EP. 103 | How Persistence Became the Solid Foundation for Success with Ian Ippolito

Today's show is sponsored by the Airbnb Kickstart course. My wife and I started our first Airbnb here in the last year and we've come to love the ability to earn more money than we would if we had a long term rental. If you're interested in starting your Airbnb business with little money, scaling your Airbnb business, or just learning tricks about the industry in general, check out our airbnb course@nextlevelincome.com Airbnb BNB that's Air the letters B&B and you'll get a 20% discount code. On today's show we have Ian Ippolito. Ian I. Polito is a tech serial entrepreneur. He's also the founder and head of an alternative asset investing club called the Private Investor Club. It has over 5,600 members, $13 billion investable assets, and it gives investors access to high quality deal flow, detailed due diligence and special deals that they couldn't do on their own. Ian is also the founder and editor of the investment analysis website called the realestatecrowdfundingreview.com Ian has been featured in USA Today, Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, realtor.com Curbed and more. We're excited to dive into all these subjects today with Ian Ippolito.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to raise your income, investments and life to the next level with your host, your Chris Larson. Get your free copy of his book@nextlevelincome.com book also if you're an accredited investor, check out the Invest link to learn how to gain access to institutional quality real estate opportunities.

Ian, welcome to the show.

Thanks Chris.

Great to be here. Yeah, it's great to have you. I'm really excited. We've man. I started talking to a friend about two years ago and your name came up and finally we got introduced and you were gracious enough to join us here on the show today. And I'm excited for you to share your story with the audience. But I'm also really excited for you to share more information about the platform you built. Because Next Level Income is all about helping educate investors, educate the next generation here towards financial independence. And you have done, in my opinion, a phenomenal job of building a platform. But before we get into that, Ian, you know, you were a quote unquote serial tech entrepreneur. Maybe you can share a little bit about that story with the audience before we dive more into the investment side.

Sure. I mean the life of an entrepreneur is a tough one because it's like, it's. I think a lot of people think of it as like, you know, maybe they see successes from certain people. I think, oh, it must be easy. You just go out there and do it. But, you know, I can tell, at least from my point of view and the way I thought of people. But it's a lot of work and a lot of overcoming a lot of adversity and problems. And I created. So it wasn't like I just, you know, people do like a press release and they're like, oh, wow, you know, he had this company and he sold it and, you know, he did great.

Yeah.

But it took me, like, you know, 10 years to build that company and before that, five or six other companies that people don't see that, you know, I built and, you know, had different problems or, you know, got died or whatever. But no, like, I used to be a computer programmer, but I always wanted that idea of, like, you know what? I want to be my own boss, you know, and so I want to be independent. A lot of times I would go into these companies and they wouldn't necessarily listen to me, and I wanted to be able to make decisions and things like that. So I had the idea. I want to be my own boss. So what I did was I basically created this computer program. It was called the Power Launcher. This is a while ago. And I thought, oh, I have this idea. I have this product. Everyone's going to love it. I took a long time to write it and learn about it, but I finally did it and I launched it. Seriously, it's got to be the most unpopular software ever created. It had zero. Zero sales. It's never had a sale. I was the only person that ever used. Was miserable, and I couldn't get anyone to buy this thing. And I was like. But I put so much effort, and I loved this thing. I thought it was fantastic. So it took me a while because I invested time and money about it. It was, like, pretty depressing, right, to do that and to fail. And so. And I was like, you know what, though? You know, I made some mistakes. You know, I. I didn't research my market to ask people what they actually wanted. You know, I did a whole bunch of things I probably shouldn't have because I didn't know what I was doing. So after a couple months, I dusted myself off. I said, let me try again, Let me try again. I think I can do better. And I like this idea. I want to be my own boss. So I Tried again. This time I wrote another program called HelpMaker plus to help people do help files. Now this time I interviewed people and you know, and what was nice about this one and I learned from the first one I distributed better. And what was awesome is it started to work. Like I created it one time and then people would pay me to register it, which was a cool thing. It's like you write it one time and then we get these checks in the mail from people who were the product. Now I still had to upgrade it and you know, support bugs and stuff. So it wasn't 100% work free. It still was work, but it was really cool. Eventually I got so many checks I was able to buy a car which was like, wow, this is awesome. So I was doing really good. I was loving this new business and I ran it for years and then all of a sudden one day I got some bad news. So Microsoft came in. Microsoft is like the big elephant in the room with a lot of software stuff. So they came in one day and basically the elephant came down with a big foot and stomped on me and basically said, you know what, we need a tool that makes Help file. Which is exactly what I was doing. We'll create one and give it for free. So, yeah, so, yeah, so I was like, well, there goes my business completely destroyed that I just spent two years building. So again, a very, very tough, you know, experience. And I was like, you know, very, you know, upset after it was done and had to get up and dust myself off and think. I was like, you know what, it worked okay. It's not like it didn't work a lot better than the first time. I just need something where I need to keep up with what's going on. I need some protection against these big elephants from stomping me. I need something a little bit more protected. I thought about it. It took me a while. It took me actually a couple of years to come up with the next idea, which is. And build it, which was this idea called Planet Source Code. It was this website. Today everyone knows the idea of open source, at least programmers do. It's like where they share source code to build stuff. Back then there was no such thing. Basically created the first open source website before it had a. And it didn't get popular right away. It took a lot of time. It just grew slowly by word of mouth. But I thought, you know, this is, this is super useful, so I think it's worth doing. So it grew and it grew and eventually it was in probably like six or $7,000 a month of, you know, of revenues. I was like, this is doing good. Let me, let me ramp it up. Let me, let me, let me do better. So do is. I would sell ads. So. And back then, this is early Internet days, so I could sell an ad to like oracle for 60 cpm, which means show an ad up at the top of the screen and get $60 for showing it a thousand times. Now today I might get like 50 cents or something the same amount. Like people don't pay that. But back then. So it's like it was the wild west and people, the companies were just throwing all this money out and they had to be on the Internet. And so it was a very good for people who had websites and actually was very hard to write a website back then.

So not like you had to code it. Yeah, we had a whole class in college and yeah, it was act coding. Yeah.

HTML and you had to do ASP and all this backend stuff and tied to databases. Yeah. So there's a lot of work. But it worked. And so I was like, you know what, I need to ramp this up. It's like it's working. I don't think I'm gonna get stomped on. I'm gonna ramp it up. So I took a risk. Basically said back then you couldn't get broadband Internet. So I was like, I'm gonna pay for these long term contracts to have these T1 lines installed to my house. These high speed Internet lines.

Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because like I had all this bandwidth I need, I need more people to come in so I can make more money. So it was a risk because each one was one year long. I think it was $50 per month per T1 line. So it was a lot of money, right. For me at the time. It was like ridiculous amount of money for me at the time. But the company was making enough to cover it. I thought I could do it. And at first it worked. So it's like probably worked, I would say for almost a year. And I was like doing better and better. And I actually hired a couple people that I was building my business. It was awesome. And then one day, it was 2001, actually, I know exactly when it was. It was the dot com crash basically happened. And the way I figured it out was just all of a sudden some people that owed me money were like, hey, we can't really pay these companies. We can't pay you this month, we'll pay you next month. All right. The next month came, never paid. And then more Companies said, you know what? We can't pay you and oh, we're canceling this contract and you know, blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden I went from like flying high to nothing. It's like.com crash came and wiped it all out. And I had the T1 lines, these commitments that I had made. The phone company wasn't going to let me out of those commitments. So I was in deep, deep trouble. And I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do? And that was the hardest time I probably ever had. And I thought, what am I going to do? And again, it was like psychologically I had to get into that headspace of being able to figure out what to do because the stress, the financial stress, you know, all that other stuff and was killing me. But I got my head. It probably took about a month to kind of get where I could actually just kind of think about it. And I thought, well, you know what? I have something that's valuable. I have these programmers. Even though no one wants to pay for them, they're valuable. It's like, what else could I do with these people? And I thought, you know what, they're always bugging me all the time. Can you write this program for? And I'm like, I don't have the time to do that. I'm trying to run Planet source code. So it's like, what if I can create and I don't want to write programs for the mic? I don't want to be a programmer. I want to be my own boss. I want to run a company. What if I created a website where like people who wanted programmers could find them and people that were programmers that could do work remotely. And so, you know, I was coding up a storm and just like writing up this idea, like, what if I make it work and I have to have protections? And it was a complicated idea. But so I took about two or three months, wrote something up. I was like, I think this can work. I think this could be a really big idea. So I put it out there and I think it made like $5 or something like that the first month. So I was like, okay, well, positive money, I guess that's good. It was money that's good. But $5 is not going to solve my problems, so not even close. So it's like, I need, I need to ramp this up somehow. I just worked on that thing and, you know, word of mouth and marketing. I read all sorts of books on marketing and learned about different things and it build momentum and finally it Got to the point where I could pay off my bills. So I was like, oh, thank goodness, you know. Yeah, yeah, that was like, a huge, huge relief. Could pay the bills. I was, okay. It'd be a problem there. And I started actually making more money than that. And I was like, okay, I'm back in business finally. Right? So, you know, and then I got really, a really awesome break. So what it was was a reporter from the Wall Street Journal was using the website. He goes, this is amazing to me. Like, this is amazing. I've never seen anything like this. I just hired someone from India, and I don't know him, and I asked him for pictures, and he sent pictures of Span. I was like, so cool. And he wrote this thing that I've been trying to get done for years, and, you know, I couldn't get it done. And he said, would it be okay if I could write about you in the Wall Street Journal? I was like, come on.

Who's going to say, let me think about it.

Yeah, exactly. Let me think for about zero milliseconds. And it's like, please. So he wrote that article, and it was a turning point, because once the Wall Street Journal picked it up, then CBS News has to pick it up, and Fox News, Business News, and once one of them picks it up, they all have to pick it up. So. And it became this kind of snowballing thing where it just got bigger and bigger and really, you know, and I started hiring more employees. I was working out of my house this whole time, moved into an office, eventually upgraded to another office, eventually hired, like, you know, 10, 15 employees, had a whole bunch of contractors. So grew it to a. Finally, you know, had a business after all those failures of growing it to a nice, big, decent size and was happy with where I was at. And I was like, I'm going to run this for the rest of my life. But, you know, life kind of intervened, you know. So I met a person who's my wife now, and she, you know, and we were going to have a baby. So. And I was working crazy, crazy to make that kind of stuff happen. So it's like, I can't continue like this. And it's like, I'll be a stranger to my. To my son. So it's like, you know, 70, 80 a week. It's not uncommon. It's like an emergency. I just have to jump on it. Yeah. So, you know, I thought, I need a change. And right at that time, it's funny, because this competitor who'd been bugging me Every quarter or so, he's like, hey, you know, let me see your numbers and I'll probably buy you. And I was like, he's. He's. He's full of it. I'm not.

I'm not.

I'm not believing any of this. He just wants to see what I'm doing and so he can steal the information. That's what I thought. So I kept going, boss. And one day he wrote. It was right around that time, he goes, you know, hey, Ian, this is not officially yet, but we just purchased the others lower beneath you and the rankings, like, you know, we were like, I don't know, number three or something, and like, number four site and don't tell anyone but, you know, and talk to him and ask him what happened. So I was like, wow. So I call up that guy and he's a. He's a very serious guy normally. And I call him up on the phone. He was like, laughing, and he was like, wow, this is not what's going on here. And he's like, yeah, they made me an offer. Now I'm just about to go on this trip. I'm going around the world. I'm like, doing all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, that sounds really good. So I was like, okay, they're serious. So I worked it out. It took a while to negotiate. We negotiated the deal, I sold it, and I was finally done. This is after what probably like 15 years, right? Of like, yeah, working, working, working, working, working. And finally, like, I was done. And at first it was strange, but the. But it took a couple weeks. But after sentence, like, this weight was just, like, off my shoulders, which I didn't even realize was there. Like, yeah, because I love working, actually. It's like, I'm a hard worker. I love working hard. But there was all this stress, and so it was gone. I was like, wow, this is awesome. But then give it another two or three months. And I'm like, this really all that's kind of going on now? Because it's like, no, yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not. And it's like, I. Some people, like, play golf or they do tennis or whatever, and it's like, you know, I can't. That's not enough for me to get excited. I'm not going to get excited. It's great. But people love it and have something they love. That's not going to get me excited to wake up. So I was like, I need something else. And I was like, well, time. And actually, I Won't even. I'm probably going on too long, so I won't even go. I tried other things, too, and, you know, I created a video game, actually, and the game also had a thing where it's like, wow, it did really, really great at first, just making a ton of money, and then it got stomped on. But basically, the person that the language that it was in shut down, and basically I lost all my source code. I had ups and downs and things like that. But eventually I was like, you know, my investments now are doing good enough to support me. I was like, wow, this is awesome. This is passive investing. This is a lot less work than what I'm used to. And so I think I really need to focus on that. So I started focusing on my passive investing. And so, yes, and at the time, there was this called, well, real estate crowdfunding. Just become popular. A lot of ways to invest.

Yeah. So let's pause right there, because I think this is a great point to start the new chapter kind of in your life here and talk about what year that was. But before we do, I want to hit on a few things you talked about, Ian, because it's so important, I think, in today's day and age. I'd love your thoughts on this. You see on social media, people are talking about, oh, this is like, look at this, look at that. You see the good stuff. You don't see all the bad stuff that's going on. You know, people put their best selves up there. You know, it's like if we had Polaroids, we'd shuffle through, and we put, like, the best, you know, one out of ten up, right? Like, every day, and you get this complex. And I always tell people, like, I never thought I was that. That smart, and I never thought I was that great of an athlete, because I'm racing with professionals, and I'm hanging out with neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons. I'm like, you know. And then you go in the room, you're like, well, I'm like, I'm okay. You know, terrible. It's just. It's wild when you do that. And then you also talk. I want to really focus on the entrepreneurial journey. So, you know, a lot of people, you know, they have this. This idea, and they say, hey, it's like, I want to be an entrepreneur. There's the E. Myth, right? Michael Gerber. Yes. I heard a phenomenal analogy earlier this week. I was listening to a podcast, and they talked about the iceberg, and they said, Only the people that know you and are closest to, you know, what went on beneath the surface for all those years. Everybody else just sees the tip of the iceberg floating on top. And your story really highlights this. So true.

I mean, people just saw that announcement, the press release, and they're like, oh, wow, you know, that's so great.

What a lucky guy.

Yeah, exactly. So lucky. You know, don't see the blood, sweat, and tears. And I didn't even tell you 1% of the crazy things that went. Right. So it's like, where it was like, oh, my gosh, the business is about to die unless I can figure something out. So it's like, yes, yes, I'm with that 100%.

You know what I mean? I think whether you look at, you know, entrepreneur entrepreneurs like yourself that have built amazing businesses and gone on to have successful exits, athletes, you know, we look at these pro athletes and we think this. But the best pro athletes, you know, like Tiger woods, he started playing when he was, like, three years old, right? Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Yes. Yeah. And it's. It's just amazing. So, you know, I spent 18 years in my industry, you know, before, you know, my investments really, really started to pay off. And, you know, people. People say, well, what did you start investing in? Real estate, Chris? I said, well, before I started my medical device career, because they think, hey, I did this in a few years, which hopefully we can. Hopefully between our conversation today, we can help them shave years off that journey. So I think it was around 2015 that you founded the. The private investor club. Is that accurate? Was that around the time?

Yeah, it was right around then. So at 2013, I created that real estate crowdfunding review, which kind of led to the private club because it was like, hey, I'm interested in this. And I had done research on all these different sponsors, and people kept asking me for the information. The word got out, and I was like, oh, I got to send the hundredth person this email, my due diligence. Look, it's on a website. Just go, look on this website. I put it out there. And that became the real estate crowdfunding review. And now it gets, like, maybe 12,000, 15,000 investors coming every month. But, you know, it's a free thing. Yeah, I put it out there. It's just like, you know, enjoy it, you know, But I was like, I need more.

And we'll have this in the show notes, but it's the realestatecrowdfundingreview.com. yes. And you tell me if this is accurate. But I love. You're talking about open source coding. I think you've created like an open source investor network. Is that a good way to describe that is.

Yeah, yeah, that's basically it is. Because everything is transparent and it's shared. It's like, you know, I individually, you know, I don't know everything about a whole bunch of things. But when you have a whole bunch of people, like 5,000 people, there's people that are experts on everything. And with that collaboration you get that open source kind of investing experience that you're talking about.

Yeah. So you started the real estate Crowdfunding review in 2013.

2013.

That started to get traction. Then what was the next step in this whole. So.

But there were problems. So I was like, you know what? So it's like public Internet and a lot of times these sponsors don't want their information on the public Internet. So I can't really talk about a lot of things I want to talk about. And you know, and it's like, I need a private space. So it's like, let's let me create a private club where we can. First of all, people can bring good deals because it's always hard to find good deals and good sponsors, people can bring them in. Together we can do that. Open source, you know, collective due diligence where I don't know how to do, someone else hopefully does. And then together we can figure stuff out. And then sometimes we can bring together enough to a sponsor where it's more than I could bring individually for sure. And they're like, oh, hey, well, excuse me. So then they're like, well, we'll give you a discount or, you know, whatever, because this is a large chunk of money. So, you know, so those are the reasons created it. And you know, I thought, you know, but it can't be like a lot of these other investment clubs, it's like, you know, they charge money to get in, so now they've got a conflict of interest or they're charging money to refer people over to the sponsor. So that's a conflict of interest. I'm like, I don't want any of that. So no one's charged for anything. It's people come in, they are vetted because we have to make sure people aren't. Here's the other thing. We had people trying to sneak in to kind of do business their deals. Yeah, exactly.

They're planning.

Exactly. And pretend that they're investors. So we have to vet for that. So we don't allow that we don't charge people to come in, so. Yeah. And that just keeps everything very clean and there's no conflict of interest for the club itself. Yeah.

So what's in it for you then?

Well, a couple things. So first of all, one, I get access to all these. So I get access to the deals. I wouldn't normally, because now life is passive investing. Like, you know, so it's my livelihood. Right. So it's like I want my passive investing to be good. So it's like I get access to the deals and actually the due diligence. Again, I wouldn't invest in some of these deals without being able to kind of have other people to bounce ideas off of. The discounts are. But the other thing is my due diligence process is really severe. It's like I have a ton of questions I like to ask people. And most. A lot of. Like, some sponsors can get kind of upset with it because they're like, why are you asking about all those sort of things? Yeah, you would think not. But there are definitely some that are like, oh, is this person ever gonna buy? Because he keeps coming up with more questions, you know?

Yeah, it's like just a tire kicker, right? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I could see that. Or maybe. Maybe taking the opposite stance and saying, well, yeah, they're just trying to figure out what we're doing so they can structure something differently or.

Yeah. Are they like. Yeah, they for real? You know, there's always all these questions. It's like, so. But, you know, that's just. I'm a conservative investor and these are the things I need to get answered. So before the club, I would always have that kind of risk. That would be like, no, we're done. Sorry, I'm not answering any more questions.

But, yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, a lot of times I thought that was a good sign that, you know, I would just walk fine. But, you know, I do think occasionally it was just probably a misinterpretation of what was going on. And now with the club, that doesn't happen. They're like, well, we get rid of him now. We're getting rid of all these other people. Like, we'll take them seriously. And we've gotten actually many compliments, and they've said, you know, the due diligence the club has done is more than some of these institutional investors are doing. So, you know, so now it's a compliment and not an insult. So that's good.

No, I think it's fantastic. And, you know, I talk to investors and about once a month I get an investor who just runs me through the ringer. I get on our initial call and for 30 minutes they ask me questions and I usually compliment them at the end. Sometimes they're like, hey, I'm really sorry. And I say no, because I look at it. The more education that an investor does on the front end, the better that an investor understands a sponsor and a deal and a sector, the more confidence that that investor is going to have and the better it's going to be for both the sponsor or the operator as well as the investor in the long run.

I totally agree. And these sponsors that I have kind of done that too. Basically, once I understand them and I check off the box and go, yes, I become like their biggest fan. And I'm like telling everyone about, you got it out so and so, because. Yeah, because basically I really, really understand at that point and I do feel really confident. So. Yeah, that's great. And that's great that you take the time to do that.

Yeah. But no, it's amazing. And you're also, Ian, you've created the framework so that other investors can learn the process and the practice on how to do that and how to vet sponsors and deals, which I think is cool. I want to ask some of your predictions and some of your thoughts on what's going on today and the economy and what you and your club are focused on. But you also touched on something and it reminded me of Rich dad boredad, which most of my books are digital now, but I keep some special books. And Rich Dad, Poor dad is one of those. Right. And he talks about, and I wish I could flash it on the screen here, but the quadrants, right? He talks about the four quadrants. He talks about employee, self employed, business owner, and then the investor. And I pulled this up here, and if you look at the flow. So typically kind of the flow that rich dad Poor dad talks about is moving from employee to self employed to business owner, as you did, Ian. And then the ultimate is moving to that lower right quadrant, which is the investor quadrant. I mean, and your story is like straight out of respect.

It's kind of. Yeah, exactly. I'm like walking through this.

Yes.

Huh? Yeah, I agree with everything in there. And it is. Each step is better than the last. So it's like, it's been an interesting journey.

Yeah. So if you're listening today and you're not familiar with the quadrants that Rich Dad Poor dad talks about, check it out because that's exactly what Ian's talked About. So, Ian, you guys. You guys see a ton of deal flow. I've read through some of your blogs, you know, going back through the last two years and looking at your analysis during COVID which I really like, because I kind of. I caught. I caught a story coming out of China in late 2019 with coronavirus and SARS CoV2, and I was like, wow, there's something to this. What's going on. Financial markets. It really kind of got me. And I can. You can go back and listen to some of the podcasts I was on, because I said, hey, investors need to be very cautious here. As we stand today during this recording. It's May of 2022, and the stock market has had a terrible start to the year. Some of the markets have had their worst start to the year, worst month here in a couple decades. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from investors? And how is this affecting your investments and your thought for the rest of this year?

Sure, sure. First, I'll back up a second. Just say the club is so diverse. Yeah. That on any topic, there's always going to be a bunch of opinions on it. So, you know, I can't speak for the club. I can just say there's. And it also depends on someone's kind of risk tolerance. Like, you know, if someone sees things going bad, they can look at it two ways. They can say, oh, man, that stinks. I lost some money. Or they can look at it and say, oh, there could be an opportunity here to make some money. So. And all that's good. Everyone's coming out from their own place, you know, and what makes sense for them and their financial goals and their families. So the club is really big on not also not trying to say, hey, this is the way to invest, or, you know, like, what you should do. So it's like the answer for everyone is different now. So. But I will say this. So the club focuses on alternative investments. So we don't do any. We end up talking about the public market stuff anyway. But it's supposed to be, you know, mainly focused on that. So one of the advantages of the investments is a lot of times they're not directly correlated to the other investments. For example, I mean, as you know, real estate, it does have its cycles and it goes up and down, but not the stock market cycles, which are much more frequent up and downs and much more volatile. Basically, that part. So people can say, oh, well, our portfolio is looking pretty bad right now, but hey, at least my real estate is doing well. And Rental income is up and prices are up and these sort of things. So I'm seeing a lot of that where people are like, hey, I'm glad that I diversified because I didn't follow the traditional advice. Just put X amount in stocks and X in bonds, because I'd be totally freaking out right now. It's like I have more diversity. And when some things are working, some aren't, different parts of the engine can kind of kick in.

And that's the whole point, right? If you're overloaded in one sector, things can be great one day and they can be hard, horrible another day, you know, Whereas if you're diversified, you get, you get, you know, smoother, a smoother trajectory, but you don't have those highs and lows. But ultimately that, should I call it, it's called variance drag. You know, the less variable, the less volatile your portfolio is. Assuming everything else, you're going to do better over the long run.

Yes, yes, exactly. And so there's a lot of people that are. I think they're kind of taking this as an opportunity to remind themselves, you know, of that risk. Because it actually very easy to go, let's go all in on the stock market when it's like shooting up to the sky or I mean, let's go all in on Bitcoin or let's go all in on whatever. So it's like, I think for most people it's been a good reminder, hey, I need to be diversified. And so I gave the example of real estate. Eventually real estate will crash just like everything else. I'm not going to put 100% in real estate, but I want it in my portfolio. And there's a lot of different ways I can put real estate in my portfolio that can even diversify there because I can diversify by asset class. I can be reversed by multifamily. Is different than triple net lease and that's different than self storage. And they all have unique characteristics and can hold up in different types of recessions. And historically have done it personally. This is personally what I like to do. I like to diversify. We're in a situation now where stock market has done badly. We've got a weird thing which is this inflation that we haven't seen in decades, right? So it's like people don't know what to deal with it. And we know the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. And that's also kind of a weird thing because it's like we had a brief, we've had a couple of times, it's gone briefly up, but never where there was a danger of it going like way up to fight inflation. So yeah, so there's a lot of uncertainty right now and I'll say I will not. I'm very humble about a lot of this stuff. And it's like I feel to try to predict something what's going to happen a year from now is almost, I feel very, very difficult. I would say impossible. Right. I can't tell you inflation's going to be. Yeah, it's going to be an X percent in a year from now. I don't know. Basically what I do is I kind of plan. I'm like, well, I want to plan for if it's way up here and I want to plan for if it's down here and then that way I can sleep no matter what happens. So for example, real estate tends to keep up with inflation because one of the characteristics of inflation is rent and rent is driving real estate. If inflation is bad, but in that middle age hyperinflation, real estate's probably going to do pretty good. I have real estate in my portfolio, but you know what, I have things like this is an awesome thing if people aren't already aware of it. But you can go to TreasuryDirect and you can invest 10% thousand bucks. The maximum you could do to get these inflation bonds. They limit you to just $10,000.

Are these tips?

Tips, exactly.

So Ian, you were just mentioning how you like inflation protected treasuries or options right now.

Yeah, I mean, so you're only limited to 10,000 like I said. But I want to say it was something like 7 or 8% that a person is getting and there's an income component and an inflation component. And right now the inflation component is huge. So. And it's backed by the US government. So when you talk about risk, you know, you've got like default by the US government is like one of the lowest possible risks you can take. So it's, it's really great risk versus reward, I think. And you know, like I said, only $10,000. But for example, if you have a business, you can open up, you can do $10,000 for your business and you can get $10,000 usually personally. And there's actually ways to open up multiple accounts.

Yeah, listen, I remember when they first came out with tips and I was in college and I was like, well this is interesting. And I had a percentage allocation for a long time in my portfolio for that. And then basically inflation went away. So I was like this doesn't really make much sense anymore.

Yes.

No. It's funny enough, I literally just had a conversation with an investor yesterday who said, well, hey, what are some other options out there for income? And he's in Europe. And I said, well, have you know what tips are? And he goes, yeah, we don't have those here.

Oh, too bad.

Yeah, yeah, we got.

It's like a free giveaway, really. It's awesome.

Yeah. So. And I think, look, this is. You know, when you talk about. One of the big things I talk about is liquidity, drag, you know, so normally it's like, okay, it's more of an opportunity cost when you have money sitting in your bank account. Right. But listen, this can be money in your bank account, your checking or savings or business account. It could also be equity in homes that you have. And I think right now, not only do you have that opportunity cost, but I was talking to a friend and he's like, yeah, I just haven't decided. He spent a year with a half a million dollars in the bank. I said, man, inflation is just munching away at that.

Eating it up. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So the other thing I should say, people shouldn't feel pressured. I also think people can also feel the opposite. They feel pressured, oh, I got to make a move. I got to do something, and they'll just jump into to the first thing. And I think that's also a mistake. It's like what I do is I just.

My time.

I think of it like a bus. You know, it's like I might miss the current bus because maybe it takes off, but there's going to be another bus, and usually it's going to the exact same destination. It may not be the exact same one, but it'll probably get me there.

Yeah. And I think. I forget if it was. It might have been Robert Kiyosaki again, but the saying is, the opportunity of a lifetime comes along every single day.

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly it. I didn't. I love that. That sounds great. I hadn't heard that before. That's awesome.

Yeah. But I love that saying. And, you know, the point. To your point, Ian, like, it's like, my point to. To my friend was inaction, is he's like. He's like, I. He's like, I need to figure out, like, what to do. I said, well, not doing something is doing something, too, but you have to be comfortable in your choice. And, you know, I think that's what. Look, you have built a tremendous community. You know, we've only touched on, you know, such a small piece I feel today. Ian, if, if the audience wants to get in touch, if they want to learn more about what you're doing, how they can participate, we're going to have these in the show notes. But what are the best ways to get in touch with you?

So the best way is through www.the excuse me, www.privateinvestorclub.com and the other site that I mentioned too, people might want to check out. Is therealestatecrowdfundingreview.com I'm usually@privateinvestorclub.com, that's where I spend most of the time.

Yeah, no, it's fantastic. Again, I encourage everybody to check out the resources that Ian talks about again, like I call it open source investing. Pool your knowledge, pull your resources, figure out what other people are doing, what people that have been successful like Ian are doing to create passive income that has allowed them to live their best lives. Give back to other people. Spend time with your wonderful eight year old son. And Ian, I appreciate you spending some of that time with us today and sharing your story with the audience.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. Chris, thanks so much for having me.

Thank you. Hey Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.