kind of focus on you. What are the big questions in life, you know, that relate to money and finances, and what do you wanna be when you grow up? All those kinds of things. We just. Try to hit on all those things. You know, typically we talk about tax planning and general financial planning and stuff like that, but today we got special guests for you and a special subject, something that we haven't covered before, but I think you're gonna really dig it. So what if you're tired of the ups and the downs of the stock market? What if you're tired of having the euphoric increase and then all of a sudden the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and your statement? What that was a 401k, is the proverbial two ohk. Hi. And on the other hand, you know, I can't tell you how many conversations we've had with people that were like, well, you know, my balances were a half a million, or a million or 2 million higher, but you know what happened to all that. So there is a way that you don't have to suffer that if you're tired of the ups and downs, and you don't want to go to the extremes of higher hiding it under a mattress. Or sticking it all into an annuity someplace. Uh, we have some hope today. We are coming through our white shining night. Today is Ben Frazier. Ben is, uh, managing director of Aspen Funds. He's also their chief investment officer and he's, uh, gladly decided to come on and share some great ideas with us. So Ben, welcome to the show. Well, Craig, thanks for having me on. It's fun to connect again. We had you on our podcast not too long ago and it was a really fun time, so it's fun to to come on yours and, uh, you definitely set me up well, so didn't plan on being a night shine armor, but I appreciate, appreciate that man. Well, man, I tell you what man, for guys that are just tired of watching the Apple and Tesla and all the others, just kind of, yo-yo, I hope they really take this. To heart. Uh, I have done this in my own life, uh, in different ways and I hope that people will kind of just pay attention and maybe we can cast away some of the paradigms about the space we're gonna be talking about and talk about it just in real world terms. Before we get into that, tell us just a little bit about Ben. Kinda like, you know, who are you and what's going on in your life, what do you do when you're not, um, you know, putting on the official Unsmart business hat. Yeah. Well, uh, again, thanks for having me on and yeah, my, uh, my life is outside of work is, uh, mostly made up of keeping four little girls happy. So I got, I got four girls, uh, nine under. And, uh, you have a, a girl dog. So I'm, uh, very outnumbered. Um, but I love it. It's, it's kind of fun. You gotta just embrace it, right? So that's cool. We have a blast. Very, very busy life. But, uh, it's, it's all good. So, hobbies, I don't have many of them, uh, because of that, but, you know, started getting into pickleball recently. I've, I grew up playing tennis, um, cool. And, uh, just, just won a, uh, tournament the other week. Kind of fun with the buddy. You just won a tournament, you're getting into pickle and you and you. It's not a, it wasn't a very competitive tournament. We'll say that, but it was a, it was a fu fun time. Well, it sounds like there were two people that were real competitive and everybody else was wondering what happened here, right. Exactly. Yeah, that, that we had to, we had to tone it down a little bit. We started getting a little too, uh, a little too aggressive there. So are you guys like the, uh, you know, the, the college tennis players that go into the novice pickleball court and just clean house? Is that what's going on? Exactly, yeah. We just, we look for, you know, the tournaments that we just dominate and feel really good about ourselves afterwards. You know, it was, it was kind of funny cuz we started getting, we're playing in the final and, uh, This is our first time playing Pickle, me and my partner. And, uh, I'm gonna throw him under the bus here. He's actually sitting right over there so he can hear me. But, um, he, he started getting real into it and, and just slammed the ball right into this old lady. And she shrieked and, you know, he, he got a little, little too into it, but we, we went up winning the game. So that's all that matters, right? And, uh, It was. It was a good, no, it was all, it's fun. That's all matters, right? I'm gonna pick a bunch of senior citizens today. It'll be fun. It pretty bad. We like, oh, we should probably tone it down a little bit, is you, As you know, and I think many of our, listen, many of the people that listen to the podcast know, my wife and I have kind of a different gig going on in it. We live full-time in a bus. You know, we travel a lot. Summers we spend up in the mountains in Colorado and kind of do our thing. But a really big thing in a lot of the RV resorts that we stay at throughout the year is this pickle, pickleball, pickleball thing. And I will have to tell you that I'm, I'm fairly athletic, but I've never. Played pickleball. I always kind of turned my nose up at it, is like, I'm not old enough to play pickleball yet. Right. But I think I am, I think I'm right there in this Democratic, yeah. So it, it's fun. I mean it's, uh, I've grown up playing tennis. It's, uh, it's fun because it normalizes a lot of the skill level, right. To be able to play and just to have, have a fun time. It's. Not that hard. Like the, the higher level, you know, players, it's, they, they're, they're good, but you can, you can keep a game going and have a fun time doing without much, much experience in this. So that's, it's been fun. And it's pretty funny. I mean, it's, it's crazy to see how much of a wave is just taking over with, uh, the pickleball. I saw article, oh, it's crazy. I was a Wall Street Journal or something where they're converting, uh, this is a local, here in Kansas City, they're converting all these empty Sears buildings that have just been defunct now into indoor pickleball. That's great idea. You know, don't min money too min don't, don't MIT money. And it's just this big empty warehouse, you know, that's, no one's using it, but it's in a great location. And so it's ma makes sense. But it's, it's just funny to see how, uh, much is Colin. That's cool. That's cool. That's good stuff. Well, I'll have to discover my inner pickleball. One of these days I was, I was always a baseball, basketball guy. But, um, I did some racquetball and stuff like that, but hey, pickleball is all the rage. So I guess we'll have to get with it. There we go. So, um, so let's kind of dive in. Uh, if you don't mind, man, you know, I, I set up the alternative investment space, but before we kind of dig into some of those details, just kind of, you know, I'm kind of curious, um, how has, how has the company, I mean, how has Aspen Funds even launched? Tell me a little bit about why or how, how it came to be. Yeah, so it started 10 years ago. I joined about five years ago. Um, and so the company was, was formed actually one of the founders is, is my father, um, uh, which is pretty, been pretty fun. And his partner, they really saw an opportunity. Kind of post the great financial crisis, um, of investing in, uh, distressed mortgages, right? So obviously there, there's a lot of those back in the day. Um, but one of the unique things is that you can pick these up for very, very deep discounts, uh, relative to what's owed. And then you can work with borrowers, help'em stay in their homes, work out new, you know, modifications of of their terms, help them get back on track and, um, Actually do good and, and make, make some good money along the way. And so it started that 10 years ago. The initial thought was, Hey, this is a good time to get in. This is a good opportunity. Um, you know, timing is a big deal as we can get into down the road of, of investing And, um, Initial thought was, Hey, let's just do one fun, friends and family, make a little bit of money and move on. But really started growing kind of with this space and over the past 10 years have become one of the bigger players in this, uh, niche. And, uh, You know, now have, I think 3,500 mortgages in all 50 states, um, that we, you know, service and, uh, help our borrowers. And, uh, you know, and that business continues to go on. We have legacy funds, um, that, that continue to operate. Uh, just great, great track record there. And, um, still doing good with our, with our borrower. So one of our, our fun things we'd love to do with that is, uh, you know, tout the, the number of foreclosures we have, which is less than 2%, um, of all these workouts, ending foreclosure. And so it's been. Uh, we got an amazing team and, uh, a pretty cool model to still help people out, uh, while uh, making money. So been doing that. But that really launched us several years ago into kind of, um, broadening our approach in al the alternative investment space. Cuz really the original vision for Aspen was we wanna be kind of the premier provider of alternative investments, um, for the, you know, retail or accredited investors. And so, you know, we could talk more about, you know, why. Alternatives make sense and why you're probably hearing more about them now than you ever have. Uh, it's actually because of some recent regulatory changes about 10 years ago that kind of completely changed the game to allow access, uh, for the average individual to kind of get to participate in these types of things. And so it really kind of expanded approach. We've now, you know, since invested in. Um, you know, over 300 million of real estate, across multi-family, um, industrial storage, retail, uh, oil and gas. And so we've, we've really expanded in our, um, our goal is the same, is to help, uh, you know, accredited investors, individuals invest like the ultra wealthy and diversify out of just stocks and bonds. Um, cause what we ultimately discovered and when we, you know, we have a podcast like I mentioned earlier, called Invest like a Billionaire. And part of our, our thesis, uh, from the research that we, you know, did early on was. The ultra wealthy, you know, the billionaires of the world, the family offices, the pensions, endowments, you know, all these, you know, Yale Endowment you probably have heard about, right? If they're ultra success in investing, they've been investing very heavily in alternative investments, in private alternative investments for decades. Many, many decades. Yeah. Um, and they've been investing very differently than the average, you know, high net worth individual, which is mostly stocks, bonds, mutual funds, right? Not, not to, you know, say those are bad at all, but there's, there's um, you know, uh, some real wisdom in creating a diversification outside of just the public markets, into the private markets, into multiple asset classes within the private markets. Cuz many of these investors, the groups I just mentioned, the billionaires, family offices, et cetera, They are generally allocated, even now to this day, upwards of 50% plus of their total portfolios into these types of deals. You know, real estate, venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, and so it makes up a very big part of the portfolio or the average investor individual. Maybe 5%, you know, uh, in alternatives now, alternatives, quote, quote unquote, because most people think they're, they're invested in real estate when they're invested in REITs. And I'll make a very strong argument that REITs are not real estate. Uh, it's, um, you know, it has some ownership, real estate ownership in there, but yeah. Yeah, it's, it's very, very different. So that, that's kind of our thesis and we're seeing a huge trend to that. So, you know, our, our listeners are, you know, typically the guys and gals that are about to retire are, are already into retirement and you know, they kind of built a nest egg for many of them, at least the ones that we get to talk to and help is they built that nest egg by just ploting money away, sticking it in that 401k for the last 30 years. And they wake up one day and they got a million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million plus sitting in an ira and they did it all through the stock market. Mm-hmm. Very seldom do we find people that really embrace this alternative investment space. But I'm the guy with just enough lack of hair and gray hair that I remember why they, most people didn't do that. It was, it was really the wild, wild West back in the seventies and eighties. You know, I remember the. They were just tax deals. You know, the, the cattle deals, the livestock deals, the oil and gas deals that had absolutely no economic value other than the tax benefits. And then of course, the eighties and the nineties hit and a lot of those things washed out. I think people just got really afraid of it, but, That's really not what's available now, right? I mean, yeah. The types of things that you offer and that other people in your space offer. It's really, it really, it seems to me like this space has really grown up and it has, I'm sure there's still some bad players, but for the most part, there really are some, some good things that can be, that can happen when you open your mind to doing things a little different than. What's comfortable or what's convenient. So, um, I've got my own answers, but, um, from your view, I mean, if you were 65, 70 years old and you had a couple million bucks sitting out in an IRA and some other money outside of other places, knowing what, you know, what are just one or two of the main reasons why you would be looking at putting some of the asset classes that you just mentioned into your portfolio? Um, why would you do that? Why, why would somebody want to wanna do that? Yeah. Great. Great question. Great observations. Um, and I think what's really changed, um, is not necessarily that these deals are, are all of a sudden now being done these, you know, better quality deals, you know? Yeah. Better access, better transparency. But it was, they were being done more in a vacuum. Right? They were mostly being done with big institutional investors. And in 2012 there was something called the Jobs Act, um, which kind of flew under the radar, but it basically changed the game. I, I think this was a revolutionary change from, uh, before this, this, this act. You had to have what's called a preexisting and a substantive relationship with an operator, a provider of these investment, uh, vehicles to even have the opportunity to see them. Right? And so most of these were traded through broker dealers. And when you, whenever you kind of go into the traditional financial plumbing system, right, the legacy system broker, et cetera, It's very high fees. There's just a lot of crap is being sold. Cause it's all commission based. Yeah. And so it, it kind of attracts, to your point, some of the wild west, some of the cowboy operators. But in 2012 the regulations changed to where these sponsors could directly market too, the individuals and be able to share openly about the things that they're doing, uh, without the worry of, um, these kind of a previous regulations. So there's still some rules you have to kind of be aware of. But that's, you know, if you go on Facebook or you know, wherever you're probably, you know, you have a decent net worth. You've probably seen some ads for different multi-family deals or whatever, right? So you're seeing a lot more of it. And because, uh, because of these change, it's allowed access. So obviously that doesn't necessarily mean all the bad actors are gone, right? You still gotta, you know, understand how these deals work. You gotta learn how to do some due diligence, um, and, and all that, but, The access has changed and, and since then, the amount of, of capital and retail capital has come into the market has been really extraordinary. And the projections from this point on are, you know, pretty one, one direction just going up and to the right, right? Because it's, it's got a lot of attractive benefits relative to just stocks and bonds. Um, and, you know, advisors and there's several surveys that I could. Reference, we have a whole podcast. Our, I think our first podcast episode, uh, references a lot of these studies, um, where, you know, most advisors are wanting to increase allocations to, uh, alternatives for their clients because one, you generally get better returns. Um, and two, you get true diversification. What, what has kind of come to happen over the past probably a decade, I would say in the public markets is correlations. Are approaching zero right Across all, or not approaching one, sorry. Of all asset classes, meaning Explain? Explain, yeah. Explain what that means to, yeah, so, so the, the traditional idea, you know, modern portfolio theory is if you have, you know, a good blend of stocks and bonds, um, you know, generally those trade in an inverse way. So if stocks are up, bonds are down, if, you know, bonds are up, stocks are down, and so you kind of create some balance. You create some mitigation, so you reduce kind of your variance of return. And if you have a little bit more stocks relative to bonds, you're gonna get a little bit more upside in growth. So you can kind of keep that, that average growing. Right. Well, last year, 2022 was the, the worst performance of the 60 40 portfolio in the past 100 years. Right. Because, uh, not only did the stock market suffer from some of the interest rate increases, but uh, you know, if you understand basic math, Interest rates going up, impacts, values negatively in bonds. So bonds had a terrible year because interest rates were going up, right? Driving down the value of bonds. And so there's the, you know, what was supposed to be this kind of risk mitigation from a diversification standpoint, uh, both went the negative direction. And that's what's happened even, even with REITs, right? Oh, I'm gonna get some diversification by going into REITs and sure. They all have different drivers of what's, you know, You know, driving the demand, but in the public market, so much of what drives performance and drives, uh, price, uh, discovery is sentiment, right? What is, what is the sentiment of the market? How does, what's the FNA do next? Right? It's very reactionary. And so everything is kind of in this vacuum and, and, you know, going off of trading off the headlines. And so the more that that happens, the more these. Different asset classes trade more similarly and reducing diversification. So it's a little aside in diversification, but in the private markets, these are not, you know, traded on any exchanges. And so, you know, if the Fed does something different, this, you know, tomorrow than they did yesterday, it's not gonna change the pricing of the asset you're going into. Right? If you're buying a multi-family apartment building in a good market with some, you know, positive population growth, positive rent growth, And you have direct ownership into that asset, you can drive a lot of value even outside of the external factors going on. Right? There's, there's things you can control and, uh, and have a lot more impact on that and re reduction of, of your, uh, variance of return, which is kind of the traditional measure of risk. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, you know, you don't have the yo-yo. On your statement every month where you get, you know, it's, you're not riding the rollercoaster, so to speak. Certainly the values change and there certainly are risks in anything that you invest in, but to avoid that volatility, um, to me is huge. And to get into an investment strategy that allows you to participate in. Totally different components than what is the expected future value of this company's cash flow streams in the future is, is pretty huge. Um, let's define, I've been out, I've been away from the definitions for long enough because I haven't done the actual investment management work for now six or seven years. But so what are the thresholds? Now we're talking to people that have to be accredited investors. Right? So just, just real quickly, Before I get into some, some meat, I want to cover what is an accredited investor in today's definition. Yeah, great. Great question. Um, so if you haven't heard that term accredited investor, a lot of people think, oh, I have to go get some certification or some kind of test I have to pass to become accredited. Um, and it's, it's not that, it's basically you are or you're not based on your financial position. So there's, there's two ways to qualify. One is by income. So if you're a single income earner and you make over$200,000 for the past two years, Um, or if you're a joint income earner, uh, and making over$300,000 over the past two years and expect to make the same going forward, then you're accredited. Or if you have a net worth, uh, of greater than$1 million excluding your personal residence, um, then you're accredited. So the kind of folks you're talking about, you know, have the IRAs of, you know, two, three, 4 million, they're pretty comfortably gonna be be accredited. Yep. Yeah. And so as a, just a quick, um, commercial if you will, I'm a huge proponent of alternative strategies, but I'm even a bigger proponent of owning these alternative strategies in an, in a Roth IRA instead of in a regular ira. Yes. Um, Because of the potential in the demonstrated historical performance can, can be significantly higher than what I would say the average person's experience is with a typical investment advisor and investment management program. Um, you i'll, I, I can put it in the show notes, but if you'll go out to our website at craig weir, w e a r.com, um, you can download the books that we've got. Um, And the first book I wrote about the whole subject of why would you even wanna do Roth conversions is there and you can download it for free. And then the second one I wrote, which is The Five Biggest Mistakes, which is really Roth conversion secrets that kind of gets into the mechanics of it and all that stuff is available there. So all this stuff that we're talking about, it's great from a return standpoint, but man, you just. You put a multiplier on your benefits when you get it to where those benefits are forever gonna be tax free. And that's kind of what we talked about on your podcast. So, alright. So you know, a lot of the people are kind of, They, they probably got the same, you know, white goatee that I've got and, you know, the, the, the flowing hair is gone. Um, they remember the days of the shysters and the slick stories and the high fees and all those kinds of things. Um, As Ben's explained that that's, there certainly are bad players and you need, as he said, you need to do some due diligence. But that was the Wild West. Now, now everybody's kind of wearing jeans and flip flops, and it's a lot much more relaxed environment, but you still need to know what are the questions you need to ask, right? Mm-hmm. So you're gonna get this memorandum and this prospectus, and they're, they're written by attorneys so that we all stay totally confused and they still charge our a thousand dollars an hour type of thing. But what are the, what are just, what are the, what are the primary things that's, that you would go, if you went to your, if you had, if you had a big brother who knew nothing about this space and he said, what questions should I ask? What would you tell the listeners are the really the main two or three primary questions that are the most important thing before you get into the minutia of the details of the due diligence? Yeah, no, a absolutely. And you know, I wanna be clear too, you know, the, there is a lot of concern from investors because the private markets are largely unregulated, right? So there's exemptions from regulation, which is create this private market. And part of the reason that there's still, you know, you have to be a credit. So you have to have some financial wherewithal to be able to invest generally in these, these deals. And the idea is, hey, there potentially can be some risk here. And you, you gotta. At least have some sophistication to be able to understand what you're investing in so that you know, uh, you're, it's not someone that has a hundred thousand dollars to their name and they put it all in one deal or Bitcoin or whatever. Right. It goes, go, goes bad. Right? So, you know, I, I wanna be clear there. And, and, and the reason I wanna emphasize that is my biggest thing, why I always tell people is, the best thing you can do is. Get the education yourself, right? Learn about these types of deals. And I think it's even broader than just private alternatives. What I'm really seeing a trend of, um, which is really, really positive, I believe, is people are taking more ownership of their money, right? And, and traditionally the system has been, Hey, I'm gonna go make as much money as I can. I'm gonna step as much as I can into the 401k, get the match, set it, and forget it. Never think about it. But what people don't realize, and we talked about this a little bit on your podcast already when you had come on our podcast. You know, people work so hard to make their money, but then they spend no time maximizing what they've earned. Right? They're not making their money work for them and they just stick it into these mutual funds, but they don't really know what, what it's in, right? They don't really know what are the fees in and those kind of things. And so it's, it's not even just alternative, I think it's just a general approach of being more active. And so I'm, I'm seeing a lot more, I call it, you know, DIY investors where I say, I want to, I wanna take a little more ownership of my finances. Cause when you do that, Regardless of what you invest in, you're gonna have way better performance, right? You're gonna be able to identify the traffic, you're gonna be identify the things that are the red flags, right? And things that you wanna be aware of. Um, and so I say all that to say, and if you're just kind of getting started here, the best thing you can do is start really slow and really small, right? And so, um, the best way to do reduce risk is just reduce how much you're investing initially. Um, and just start. Building a track record, you know, uh, with, with, with some sponsors. Um, but even before you kind of get to that point, there's a lot of things you can do. Um, and I like to think of, of a few things, right? If you're investing money, imagine you're going to a horse race, right? And you've kind of got these, these three components of, of a deal. So there's, uh, the racetrack, there's the horse, and there's the jockey, right? So I like to think about these separately. So your racetrack is, What's the asset class they're investing in? Is this a multi-family apartment deal? Is this a self-storage investment? Is this, you know, land entitlements? Or is this oil and gas indication, right? What is the, the track that this, that this horse and jockey are on? And do I believe in the long-term, you know, sustainability, positive trends, the story of that, right? Yeah. Of the story. Right. So there's, I'm gonna have a very different feeling about investing in, you know, uh, Urban office than I am gonna be in, you know, suburban multi-family residential housing or something. Right. Those, those two very, very different things. You gotta understand what are the long-term trends supporting or not supporting these, these assets. The second is the horse. So the horse is the actual investment itself. What's the strategy? Right. What's the vehicle they're gonna do it with? Is this a development deal? Is this, they're gonna build this from the ground up and lease it up and sell it? Is this gonna be gonna buy an old, you know, class B apartment in a good area? They're gonna renovate it and lease it up at higher rates. This, you know, kind of value add deal. Um, is this in a good market? Is this in a growing market? Is this in a, you know, diminishing market? Um, right. And so, That, that's kind of the other piece of this. You gotta look at the big asset class. You're gonna look at the market and the deal itself. And then, uh, arguably the most important piece of this whole equation is the jockey. Right? And the jockey is who's the one driving the deal? Who's the one Yeah. That is making this deal happen, putting all the pieces together. What's their track record? How many deals have they done? Right? How, what's, what's been historical performance? Um, what are the backgrounds of. Of the sponsors, do they have any gray hairs, right? Or are they just kind of young, young bucks kind of getting started in, you know, trying out a new, a new strategy, right? So there, there's a lot of things you can just basic smell test, right? Yeah. Of you can, but, but think thinking about it in that way, breaking it down the different components and then, you know, if, uh, something jumps out, dig into that a little bit more, right? And, and if something doesn't make sense, you don't feel comfortable with it. Don't move on right there. There's a lot of deals out, there's a lot of things to, to look at, but that's the most simple way I've, I've kind of been able to describe, just to start and, and try to break it down. Like that's good and specific due diligence I can get into, but that, those are the good places to start. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I don't think you want, you know, uncle Vinny who decided, man, there's some money in this apartment complex down here. Let's go. Uh, Hit up all the relatives and let's go in and do it. I, I don't know anything about it, but man, uncle Benny's smart. He can figure it out. That maybe is not where I wanna put my money. Right. Right. And the other thing too that was important to me back in the day is, and even now when I look at different things, um, I like to look at how is the sponsor compensated? Yes. What is their motivation? Right? Yes. Is their motivation just to make sure you stay on the hook, that where they can get management fees forever or. Do they, are they rewarded for, for, for great performance? And, you know, as long as I get my part as an investor, I don't, I don't really care. I, you know, what the sponsor gets, what I care about is me. So to, to focus too much on the fee aspect without looking at the track record of what have they been able to do in the past. I don't think that makes a lot of sense. And you, I know a lot of people get stuck on fees of any kind, and I do to it in certain instances, but what you really have to focus on, on anything is is it gonna give me what I need and what I want at a reasonable value to me. So, um, and I'm, I'm kind of jumping into a couple different areas here, but my primary, kind of the primary point is, You know, if I were looking at an Aspen Funds deal, I'm gonna, I, I want to figure out are they really truly a partner in this with me? Um, or are they just somebody to that's gonna hit my account and get their fees every single year? Right. And from what I've gathered from the stuff that I've looked at, you guys really have a really unique approach or a very equitable approach to that, in my opinion. So that kind of wants me to launch into kind of, so we can keep track of, keep some track of our time and what we're doing here. Um, Gimme the, gimme the pitch of, you know, why Aspen Funds, what makes, what makes Aspen Funds unique from the 20 other people that as soon as I click on an ad, I get to see their stuff too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you kind of hit a lot, lot of it. It's, I think, alignment of interest, right? So part of our kind of pitch, if you will, is we as owners invest in every single deal that we bring to our investors. Um, and we sometimes invest to nice. Nice chunk of the overall equity we're raising, um, on the same terms, on the same fee structure, everything as as our investors, right? Because how better do we align interest than. We're putting our own money in there. Um, and cuz we believe in the deal, right? And so our, our whole goal is we're not gonna bring anything to our investors that we would not, you know, excitedly put our own money in. And I think that's like the ultimate lit litmus test, right? So, yeah, that's right. I, I think, I think that that in of itself is, is a pretty big differentiator. Um, I think we got a tenure track record. Uh, we've been investing for a long time. We're a very, very diverse. Backgrounds of our principles who have four, four principles. Um, been investing, you know, combined over a hundred years and investing in lots of different asset classes. And we've seen the ups and the downs and, um, you know, we're, we're, uh, we're trying to do right. And we have a lot of investors that work with us and, and most of our investors invest more with us over time, so it's usually a pretty good indicator that they like what they're, what they're seeing. So, yeah. Yeah, I think it's a lot of things, you know, and I'd kind of even make another comment too. You're going back to, to the fees and, you know, just the, the more you kind of get into the space and understand, you know, what, what's the market rate for this fee? What's, you know, what's normal, right. Versus what's. You know, out outside of kind of normal range, and you can get a pretty good sense of a, a sponsor from, like, there's these things called ppms, private placement memorandums. Very simple or very similar to a prospectus for a stock right as you go. First thing I do, I go straight to the fee section and the, and the waterfall section. Because, because the, these two things show you exactly who gets paid and what priority. And what are the, what are the splits between investors and the sponsors? And then what are the fees that they're taking and when do they take them and how are they taking them? Right? Because tho those things, right, they're gonna be the most indicative of anything else in the deal, aside from you gotta believe, believe in the deal, believe in the strategy, believe in all that. But it'll tell you a lot. It'll tell you a lot. And, uh, um, to, to your point, it's, it's important to, to know that. Um, so yeah, I, I think one other point I I'd make too. I think as you kind of get into this, and obviously we're not financial advisors, I'm not giving any advice, uh, so I gotta throw that caveat out there. But, you know, I, I, what I, what I've seen a lot of people do is I kind of call it the, uh, you know, sock drawer of investments, right? They kind of, they hear about Uncle Benny's deal and they throw. You know, some money into that one. They see another deal on a Facebook ad and they're like, I'll throw some into that one, and then they're just getting referrals left and right. I'm just gonna throw these deals. Eventually they have this kind of hodgepodge of investments that they didn't really, they kind of looked at a little bit, but. Ultimately, they're now getting, you know, these, these tax forms and they don't even know what they're doing. How are they doing? What's the strategy behind it? Right? And it's just this kind of random assortment of deals. But what's so important, as with anything, is you gotta understand what are your goals first as an investor. Right? Are you looking for like passive income, like a current income stream, right? Um, are you looking to, you know, multiply the net worth and then within your portfolio, what kind of, you know, uh, Portfolio allocations do you want to have to these different buckets, right? So you gotta, you gotta think through that first and you gotta go and invest with a strategy, um, in the investments you do because a lot of times, you know, someone can do this kind of sock sock drawer investing approach and. Uh, they'll look back and, oh, I just did like 10 multifamily deals and they're all in Texas and they're all, you know, class B value ads. I thought I was getting diversification. You're probably not that diversified as well as you think, right? Because you don't have, you know, some other asset classes, some other sponsors, some other markets. So you can really, uh, be pretty selective, um, as you kind of build this over time. But again, you want to have a good strategy. So for example, we have. You know, uh, a debt fund, it pays a current income stream. We pay 9% every month. Uh, it's excess annualized. Um, and been doing that for 10 years. And it's just bread and butter, vanilla income, right? But some people need income, especially if they're retired and they, they want to live off, live off the, the net worth. Um, and then other people, They don't need income and they wanna kind of maximize growth. We have development projects. You can kind of come into a development project and get some pretty big IRRs if everything goes well, right? So there, there's just, you gotta understand what you're doing, what kind of risk you're taking, what are your ultimate goals, and, uh, use that as you're kind of going through this whole learning process. So I think one of the things that needs to be said before we shut down it here is we need to point out that, you know, one of the things that people really like about the stock market investing is that if they wanna pull their money and they, they wanna go buy something, uh, they make a phone call or they get online and they crank it out and you know, it shows up by wire. And their deal. That's because they're dealing with a marketable security that has a well-defined active market that's, in my opinion, controlled by, you know, a lot of different rules and a lot of different players. But man, when we go out and we buy, um, several class B apartment complexes and we throw'em into a bucket and a sponsor offers them to us, It's difficult to go get$50,000 out of a 25 million deal instantly. Right? So there's this, there's a liquidity issue that is, that exists inside of some of these that also needs to be part of your decision of how much you put in. And you need to look at where you're, when you need money, how often you need money, that kind of thing. So you're the, the deals that you put together are. Talk just generally about, you know, if, if I were, let's say I had a hundred thousand dollars of my million that I wanted to do a baby step, um, if it wasn't in the debt fund type of thing, am I, am I locking money up for 15 years, like if I were in an annuity or am I looking at a, a lot shorter timeframe than that? Ben? Yeah, so, so every deal is different. Again, you gotta understand what's your goals is, is it liquidity? Um, then that's gonna change the types of deals you invest in. So our, our debt fund, for example, we have a one year lockup period, and then, you know, full liquidity thereafter. Uh, it's not instantaneous, but it's, uh, within 90 days generally is, is what we target and we've always been able to hit that. Um, so you have some liquidity. Right. Um, uh, and, and that, that type of an investment, it's an evergreen funds, was kind of always going and put money in, take money out as you need. Um, and are there other deals, like we have oil and gas, uh, investments that we've done, and those are 10 year deals, and you're not getting any money out of it, right? Other than the cashflow coming from it because, you know, these are hard assets and we're reinvesting back into more drilling, et cetera, et cetera. So it's every strategy's different and again, That's probably the biggest knock that alternatives get, right? Well, they're not liquid. Um, and there's definitely some merit to that, right? Liquidity is important. Liquidity is, is you have to manage liquidity as a, as an investor. But what's interesting that we actually did this, uh, episode on our podcast, one of the first ones. Where we looked into some studies that was done by a, by, by a Bain company. It's a big consulting firm on, um, investment strategy and, uh, liquidity. Right. And what they, what they found was, Most investors, even through downturns, overestimate their need for liquidity, right? So meaning that they think they need more liquidity than they actually need. Um, and if that's a preventive, preventative thing from keeping you investing these things, then you gotta, you gotta think about that, right? Because cuz here's a really concrete example. So you talk about investing in Class B apartments. Well, you can go, well, I'm just gonna go invest in some REITs. Uh, cause I'm gonna have, I can have liquidity, but I'm still investing in apartments. Well check this out. So there's a metric called price to book ratio, right? You've probably heard of price to earnings. It's basically the price you're paying for a dollar of, of earnings. Um, annually, well, price to book is a similar ratio, but it's, it's great for real estate. So it's what, what's the price you're paying relative to the book? Value of the assets, right? Mm-hmm. So if you invest into a syndication or a fund, that's a direct private investment. Your price to book is generally gonna be pretty close to one, maybe a little bit less than long as you have some little bit about upfront fees. But say it's, you know, pretty close to, to one, um, that's really good, right? Most of your dollar is investing in the asset. Well, the average price to book of reit, and this has changed over time, but you know, pretty, pretty consistently. It's about five x. So that means that you're, if you put$5 into a reit, only$1 of that is actually going into the asset. The rest is. Goodwill and premium, and you could call that liquidity premium, right? So that's, that's the, the premium you're paying, uh, to get liquidity to that asset cost. I would argue that liquidity is probably not, that it's not worth that much, right? It's not worth, uh, only getting 20%, uh, you know, value, uh, in, into assets. So it's something that I think about liquidity's important. You know, I'm not saying put all your eggs into the private market, you know that that's definitely. If you do that, you gotta be really, you gotta know what you're doing and manage liquidity and manage lines of credit and other things. Um, but you don't want that to be a, uh, deterrent from investing in private alternatives because one, you're paying a lot more for liquidity than you probably should be. And two, you probably don't need as much liquidity as you think you do. Yeah. Well, you know, a lot of the people that we deal with, I've kind of coined the term IRA millionaire and they're. Other than the obvious, most of the people that we work for are folks that, generally speaking, are probably never gonna touch very much of their IRA over their lifetime. And so they're, but they're so used to being able to go get it. That they maybe would say, oh, I'm not gonna lock money up for three or four or five or 10 years because if I need it, I, I want it. And then like, to your point, in reality, you're probably, you're probably gonna die with more money than you have today, and there's some per percentage of that portfolio that the world would really have to change for you, for you to need that portion of that portfolio, whether it's 10%, 20%, 50%, 60%, whatever. So of course that's, that's our bailiwick, is putting together that comprehensive financial plan so that you can make better investment choices of what you're doing. We don't invest people's money, Ben, we don't manage it. We don't send them to investment advisors. We don't do any of that, but we help with the construct of. A structure of what that should look like and help them to understand the parameters that are necessary and that, that they need to make things work. Um, and I, you know, we, we love that part of it. And, and the, the tax planning portion of what we do is our intent to help them really make sure that they're able to maximize. At last half of life where they're not just feeling the pressure of Uncle Sam every April and all these huge required minimum distributions that come out. But, um, I, I, man, I really dig what you guys are doing. Tell me, um, what, how do, how can people connect with you? Gimme two or three ways. That people can connect, or if it's simpler than two or three, just how do they, how do they find out more about Aspen funds and try to be able to connect to ask some really specific questions for them. Yeah. Yeah. So probably the simplest way is, uh, you know, if you just wanna get more general education, our podcast Invest like a billionaire. Um, it's the billionaire podcast.com. Uh, we had you on the show, so you kinda listen to that episode. It was, it was a great, great episode. But our whole, our whole point of that show is just education around alternative investing, right? It's just, just breaking down and demystifying a lot of the things that go on there. Um, and then, yeah, if you really wanna learn more about the investment strategies themselves, uh, Aspen Funds, uh, US is the, the best place to go find out about it. And you can download, you know, a myriad of our eBooks and, um, other free content we put out there and schedule a call with our team. Um, if that makes sense. So, yeah. Cool. So they don't have to go. To their, to an investment advisor to, to work with you. They don't, um, they don't have to go through Fidelity or Schwab to connect with you. They can have a conversation and um, you can help them with a lot of the mechanics of how do we actually get that in my IRA or my Roth or whatever. Your team can do that for them. Right. Exactly. Yep. Absolutely. So is there anything else that I, that maybe we, that I, I didn't ask as a good, um, host that I should have asked? To get the point across that this is really a pretty cool space people need to check out. No, I, I think we hit it all. I think we hit that and more so I, I feel like we hit good, the, the big stuff. And I think, you know, the, the big thing I would just say is, like I said earlier, Really take an ownership mindset over your money. You work, you work so hard to accumulate this money. You know, don't just turn a blind eye or just blindly trust someone else to, to have your best interest at heart, right? Because no one's gonna care about it. You're on Nest Day more than you. And, um, it's not even just the investing side, but e everything about it, right? You gotta take ownership of it. You know, dive in, figure, figure things out, start to learn and you'd, you'd be shocked at this stuff is not that complicated. The whole system is set up to make you feel like you, you can't figure it out. You don't know what you're doing. You need help. It's really not that complicated. Right. It's some common sense, a little bit of curiosity, asking good questions and just, you know, experience just. Starting to read, read these things, you know, get on these email, uh, start talking with, with these different firms and just start doing it. Right. It's, uh, you just rip the bandaid off and start, start, start diving in cuz it's, you're really, um, there, there's some, some really good goal on the other end of the, of the, the side here. Yeah. Cool. Well I've listened to several of your, uh, podcast episodes up till leading up to me being on there just so I can get a feel of the vibe and what you guys really. Do and I highly recommend that you guys get out there and listen to one or two of'em. Subscribe to their podcast and if you haven't, click the button, subscribe to this one so that you can be right on the cutting edge of the stuff that we bring to you as well. So Ben, thanks a lot bud. I appreciate you being here and um, man, looking forward to maybe another time we can hang out and share some good information with folks. Sounds good. Thanks so much, Craig. You bet.