Catherine Bell: Titan Investor Advocating for Foster Children || Ginny Bolling

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Hi there. I am Ginny Bowling with Pivotal Real Estate Investments, and I will be interviewing Katherine Bell today. And just to give you a little background, Katherine is the CEO and management director of Titan Impact Fund Group. I said fund Titan Impact Group. And she has done so very many things. Oh, my gosh, Illustrious background. She's had a hedge fund. She's been owner of a bank and, and an investment bank, and buy and hold investor, Airbnb investor, fix and flip investor, builder, developer, mobile home park investor, private money lender, and many, many other things. So tell me what I missed. Please, please fill in the rest of it.

Well, at the end of the day. So, first of all, thank you for having me here. I love what you're up to, making a positive difference for investors and communities. I love that. It's that whole, like birds of a feather flock together, you know, it's. I shared with you, my vision and mission is that we leave every person, property and community better than we found them. Right. And what a brilliant way to make a difference for investors and communities and lead people better than we found them through real estate. Right. Like, I absolutely love that. So thank you. I love what you're doing and obviously have absolutely loved all of our conversations. So what have I. So, yes, I've done a myriad of investing in all sorts of areas. And at the end of the day, what it boils down to is that I gave myself permission to try lots of different things, Right. And inside of trying lots of different things, at the end of each one, I go through an exercise of what didn't work, what did work, what did I learn, what could I do differently? And so when you do that with relationships or with business or investments, you start getting really, really clear what it is about it that you learned and that you can take forward and do better differently next time. Right. And so that's what sort of led me down the path. Like, I started buying holds, discovered I don't like tenants and toilets. Through a series of events, you know, we had a different company, discovered I don't like employ, I don't like having employees. It was like running an adult daycare. Not interested. So again, learning all these beautiful lessons and taking them forward. So then ended up in Arizona and we had the flipping females program where I really had a heart to teach other women how to invest in properties and stuff. And so we, we flipped about 500 houses with women because how fun is that? I mean, who doesn't love watching HGTV the before and after? And there were things that I loved about that. And, and the biggest thing is that making sure that the numbers work right. So the markets are cyclical. So you understand there's up markets, there's down markets, and there's ways of making money in up markets or down markets. So when you understand that, you understand to build your business model so that you're always in front of that curve and that wave moving forward, like fix and flip doesn't work in every single market. So if you understand that you, you do that in the market that it actually works. And then there's other things that work in different markets. So I went on from there and had a hedge fund. We did vacation rentals, which at the time my husband absolutely loved, like hosting and being hospitable and stuff. That's not my genius. And then after he passed away unexpectedly, I just had to take pause and look at, like, what I liked and what I didn't like. Turns out I don't like gas and toilets either, so. So shut that whole thing down and, you know, what do I love? So we've got residential developments, we've got commercial developments, and mobile home parks. So at the end of the day, I love being the bank and I love renting dirt. That's what it comes down to. That's my personality. I am a numbers nerd. I love spreadsheets. And so for me, looking at my value of time to money, right? So look at is like, if I'm spending this much time to make this much money, is it really worth it if I spend, you know, this much time to make this much money and it's the same amount of time, well, it makes more sense to do that. So what I tell my team all the time is do the numbers, and the numbers will tell you what to do. So for me, it's like if and after my husband died, like, I just got really clear One life is really short. So if I'm going, going to spend my time on something, it absolutely needs to bring value to the world and obviously to me and my kiddos. And so that's, that's what I focus on. And so you know, with the mobile home parks, again, renting Dirt, which is totally fun. Sounds weird, but it's totally fun because I love adding commas to all of our investors bank accounts. Right. There's just something you're known for. Really great. Like you know, again, what I'm known for is adding commas to bank accounts and collapsing timelines. Right. And so you collapse timelines by having really good teams of people and systems and structures that are able to expedite and get things done efficiently and effectively. Right. Then on the other side, because of that, the time, money, value, now there's more commas to add to everybody's bank accounts. Right. And it's just fun. Like it's just, you know, I love playing Monopoly as a kid or playing cash flow. Like it's just fun. So that's, that's how I love being, you know. And the other part is, this is the other part is when you played Monopoly, there's all the different pieces you can play, right. So I always ask people like when you played Monopoly. So Ginny, when you played Monopoly, which piece was your favorite piece to play? Which part did you like to play?

I like the hat.

Okay. I love being the bank because at the end of the day the bank always won the bag, never lost.

Right.

And that's how it is today, like still being the bank, you know, through investing in notes or you know, all these other investments, these medical offices. Like it's the ability to do that, make a difference, make enough to obviously add commas to investors bank accounts, everybody else. Like it just, I, it's, I know, it's just fun, right?

Goes back to the collateral is there. Right. And that's one of the biggest points I try to make, explaining to people how it works. Investing, it's not like the stock market where it can disappear totally. These are hard assets. This is mother Earth.

Yes. Well, and okay, so that's brilliant. So people like, why do you like being the bank? Because here's what you have to understand at the end of the day, if something goes wrong with the property, if you're the contractor, subcontractor, realtor, title company, buyer, seller, all of that, like they all have a ton to lose. But the bank, if something goes wrong, always gets the asset. You can sell it, get all Your money back. Right, right. That's why I like being the bank than anybody else. It's the most secure position to be in any real estate transaction. So for me, obviously, you know, having my world rocked in multiple areas with my husband dying, you know, my childhood, like, I like to be secure. So it all came down to the numbers. You know, do the numbers, numbers tell you what to do? So being secure and the numbers and that was the other part. It's like, why do I love mobile home parks? Why do you love multifamily? It's because your time, money value, right? When we look at, you know, the amount of time and energy it goes into buying a single family home. Right. Versus the amount of time it goes into either buying a mobile home park or a multifamily. Like whatever it is, at the end of the day, you buy a single family home, you've got one door, which means one rent. You have a mobile home park, you have hundreds of rents, you have a multifamily, hundreds of doors paying you every single month. So now again, it's lessening the risk. Right? Because if that, if the single family home with that one person doesn't pay rent, oh my gosh, you're on the hook. When you have a multifamily or a mobile home park, you have one or two people that don't pay rent, but everybody else is, there's still a serious cushion there to keep moving forward. Right? So again, time value, money. So. And it's scalable, going with the mobile home parks, the multifamily, whatever it is, is scalable. And you talked about the people, people investing in the stock market. So I just need to go off on a tangent right now. So here's what people don't understand is that when they are creating their retirement accounts, and this makes me mad that this whole country has been brainwashed into believing that we're not smart enough and that we need to turn our money over to some retirement management company that's managing our 401k or our IRA or whatever. I'm sorry, that is a bunch of bull. And here's the deal. It doesn't take that much education to understand there is something called a self directed ira. And you can go to my website, get the free book, download it, get yourself educated. Seriously, it's not that hard to understand. And I give you the contact information for the company that does it for my investors. Like, they'll take care of you. I don't get anything from this. But here's the thing. I want you to understand is that when you, when people are turning their retirement accounts and having somebody else manage those retirement accounts, there are all sorts of fees and ridiculous charges are coming out of there that are never disclosed. They are never disclosed. I promise you. They bury them so far down in the paperwork because they don't actually want you to know. Because here's the reality. You can take your 401k, your retirement account, you can put it into a self directed account. Now you are the one that now tells your money where to go, not somebody else. And here's why I'm so passionate about this. So I invest in notes. So work with Wall street, major hedge funds, major banks. We buy non performing notes which are, you know, mortgages of people haven't been paying. Right. So and we work with the families to be able to get them back on track, to be able to keep those families in those homes. Now non performing means they haven't been paying them, mean it's bad debt, right? So what happens is these banks legally have to get these off of their books so that they can lend out more money because that's how they make money. So it's a win win there. Now here's what we've been watching over the whole Covid thing. So I'm pulling back the screen this the curtains on Wall Street. So over Covid, so it turns out that while there was a toilet paper shortage, there was also a note shortage. So because of the forbearance, everything got shut down, the courts got shut down, everything got shut down. So normally this trading experience that happens on Wall street, which is the buying and selling of these mortgages, these notes that normally happens when you buy a non performing note, you'll get it on pennies on the dollar. Normally. Right. When Covid happened, these, these funds that were managing people's retirement accounts were taking people's retirement money to put it into investments, which is what they're supposed to do. But what they did was they took these people's hard earned money and they were buying these non performing notes is bad debt. For 125 cents on the dollar, they were losing people's retirement accounts at 25% right out of the gate.

Wow.

And one, it's legal because here's the deal that people don't know about, and this makes me so mad, is that these funds that are managing people's retirement accounts, you ask how are they being bonused? They are being bonused on the number of transactions that happen in the fund, not the profitability.

Wow.

So let me say that again. These funds that are managing people's retirement accounts are like pirates and they're literally stealing money out of people's accounts because they are getting their bonuses based on buying all of these bad debts. Because Yeah, I bought 200 of them and woohoo, I get my bonus for buying 200 things. But what they're not telling you is they literally just lost 25% of the value of people's retirement accounts. So people are wondering why their retirement accounts are dwindling and why the stock market's doing what's doing. This is, this is what's happening behind the scenes. And yes, it's legal. Should it be legal? No, it's not. It's an unfair game. So again, financial literacy is the unfair advantage. So get yourself educated on getting your money into a retirement account that you are 100% in control of. Because now, now here's the deal. You can now invest with Ginny. People like myself, there's lots of different companies out there that literally pay you because of the profitability of the transaction or the entire portfolio. We are only paid because it's profitable. We don't make money if you don't make money.

Right?

So that's how Wall street should be working, but it doesn't and people are not aware of that. So again, from my, the last couple of years of literally witnessing this from behind the curtain, I mean, this made me sick to my stomach, which is why I wrote that book. So it's a free book. Go to my website, titanimpactgroup.com, download it. It'll literally walk you through the steps of how to legally take your money out of these accounts that are being pillaged, put them into a safe little account that you are now in control of. And now you have some financial education and continue to get yourself educated and learn from people like Ginny that literally teach you how to analyze deals with put your money into these deals like multifamily, like mobile home parks. Because again now the risk has now been leveled out and now that's how you know you're actually going to be making money. Right, Versus it being a crapshoot. Kind of like going to the carnival with having these other companies actually manage your money that are not held accountable to the investments actually being profitable. Where companies like ours are and are committed to that. Okay, that's my soapbox.

Well, that's terrific because that is not known enough by people. And I do have, yes, a discussion on the YouTube channel I'm launching about that. I do have a solo 401k account, so. And I have checkbook control, but I still do have some money I need to get out of the, out of the market. So, you know, you can't do it all at once. You do the dollar cost averaging and all. But thank you. That, that's terrific. I think that that's so important for people to hear from many people to help validate the fact that, you know, and there's different places you can put it as well where you don't have to wait for that particular investment opportunity. There's ways to hold it so that it's still making money while you're looking for that bigger investment opportunity as well.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes. And so, but let me go back because we're running out of time. I do want to also have you talk a little. How did you ever get involved with the hedge fund?

So 20 some odd years ago, when I had my very first real estate investing mentor, he said to me, like, he, he said, listen, there's multiple roles you can play in any real estate investing transaction. Can be the buyer, the seller, you can contractor, subcontractor, realtor, title company, bank, like all these roles. And then he asked the question, which one is the most secure? Which role?

The bank. The bank.

So I said, oh, well, how do you be the bank? And he's like, well, you start a hedge fund. And I was like, how do you do that? And so I went and got myself educated. I went and got myself educated and learned how to form a hedge fund. And so that's what I did. It just comes down to financial education.

And I never even thought about doing it. I, I really. Yeah, yeah, I, I pride you on that. That's another, you know, you're, you're paving the way for especially women. I think it's really great for women to be able to see other women brave enough to forge that trail and.

Right.

Yeah, you're awesome at that.

Well, and here's the thing that I want to remind women after, like, well, it's just a mom. I was just a wife. Are you kidding me? You're the most incredible CEO there ever was. Because think about it, think about the amount of things you have had to manage and keep on track this entire time to keep this business called your home moving forward. Right. Think about the, the progress that you've had to have with your kids, with your spouse, with yourself. Like, there's all these promotions happening, all this training going on. I mean, that's what it is to Run a company, right? And the chaos and serious lack of respect that comes from teenagers and all that, you can get through that, honey. Running a company is a breeze. Got the skills, right? So we call it sra. Same rules apply. So by you, you know, doing all the things at home, raising your kids, all the sports, all the PTAs, all this volunteering, like everything that it took for all their activities and you know, to make it all happen, even if you were a working mom, which, oh my gosh, like even a bigger. If you were able to successfully navigate through that, the same rules apply. You have got these skills and the muscle to be able to now flip it over to investing. So it's like when you look at it that way, you do have the skills, you do have the muscle. Now it's just a matter of a little bit of education. Like, I absolutely love to read. There is an endless world out there. Be through, you know, physical books or audiobooks or, you know, whatever it is that has people be able to get themselves self educated, which is what I did, and learn how to do this and then put the team around you. You know, Jenny, one of our favorite books is, well, I don't have it. I must have lent it out. It's the who not how.

Right?

So for all of you, like, read that book who not how and then make sure that you're like, continuing to develop. Like I love, like the whole Rich Dad, Poor dad series. He did a great job of breaking it down into layman's terms to be able to understand a lot of these concepts and these very complicated terms that, that they don't want you to understand when it's all like, it's actually not that complicated when you break it down into, you know, everyday language. And so doing that will be the greatest gift you can give to yourself because again, you know, it's like, you know, being a millionaire by the time I was 30, losing my husband, losing it all, like, you know, it's like. But what they, you know, what couldn't be lost was what was going on here because of all this knowledge, wisdom, and all these relationships I built, building it back better, more efficient, stronger and way more profitable. And everybody can do that. Everybody can learn, everybody can build relationships, everybody can build an empire that lights them up and that they love and that makes a difference. Right, Exactly.

And I was going to get you to talk just a little bit more about how much that's empowered you to do good in the world.

So this is my why. So I was born to a 14 year old mother and she was, I'm sorry, she was 14 when she was pregnant with me, 15 when she had me. And the birth, the sperm donor was 25. So that's a whole other story. I was in and out of multiple homes as a kid. My younger brothers and I went to 13 different schools and didn't learn till I was learned to read till I was in the eighth grade. And so that brings a whole other, like coping and learning how to move forward with that. My brothers, I eventually got them adopted by their birth fathers and I was eventually adopted when I was 16. Changed my life forever. It literally changed the course of my life because at the time I was living in a home with drug dealers and being made to go out to nightclubs every night at 16 years old. That's a whole other story. So having a safe family where I was loved changed the trajectory of my life. So moving forward, after my husband and I got married, discovered we couldn't have kids, we ended up learning about something called Fost Adopt, which is children who are in the foster care system, that the parental rights have been severed because the parents aren't doing what they need to do to get themselves back on track. And it's already been predetermined. These children are going to stay in foster care until the age of 18. At the age of 18, when these children age out of the foster care system, they experience something called Black Trash Bag Day. What that means is on their 18th birthday, they are handed a black trash bag. They are told to put all their belongings in it and they are kicked out because that family is no longer being paid to take care of them. Where do these kids have to go? Statistically, these children end up on drugs, prostitution and incarcerated. That does not work. So what do we do about that? I formed a nonprofit called Bell Community Empowerment Foundation. If you want more information, you can go to my website, titanimpactgroup.com it's there. And here's what it comes down to. Here are the numbers it costs. So there's over 500,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. 350,000 are available for adoption today. It costs less than $1,000 to adopt one of these children? Yes, less than $1,000. Now it has to be done in a very specific way. There are adoption agencies that specialize in this type of adoption. So it with these children in the foster care system, it's costing taxpayers billions of dollars to keep these children in foster care. But on the back end, when these children age out of the foster care system and don't have families to circle back to. They end up drugs, prostitution, incarcerated, which now cost taxpayers billions more to deal with that. So here's my plan. There's more than 350,000 congregations in this country. What if each congregation took on finding one family to adopt one child? We could absolutely do this within my lifetime. So my non profit focuses on partnering with the churches and the adoption agencies, educating, empowering and inspiring families to be able to adopt these beautiful children. I was adopted. I adopted my twins out of the foster care system. So it's children of all ages. And that's the thing I love. But here's the thing I'm the most excited about. What if, what if 1% of those 350,000 children got as inspired as I got by being loved and having a family, especially after 18 years old, had a safe place to go back to. What if 1% of them, 3,500 kids, decided to grow up and go and make a difference in the world? That would be 3,500 adults that go out and make a huge difference in the world, just like I am, just like so many others are. And it is really simple to do that. Is it hard raising kids? Yeah. Parenting is one of the hardest things ever. But on the back end, the gift, the difference that it makes is huge. So again, I talk about money is like oxygen. The more we have, the easier it is to breathe. And the more we have, the easier we can breathe, the bigger the difference in the world that we can make. So this is why I do what I do. You know, we are all here. You know, Ginny, it is clear you do what you do, you make this money so that you can make a difference. So I encourage everybody who is listening to this, watching this to really have like take a moment and just say, why? What is the difference that I am here to make? And start taking steps towards making that difference. There's probably already a non profit out there that you can support that you can get involved in ways that you can help to absolutely make that difference. But I encourage you to ask yourself that question. Like again, if money is like oxygen, more you have, the easier to breathe and the bigger the difference you can make. What is the difference that you're here called to make and what steps are you taking today to go make that difference? That's my challenge for all of you.

That's terrific. And that's, that's a great way to wrap this up. I know we're, we're out of time here but thank you. Thank you. That's. That's so inspirational and, and that's just like you, Catherine. So tell people how to reach you, though.

So you can go to my website, titanimpact group.com. you can also find me on social media. I'm Katherine Bell. It's usually Catherine Bell. Tig, as in Titan Impact Group. I'm on all the social media channels. You can watch our videos. You want to connect with me again, go to my website. There's a button there you can schedule a call. Happy to talk, happy to share, whatever you know, we can do to help empower you to add more commas to make a difference. That's the fun we love to have.

That's terrific. That's terrific. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Thank you. This has been amazing and you are amazing. And thank you for the difference that you make in the world. Really, Ginny, you're extraordinary.

Thanks. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please, like, share. And most importantly, if you want to know when an opportunity comes available, do register on pivotalrealestateinvestments.com so we can get in touch with you. It's important to have a conversation. Likewise, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. We'll have free things we pass out time to time. Thank you.