Unlocking Passive Wealth: Diversifying Investments with Jeff Greenberg

Are you one of the many busy professionals working in offices day in and day out? Do you wonder how some people grow their wealth fast, retire early and play on work days? Well, you're in luck because Ginny Bolling hosts this show Pivots of Prosperity where she interviews people that can do just that play on work days. Many guests have become financially free. She also interviews people that are on their journey and people that are in support roles like attorneys, contractors, brain brokers and others. Commercial real estate is the common element. She is on a mission to be sure. Busy professionals know they can own substantial commercial properties too, like apartments, self storage facilities and others and not have to do the work managing them. Passive investing is the key. Syndications are the typical method. Tax write offs are some of the biggest rewards. Ginny and partners find the deals, build a strong team and business plan, then offer the investment opportunities to passive investors. New episodes are released Every Tuesday at 12 so watch for new releases. If you want to get involved, let us know. You need to get pre qualified to hear about most deals. See the show notes for contact information.

Hello there. Jenny Bolling here with Pivot to Prosperity brought to you by Pivotal Real Estate Investments. And today I have Jeff Greenberg on with us. Jeff, thank you for coming on.

Well, thank you very much for having me, Jenny. This is going to be fun.

Yes it will because we have known each other for three years I guess now and been parts of several different groups and I know that you have always been looked at as one of the senior experts in every group. So I'm glad to have you on share some of your knowledge and expertise. And so why don't we ask and start with how did you get into real estate? And then we'll fast forward to what you're working on. Okay.

Well the, the fast forward I started out looking at regular residential real estate in about 2005 and that wasn't a great time to be doing bank owned properties. REOs. Ended up finding out that I could actually own commercial real estate by raising money from other people and then started doing that in about 2007 and became a syndicator and syndicated small properties. Up to the largest we did was a 225 unit property and then also got into student housing as well. One of my, one of my interns brought me a property, was the first student housing property we had and I ended up with three more after that and still have one that I'm selling off right now in Georgia but went into student housing and multifamily.

Nice. Well and I Forgot we. We want to talk about some student housing after we're done, but yes, so. And now you've moved, I believe, from syndications to being a fund manager, correct?

Yes, absolutely.

I decided you would do that.

Well, I decided that. Well, first of all, that wasn't the most enjoyable thing to do. Being an asset manager, being the operations was a necessary evil, but it wasn't the most fun thing. And I hired on a lady. Well, excuse me, I was going to hire on the lady, but she didn't want to be an employee, so she became part of my GP team. So she became part of my GP team as my asset manager. And when I saw how phenomenal she was, I decided that all I wanted to do was to help people like her in their businesses when they had opportunities. And so that way I pushed myself over to the equity side and let somebody else do all the asset management and the operations and all of those headaches. Decided that I enjoy what I'm doing now. Working with investors, help investors getting into quality deals and just working alongside of good operators. And so she kind of pushed me over the edge.

Great, great. And that takes us a little bit to where we are today. We both are part of the Connected Capital group of fund managers where we have operators come and present to us. Right. Looking for them, for us to raise money for them, which is much more SEC compliant than any other way of doing these deals. Right. And bringing investors in. So I think that that's worthy of noting. And so what are you working on today these days?

Well, right now we have a couple opportunities that we're looking at as, as we talked a little earlier. One of them is a self storage and portfolio out in Iowa. And the other is an acquisitions and mergers opportunity where we're raising funds for a fund that will be acquiring infrastructure, paving companies. And so this is an exciting new adventure where we've been spending a lot of time doing our due diligence and learning the business and learning all about this company. And so we're very excited about doing that where great opportunities to diversify. That's one of the things that we've always talked about is diversifying a portfolio. And so this is a diversification, not only diversifying within real estate, but outside of real estate, because this particular deal is not a real estate deal.

Yeah. And taking that a step further, you know, it's interesting because in looking at different deals, and I'm one of those that's not strictly multifamily anyway, I look at triple net leases and all kinds of other things. But of course we've come to know obviously in the investor world that in the last several years a trend has been these roll ups where people are buying the businesses and accumulating many like kinds and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness by having a back office which is a shared operation, which drives up value of all the various businesses. And that's pretty much the same model for this pave business. And I had not thought about doing it outside of the medical fields, but it certainly makes sense, especially since there's so many business owners out there that didn't do succession planning. Right. And need to have someone take over the businesses as they age out or else it's all for not right. We'd be losing a lot of really good vendors to do this business. We'd be up the creek, so to speak, if we didn't have some of this going on because there's just not as many people in the labor force anymore. And so it's this efficiency and ownership even is what it comes down to, wouldn't you say?

Absolutely. When you have a company that's maybe run by a lone wolf, you know, an individual and maybe doesn't have partners to hand things off to, typically when they're ready to go into retirement, the kids don't want the business, the kids don't want to get in there for the most part. And so they want to leave a legacy for their families and they end up selling off the business. And that's what we're looking at doing. So they're looking at those kind of businesses where there is no succession plan. And so we could buy the business, the people can retire and do whatever they're off, you know, go off fishing, you know.

But the best part is the way that, that we're doing it. Well, the, the pave business plan is to keep those owners in and, and slowly phase them out such that there's no bumps in the road, it's not sudden change and you can do that smooth handoff to where there's support in all of those phases. Right. So they.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And not only that, the other thing that I love about this is putting in their hurdles. So the, there's a partial owner carryback or holdback. And if the performance of the business isn't at certain points, level points, the owner isn't going to get certain amount of money. So in order for them to get the promised purchase price, they have key principles that they have or key points that they have to satisfy. And the other thing that I love about the idea of multiple businesses is, you know, if one business isn't doing quite as well, you, you're in a portfolio, so you have lots of businesses to carry a little more of the load. But the idea of having points that they have to make in order to get their full amount of the purchase price, I think that's a great way to go.

So. And I can share with you. I'm from the transportation business and infrastructure business. I most of my career I worked for the Florida Department of Transportation. So in this particular case, we're talk talking Arizona Department of Transportation to start with. And we call those milestones usually. So they have to hit their metrics, their milestones to get more of that purchase price, which is awesome. And I think that, that they set this up in a really smart way for being able to ensure that things will, will proceed as, as planned. Of course, what the other thing is, is that they're trying to zero in on GE geography to where they can also share equipment, share things, so that there's more efficiencies even still that can be driving up that value too. So.

Yeah, and the other thing that you and I were talking about a little bit earlier is they brought in an experienced CEO that has been in the business for at least 30 years. That's, that's going to be overseeing and helping improve each of these different companies as they're acquired. And in addition to that, they have a. Another experienced operator that's coming in on the GP side as a consultant. And he brought his company from about 25 employees to almost a thousand employees. And so he's acting as a consultant to the overall operations. So the combination of those things just makes it super attractive.

Right, right. Well, there are some growing pains, I think too, that's going fast. It's really. They've already acquired what the first company, and so it's. Yeah, really.

And I think they have two more under contract.

Yeah, yeah. Exciting. Very exciting. So I'm anxious to, to watch and jump in. You're already, I think, involved, but so I guess we can't say too terribly much. It's a 506B, right?

No, it's a 506C.

Oh, it is a C. Oh, okay.

So we can talk about it.

We can talk more. Oh, good, good, good. So, yeah. Well, in that vein, what else do you want to add about that?

Well, the one thing is, on the 506C, it is only open to accredited investors, but I believe it's a great opportunity to diversify your investments beyond just Real estate. I love real estate. I love multifamily. But I am doing, like I said, self storage, looking at some other things. But this is an interesting opportunity as well for everybody with some phenomenal returns.

Right. And you know, when you think about it too, really, when you get into multifamily or self storage too, you're not just buying real estate, you're buying a business as well.

Yes.

So it's not, it's not that far off. It's just measured a little different, the metrics are a little different, but it's still the same principle. And so that's very exciting.

So, yeah, the operation of the business is critical on any of those things. Anything to do with the commercial real estate as well as this, the, the acquisitions.

Right. Right. Now, the self storage that you're talking about is. Are you able to elaborate more on that one?

Well, that one's a 13 property portfolio in Iowa. It's, It's a very experienced team that's. It's a husband and wife team that have been doing this for quite a few years, had some great returns on their investments. And this one happens to be very close to where they live, which makes it even more convenient. But it looks like it's a very good opportunity as well, especially for those people that are mostly in multifamily. That it's another opportunity to spread out into another investment class.

Right. And that's, that's important to diversify not only asset classes, but geography. Because like what we just went through here in Florida, when you have a hurricane, if all your assets are in one city, one location, and no matter what diversification by asset class, that geography can still still really hurt you.

Yeah. And the, and the location, you're absolutely right on the geography. I mean, I have a lot of assets that we've invested in in Houston. And so Houston floods. Houston has problems as well. So it's better to be diversified out, spread out across the country.

Right, Right. Well, very good. Well, so we're wrapping this up. I need to ask you that critical question I ask everybody. Is there a pivotal person or event that brought you either to where you are today or pushing you forward to a certain place that you' trying to get to?

Well, the, the one thing that changed my trajectory was that lady that, that I hired that I brought on as my gp and now she's a syndicator herself, and that's Ashley Wilson with Bar Down Investments. So I definitely want to shout out to Ashley. It was, she was the one that pushed me over the Edge that I decided I wanted to raise equity. And I've raised for several of her deals, and so she was pivotal in my life for that. But the other person, I guess, would be Hunter Thompson with his raise Masters. The raise Masters were there when I was looking for help on getting started with funds. And so he was. He was there at a great opportunity for me. So I'll give a little shout out to both of them.

All right. Are you nominating them as pivotal people that I should let them know you. You nominated them or you want to call them and say you nominated and then have them on the show?

Well, you could. You could reach out or we could. You know, I'm sure they would be on your show as well. Good. Yeah, we could do that.

All right, Very good. Well, you'll have to let me know how to reach Ashley. You said her companies barred down investments.

Yeah, bar down B, A, R, D, O, W, N. I think it's bar down cat. I don't know if it's bar down capital. Bar down investments.

Okay.

You know, she's a. She's a horse lady, really. Bar down. You know, the bar is down. I would say, you know, she's a jumper. She jumps horses.

You know, I am, too. Right?

Are you? Oh, she's in. She's in Philly. She. She competes. Her kids compete.

I used to. I'd like to get back to it, but.

Yeah, I don't know if she still competes, but I know her. I've seen her. I've seen her kids on horses that they compete.

Nice. Yeah. Well, very good. Well, I'll get with you on. On that and we'll let them know they've been nominated and they can get a lapel pin and have a lot of extra recognition through the show. Very good. Let people know how they can reach you, too. Jeff.

You could reach me at synergetic IG.com jeff. @synergeticIG.com and I do have a. A gift for everybody that wants to go if they go to sigcre.com sponsor. I've got a little booklet on how to vet sponsors before you get into deals. So that was Sigcre.com sponsor.

All right. We'll put that in the show notes, too, as well as the contact information. Very good. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate you coming on the show.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Jenny.

All right, take care.