Chris Larsen On The Money Insights Podcast

Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to raise your income, investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. You can get a free copy of our book@nextlevelincome.com just click on the book link, put your address in. I'll even send you a free copy. Also, if you're an accredited investor, check out our Invest link to learn how to gain access to our new self storage fund as well as other institutional quality real estate opportunities. On today's show, we're going to switch it up a little bit. I was a guest on my partner's podcast at Money Insights, so listen today to hear my interview on the Money Insights Insights podcast. Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their investment optimizer strategy. In my book, I share how I use the same strategy starting over a decade ago to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthiest for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth, and increasing stability for their investments. Now you can do the same thing. In addition, you can build a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college, fund a business plan for retirement, and ultimately optimize your total financial picture. To find out more information, check us out at the banking link@nextlevelincome.com.

So let's just jump right into it, Kris. I want to know a little bit about your story. So tell us a little bit about your story, kind of your background, and maybe before we even get into, you know, the podcast you've got going on, you're syndicating all those things. Just, just give us a little bit of background. And what, what's Chris all about?

Yeah, so. Well, one, I'm all about enjoying life as much as possible, like we were talking about. I'm going to come out and I'll be right around the corner from you guys doing some mountain biking out there in Utah next week with a good friend. Um, I live in Asheville, North Carolina. My, my wife, my boys, we've lived here for 13 years. My boys, not quite as long because they were born when we were here, but I started on my investing journey back in college. I noticed we're going to talk a lot about this and I had a couple momentous points in my life that really acted as points of reflection and pivoting points and really overlaid some things that made a big impact. My father died when I was 5, and I had an early experience with life insurance because he actually accidentally had two Policies. Unfortunately, they weren't very large, but those proceeds allowed me to go to college with some scholarships in state tuition and come out the other side debt free, which was a real blessing.

Wow.

When I was in college, I raced bicycles. So I was talking about coming out there and riding. I've had a real passion for cycling for. Oh, man, It's. It's going on 30 years now, so I've been. I started racing when I was 14 years old.

So what type of racing?

That's. Yes. So, yeah, I raced. I started off my first, like, real bike, was a mountain bike, but then I started racing road bikes, like, just. Just about two years later, and the Tour de France, like, why we're recording this is going on, and it's. I love this strategy involved with road cycling, and I love being able to go out and ride for two, three, four hours. I think it really helped kind of calm my mind and my, you know, over the years, and it gave me a lot of relationships and, you know, a lot of lessons into discipline over the years. That helped me now not only, not only professionally, but also personally and, you know, I could even say as an investor.

Yeah.

So are you doing team racing in good shape, too?

Yeah, it definitely is something that, you know, it helps you stay in shape. It's a lifelong sport, and one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is. And if you're watching the Tour de France, you can kind of pick up on this. But cycling really is a team sport. It's a real team sport. There's a lot of strategy, you know, because of the aerodynamics, the energy conservation, even the things like fueling, you know, if you're on the bike, I mean, think about, like, an. If you've ever seen an F1 race and you're listening, you know, you see the driver, but you don't. You know, you see the pit team, you know, but you see the people communicating. It's really similar. You have a radio. If you're racing, you. You know, you're getting. You're getting food handed up. Your teammates are going back to the car, they're giving you water, they're giving you food. It's really neat. Now, mountain biking is a little different. You're out there kind of on your own. You have to change your own tires. Uh, but road cycling, it's a real team sport. And like I said, it's. It's almost like F1 in a lot of ways. Even. Even the technology, there's some teams, like McLaren sponsors the cycling Team as well. And they use the same wind tunnels and carbon technology to do that. So, yeah, I raced, I raced with different teams from 14 all the way up till when I kind of, kind of quit officially in my mid-30s. That is awesome.

I've been hearing in my podcasting, listening, a lot of people saying investing is a team sport. That's kind of a new phrase. I don't know if it's new, but that's a new phrase that I've been hearing and that's what it reminds me of. So I think there's probably a lot of carryover with anything team related that we can take into business and investing and we're going to jump into that. Okay, so you're in college, you kind of get started, get exposure to the investment world. You're at least interested in it. Where did, what happened next after you go, you go through college and what's kind of your next stage of your life?

Yeah, so I mentioned there was some momentous points in my life and we started kind of dove a little bit deeper into the cycling there. My best friend, my training partner, my roommate Chris passed away between my freshman and sophomore years of college. And I'm in college for engineering. And I knew two weeks in I didn't want to be an engineer. All I wanted to do was race my bike. And I raced another year after Chris passed away. And, and then I realized I just, and I talk all about this in my book, which if you listen, I can, I'll tell you how to get that from our website here. But I realized I wasn't happy, I wasn't fulfilled. And I quit racing my junior year of college and I didn't want to be an engineer. I'm not, I'm not racing. I was kind of like floating out there. But what I did know is I needed to live my life to the fullest. I needed to make the most out of every day. And I also knew that you had to have money do that. And I had been introduced to investing by the same family friend that introduced me to cycling, Clint Provenza. I thank him in my book because he introduced probably the two most important things that pivoted my life during those years. I started trading in the stock market, but ultimately ended up in real estate because I liked the leverage, I liked the control. And over the past 20 years, we went from buying single family properties to now we have thousands of units of apartments that we own and manage. And as you kind of mentioned in the beginning there, Christian, we syndicate, we bring in investors Alongside of us. And that's my passion now, is showing others, educating others to how to best manage their money, how to make more money, how to keep more money and ultimately grow their money and hopefully shortcut the path that I took.

You've got a great story, Chris. And it's a hard story at times, right, I know because my, my dad passed when I was 18, I guess I was 19. And that was difficult. And you know, having your, your, you know, parent and a close personal friend, like, it's just, just tough.

I have a quick question.

When.

So when you were kind of pausing, not racing anymore, trying to redefine what, what were the, and you mentioned kind of this family, friends. Maybe that that's the answer. But what were kind of the principles, what were the voices that were guiding you as you're really kind of defining the vision for your life?

Right? Yeah, yeah. You know, at that time I didn't have a lot of direction, you know, and I was, I was kind of searching, searching for people and ideas, you know, to help me at that time. And I just, I was seeking mentors. I was trying to find people that could kind of help me. I did go. We had a great ministry on campus when I was in college that we went to. And it was nice to have a community that I could go to and do that. I had a community within the cycling community that I could spend time with. But a lot of it was me going out and searching because I was kind of in this in between stage, trying to figure out like what I wanted to do with my life from a professional perspective, but also a personal perspective. I mean, I didn't have a girlfriend when Chris passed away. All my life was in cycling. I mean, it really was kind of this almost a blank canvas coming out the other side of that, of that year. But a lot of the things I learned in cycling, you know, the discipline, the hard work, helped translate, you know, over when I, when I ultimately kind of started to pivot.

So Chris, you had a kind of the next stage. I know you had a successful career in the medical device world and maybe talk a little bit about the trans. The transition to, from being a full time medical in that field to going into full time real estate investing. What was that like? And maybe what advice could you give to people who might be trying to make that same type of a jump?

Yeah, I've learned a lot of things here over really the past year as I made this transition. So I bought my first property at 21 and it was less than $3,000 that I put down on that property.

Impressive.

Yeah, it was a little $90,000 townhouse. And I was telling the story yesterday on actually another podcast I was on and today we call it a house hack. I'd rented out two of the three bedrooms and I had the third bedroom. I actually bought the place next door. And so I basically had this little mini six unit apartment. But I didn't have a lot of money. My parents didn't have a lot of money. My stepfather was a contractor, My mother was an assistant teacher, not even a teacher. And she made like 30 some thousand dollars a year. The first year I got out and worked professionally, I made more than both of them combined to the put things into perspective. But I had to get some capital. So I looked and I thought, okay, what career can I make six figures and actually ultimately become accredited? Because I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, it's on my shelf back here. I got a copy from Robert Kiyosaki himself in Phoenix a couple of years ago and he said, you got to be accredited if you want to have access to the best investments out there that the rich have. So I looked at all these careers and I was selling insurance. I was a licensed insurance agent when I was finishing my MBA in finance. And the agent I worked with introduced me to a friend that sold medical devices. And I'm sitting down talking to this guy now, remember I was in engineering, was biomechanical engineering. We designed and analyzed these medical implants. And I sit down with this guy for lunch one day and he tells me he sells these same implants that my professor had designed and that we were going through this process with just a couple of years before. I was like, this is so cool. What do you do? He goes, I go into the or, I work with surgeons. I'm like, that's amazing. And then he told me how much money he made and I was like, well, I can become accredited doing this too. I was like, this is the coolest thing. So I always say I was an investor first, but I spent the next 18 years, started in pharmaceutical, but then ultimately in the medical device industry. And what I did, once I got to the point where I was making a good amount of money after working really hard for about five years, I kind of settled in making a healthy six figure income. My wife and I, we saved 50% of what we made and we just poured that into real estate. And my whole plan, my whole goal was to be financially independent within 10 years. And I had, I had a number in mind and we hit that. We hit that figure. We were debt free, financially independent by the age of 38 with a family. This isn't one of these fire stories where I'm like, in, you know, I'm living out of a, you know, Airstream with no kids. Right. We have a nice, nice upper middle class existence. But what I found over the past five years is we've expanded our investments to include other investors. My passion really is sharing that story. So as much as I loved working in the industry, getting to know these geniuses, brain surgeons, orthopedic spine surgeons that I got to work with, I realized I just couldn't do both anymore. Not if I was going to be a good father and a good husband, but also not if I was really going to serve what I found to be my mission life. Which was. Which is sharing the story because so many people I feel need to understand you can be financially independent, and that doesn't mean you have to quit your job. You can actually be better at your job. I spent five more years in the industry after I didn't have to, just for the record. So over the past year, it became evident I couldn't do both anymore. And it was a real struggle, Christian. I mean, I really wrestled with it, and only in the last nine months that I kind of come to grips and accept that I was going to walk away. And. And when you define yourself, and I think maybe people are reluctant to talk about this, but as a male, as a husband, as a father, as a provider of a family for the past nearly two decades, to say, hey, I'm just going to put that over on the side. I'm going to turn the chapter, turn the page on that chapter. I really struggled with that. And it took me about six full months to be comfortable with taking that leap. And I'm like, what are people going to think? You know, what if I don't have anything to do tomorrow? Like, am I going to. I don't want to go riding five hours every day. Yeah. But what I found was when I did that, the floodgates open. People started calling me. People wanted to know my story. They're like, I thought, wait, you're not selling real estate? You know, I thought you sold real. I'm like, no, I don't sell real estate. And you tell them the story, and they read my book and they're like, wow, this is. I didn't know this world existed. So the past six months have just been awesome. Sharing, sharing the story, sharing opportunities, education with others. It's also Allowed me to do things like start a financial literacy course for a local nonprofit. But probably most important, it allows me to do things like take my boys to camp this morning, go for a bike ride on a Monday morning when my kids are home from school or not at camp during the summer, travel and really expand some of the things that are important to me and truly be a business owner and help out more people than I was, you know, on a day to day basis a year ago.

And we can attest to that. So we actually got to see Chris. He brought his boy out to do some skiing this last winter and, and so we met up with him while he was here. So he's doing it, he's loving it.

Yeah, it's been a cool transition to see. So I want to jump back a little bit, Chris, and just, just to get into some of the business stuff here. What is it? Or maybe what are some of the key things that attracted you to the alternative investment space and maybe specifically to real estate?

Yeah, again, I think I mentioned earlier my goal is to help investors, individuals shortcut the path that I took. Because my MBA is in portfolio management. That degree back there, MBA in portfolio management, we're talking about learning how to manage big portfolios, institutional level portfolios. I find out all this information about the financial industry and there's all these secrets and all these fees and I'm thinking, well, geez, this isn't how I personally invest. This is different. I know there's a better way. So I ultimately didn't go down like a financial advisor path. I didn't go work on Wall Street. I found this other career path that I mentioned, but I was still investing. And then as I started to learn more again, Robert Kiyosaki, you think, okay, how do I become accredited? As I learn more over the next decade, I started to study. When people hear things like Donald Trump doesn't pay any taxes and they're like, oh, that guy Jeff Bezos, I say, why doesn't he pay taxes? So I started asking questions and what I wanted to know was how the rich, how the ultra rich invested. And what I found was, sure, they invest in the stock market, but they don't have 401s. They're not pouring their money into mutual funds. They have some there, but they own businesses, they own cash flow real estate. 20 to 30% of ultra rich families are investing. I'm sorry, 20 to 30% of the portfolios of these ultra rich families are in income producing real estate. You know what else they own? Cash Value life insurance, not term life insurance. I say Dave Ramsey, he provides a great service. If you're in the 70, 80, 90% of Americans where you just don't have that abundance mentality and do that, yeah, it's great to pay off your debt. But I always say, like Dave Ramsey, that's investing advice for poor people. If you want to be poor, if you think you can retire on a million dollars, you follow his advice. I want to know how the ultra rich invest now. Am I worth $100 million? Not yet, but I want to set up my life for that. So if you're listening, you don't have to have $100 million to invest like that. You can start off with $100,000. Educate yourself and learn those things. So what I found was that, yeah, these quote unquote alternatives. And how crazy is it that we call real estate an alternative investment?

Yeah, that is interesting.

We call whole life insurance and alternative investment. These things were. Insurance companies have been around longer than the irs. Real estate has been around. Life insurance itself has been around since before the United States was here. Real estate, owning real estate, I mean it goes back pre stock market, all these things. So again, I think what we call alternatives today, I call the fundamentals. These are the fundamental things that you should be investing in. And the cool thing is what I found, Christian, this is the ultimate. And this is why I call in my book the holy grail of real estate is multifamily real estate or income producing real estate. Because what it does, when you add it to your portfolio, when you add these alternatives to your portfolio, it decreases the risk and increases the returns. And that's what Ray Dalio calls the holy grail of investing. And that's ultimately what I found.

I love it, Chris. That's a great transition into syndication. Most people here will have a pretty good idea. Our listener base and our clientele is primarily high income, high net worth people. But we hope to attract all sorts of people. Not everyone will necessarily know what a syndication is. You started to make this transition from doing your own real estate investing and maybe talk about that for a second, but then also just define or give the audience a better idea of what a syndication actually is.

Yeah, absolutely. We'll go in reverse here. So I'll answer that question, then I'll tell a little bit more about story. So a syndication is nothing more than pulling together, bringing as we talk about a team of investors together to purchase a property. I always say we invite investors to invest alongside of us. And that's what we do, we form a partnership. We form an LLC. And it'd be no different than if the three of us all invested $100,000 to put $300,000 down on, say, a million dollar property. We split the ownership between the three of us. It's the same thing, except maybe instead of three, we may have 300 investors. Instead of million dollar property, we may be buying a $90 million property. And the neat thing is, when you buy these larger properties, they're more efficient. You can run them like a business. And if you're a limited partner, as our investors are, they get to be passive so they can focus on their craft, which may be spine surgery, like we were talking about. And they're making, they're experts at that. They're making a lot of money. And a lot of these surgeons that I work with as investors, they love what they do. They absolutely love it. They want to keep doing that, but they see the value in real estate. So personally, I started buying real estate when I was 21. I managed my own little portfolio for 15 years before I ran into somebody in a meeting with my wife. And we come to this realization after my second son was born. This is another turning point in my life. My mother had passed away the week before my second son was born a year later. My wife and I had figured out that it cost us $11,000 for her to work that past year, and that's because we had to pay for childcare. And after we paid taxes on what she made and paid for childcare, it cost us almost $1,000 a month. So I just remember sitting there now, my wife's an architect. She goes to school a year longer than I did. And I sat down across from her and I'll never forget, I said to her, it would make more sense for you to stay home, to be a stay at home mom than work. I said, is that what you'd want to do? And she said, no. And if you met my older son, you'd know why. She immediately said, no, because he's way more work than. Anyway, we said, well, we got to do something different. So we end up hiring a business coach. We're at this meeting and I was lamenting the fact that I had these pain in the butt tenants and I was dealing with these properties. And this guy goes, you should look into multifamily real estate. I'm like, apartments? He's like, yeah. I'm like, that's the same thing, right? He goes, no, no, no, I'm talking about syndications. Because I'm telling him I'm working 60, 80 hours a week and we're making all this money and paying all these taxes and my wife might stay at home and we're thinking of other ways. So I talked to these operators. We end up investing a few years later. What we find out is now my former partner and I, we realize we have as much or more experience in real estate as the operators that we're working with. So what we did, we formed a partnership. We brought in those operators. On the first deal we did as consultants, we bought 100 unit apartment. It's a really nice round number, 100 unit apartment down in a great suburb, great sub market of Atlanta, right near the new Braves stadium. That property has done phenomenally well after the past five years. And the reason we did it is we had a lot of our own money that we wanted to invest our family's money. And friends had now started asking, they said, well, what do you do? What do you do with your money? I'll never forget the first spine surgery. He looked at me and I'm 30 years old and he looks at me, he's like, well, what should I do with my money? And I'm thinking, here's a 55 year old genius spine surgeon and he's asking me, this kid, probably in his eyes, what I do with my money. But he knew that I invest in real estate. So we started bringing in friends and family. And then ultimately those 40 investors we had initially over the first few years has now grown into over 400 investors that we now work with today.

That's awesome. And you guys focus primarily on multifamily. Is that exclusively the asset class you're working in?

So I am not opposed to working in other asset classes. And I will say my view is.

Full of maybe expertise is probably a.

Better way to put it. Absolutely. So yeah, about 80% of what we do is multifamily. We have a self storage fund now as well. We also, by the time this airs, we'll have closed on our first mobile home park. And the reason is if you look at multifamily over the past decade, it's performed exceedingly well. There's some areas like we focus now more on B, even luxury assets that have been built in the past few years just because they have a higher resident quality. What I mean is we're talking about white collar workers who can work from home, they can afford rents a little more consistently during downturns. But there are other asset classes that have opened up areas of Opportunity, like I mentioned mobile home parks for affordable housing, for workforce housing, which I think make a lot of sense. But yeah, we focus heavily on multifamily. And when I say 80%, I'm always transparent about 80% of my portfolio in real estate is in the multifamily space as well.

Yeah, that's great. That's super helpful. And what types of people, what types of investors would be and are good fit for working with your group?

Yeah. So I guess first off there's how you qualify on paper and then there's how you think. So we work with investors that want to be passive. Christian and Rod, if you're a professional and you're listening, you're a doctor, you're an engineer, programmer, I work with. I have, my college roommate is high up in Google and he likes what he does. He makes a lot of money and invest money in this.

Not everyone wants to be a full time real estate investor or a full time investor in general. And so there's got to be a place where people go and invest passively.

Yeah. So if you want to be a direct owner in income producing real estate, but you want to be passive, we're a great option. Also, if you think this might be a path that you want to take, I mean, it's a great option to invest with somebody and learn. Now I don't, I do have coaching clients, I don't coach individuals on how to specifically go and buy multifamily. But certainly there are options out there as well. But I always think you should start as an investor, learn it from somebody that knows what they're doing. And then as far as from a financial perspective, our offerings are typically for accredited investors. And if you're listening, you're not sure what that is. Accredited as an individual, you have to make $200,000 a year more, $300,000 as a couple or, and I got this wrong about 10 years ago, or $1 million net worth without your personal residence. If you're accredited investor and you're interested in this, we don't have a lot of information on what we offer on our website, but you can check out nextlevelincome.com and click on the Invest link and you can schedule a call to talk to me. And I'm happy to talk to you if you think you might be a good fit for what we do and want to look at the opportunities we have.

Yeah, I love it. So talk to me a little bit. We didn't talk much about the podcast, but just hit on the Podcast, the Next Level podcast, what kind of inspired you to start it and what are the kind of the primary things you like to hit on?

Yeah, so Next Level Income, we like to say we like to help people make more money, keep more money and grow their money. You guys have been awesome, awesome guests on the show, on the podcast Next Level Income show. So we talk about all those different things. We have entrepreneurs that have come on. We have insurance specialists, we have tax strategy specialists on how to keep more your hard earned money. We also have people that are operators in the real estate space, oil and gas space traders that talk about how to grow your money. We're not exclusive to real estate. And the reason we started it and this was about three years ago, my marketing partner, Caleb, he was my co host on the show through the first season. He said, hey, Chris, you should start a podcast. And I'm like, I don't want to start a podcast. That's a lot of work. Like, I don't. It's not really. I'm not. It wasn't something that interested me. And I thought about it for about a week and I said, hey, Caleb, we should start a podcast. I want you on it with me. He's like, why do you want me on it? I don't like, this isn't my expertise. I said, but you're a millennial. You have a cool perspective. So he helped me start it. Ultimately, he's still behind the scenes, helps me produce it helps with my website still and doing all those things. But we started at sports specifically to help curate the information that I was sharing almost every day on phone calls, on emails. And I realized after answering for the 20th time the same question, I'm like, why don't we just do a podcast episode or a blog on this? And that's ultimately why we wrote the book. Caleb said, well, you could write a book out of your blog posts. I said, why don't I just write a book and we'll take the blog posts out of the book? He's like, that's the same thing. So two weeks later, I wrote all 10 chapters of the book. But I think it's important to note that I added chapter three, your opportunity fund. And that was a big inspiration from you guys, which talks all about how I personally use cash value life insurance through really what we call the investment optimizer together. And I talk about that in chapter three of my book, which you can also get on the website.

Very cool. I was actually just. You did a perfect transition into that, Chris. I Was going to ask what types of things are you. No, it wasn't planned. That's what was cool. So what types of things have you maybe used in conjunction with the investment optimizer or what types of things would you think you could encourage other people to use?

Yeah, so I think if you look at investing like a pyramid, you have to have your base. Remember, we talk about making more money first. So the first strategy, if you're listening and you're like, hey, I want to invest. I want to be financially independent, find a career. Pick a profession that you are really good at, you can help a lot of people and you can make a lot of money. And there's a lot of options out there, okay? And I tell my boys, if you want to make a lot of money, you need to help a lot of people and you need to be good at what you do. So pick something that suits your skill set where you can help a lot of people and get really good at it and maximize the amount of money you're making. If you have a business, optimize your business. That's what I help my coaching clients do. That's number one, before you do anything else. Number two, figure out how to keep as much money as possible. Make sure you're working with a tax strategist. That doesn't mean TurboTax or your accountant that you give your receipts to once a year. That means somebody that helps you look today in the middle of 2021, out through the year and figure out how you're going to keep more of that money. People like yourselves work with people like Rod and Christian. Because if you can take money and you can put it into your own personal bank essentially, and figure out then what to do. And I ask my coaching clients, I ask my investors this. What are you doing with your money in between deals? If you're putting it in a checking account or savings account or a money market or God forbid, the stock market that might go down. While you're waiting for that next investment, I want you to think about something that's more secure, like cash value life insurance. That's what we personally do. Once you make a lot of money, once you have your insurance needs met, figure out how to maximize your opportunity fund, as I call it. And it's that opportunity fund where that money sits and grows and provides you that stability that you can access if you have an emergency. Like during the pandemic last year, we accessed over $200,000 to have as liquidity. During the pandemic, my wife and I. So it was great to have that. It was amazing. And then the other thing you can do is you can take that money and then you can invest it in real estate opportunities when they come along and do that. But I think the base is having a high income earning profession or business. Number two, make sure you have optimized your tax strategy as well as your insurance structure. And then number three, start to look at your investing opportunities. And personally I flow everything through that investment optimizer approach.

You hit on a really, really important point there. Liquidity, right. So the nice thing is the investment optimizer is about keeping liquid cash earning interest, creating a return whether or not you're using it actively. So there's not many situations that liquidity can't solve. And so I love that you hit on that. I think it's super important whether it's in our investment world or our personal world. Having plenty of liquidity makes a huge difference. But it's hard to do if you feel like you're losing money to inflation by having liquidity, you know what I mean? And so it ends up becoming kind of this double edged sword that becomes difficult for people to navigate.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's increasingly harder in this world. I mean, what are you going to do? Put your money in a money market earning. I don't even know what my money market fund earns, like less than 0.5%, 0.2%, something like that. It's ridiculous. I mean, inflation is real today we're seeing prices skyrocket in a lot of areas. So yeah, there are very few tools out there. Vehicles out there. I wouldn't call what we're talking about an investment. This is a tool, right? There are very few tools and vehicles out there that you can use and have access. Your 401k is not going to do that, your IRA is not going to do that, your mutual fund's not going to do that. And look, I have personal experience with my father, my best friend, he asked me one day, he's like, what are you doing? And this is what inspired me to work with you all to put these educational resources out there. It was four years ago yesterday, as a matter of fact, she passed away, his wife. And the year before, he calls me and says, hey, what do you do for insurance? And this? I said, oh, I use whole life, I have these policies. And he's like, wasn't that expensive? I said, yeah, but from a premium perspective it seems more expensive than term. I said, but here are the advantages. And I said, but you have the protection for your family. And he goes, oh, didn't talk to him again. Year after his wife passed away, he says, hey, I never thanked you for this. He goes, but after I talked to you, we took out policies, my wife and I, and the proceeds from that insurance policy were enough so that he doesn't have to work ever again. And he moved back to his hometown here, a mile away from me in Asheville. And his daughters, who are just a year different than my sons, they're like brothers and sisters, they come over multiple times a week. And he was able to focus on his family because of this. So if you're listening, you're thinking, oh, that's not a great investment. It's not an investment, it's a tool. And no one would ever ask my friend, hey, what was the return on that policy? That's not relevant at all. What's relevant is what it allowed him to do. And so for me, it's a real personal issue that I've dealt with in my own family. I've also seen my best friend and the impact it's had on his family. So, yeah, we're talking about this in terms of investment, Christian, but I think you always have to remember why these things are in place. God forbid that it ever has to be used, but it certainly is something that can give you a high level of peace at the end of the day.

Chris, you've got an amazing story, my friend. Before we let you go, before we let you go, what kind of stuff do you see yourself doing over the next five years? I'm just curious. You probably weren't thinking, hey, I'm going to come and give these guys my five year vision. But you've done, you built syndications. I mean, you've just, you've written the book, you've got the podcast, you've got a lot of really cool stuff going on and we've, we've enjoyed our relationship. But, you know, where do you see yourself heading? What is, what do things look like over the next five for Chris?

Well, I know I'm not going to be a professional cyclist. I put that in my rearview mirror, so I turned that chapter.

You're on the other side of 40, aren't you, Chris?

Indeed. I just had my 43rd birthday just a month ago.

You're a young 43 though.

Thank you very much. I love it, I love it. I love living every day to the most and plan to live a lot many more years. But looking five years out, it's been really inspirational to work with investors. But the big thing is I started coaching some clients when I exited the medical device industry and I've had to turn down a lot of coaching clients. So as I look out over the next five years, we're going to keep growing our real estate business. I want to make sure that I'm devoting a lot of time to my boys that are 11 and 9 because the next five years are very formative. But when it comes to me professionally, my goal is to scale the coaching business because I want to help more people. And we're going to be launching a course here in the next year. We're going to be putting together tools that can help as many people as possible. Like I said, shortcut the path to financial independence. So ultimately, you know, if you're listening, you can live your best life. You can have the most impact you can on this world. And you know, I want to, that's what I want to do, is help as many people over the next five years do the same thing. And I'm excited to be have you guys as part of the team as we do that.

Yeah, I love it. What a great vision. Before we let you go now, just remind everybody where we can find you. And really, you know, maybe at two levels where they can go just check out your stuff and then if they want to connect with you personally, personally in some way, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, absolutely. Try to make it easy. Nextlevelincome.com you can check out our podcast there where you can see great guests like yourselves on previous shows. We have a blog, everything I've talked about, all that's there on the website, it's on the blog, it's on the podcast, the book. If you're listening, get a free copy. Just click on the book link and if you put your address in, I'll even send you a copy as well. And then if you want to get in touch with me, you can reach out Chrislevelincome.com again, that's ChrisNextLevelincome.com and we can schedule a call to talk if there's anything I can help you with on your journey.

Wonderful, Chris, thanks for being on the show with us again. We super appreciate it and we'll talk to you again soon.

I enjoy it every time we get to talk. Gentlemen, thanks so much for the opportunity. Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more gift for you. If you, if you haven't gotten my book next level income yet, and would like me to send it to you in the mail for free. Then go to nextlevelincome.com and click on the Book tab. If you fill out the form in that page, I will send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for being a podcast listener. Also, please like share and take 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.