Mathew Owens: Building Wealth and Giving Back to the Community

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast.

We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Legacy All Stars podcast, where we spotlight extraordinary individuals who are not just succeeding, but using their platform to create real, lasting change in the world. Today's guest is doing just that. His name is Matthew Owens. He's the founder of OCG Properties, a real estate powerhouse based on purpose. What sets Matt apart isn't just his business, it's his heart. He's deeply committed to helping others build freedom and legacy, especially through innovative programs like the Debt Validation Fund, which supports first responders facing credit issues. Matt, welcome to the show, my friend. It's good to have you here.

Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Looking forward to the conversation. Hopefully we can add some value to everybody.

Yeah, most definitely. Let's start at the beginning. Take us back. How did your journey into real estate investing begin?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So just to give you a little background, I went to UC Santa Barbara, got a degree in finance as well as economics and accounting, and basically started working at a CPA firm right afterwards. Mostly because I wasn't sure what else I wanted to do. And I knew accounting was a good background, only kind of to find that I was bored out of my mind, like, sitting there going, I can't do audit and tax for the rest of my life. If I had to call another IRS agent to deal with, it's like, that's it, right? And at the end of the day, I didn't know what to do. I was kind of struggling, going, I can't emotionally get up and do this every day. I was going to a job that just was boring to me. You know, it was a good job. It was making me good money. But at the same time, like, was not what I really was passionate about. Right. I needed something else that was. Was. Was interesting to me. I'm like, but what should I do? I mean, should I start a. Start a bar? Should I, like, what should I do? You know? Like, I have no idea. I'm in my 20s going, yeah, well, wait. You know, we're drinking a lot in our 20s, so you know as well, go start a bar, right? That was in your mindset, right?

I don't remember my 20s. Y. There you go.

Yeah. So many of us don't, right? So at the end of the day, my stepbrother calls me out, and he's like. He was an engineer bored out of his mind as well, and was like, hey, come check out this class that I'm going to. And he, he calls me up, he's like, you have to go to this. And he kind of forced me to go. I really wasn't interested in going too much. And then it happened to be all about real estate investing. And immediately my attention was like, focus that I knew right then that I had like a peak interest in something to where I was going to learn a lot about it. And I was immediately drawn toward that. I signed up for the classes and I took two years of classes and then quit my CPA firm job and just literally quit and went into real estate full time. I got my first deal under contract where I was going to make 30 grand on a flip and I ended up making 20 grand on that flip because I didn't know my numbers right? Luckily I made 20 grand on that flip. But, you know, I was just bored and going, how do I build wealth? And I read the book Rich dad, Poor dad, right? To change my mindset and saying, oh, wow, I'm trading my time for money consistently instead of trying to build assets that are gonna create cash flow for me whether I'm working for it or not, right? And that piece, that shift in mindset is really what pushed me forward to say, no, I need to be free. And how do I become free of never trading my time for money again, right? And don't get me wrong, through this process of being an entrepreneur, you're definitely trading time for money. When you're a flipper, you're trading time for money that wasn't really building assets like I thought it was in the beginning. That's an active business that you're doing now. All the holds that I held on to, those were great and probably one of the biggest wealth building avenues I had. Actually, after flipping over a thousand houses now, I realized, wow, I left over $50 million of wealth on the table by selling those assets. We, when I did in like 2012 through 14 and 15 and seeing that happen, luckily I held a bunch of them. But now we have over 35 million lent out to flippers and we make passive cash flow on the lending aspect of that now. Passive on the, on the lending side, that's still active operations. Same thing with the flipping. But the idea is hiring the right people, delegating that that work out so it can be passive for you at the end of the day, whether it's an active business that you can step out of or a passive deal like a multifamily, a syndication or something like That I hate to say rental properties are passive. They're definitely not, you know, they have a lot of workload involved. But so that's kind of my story now. You know, We've raised over 150 million now for real estate transactions. And I really started off with that kind of mindset involved of how do I help people and not how do I make a bunch of money. Right. And we started off like back in 2008, we started a nonprofit organization called called For Investors by Investors that teaches financial education and real estate education without a sales pitch. And we have six chapters throughout Southern California that have been running, reoccurring every month since then. And through that community is how I was able to build all the resources I need for my business and things like that as well. And so starting off on that way of being able to help people from the start and teach people, have them not make the same mistakes I did when I quit my job in 2006 to go into real estate, thinking I was a real, real estate genius for two years and then losing everything in 2008 and taking a massive punch in the face, you know, only to stand back up and now flip over a thousand houses. You become a lot more powerful mentally and you can now help a lot more people. Now that I've been through that, you know, those trials and tribulations and there's been a lot more over the last 18 plus years, you can imagine how many headaches I've had to deal with flipping a thousand houses. Right. But being able to help people not make those mistakes has been amazing.

So, yeah, you know, you touched on this a little bit, but you've built more than a business, you've built a movement. What's the why that drives your work every day?

So in the beginning, like I was mentioning, it's, it was just about not trading my time for money. Right. And then, and then of course, I had kids. I have a 6 year old and a 9 year old now. And once you have kids, you become a lot more selfless and you start thinking a lot more about, wow, what do I want to teach my kids and how do I want to live my life. Right. And I realized that if I don't figure out how to exactly do that cash flow strategy and become free, then I am never going to be able to teach my kids how to do that. And I won't be able to. They, they will be stuck trading time for money and having that different mentality. So I teach them, you know, the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. I Teach them about money. Now I teach them all different types of stuff. They understand real estate, they help me with the marketing sometimes, you know, I like to pay them so that we can take tax deductions, of course, for those things. But, but at the end of the day, it comes down to being able to say, how do I teach other people, and more importantly for me, my family and kids too, how to invest in real estate, how to take control of their financial future. And it's not just real estate, it's other businesses and creating income strategies and diversification strategies to protect yourself along the way as well and not make the same mistakes I did. And it's exciting to do that within the. And we get to teach every month on these actual strategies that we implement to help people like achieve way more. And I see people that we started off with in 2008 and when they first got started, I see where they're at now. And it's so exciting to see what kind of a level they've been able to grow to and the amount of deal flow and the amount of projects they've been able to solidify for themselves on the freedom side.

Yeah, for sure. Other than your kids, of course. And I've gone through the same moments myself. I have four kids, the youngest is 30 and I have a six year old grandson. Other than those very significant people in your life, was there a moment or experience that really made you shift your focus from not just success but to significance?

So I think when my, my father passed away when I was 26 years old and that was one of the biggest experiences in my life that I think shifted my entire mentality into wanting to live my life to make him proud. Not, you know, focusing on how do I make money, how do I do this and how do I, you know, you know, change my life? It's more about, you know, how do I help everybody else? Because I know that, you know, the wealth for me will come as long as I help other people. It's, it's all karma right at the end of the day and it's all energy and we, we permeate that energy. And my dad was the, he was a ranger and a sniper in Vietnam. He was a, a black belt in hapkido. He was the, the, the guiding person of my life that gave me direction and moral compass. He wouldn't even let me cheat on my taxes, for God's sake. It was horrible. You know, so, and he, he was a CPA also. And so, you know, having that, that kind of moral Compass. And then when he. Him passing, it kind of passed the torch to me to be more of the head of the household, to be able to take care of the family. And everybody is looking to me to be able to, you know, help with that. I had a one year old little sister at the time. My. My little, little brother is three years younger than me as well. You know, trying to kind of step into those shoes made me shift my mentality quite a bit to saying, well, what's the right move, dad, that I should be doing across the board? And is it always going to be helping other people? Is it going to be, you know, making you proud of me to do that aspect of it? You know, and, you know, honestly, when I started doing that in the beginning, just teaching instead of selling stuff, I got profound joy from doing that because you realize how much of an impact you're making on other people's lives, and that changes the whole direction of their life by being able to show them, like, one strategy to implement or one thing to try to achieve, to move them forward, to get them to their goal or bring them a resource that I already have at my disposal to help them to get to that. That goal a lot faster. Right. And so being able to do that, you realize that helping other people is where true happiness comes from. You know, like, being able to get out there and be that guiding light for as many people as you can has been, you know, life changing for me. And I say guiding light with, you know, sounds so weird to me because I don't feel myself that way. But a lot of people in the community, I help quite a bit with that financial side, and a lot of them look at it in that way. Even if I want to not feel that way and be humble about it and say, no, I'm not that important. You know, after taking multiple punches in the face, you become humbled, you know, at business, you're going, I can make just as many mistakes as everybody else, even with all this crazy experience.

Right, yeah, we call that getting your nose bloodied, for sure.

Yes. Yes, exactly.

So, you know, when you then know when to duck.

Right, Right, hopefully. Right.

That's great. Matt. Let's shift gears a little bit. I'm really excited to talk to you about this debt validation fund. Now, one of the things that really stands out to me and what I'm most excited to dig into is that, I mean, tell us about what the debt validation fund is. How did it come about and what is its purpose?

So I think, you know, this all comes Back down to the financial education side of things. That got me interested in this project for the start where they are helping people invalidate their credit card debt. When collection companies buy that debt from them, right. And wipe it off of their books through the legal process. When these collection companies don't abide by the law. So them not abiding by the law opens up the doors for them to be able to invalidate their credit card debt and wipe it off and put them on a much better trajectory moving forward. And when you're involved in this industry and you understand what big finance does, what big credit card companies do, where they're, you know, sign up for, you know, five credit cards and get five free T shirts in college and they prey on people that don't have the right financial education. Don't get me wrong, there's still moral responsibility for people to pay their bills. When you start to understand the majority of, you know, people running in a major credit card debt, you know, people think it's all about spending, right. And you know, not having the right financial education to do that. I mean, look at the inflation that we've had just recently, right? Most of the time also you're talking about massive amounts of this due to health related issues and the problems that come out of that industry where, you know, people just can't afford these. The insurance policies now are really geared towards pushing as much of that major risk onto the actual, you know, client as possible. So you know, people get into a lot of medical debt and that's a big issue, right? People get into getting business loans and having issues with that where they can't afford to make those paybacks. So there's, it's not just spending, it's a lot of other life problems that occur in everybody's life at some point where they could, anybody could end up in the wrong financial position. It's not just a lack of financial education or you know, unregulated spending on the personal level, Right. That is part of it in our consumerism society. But at the end of the day you realize that, hey, this is a way with the debt and validation to fight back against a lot of these banks and these big companies that are killing it. These credit collection companies, they, they go through and they buy these, these, this debt for like 2 cents on the dollar and hope to collect 5 cents on the dollar and they're killing it, right? And so they don't care if they're abid laws if a small percentage of their stuff gets invalidated because they're not able to do their collection practices. Those collection practices enable them to collect 5%. If they go collect 6 or 7% instead because of shady collection practices, but lose 1% because of debt invalidation and people challenging them, they're still going to do the business practice. Right.

They're still killing it.

Right.

It's predatory in nature. It's, it's unfortunate, but it's a reality of the way the credit industry works. So.

Right.

It's a great service you're providing with that fund. Yeah, for sure. And you focus on, yeah, you focus on first responders on this because there's so much of a need there. Tell me why first responders specifically.

So when I have a very big military base, because my dad was a ranger and a sniper in Vietnam, we've actually trained a bunch of marines from Camp Pendleton on real estate investing and how to create financial freedom in their life after they get out of the military and they're transitioning out of the military. And you know, we started with that involved in saying how do we help the military as much as possible? And so we went and when we were setting up our, in our investment system with the companies we're working with to help them invalidate debt and the attorneys that we're working with in that regard, we said, hey, we want to set up a system and a discount program for first responders, active duty military vets, as well as police and firefighters, and hopefully to add teachers to that mix shortly. But you know, going through and setting that up for them where they get big discount programs on their debt and validation. So if they're in trouble with their credit card debt, they can actually get major discounts on the legal services that are provided to them and get them out of debt at a faster pace. We're actually in the process also of putting financial education on the back end after these people go through those programs to get rid of their credit card debt, to be able to help them stay out of it and have the right proper financial education on the back end and financial tooling to set them up on the right path to success moving forward and put them in the right light. Right. And so, and what's actually happening here is when someone has high credit card debt and they can't afford their monthly payment and they're struggling, they got thousand dollar minimums, $40,000 in credit card debt at 30% interest and the credit collection companies buy this stuff for 2 cents on the dollar. They usually have a couple of options. One is bankruptcy. They could go bankrupt and have that on their credit for seven years and they're kind of starting over. Right. They also can do a haircut where, you know, maybe they can't afford a full payment on all their stuff. So they're going to consolidate that debt and do a haircut for all those creditors at a more reasonable payment. But that means that they're still going to have a high interest rate. It's going to take them a long time to get out of that debt. And it stays on their credit like a bankruptcy does because they've taken a haircut. Or they can do a consolidation loan. All those debts together, they can pay off that debt. It's still a much higher payment. Most of these people cannot afford that debt or that payment. And so they don't necessarily qualify for that other option that saves their credit. And so those, those are the primary options that someone is faced with when they're in this kind of a situation. And they, they've been sold to collection companies because they can't afford it. And so debt invalidation comes in where they say, first of all, do these credit collection companies even have the right to collect this debt? Let's see how many of those we can wipe out off the top. And they analyze all that person's individual credit card accounts to see if they can wipe off that debt off their books, which is really super cool to be able to do that right off the top through the legal process. Then they analyze all their communications. Are they abiding by the Fair Credit Practices Act? Are the multiple other acts or laws that they need to abide by in their collection practices? And another big chunk of them can fall off and be threatened with lawsuit if they don't absolve that debt, for example. And there's 200 plus ways that they can actually invalidate that debt or make it so that it's an uncollectible debt where they don't owe that debt anymore and it gets wiped, can get wiped off their credit report and actually improve their credit along the way. And they're taking them from, you know, an average of $1,000 minimums, call it as an example, down to a 250 to $300 monthly payment, fully paid off in 24 months with no interest at an around a $6,000 legal fee receivable to do that. So they're taking them from a much higher credit balance with a much higher payment and crazy interest, down to an average of a $6,000 total balance, fully paid off in 24 months at like $250 to $300 a month with zero interest involved in that in that scenario, which. So it takes them into a much better financial spot right after the front, then cleans them up and gets them in a trajectory forward. Then we do the financial education piece. On the back end is the idea that we're putting in place now to help them with that process. And if we can go through at the same time and get major discounts for first responders and military and vets and police and firefighters and teachers and things like that, then great. Absolutely amazing. Let's go implement that and put them on the right trajectory at a faster pace because they deserve it at the end of the day. So.

Hey, Matt, you know this without naming names, of course, but can you give a specific, at least one specific anecdote of an extreme situation where somebody had a lot of debt, where you were able to help them invalidate a lot of that debt and put them in a better path?

Yeah. So we had one military member, for example, that had over $75,000 in credit card debt and got them on a monthly payment of around $400 a month on this out of that $75,000 to help them invalidate that debt. There's numerous clients that they have that have, you know, positive reviews for them that have explained that have gone through this process already to help them invalidate that the account. The company that we work with has done over 70,000 of these types of contracts already, which is super amazing. And, you know, with the capital we're raising for this on $50 million, it's going to be like over 30,000 contracts that we can go and help this with, which is really, really cool to be able to, you know, help that many people invalidate their debt. Right. So really cool stuff.

Very inspiring. That's what this show is all about. And I'm super excited to have you on to talk about that.

It's clear that giving back is baked into your DNA. I mean, beyond the debt validation fund, how else are you helping people grow and build their financial legacies and their own personal legacies?

So I think this is one thing that, you know, is really not taught correctly. Right. You have a lot of financial planners that make money a lot of times off of, you know, the trades they make and things like that, or, you know, stock picks or, you know, managing someone's accounts. They do a lot of good, right? They can help people get on the right budget. They can help people have the right insurance in place, have some of that portfolio put in place. But there needs to be some diversification, right, There needs to be an actual cash flow plan. Most of the time that I see financial planners, what they do is they build this, you know, nest egg and say yes, you're gaining wealth in stock, you're gaining wealth in all these aspects, but there's no specific cash flow plan to where they can retire off of those funds. Like if you have $15,000 a month in monthly overhead for your living expenses, you need to be making 20 to 30 in actual cash flow so you can go and reinvest the difference, help keep up with inflation and live off of that during retirement so you're not actually going through and depleting the principal. The die broke mentality of hopefully you have enough money to last you through retirement is the complete wrong strategy to utilize. When there's other investments out there that produce a cash flow stream that can carry you and be above inflationary returns, that can actually carry you through retirement and pay you so that you can live off of that and never deplete that principle. And so that to me, me is the key. And then having the right diversity, right? I don't just invest in real estate, I invest in the debt and validation business, which is accounts receivable financing or legal fee receivable financing. We invest in other private small businesses that we invest in along with debt investments and property investments. On the debt side you get consistent cash flow streams coming in. On the equity side you get tax benefits. You get and you can front load those tax benefits to, to compound your growth, you can go through and do value add components where you're renovating units and increasing rents and decreasing expenses. You can go through and get a big chunk of equity on the back end along with cash flow long term on those value add projects as well as use leverage their inflation hedges. So there's benefits to different asset classes. So having the right diversified structure into debt, into equity. I even have insurance policies in gold and silver and commodities because if something happens to the US dollar, I want to have an insurance policy there, you know, making up for any potential issues I have with my portfolio or anything that could blow up from a black swan event. I'm also a prepper, right? So life prepping. So I got water barrels and food and things like that. Because once you have kids you're like, okay, what happens if the world blows up, right? So I look at this as a holistic plan, right? It's a life plan. It's not just investing. Yes, your investing needs to be diversified. It needs to be cash Flow focused. It needs to be wealth focused as well, if you have enough cash flow, you know, and mitigating risk. Doing the right homework on that investment portfolio is key. But look at your investment portfolio as how do you want to build your life? You don't want to be a fix and flipper or a direct lender if you plan on not and trying to be passive and wanting to go on vacations all the time, right? You need to be able to build your portfolio the way you want to build your life. So that's why I invest. I have active operations where I have my team help step in on those operations to make it more passive for me. But it still requires some active attention, right? And then I have a passive portfolio. I invest with other operators in mobile home parks and multifamily and self storage and debt and all different types of asset classes. So I can develop a passive portfolio. And I invest small amounts of money with different operators, different asset classes in different markets around the country to diversify my portfolio over here. And then I have my active income streams over here where I try to be as passive as I can, which is difficult with all the content and all the, you know, operational overhead and solving problems that other people can't solve, you know, until you get more and more people, the right people in the right seats, right? So that's how I develop my plan. And I think everyone should be looking at it in that way, depending on their individual situation. Some people, they have to be active, they don't have enough money to necessarily go through and just live off of the cash flow. Other people have a couple million bucks that they can go in and slap down on multiple investments and build a portfolio for themselves where they could be retiring off of that money. Right now I have people on that are investors of mine that are making 40, 30, $40,000 a month in cash flow and traveling the world because we manage the active operations associated with their promissory notes and their rental properties and things like that. And so to be able to see someone being able to do that in their retirement years, that is super rewarding when you're like, that's dope, you know, now can I get some so I don't have to work so hard too, by the way. So, and that's, that's the whole idea though is like, I can make money off of their money, but after they've made a certain level of return, so there's incentive for performance where I make a piece of the upside potential based on performance, right? And that's how I think that's the big difference between, you know, brokers that are dealing with stocks and bonds and mutual funds where they get paid whether you're paid or not. And they really take up like 65% of the gains in mutual funds and things like that with their trading and their fee structures, versus many times in the syndications that I invest in and raise capital for myself. It's always incentive based performance in place that I think is key when you're investing with someone else.

Yeah, Matt, you, you are aware, I'm sure you're aware of this, but I recently released my book wealth with Purpose, which is focused on guiding others to build passive income with the intention of making the world a better place. Awesome. What's something people misunderstand about building legacy through investments?

So I think what's amazing is people think that, hey, you're just building these investments over and over again, building wealth for yourself. And you know, what's amazing about this is that the people that are wealthy that actually create wealth for themselves and their clients like this, enable a lot more people to donate, to do goodwill, to, to be able to add value to society as a whole. I personally believe that most money should be coming out of the government and going back to the people. And if the people have more wealth, they will provide non profits capital and things like that. And it's a much more efficient use of capital in that way. And so, you know, a lot of people think, oh, you're a flipper, you're, you're an evil flipper. It's got to buy a discount and all this. You know, we're, we're literally improving neighborhoods, which is amazing. You know, a lot of these houses are blighted. They need tons of renovation work. You know, you're not going to find a normal homeowner that typically is going to go buy a property that needs $200,000 worth of renovation and clean up an entire neighborhood. Right. And add housing stock and a lot of times affordable housing stock to the market because you're buying existing homes in that way. That's just an example of, you know, I think the goodwill that comes out of, you know, this business is providing that to, you know, to apply and give people more affordable housing out there. This is why we invest in mobile home parks too. Because when you're investing in mobile home parks, you're literally buying and helping improve the most affordable housing and adding more stock. So one of the strategies with mobile home parks is renovating all the down units at the park, adding New mobile homes to empty slabs, which, like, on some of the parks, you're doubling or, you know, multiplying that, you know, getting multiple multiples on your actual, you know, current stock versus what you're adding to the park. And so being able to add that affordable housing to the community is. Is really, really cool, especially where there's a need there now. So you look at all of your investments in that way and say, is it the right strategy that I should be using? Is this. Is this something that's improving people's lives, or is this something that's just something evil that just is not something you should be, you know, investing in in the first place? Right. So, yeah, I think that the whole.

Thing, I mean, that's why you and I get along so well in terms of our philosophies. But I appreciate that about you. Thank you.

Yeah, you can't sleep at night if you have the wrong strategies there. You just, like, you know, if you're screwing people over, like, that's just horrible. You know, you're not going to be happy long term in life.

So that's for sure. All right, let's end with a lightning round. This is like a one thought that comes out of each of these questions. You ready?

Yes, sir.

All right, give me a quote or a mantra that you live by.

You're gonna laugh and you're gonna think of my. My. I grew up in the 90s and I grew up in Southern California on. On hip hop here in Southern California. And so Tupac actually has a quote. He says, I got advice from my father. All he told me was this, get off your ass if you plan to be rich. And so, you know, it's just a constant reminder to hustle and get out there and take action as much as you possibly can. And that mindset, I know, it's kind of funny, the whole.

Gangster hip hop mindset.

There are poets in this world that have very profound things to say. And there you go. Certainly one of them for sure. Tell me a book that changed your life.

I think there's been a number of books, but the top three I'd say are Rich Dad, Poor dad, because it changed my mindset. Think and Grow Rich was a huge one because it made you really, if you study that book in depth, it's literally the path to wealth. It's unbelievable. And then Traction by Gino Wickman. It's the entrepreneurial operating system. And then how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. All amazing books. Changes your mindset about how you Interact with people. That Dale Carnegie book as well. Very, very in depth knowledge about how you permeate positive relationships in your life and how you, I'll say. Win at conversations with people.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

All right.

One more. One habit. You swear by one habit.

I swear by meditation. I consistently meditate every morning and after, before I go in the house to go see my kids again, you know, and get, get home, I meditate and you know, try to focus on living in the moment as best I can. It's hard for an entrepreneur and hard for, you know, to shut your brain off. One it massively changes your, your stress levels, especially breathing techniques using like WIM HOF techniques and things like that. Massively biohack you so that you can regulate your stress levels massively. And then of course shutting your brain off so that you can live in the moment with your kids is how I, when I meditate in the afternoons or before I, you know, go hang out with the kids and those, those things have been life changing for my mindset.

That's fantastic. All right, before we wrap, where can people find you? Follow your work and get involved. Most specifically the that I love this with the debt validation fund.

No problem. So you can go to my website, Matthew Owens.com with one T&Matthew because my parents couldn't spell so so Matthew Owens.com we also have a 200 point due diligence checklist on that site that you can download for free the ones we use when we're going over all these different deals that we're investing in. You should always do your homework on your deals and that's, that's the best way to reach us is doing that. Or you can reach out to us via the contact page on that page as well to, to reach out about the investment stuff.

Super cool. This has been powerful. Thank you for showing us what it looks like to lead with purpose, build with intention and never forget the people who serve and protect us. You my friend, are a true legacy. All star. I appreciate you and to our listeners, remember, legacy isn't what you leave behind for people. It's what you leave in them. Until next time, keep building boldly.

It.