Tribevest: The Power of Investing With a “Tribe” - Travis Smith – Episode 107

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 on today's show, we have Travis Smith. Travis is the founder and CEO of Tribe Vest, a platform that makes it easy to invest as a group and do deals together in as little as 48 hours. He started his career with Morgan Stanley, but realized that the most direct path to wealth and financial freedom was not as an individual. The path is as a group, as a tribe. And Travis is obsessed with building a platform that standardizes, streamlines and ultimately de risks group investing. He won't stop until every single deal on and off the Internet is an opportunity for a multiplayer experience. And we're going to dive into that today.

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, 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.

Travis, welcome to the show.

Chris, really glad to be here. And let's try this again.

I know, I know the listeners don't know but this is take two because you have a great story. Last time we spoke you were. You were camped out at. In a beautiful location on the beach.

Yeah, that's right. You know you'll probably a little bit more of that origin story but yeah, my brothers and I have group invested and one of our pride assets is a little cottage in Cape Cod and that's where I was trying to do the interview with you but uh, the, the wi fi moatness had had another thing to. To say about that.

You know there's.

This should work now that I'm in my offices in Columbus, Ohio.

I'm sorry to have to drag you back just to. Just to get, just to get a good podcast but. No, there is man. There's something to be said. You know, I love being here in Asheville but you know Some of the best vacations I've had are those that you're remote and you don't even have access to cell service or, you know, definitely not WI fi.

No doubt. A little bit of shame on me, you know, trying to do a little bit of business there, but founder, CEO of a startup, fast growing startup, it's, it's hard to separate, you know, work from, from fun and pleasure, but sometimes welcomed that you don't necessarily get that reception and that.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, I got to tell you, I'm really excited to talk to you because I've, I was hearing about Tribe Vest and you know, this concept of your tribe and you kind of, it's almost kind of, kind of cliche right now. You hear this tribe mentality thrown around. You hear it, you know, with, with masterminds and different things like that. And you know, we have, we have the next level coaching program and we also have, you know, the next level investment side of the program. So when I heard Tribe Vest, I was like, man, this is really cool. This is like combining two of my big passions. One, the concept of bringing together people to improve your performance in an area, and also the concept of investing. So, Travis, I'd love for you to share with the audience how you went from Morgan Stanley, which is like the, it's like as conventional as you can be in the investment world, to this now, you know, concept that is, in my mind, you know, a really novel, amazing concept.

Yeah, Chris, you know, you're right. What we gain from our group, from our tribe, from a mastermind, from our community, is just indisputable and the advantages that come with it. It's that old adage, you know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And more than ever, we're just seeing that these communities, these masterminds, and big hope by people like you, Chris, that are offering these masterminds and podcasts and resources. And if you go back to the origins of Tribest 13, 14 years ago, you know, there was less of that online. Like, it doesn't sound that long ago. I guess I'm kind of dating myself. But like, so much has changed since then and we didn't have, didn't have those available online communities or even many offline meetup communities. And my brothers and I had each other and none of us were masterminds at investing. In fact, that was kind of what we acknowledged was, hey, we didn't grow up investing in real estate. We certainly didn't learn it in school. So how do we do that? All we knew was, you know, the W2 and investing in our 401k was never going to be enough. In fact, that was right. It was right during the Great Recession and that was just hitting us right over the head that nope, what society has promised you is not going to work. And you never be able to get find that financial freedom by doing what you are supposed to do.

Yeah, and it is one of those things. I was just actually with my coaching group, we were talking about this last week, which is this concept of retiring. If we look at the baby boomers, their average life expectancy was less than 80 when they were born. So you know, the concept of retiring at 65 and having a million dollars in the bank and that was like a big thing. Like, yeah, millionaire, right? Like when I was a kid, you know, we were kids, it's like that was a lot of money. We thought, right, well, you know, if, if you now today move forward and you know, a lot of people think like, hey, I'm going to live to 100 or even further than that, well, do you even want to retire? You know, if, you know, it's like if you, with the way technology is and now we know that retirement is linked to early death or you know, you're really to those sorts of things. So there's a lot of negativity around the concept of retirement in my mind. But you hit it like the promises and kind of the assumptions that this was built on don't really work as well in today's world.

And it really is a mindset. You mentioned my time at Morgan Stanley and I got into that industry to build wealth. It was my interest, my drive to find financial freedom. And then how cool would it be to help others, you know, reach that financial freedom too? But I realized I was in the wrong profession, you know, I was working for the wrong industry, if that's what I wanted to do. And it's, it's because of what you mentioned. They're so focused on a number, right? On a transaction and how much you have in the bank. And, and what I realized is the more I just focus on financial freedom, the more wealth I continue to accumulate. It has nothing to do with the number. It's just I'm out there seeking financial freedom. And as a result, I keep building wealth. I keep investing in assets that are cash flowing and you know, appreciating and come with different tax benefits and everything else. But it's all in the search of becoming less dependent on my W2 or my 401k or whatever it is, which we, you know, which we love here. You know, just really what was invented unknowingly kind of as, you know, to solve a problem, all the problem. We wanted to invest in private assets. Everybody we knew we had the good job. Right. We had the great education. But again, we just, we knew it was never going to be enough. We had aspirations of vacationing together, you know, making sure our kids were going to get to know each other. My brothers and I, that is, and living.

How many brothers do you have?

So I have three other brothers. And so the four of us formed the origin investor tribe, if you will. Of course, we weren't the first to do investor tribes. The wealthy have been in group investing forever, but they have country club networks and advisors at the ready. So you take kind of an average guys, guys and investors and you say, hey, let's set up an investor group. And it's like, man, do we need an LLC operating agreement? Do we need an attorney? What, what type of, where do we go to get all these things? And setting up a business bank account and how easy is it to pull capital together and then track all that? Right. And so it was almost a non starter, but we're pretty persistent and thank goodness, because it changed our life. We look back at what we've been able to do in terms of pulling capital and investing in things that we wouldn't have or couldn't have on our own. And we've realized that we've unlocked a future that none of us could have achieved on our own. But together we're in a completely different place. You know, thank God for, you know, where we are and, and for our family.

Absolutely. And that, that abundance mentality you talk about, Travis, is really, I mean, it really is. I think the single most important thing that people can do, you know, to make, to make their lives better is, you know, think, okay, how can I, how can I share, you know, ideas with other people and bring other people in to do that? So tell me about, so you're, you're, you're either you're sitting around with your brothers, you're at Morgan Stanley, you know, do you remember the moment where you're like, hey, this isn't working. We need to do something different because you mentioned that you said, hey, these vehicles, these assets that we have access to aren't going to do it.

Yeah, pretty vividly really. So first, really the first look at group investing. And one of my most cherished memories growing up was my dad bought a little cottage in Nantucket. So you see our attraction part of the world, right? Just a little cottage. In the 80s, with his two sisters, my aunts. And this little cottage became the place where all of our families, all the aunts and uncles and cousins would ascend. And we grew up going there two weeks out of the summer every year. It's where cousins, you know, became brothers and sisters. You know, just that this really tight knit family. And then we got older, we all went off, you know, grew up. And meanwhile our parents were selling it. And it hit me when here was this house that meant so much to us, I wasn't in a position to buy it and my brothers weren't in a position to buy it either. We're like, wait a minute, I thought we were doing okay, but we don't even have enough capital to buy a family home that should be in our family. And that was like a big wait, you're not doing that well if you can't do this. And then of course I read Rich dad, poor dad, right? Light bulbs start turning on. We're going through the Great Recession. My uncles, my uncle, who's, who's I always admired with all the company, awesome companies who work for you, IBM and HP. Wow.

Yeah.

And then at the age of 50ish, found himself out of a job and unemployable, right? And I'm like, whoa, what's going on? So all these things happening at once. And then my dad, who kind of threatened us with hey guys, I really want to go fishing trip with my sons and this might be my last trip. But he's, he's fine and doing, he's live and well today. But you know, this was kind of like, dad, how can we do this? We're all busy, you know, we can't afford to do this. And he wanted to do something big and go down to Patagonia, Chile on this fishing trip. And so we all did it. We said, let's go. That's what our family does. We show up. And on the way down, my brother Kevin was reading this article about Jerry Buss. So originally from la, you know, grew up big Showtime fans in NBA. And Jerry Buss is the legendary owner of the LA Lakers. In this article, it talks about how he was a professor. He loved to, he loved his job, but he couldn't afford to be a professor. Like that's what he wanted to do, but he couldn't make enough to do it. And so him and five of his other buddies each put in, you Know, a little bit each month actually was like $150 a month, which just coincidentally was the same as $500 a month at that time, which is what we ended up putting in. But him and his buddies put this in and to buy a building in West Hollywood, in West la and rest his history, of course, he builds this incredible real estate empire, buys the Lakers, becomes a six time world time champion or whatever it was. And reading this, we're like, wait, that's how he did it. You know, that's how he did it. So that I really just gave you the whole there and how it came. And then on this fishing trip, of course, you know, you're outside, you're dreaming, you're thinking big. And we finally just committed to it. Say, listen, let's stop talking about deals we can't afford and let's pull our capital together and do together and find confidence and safety in numbers, right? Spread the risk, stack the capital and get into deals that maybe we wouldn't or couldn't on our own. And now it's not about getting on in deals on our own. It's now about doing more deals faster and not say no to good deals.

Yeah, so I love that. I mean, it's just, you know, the story of being, you know, on this, on this trip and there's something to be said for getting out of your element and being out in nature and your brain. It's almost like we connect not only with a different part of ourselves, but almost like a different energy within the universe, I think. And, um, I don't, you know, people might roll their eyes when they hear me say that, but, you know, there's something, there's something almost magical that happens when, you know, you're able to travel and, you know, especially to a special place like that.

Chris, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. It's probably a little bit why you're drawn to where you are today.

I'm sure we love Asheville and there's, yeah, a lot of people say, say there's something mystical about this place, you know, but I want to. So I love the concept, I love the story. Let's talk about how you went from there to the actual platform itself. Travis of Tribe Vest.

Yeah, so we started to pull our capital, believe it or not, just $500 each a month. And we hit the $25,000 mark and invested in a real estate syndicate, a physician's office in Pasadena. And it was a great deal, was our first deal, and we just kept going, just Kept going and really a lot of our motivation was to learn about different types of investments. So along the way we've been investing in everything from all sorts of active real estate deals to rentals, short term rentals, flips, a lot of investing. We started in passive investing and kind of landed back at passive investing today. As we were talked about before, one of our big things is acquiring rental properties. And of course the short term rental technology that's out there has really given us a cool platform, cash flowing platform, which we love. But we've also invested in crypto and startups and a racehorse.

Oh wow.

All these things we wanted to learn. How do you get these things and that. And, and that's the real wealth. Like we couldn't be where we are without actually the, the dollars.

Right.

You know, the real loans. You can take that all away from us and we could go do this again. Right? Like that's right. The real freedom that we have. And so along the way people started to notice especially when we're like, you know, owning high stakes earnings horse racehorses and they're like any ones we would know of, you know, none that kind of made it into that culture. But a horse named Smaverlis was one of the top earning race horse racehorses in, in the country one year that and we owned.

Oh wow. And that's cool.

Never made it to any of those kind of those big marquee races but you know, had had a heck of a ride.

Yeah. Well there was the, there was the recent movie right. About the same thing. A syndicate buying, buying a racehorse and they each put in just like you guys did. I love it.

You know, hey, for your audience is they know that that's not really an investment. It's, it's kind of a bet. But it did it fit. Our mission. Our mission was to come together and you know, investing as a tribe has been is the best, most fun thing we do. It brings us together. So it kind of fit. It was like we had this unique opportunity. We had just kind of exited a nice real estate deal and we said yeah, let's. And it was just an incredible lightning in the bottle kind of experience.

That's cool. That's cool.

So anyway, people started to notice and we're at the time, you know, we're sitting in the owner's box at these races and, and we're thinking how the hell did a group of guys like us get here? And it really was kind of this acknowledgement of the power of the group and how we were able to do this. People started to notice. They said, wait a minute, I have people I like and trust. Can you help us form an investor group too? And along the way, kind of since early on at Morgan Stanley, I say I was saved by fintech in software, so made a change over to fintech and working for different software companies and was in that space. So kind of in parallel to my personal journey, wealth journey with my tribe and then along my professional journey being in fintech and working in technology, it kind of occurred to me that, yeah, this is a game changing, life changing tool and it needed to be streamlined and all those things. So that's when we set out to build the platform we wished we had. Because to be honest, it was hard. Like we didn't do it right and we were doing it with spreadsheets and everything else. And now with Tribest, we've made it easy, you made it safe. We've made it transparent for you to operate as a group and managing all your records. You can, Chris, you can to try best and file your multi membered llc, open up a FDIC insured business bank account and be pulling capital with your tribe ready to transact in less than two days. So that's how much we've streamed in this. And back in the day it took us two months to do that. Early on in Tribest, it took us three, four weeks, which was lightning fast. And now to be able to do that in two days is just, it's a game changer because now you can find deals, come together with your tribe and get it all done at once.

That's awesome. So how does it work? So if I'm an investor, I go in and how do I, how do I find my tribe? Travis, I have to bring my tribe with me or.

Yeah, you know, so right now it is, it's bring your own tribe.

Yeah.

And it's funny, a ton of communities out there are the source of these tribes. So, you know, as, you know these real estate syndications, they have thresholds, right? Some of them are 25,000, but you know, a lot, lot of them are 50, 100,000, 250,000. And I don't care who you are like writing those checks, they're, you know, they're big checks to write. And so, you know, a lot of these communities are, you know, talking about deals, bringing deals and they're like, I want in on this deal. And they're like, are you all in or do you want to form a tribe? Maybe we can each put in 10 grand instead of 50. Grand. And so that's where a lot of tribes are coming from. And then of course, friends and family. Right. Like my brothers and I, colleagues from school, colleagues from high school, college. A lot of doctor groups are out there investing together, the safety in numbers. So, you know, you find your tribe, you know where you're aligned and you have kind of, you're in this kind of a similar position. And that's why those communities are such a great source of tribes, because anybody that's in, say, your mastermind, they're at a similar point in life or looking at things differently. They're looking to grow and therefore make a great tribe to do a deal or two or three or five other.

Yeah, no, that's. I think it's great. And also, you know, one of the big questions I get from investors a lot of time is like, how do I know this is the right investment? You know, what about this investment? What about that investment? And being able, like you said, to do due diligence together and learn together and then ultimately invest together. There's a lot of confidence in that. There's a lot of value in that too. From just a, just a social component, right?

Yeah. You know, it's. You never want to be, you know, what, what, what holds us back is fear. Right. And when you're alone and you're making a decision, even if you've done the proper due diligence and everything else, and maybe, you know, maybe it's just me, but I'm sure there's a lot of people like me and you're writing that check or you're making that decision. It's hard, right? And so imagine that with four other people that you know like and trust, you're all looking at the same deal and all your heads are not up, like nodding up and down saying, this is a good deal, like, let's do it. To be able to write that check or wire that money into the tribe with a tribe that's doing it together just brings this confidence and just ensures that, you know, you know, you are being smart. It's that peace of mind.

Yeah, no, I love that. So what you've talked about real estate, you've talked about, you know, racehorses, you know, what are some other things that you can invest in through Tribest? Is it, is it like a self directed IRA or the limitations, like what are your options as an investor?

Yeah, so we're deal agnostic. Right. Which is an important thing for why we partner with so many, you know, we're just a good partner. Out there we're a neutral third party. We don't make money on a transaction or the deal or by recommending deals. It's a simple SaaS model, right? $29 a month, you know, if just annually. And it's a great business model because we're on a direct line to, you know, a million tribes. Right. Like that, that's like we've got a while to go there. But when we do that, this is a really exciting business. And so anyway, to answer your question, we're deal agnostic and you have a, you're just, you've brought your tribe together, you formed a multi membered llc. So as one entity you can go out and transact with any deal source on and off the Internet. Right. So you can wire fully, full service bank to wire, write checks, bill, pay whatever it is, link, you know, link the bank account.

Ach.

So, you know, really people are doing all sorts of deals across the board. In real estate. A lot of angel investor groups are coming together to invest in startups. In fact, a lot of tribe vest funding has come from people forming investor tribe groups. A little bit of a sneak peek, you know, we're actually doing a crowdfunding round here in the near future. So a lot of tribes will come together and invest together or just invest individually in tribest. Of course, it's directly aligned with our mission of helping people find ownership, build equity and alternative and private assets. So yeah, I mean anything you could imagine, people are investing in collectibles. Art is a big one, collectibles and cars and you know, recreation, RVs, boats. So it's really, you know, whatever our tribes are passionate about is what they're investing in, which is so cool.

That is cool. So let me a quick question. So I had somebody say, hey, you know, we want to buy this, want to buy this house. It's very similar story to the place, let's say it's a family, you know, that wants to get together and say, hey, you know, can you just get some family members? Can you get anybody together and buy, you know, buy a piece of property, that sort of thing as well.

Absolutely.

Terrific.

Happens all the time. Yeah, just, you know, whatever it is and you know, it's also, you know, bringing attention to where the best deals are. Right. The best deals are, you know, with the sponsors who've gotten to know and you know, you, you trust them. Right. So there's this familiarity with it and that's more like on the past, inside, on the active invested side. The best deals aren't the ones you find on the Internet. Right. They're. They're the ones that are around the corner. They're the ones that are like the ones you're the most familiar with. You have maybe some insights on what else is going around in the community. So to come together and purchase property, a building, a home, a rental, a flip, whatever it is, is powerful.

I love that. I love the flexibility. And I know a lot of listeners are listening saying, like, okay, I want to learn more. Travis, I know you have a special offer that we're going to have a link to for listeners in the show notes here. What is the best way for listeners to learn more about Tribe Vest if they want to figure out how to bring their tribe in and inform their own tribe to invest and move forward, what's the best way to do that?

Absolutely. So we've got a special link page for your audience, but you know, it's Tribevest.com and again, we'll have a special link for your audience. If they sign up through that landing page, we'll give them $100 deposit in their business bank account, which covers about four or five months of the tribest fee. So anyway, yeah, that's a special offer. And, and that's, you know, a great way to find out more about us is on our website. And then by building a tribe so you can come in, you can actually, you know, build a plan before you purchase. You can share that plan with people so you can say, hey, here's the type of deal that we're looking at. Share it out and get the buy in and then come in and actually go through the process of forming an LLC and starting to pull capital and using the utility.

Yeah, I love it. Travis, this has been a great conversation. I love what you've done. I love your story, obviously, and I look forward to continuing the conversation here. Thank you so much for sharing everything with the audience today.

Chris. Keep up the good work. Love what you're doing as well and just so, so pleased to be on this interview with you for having me.

It's our pleasure. Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to give to 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.