The Insider's Edge To Real Estate Investing w. Ben Reinberg

Welcome everyone to the Insider's Edge to Real Estate Investing. I am your co-host James Nelson, Principal and Head of US Investment Sales here at Avison Young.

And I'm Kim Trohler, also your co-host.

Wonderful. And Kim, we've got a great guest with us today. Also, thanks to the Biz Now Network. It's just incredible people that come out of that program. So why don't you go ahead and introduce Ben?

So today we've got Ben Reinberg, founder and CEO of Alliance Consolidated Group of Companies. The firm is based out of Chicago, but Ben's here calling in from the Orange County office. So welcome, Ben. We're excited to hear about your portfolio, your strategy, and your story and how you've built such an incredible business.

Well, thank you very much for having me. What a privilege. It's early out here. I know you guys are on the East Coast, so thank you for having me today and look forward to our conversation.

Wonderful. So Ben, maybe you could just give our audience a little bit of a background on Alliance Consolidated Group of Companies, maybe just give an overview on the portfolio and what your investment strategy is today?

Well, currently, you know, just to take a step back— getting calls already from the office in Chicago— we started back in the early '90s, you know, when I was about 22 and 23 years old. Wow. The business was a lot different then. It was more of a local and regional business. And so when I came from Chicago— and James, I'm sure you can appreciate this— is some of the largest icons in commercial real estate were from Chicago. Um, you had leaders like J&B Realty, you know, who built Century City out in Los Angeles, were one of the largest mall owners at the time when I was a young man. Um, you know, you had Neil Bloom and, and, and Juddelson, and then you had Sam Zell, and then You had large families like the Crowns and the Pritzkers. And when I eventually belonged to a club called the Standard Club in Chicago, and it was every family, wealthy family in Chicago like this, billionaire families. And I was looking, I was seeing how did they build wealth. And the common denominator, you know, you go to the library because back then it was microfiche. It wasn't like it was newspaper articles. I mean, that's how we had to research. And so, and I learned that as a young man. So I would go and research and say, well, how did these people develop wealth? Because I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't come from wealth. And I realized it was through hard assets. And it ties into my new book, um, Hard Assets and Hard Money for Hard Times. And all circles what I've learned and what I share with the public. And so hard assets were the way to build wealth. That was a common denominator. And I saw whether, you know, the Pritzkers started Hyatt Hotels to, you know, the Crowns, what they own, and just kept going on and on. I said, well, the common theme is commercial real estate, no matter what. And so I got into commercial real estate while I was in my early 20s. Uh, I decided, James, and you know how crazy this is, when I was a young man, I jumped right into the principal role. I just bypassed the broker and I said, I'm gonna start buying in syndicating and raising other people's money and jump in the deep water. And that's what I did. And so we started off, we started doing project management. We built millions of square feet of office, industrial. I did office and industrial because a lot of my colleagues and friends got into multifamily. We, we all graduated from Indiana University from the business school, which was one of the top 5 business schools in the country when I graduated. And we had a gentleman who was recruiting guys like us into the multifamily space, into Chicago and downtown Chicago. Now downtown Chicago has an amazing multifamily market, okay? You can learn, you can build wealth, great market, great, great demand, and, and the fundamentals are there. I said I'm gonna go the opposite way because everyone's going multifamily. I'm gonna do industrial, I'm gonna do office. And so I went up on the learning curve, understood it, My first deal, I bought a 95,000 square foot industrial building in Northbrook, Illinois. Um, it was great because they were doing a development called The Glen. The Glen was going to be, um, multi-family, single-family houses, community centers. It was basically— they were going to build the whole community in Glenview, Illinois, which is next to Northbrook. It was 20 minutes from O'Hare Airport. A lot of captains of industry were moving into the area. And when I did my due diligence and learned, I said, God forbid I lose a tenant, I could bring someone in who lives in the Glen, who wants to be close to home, who will take 40, 50,000 square feet of industrial. My rates were below market. And so what's interesting, I learned the business the right way. The people that taught me the business said, learn the fundamentals. It's not a commodity. And it's one of the biggest issues I've had lately in the last 10 to 15 years in our business is that people treat these net leases as a commodity. They look at it as a cap rate instead of saying, what's the rent to market? What's absorption rates? What are vacancy rates? What are supply and demand? What are barriers to entry? Is there a vacant piece of land that can come in and compete next to me? And so this is what I teach within my firm to the acquisition guys and the asset management department, because it's so critical you underwrite the fundamentals, because That's how you protect your downside. And I learned in the business, when you can protect your downside, the upside will always take care of itself. It's been that way my whole career. Is— so we take a conservative approach. Um, we don't have to do every deal, but the deals we do, there's a purpose, there's a story, and there's good fundamentals that we underwrite. And so when I was younger, I started buying. Um, we developed as well. And then within my career, after I was about 10 years in the business or so, a little bit under, we start— I thought I was going to buy, be the next Sam Zell, buy skyscrapers. I was buying office campuses, and I thought that was the area I was going to go. I was going to be a huge landlord of office, huge office campuses, just like Sam was. And he was a mentor of mine, and he gave me a lot of advice. He's like, it's not a good strategy. And I said, why? He said, because The internet's prevalent. People don't need as much space. People are going to start working from home. And I think you should look at other niches. So I said, I said to my investors, and we took a step back, and I said, you know what, um, I think we got to take a different path besides retail, industrial. We got to look at medical office. Now, Obama was in office and people were talking about socialized medicine. They're worried about where is the physician gonna go? How is it going to impact them? I said, well, the human body is never going out of style, so we need to get into medical office. Everyone, your kids and your family, go to some sort of doctor or dentist, etc. And so we said, this, this niche is never going away, it's just going to grow. And as the baby boomers, who's a generation above me— I'm 56 years old— they're only going to grow and demand more medical services. People were starting to work out more. So orthopedic became prevalent, cancer became more prevalent. And so we started seeing all this. And then one of the first times we had was dialysis. So I went to Denver, Colorado, and I sat in a conference room with DaVita and they had all these safety pins on the wall of where they were going to plan all their locations and all their acquisitions. And I said to the director of real estate and the CEO of North America at the time, I said, where are we going to buy these facilities if we want to get in? And they graciously gave me time and they gave me advice and they said, start with Austin, Texas. Draw 300 miles of concentric circles and that's where you need to be. So we developed our first deal in Austin, Texas. It's funny because I own the building next door. I sold that building. We, we set the world on fire at the time when we sold that building. There was nothing that ever sold in the 6s on a cap rate in a long time. We sold it for 6.25, it lit the market on fire. My investment sales broker, who's one of my closest friends, said to me, you know, we could have sold this in the 5s if we waited a year. I said— I said to him, I go, we sold in the 6s, no one's ever seen that before. So did very well, start building and bought more DaVitas, then we got into Fresenius, then US Reno. Then became orthopedic gastroenterology, uh, did a lot of plastic surgery facilities, different surgery centers, and we just keep going today. And so for us, we really understand that side of the business. Uh, we've done extremely well in that, in the medical office space. And then about, I think it was about 8 or 9 years ago, a friend of mine called me and said, Have you ever considered veterinary office? And I said, no, tell me about it. He goes, well, I'm going to send you a list. He sent me a list of the top 10 companies in the world that own, uh, veterinary clinics, as well as all the food and distribution chain for the pet industry, like Mars and Nestlé and all these big candy companies. And then Pathway Vet, which is a tenant of ours. And I started seeing this. I said, this is interesting because it's similar to medical. It's a heavy investment in the property. The real estate fundamentals are there. They don't want to leave. They build deep roots, these veterinary practices. So we started buying the different clinics. We started buying surgery centers. We bought one, one of the facilities that we still own today that I'm extremely proud of is we have the gold standard in horse and cattle and bulls, uh, as a veterinary place. It's about 60 acres. It's right outside Austin, Texas. It's— we're next-door neighbors with Elon Musk's new headquarters down there. And so we bought this facility and the land, and we've done really well. And, uh, we've extended it, long-term lease, done really well with it, and we still own it today. So we, we see all the different niches in veterinary space. You know, reptiles are big, we've learned. You know, horse and cattle It's not just dogs and cats. And so we've seen that business mushroom and done very well. So we look at that as well. And then for our new fund, the Alliance Medical Fund, we do— we buy medical properties and veterinarian, and it seems to be a great space to play in. And so my career has strictly been as a principal. It's not a broker. And we basically buy assets, hold them to build wealth for us and our investors. And that's basically what I do. And then 5 years ago, we decided to launch a personal brand for me. And then, uh, it was a podcast that became a TV show, and we continue to grow it to this day. We have a large team of people that work on my personal brand, but also the company brand. And so one of the talks that I give around the country is, as a founder and a CEO, you have to establish a brand. It's necessary in these days where we're going. And in commercial real estate, if I go back to some of my mentors from Chicago and in commercial real estate, they always told me, they're like, you know what, walk tall, carry a big stick, but don't talk about your success. You don't need to. If you're successful, you just act like it. You don't need to. So then all of a sudden social media comes around. I gotta actually talk about deals and what we've done. It flipped the script, and they'd be rolling in their grave if they knew what I was doing on social media. But at the end of the day, that's where we're at. And so I launched a new book called Hard Assets and Hard Money for Hard Times. I teach people how to build wealth now because, James Nelson, one of the things that I wanted to do was I said, if I could take Ben Reinberg from 32 years ago who came from nothing and give him the basic skills how to build wealth through hard assets. Or if the billionaire wants to read the book and say, okay, let me look at my blueprint— because I include a free blueprint in the book as well as on my website for your show today, you could download it for free, that's my gift to your audience— is you download the blueprint, it will show you how to build a fortress of wealth. And it's more than just hard assets, it's data, it's security, it's all the things as a business owner, as a CEO or a founder or, or an owner or an employee or a partner, you have to consider in this day and age. Okay, so we talk about security, we talk about estate planning, we talk about asset protection, because I want to show you how to build, scale, leverage, finance hard assets, but I'm also going to show you how to protect them as well once you start building. And so that's what I focus a lot of my time on.

Wow. Yeah.

I mean, Ben, you're clearly up to a lot of, a lot of kind of wearing a lot of different hats. On that note, I think we should definitely dive into medical office because that's an asset type that we don't hear as much on the show. And that sector is booming right now. I mean, it's strengthened meaningfully throughout 2025 from a sales standpoint. I believe medical office occupancy is at a historic high of 93%, and rents have been climbing as well. So it's definitely a great space to be in. So on that note, when you're looking to buy a medical office building, what are the major signals that you look for? Do you look for institutional healthcare affiliation, distance from hospitals? What kind of factors are you considering when you're thinking about the tenancy? What kind of comes to mind?

Well, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look at the business. Of the tenant. I want to know their financial statements. I want to know where does it fit within their portfolio. Then I'm going to look at the real estate and say, how does it tie in? How many locations they have? How does it tie into what they're doing? Where does it rank within all their facilities? How much money have they invested in their facility? Um, we look at density. Do I have 50,000 people in a 5-mile radius? I'm going to look at market rents. So when I teach my acquisition staff how to find deals and do deals, I look at more than just the real estate fundamentals. Yeah, I'm going to look at absorption rates and vacancy rates. I'm going to look at construction. Is it brick? Is it masonry? Brick? Is it stone? You know, I want to look at how— what's the elevation? I'm going to look at parking. Do I have 5 or 6 to 1 ratio based on my tenant? So I'm going to go knee-deep. I'm going to unpack this property with them. And look at and say, okay, how do we function as a business if we're the tenant, right? What's our success factor? What's our default risk? Why are we here? How do we serve the community? So in medical office, it's not just I'm attracting tenant or tenant. I am building a foundation in the community with this medical tenant. And so when you look at our properties, there's a reason why they're there. Okay, you know, that's why parking is important. That's why construction is important. How does the building lay out? How does it flow for exam rooms? How does plumbing tie into all this? So we go pretty deep into the process and we look at these facilities and say, okay, why are they going to be there for 30 years? What's the hook? What— how much have they invested in the space? Where are rents compared to market? How do patients feel going into the facilities? What's the ingress/egress to get into the facility? And then we look at the sidewalks and the elevations and, you know, do I have ramps? Am I ADA compliant? So it's more than just looking at the business and the real estate. You have to look at the sum of all these parts to be able to determine, do I have a sustainable, viable asset? And you touched on something. That was a great point. You said 93%. We found in our analysis we have renewal rates in the medical office space in the upper 80 percentile rate. And so there's a high probability renewal. And it all starts— and you know this, James Nelson Nelson— the money is in the dirt. It's how you buy the property. It's the ability to hold. Everyone ignores that comment. It's, it's not just location, it's the ability to hold. When I have to go through different cycles, especially with a medical tenant, how am I going to sustain this investment to ride through hard times? We just went through a rising interest rate market for the last 3 years. It was the lowest investment sales we've seen in, in decades through a gap period of years with rising interest rates and, and chaos and a new president administration coming in that people We're, we're worried about where's interest rates, where's inflation going to go, how are taxes going to be mitigated and dealt with in this country as we entered and left COVID. So we looked at all these factors and we say, okay, well, if the human body is never going out of style, why is that? What's the default risk? What is the credit of the tenant or tenants in the spaces that are going to sustain itself and have a viable business? And so, and then we have to look at, can they afford the rent based on what they're doing financially? So we look at a lot of different factors and you have to, because at the end of the day, you want to be able to leave your tenants alone because they invest a tremendous amount of, of money into these properties and into their businesses.

So Ben, I, I love how your business strategy is so much about the, the fundamentals. And one of the first things you said is that this is not— real estate is not a commodity. And really looking at all these metrics before you invest. I do want to kind of go back to the earlier part of your story, especially for a lot of listeners. And we get— our audience could be undergrads, it could be people who are getting their master's degree, they might be working at a bigger shop looking out to go on their own. But I would say it's very rare even today that you have someone who comes right out of school and jumps into investing on their own. So, just, I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that because, you know, your first deal or first couple deals, how did you, and assuming that you brought in investors for your first transaction, how did you give them the confidence that first of all, you knew what you were doing, that you could execute on this and get them to believe in you? Because I think when we talk to a lot of people looking to start out, You know, that kind of lack of experience, lack of capital, those are two things that are holding them back.

Well, first of all, I don't advise anyone to do what I did to start my career because it was a learning curve. It was stressful. Um, but I figured what, what other choice I have. If I, if I couldn't be successful in the business, I would just be back to where I was. And so to get to the main point where I'm going with this is fear. It's managing your mind and your fear, which is part of life anyways. It's why I do so much personal development is how do I manage fear? How do I say to myself, hey, I can go out and do this. And, you know, I have to tell you, my mother was very influential to me. When I was going through this process, she gave me a poem called The Victor. By C.W. Longnecker. And she said, put this in your wallet and always know that as you go through times, it's the man who thinks he can. And so I read that every day when I woke up, I was younger. And I realized that I just had to go out there and do it. So I had a blue suit because my brother wore blue suits, had a beautiful tie, and would have my shoes polished. And I'd go out. And we didn't have Starbucks at the time or all these coffee shops, you know. I would go to a restaurant in Highland Park, Illinois, or in Northbrook, or downtown Chicago. And I'd go see guys at the Mercantile Exchange, you know, that got done trading because they had big money. And I would go to the restaurants around there and I network. I belonged to a great high-end health club I joined. I didn't have the money, but I still joined. And I, and I just kept— I put myself out there. I said, who do you know that invests in real estate? This is what I'm doing. I'm paying an 8% preferred return on this great industrial building. Uh, I'm giving away 80% of the equity, which I'll need to now. It's a lot different, my structure. So being a CPA, I put together a great financial package, and I went to my godfather at, uh, First Bank of Highland Park in Chicago. And I said to him, I go, Bruno, you sit on this bank. I knew no banks, okay? I was just getting involved in business. I knew like American National in Chicago, which was bought by Chase eventually, and First Chicago and these different banks. And so I went to Bruno, I said, I need a loan. And he said, that's fine. I made a presentation from the board, they loved it, and I got a loan. I got a great loan. It was recourse. I don't sign with recourse anymore, but when I was younger, what'd I have to lose? They could hold me at the edge of a cliff and shake pennies out of my pocket. And so I realized, okay, so now I gotta go raise the equity. So I started with one, and it was $50,000, $100,000 increments. I raised my first one. I said, okay, I could do this. Then I said, well, you know, Joe's in. Are you interested? Yes. And within 30 days, I raised over a few million bucks. And I was young and I was green. I had brown hair at the time, not gray like it is. And I just went for it. And we closed and I sat in front of, you know, I had to negotiate credits. And two of the biggest home builders in the country at the time that own Lennar Homes and Cambridge Homes, you probably have heard of these names. These are the guys that started— they're from Chicago. And it was intimidating. So I said, I need to negotiate hundreds of thousands of dollars of credit. They need a roof, HVAC, the parking lot was screwed up, had potholes. And I realized to make my numbers work, I had to get these credits. So I went into their conference room in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and guys were extremely wealthy, had a conference room that was— if you guys remember what conference rooms, you know, it was always at the front of the office. You'd walk in It was this beautiful, uh, mahogany table. They had the fine china, coffee waiting for me. I'm in my suit and tie. They turn up the heat, okay? So I start sweating, and they're playing with me. And I never forget this moment. And they come in, and it's both of them, okay? So it's rare that you get the two guys coming in. They want to know, like, who is this young guy buying one of our properties? Because they owned a huge portfolio of commercial property too, because that they understood real estate. So I sit across from them. I'm at one end, they're at the other end. And I said, you know what, I move closer. I hand them each a packet, and I teach this skill to our property management department today and even to our asset managers. And the lesson is, when you can have a package or a document stand on its own and, and they can hand it to anyone in the world That's how you communicate. You want someone to pick up a document, be able to read it, that say is 10 years old, and say, I understand what he's looking for. And so I create a document with backup of all the improvements, and it was about $350,000 of improvements. And at the end of the day, they looked at me and they said, you have a lot of nerve coming in here to ask for this. I said, I don't have a choice. If I don't get this credit I can't close. The bank's not going to be on board. I said, my investors are gonna know that we don't have enough reserves. I said, the numbers don't work, so I have to walk away from the deal. And I said, and I know you need to sell this and you want to sell because you're motivated. I said, you listed it with Marcus and Millichap, you've had on the market for a while, and you don't have a lot of buyers lined up. And I'm standing here and They said, well, do you have the equity? I said, I'm about 80% done raised. I'll have the rest in the next week or so, which I did. So I walked out of there with a $350,000 credit. And one of the top guys— I'm walking out of the lobby, I'm walking outside. It was, I think it was like May, so it was warm in Chicago. And I'm in my suit, and I remember he grabbed me by the arm and he said, he said, he said, good job, kid. He goes, you're going to be something in this business. I'll look forward to seeing what you do. So we took that deal. Within 3 and a half years, I sold it for a 3x multiple. That same guy called me and he said, what did you do? And I said, what'd you mean? He said, how did you add so much value? You took our purchase price and you tripled it in 3 and a half years. We want to know what you did because we want to learn from it. So I met him from lunch, I explained the situation, what he did. He goes, unbelievable. And that launched me. And then we started buying more and building more. And, and, you know, when you're in your 20s, you're hungry. You know, I'm— I was hungry. I'm still hungry. Like, I still show up to work every day. I love doing deals. I love looking at things. I love negotiating leases. I love dealing with people. And that's what commercial real estate's about. It's— you can't forget the day you started. You can't forget every penny that people have invested with you. And that's what I carry with me, and that's the advantage I have, is that I'm still hungry. I still want to be the best at what I do. Um, I want to continue to grow, and I know for a fact from my experience that hard assets are where it's at. It's the real secret to wealth. It's not about hoarding cash. It's investing in tangible, durable assets that protect and grow your money even when things are crazy. And we are in chaotic times, and I'm teaching people that cash isn't king. It's great to have for buying deals and having in your back pocket to acquire deals, but what I'm talking about is when you are sitting on cash, you're losing money because of inflation and taxes an opportunity cost, and it's not as safe as you think. And so what I'm teaching people and why I go on a lot of podcasts and TV shows and I'm out there with the book is that I'm just like everyone else. I wasn't born wealthy and I had to make mistakes and a lot of them to learn through them and grow. But I'm teaching people that if you want to build wealth, okay, and no BS, no, like, you know, Look, I invest in crypto and all these different things that are out there. You really want to build wealth, serious wealth. Hard assets are the number one asset class to build wealth. And I'm promising people I'll teach you how to do it. And because I did it and I continue to do it and I live it, and it's not about being rich. Rich is about what you own now. It's how do I build wealth to sustain myself through tough times and hard times, even like today, or like we went through in '08 and '09, or back in the early '90s. And so when you go through enough cycles and you have that gray matter between your ears to do deals, that's how you end up building wealth.

Ben, on that note, you mentioned that you have a unique fund structure. I'd love to dive into that, especially when talking about generational wealth creation. What about your fund structure facilitates like building generational wealth and who are you building this wealth for? Are you raising capital from retail and accredited individual investors and the high net worth kind of network, family offices, that sort of thing? Because that's what comes to mind when I think of generational wealth. How are you actually structuring your funds? And is it single asset syndications or funds? How are you structuring everything?

Well, it's a great question. I appreciate it. We do both. We'll do syndication and fund structures. And I love the syndication model. We're doing funds and stuff, but I really still enjoy the syndication model. How we work and how we build wealth for individuals, it's not only through the returns and the great track record we have on medical, mid-20s IRR track record and upper 20s on total assets. It's not just the returns, it's also the tax benefits. So we do cost segregation studies on our property. So if you take the Alliance Medical Fund, we just got done doing cost seg studies on 7 assets. We saved over $9 million in depreciation, uh, and what that equated to is, say, oh, $3 to $4 million of tax savings to our investors that they can use on other passive investments. That's what I love commercial real estate. Our founding fathers of this country loved commercial real estate. And by the way, and don't let anyone fool you, every politician does 1031 exchanges. That law is never going out, out, right? And everyone invests in commercial real estate and hard assets. They just don't tell you. And when they do, they're taking advantage of the tax laws. The tax laws are so favorable in commercial real estate that I could have an investor pay them a dollar and they end up paying taxes on 80 cents. Or 70 cents depending on their tax bracket. It's a huge benefit of what we do. So not only am I paying you cash flow every quarter and giving you upside when we sell, I'm also providing you great tax benefits on the way. And so I'm also a CPA, um, that's what I graduated in at Indiana, and I got my CPA and I knew it would come in handy, especially getting into commercial real estate. So we have a great staff of outside accountants in Chicago. They're one of the leaders in commercial real estate in the country. They're dear friends of mine as well. And so we spend a lot of time with them. My property management spends a tremendous amount of time. Why? We want to understand how am I going to maximize tax benefits in our transactions? How do we structure deals the right way? How do we deal with withholding taxes in all the various states we do business in? And so when you're in commercial real estate, you have to become a finance expert and you have to really dig in and understand tax law because it's helpful when you have investors. And to get back to your point, we have high net worth accredited investors and families that invest in a majority of our properties throughout the United States. And I like that model. I love the retail model because we are personally helping people build wealth. It's not just institutions where I'm taking the pension fund guy from Hawaii who's investing in my office building, which is great, it's a good model, it's a great way to scale, and we do that. But for the high net worth credit investor or the family office, it's giving them a great diversification play, especially medical office, where they can say, you know what, I have retail, I invest in self-storage, I invested in campus housing, 'But you know what? I'd like a portion of my portfolio to be in medical.' And we love what Alliance does because they got 250 years of leadership team experience. They understand how to play the game, and they've been around for over 3 decades. They're not going anywhere. They've sustained themselves through different cycles. And so it's a real benefit to the public that we offer.

Ben, for our listeners who are curious, what is the best way to break into those private wealth channels? Are you a, um, a registered broker-dealer, an RIA? Are these just direct investments? How do you structure your funds specifically? And also so that the investors can maximize their tax benefits, like what is the best fund structure to allow them to take advantage of the tax benefits?

Well, I mean, for us, just to get back to your question, is that we— it's a lot of word of mouth. It's mushrooming. You know, you have a track record. We do some advertising as well. We get a ton of referrals. From investors. You make investors money, they start referring because they're so proud of, hey, we invested with Alliance or Ben and he made us X. Um, they, they're proud of their investment. They basically are the mouthpiece for our company. So we get a lot of referrals from different people. And then we have investor relations guys that go out and kick the bricks more and talk to people constantly, go to events. It's a 24/7, uh, excursion when you're raising equity. It doesn't stop. It's Saturdays and Sundays It's a tremendous amount of work. And so our business is a 7-day-a-week business, and it's always been that way. And so when it comes to fund structures, it's whether it's a syndication or a fund. It's basically how are you structuring it so your investors can maximize tax benefits? It could be, you know, do you have recourse or non-recourse loans on your, on your properties? Do you have— what are you going to do, a cost segregation study? What type of property is it? If it's multifamily, you can rip apart all the different pieces and get a tremendous benefit from cost segregation. So it depends on the asset class is going to maximize your tax benefits. It's also going to be how are you structuring your fund or your syndication. Is it— what is it? How do you allocate profits and losses to your, to your investors? So every deal can be structured differently. And what I recommend, okay, and I tell this to people, is that you want great people surrounding you. I have the best accountants, I have attorneys in every sector of what we do and that we need. And my commercial real estate attorney has been with me for 30 years, and it's like osmosis when we're doing deals. We know what we're thinking, he knows what I'll accept, I know what he's willing to do. And how to do deals, and we're very responsive. And so you need a good group, your inner circle surrounding you. And I ask people, who's in your green room? Who would go to bat for you no matter what in this business or any business? And so you have to spend time. I've been through different attorneys. I remember when I was in my 20s and 30s, like, if I didn't like an attorney, wasn't responsive, I said, we're done, okay? And we have attorneys in all different sectors, whether it's zoning, litigation, leasing transactions, dispositions. You know, you have to have different attorneys. We have tax attorneys, uh, we have securities attorneys for securities laws. So when you have a great security law attorney, and there's tons of them out there, we have a great one from the West Coast. We look at different structures. What type of capital can we come in Can we put in our fund but also do a syndication? We're doing a deal like that right now. And so having top-notch people surround you is critical. You don't have to know everything in this business, but what you do is you surround yourself with great people and you delegate too. That's the key to maximize structure, maximize tax benefits, leverage yourself into talented people. And I talk about this in my new book because when you start investing invest with smart money. Smart money is someone that has a track record, that understands that asset class, so you don't have to go on a learning curve. So when people invest in Alliance, we've been on the learning curve. We have a track record, we have great leadership team, we have a great platform, and we're using technology like no one else in the business. We're about 2 years ahead of everyone in AI, and it's gonna be hard to catch us. And so at the end of the day, it all boils down to is who are you surrounding yourself with that can help you grow and get you higher in the learning curve.

Great point. So on that note, Ben, maybe talk about your team internally. So, and what's great to hear about your story is the discipline and kind of the approach. So I have no doubt that you've got systems in place for how you approach things, but you alluded to your acquisitions team, you know, the management team. What does your organization look like right now? And then I'd love to kind of focus in on the acquisition piece, uh, because I'm sure a lot of our listeners would like to hear, you know, how do you go about finding these, these great opportunities?

Well, what we do is we do a tremendous amount of marketing. Uh, I write a blog every week. It's on the Substack. We have different calls to action. Our acquisition department, they do weekly and monthly email campaigns as well to all the brokers. We also have a staff that constantly database. So we have— we're constantly databasing properties, and our acquisition staff is calling those owners. We're calling them directly. So we do a tremendous amount of calling, uh, marketing to, to make it abundant for deals we're looking at. We also— I also get— I also still— I'm not even acquisition, I still get calls from brokers. Hey, take a look at this deal, or we have a property that's next to one of yours, are you interested? It's just being in business. And when brokers know you can close and it provides money in their pocket, that's all they want to know. They don't care about my name, they care about my performance and my actions. And so that's what we do. We have a great track record and good reputation of we close deals. And at the end of the day, you know, I have a lot of publicity. I get articles written on me and the company every week. You know, we've been in Thomson Reuters and Forbes. We've been in Commercial Real Estate News. We've been in, you know, all different— Business Week and Heartland and Southland and, you know, BizNow and all different things. So we close a deal or lease, people want to know what we're doing. So we have a couple publicists that work for us. So we're constantly pushing the envelope. Same thing with AI. We're using AI to say, okay, how do we draw in more deals? We're now even qualifying the properties. Is this a green light property? Is this a yellow light, or is it a red light that we're not going to look at? And so we're looking at all different ways to constantly use technology to our favor to find acquisitions. Um, dispositions— we have folks that we worked with for years that we position a property. We might say, hey, renewing this lease, what does it look like when you sell it? And we position it, and then it becomes a mutual effort. So we have people within our company, without our company, that it's a team effort in everything we do. And we've learned that, that, that consistency goes a long way, not only with investors but also with great returns. And so it's not for the— it's not for the faint of heart. It's a tough business. You gotta go through deals. Um, sometimes you go under contract and you gotta pull out of a deal, which is rare we do, but you have to at times. And so you have to have thick skin. You have to keep pushing forward. You have to be persistent. Um, it's why people ask me, like, why have your kids not gone into the business? They see you're successful. They see how tough it is. They're— they want to do technology. They want the blockchain, and they want you know, software and all these things. Uh, my youngest, my daughter, goes to Cornell out by you guys. She's in the hospitality school. She's got the best—

great school.

Yeah, she's got the best shot to be in real estate. But at the end of the day, they see it's, it's a little bit slower business, right? And we turn deals within 5 years, sometimes less. But then a day they see the results. And so it's a tough business. But if you hang in there, and for example, if you picked up my book and you could see how I do it and how you build a hard asset empire, you can do it. But it's— I'm not going to tell people it's easy because it's not. I'm not going to tell people that going to finance a deal is so cookie cutter and it's easy to do. It's not. It's a lot of finessing, it's a lot of discussions, it's a lot of, uh, understanding the business and protecting yourself. And learning. And you have to be— you have to have an open mind and continue to learn in this business, or you're going to lose. And those are the little things that I instill in my staff, and that's why we've had a really good run for the past 3 decades, is because we realize— it goes back to your comment earlier, James— it's the real estate fundamentals and stability to hold.

Well said. Um, Ben, you bring up an interesting point, which is certainty of close, and I've actually seen that described in articles about your company that you got— that's one of your competitive advantages, is certainty of close. So what does that actually require structurally? Where do deals typically die in due diligence for you? And what do you do upfront to avoid wasting time?

Well, what we do upfront, and this is one of my biggest pet peeves with brokers, is they don't want to guess the financial statements. Which, for every broker out there listening, I don't understand that thought process because If you want someone to close, why wouldn't you put them in the highest probability to close, right? You know the lender's going to need it. You know, to raise capital, you gotta assure and be a good fiduciary and know the default risk in your tenants. And so the biggest struggle sometimes is getting information. Sometimes with the seller, when you deal directly with them, you're talking to them, you can explain the because. When you can explain the because— I need this because I need this because I need to close. So what we do is we get the information up front so we can properly value a property or a portfolio. And then by doing— having the right information, uh, allows you to have certainty of close. And so I used to do a newsletter when I was a lot younger. Now it's a blog. And, and so the biggest thing, all the— like Avis and Young and CBRE and Jones Lang they would take my newsletter because we used to have on the third week of the month we'd do Q&A with Ben and we would ask a question. And so the biggest question, brokers would chime in and they would say, how do we create a situation where it's a higher probability of closing? And so I would give them a checklist. I said, if you can give them proper operating statements, correct rent rolls, Uh, financial statements. Now we have the property, but the tenants— talking about the tenants, what they do. When you could lay something on a silver platter, it's a lot easier to close deals. Where I think people go wrong is they mask and hide information in order to close. And so if you could give everything up front to everyone— it's one of the reasons why we're great at selling properties, because we put together a war room for the buyer, saying, here's what you need, we know what you need, and by the way, here it is. And so if you go back to my first deal that I bought in Northbrook, one of the best things that we did is we got a credit, and we knew up front when we sold the property, we knew if we had any improvements, we were going to lay it on the table. When you sell a property and you could tell the buyer that the train's coming. And what I mean by that is, let's just say you need a new roof and the roof's going to cost, say, $500 grand. Okay, it's a large property. Well, guess what? If you could tell that to them upfront, you're going to get a higher price from the property. Everyone thinks like, oh, let's go through due diligence, see if he notices, and see if he's going to negotiate with me. It's an ass-backwards way of doing the business. And I'm here to teach the right way. The right way is you tell people up front the train's coming. Why? You get more money for your property, you build credibility in the process, you have high integrity, and guess what? You get more business in the long run.

Yeah, Ben, we could not agree more. Yeah, we, we could, uh, couldn't agree more with that statement, uh, certainly from the investor's side but also the broker's side. And we've talked a lot on the show about, you know, being up front telling the good, the bad, the ugly, because you might as well get issues out of the way upfront. Because look, if someone can't deal with that, then you're just saving everybody a lot of time as opposed to waiting and springing it at the end. They're going to find out anyways. And then it's what else is this person hiding? So it's just so much better to be upfront, transparent. You get there faster. And to your point, you know, people can overcome that upfront. So, you know, Ben, I'd love to You know, now that you've built out a platform for multifamily, would love just to hear about how you set that up because, and I'm not, clearly we've established that medical, even veterinary care, they're not commodities. They're all, you know, separate. It's real estate, but multifamily can look a lot of different ways. I mean, between vintage, between style, obviously very different going into some, you know, cities that have rent regulation, others that don't. So just curious how you set up a thesis what you're looking to do on the multifamily side, uh, and where you're going to be looking to invest in that asset class.

Well, the origin was I was on vacation in Japan, um, it's a few years ago, and every time I go away in December, I take time off to myself and I take notes and I think about where are we going as a company. You know, I might be on a beach somewhere or wherever I am in the world, and I take time to think. It gives me December gives me a space, a safe space to take time to think about where are we going, where the niches. And I started talking to my colleagues that year, and I started seeing the short-term financing and the, the lack of great knowledge about financing in the multifamily space. And I knew that interest rates eventually had to, had to rise based on what we were going through. And so I said, it's going to be a really good time to get into multifamily. Why? There's going to be loans coming due, uh, people are going to be challenged, and it's going to be a great time to buy. And now if you look at the stats from '25 to '29, there's trillions of dollars of commercial real estate loans coming due. And I saw younger guys in our business that got into multifamily where they're doing 3 and 5-year loans and interest rates are rising. So let's just say their loan is at a 3% and their loan constants are 7%. Well, they're upside down. They can't meet their debt service covenants. Cash flow is minimal. When they have to go refinance, they're either going to have to sell or turn the keys back. And so I started looking at this. I said, you know what, we've been eyeing this. We have people in our property management have a lot of experience in multifamily. This is a great opportunity to get involved. Use our pedigree, our experience, our leadership team, and say, you know what, we're coming in and we're competing with you, and we're gonna— and we're gonna start dominating this market because loans are coming due. We're gonna buy safely, we're gonna buy right prices per door, we're going to add improvements. And so what I did was I hired a great man to run the department who had a lot of experience, and I said to him, I said, put together a business plan. And he did. I said, all right, I back you 100%, so is everyone else here. Go, go out and do it. And that's what I did. And I said, we're going to launch a multifamily division. And I said to myself, okay, worst case it doesn't work, okay, I'm in other asset classes. But I know it will work because I know there's great buying opportunities. I know we can handle property management of it, and we're building a great team around him to handle multifamily assets. So I'm really excited about the opportunity. I love the fact that there's different types of debt out there that you could explore into. That's a lot different than the space we have played in for years. And so I'm excited about it. I think it's a great opportunity. I think with all the trillions of dollars of loans coming due over the next 3 years, uh, there's gonna be great opportunity.

Yeah, I mean, we completely agree there. Separate from the, the debt coming due, um, the— from a supply-demand standpoint, I mean, new construction starts and new deliveries have completely fallen off a cliff. For the next couple years. And while there was oversupply over the past 2 years, we're starting to see the existing stock— there's a lot of positive momentum in terms of rent growth there. So it's a pretty exciting time to be entering the space.

So Ben, this has been amazing, and we really appreciate your sharing your story and the fact also that you have really not just kept this all to yourself but have been so generous with coming on shows like these, having your own show. And I would certainly direct people, and we'll put in the show notes the link to your site and how they can get your latest book. But Ben, I'd love to, in closing, you know, you talk a little bit about your mindset. I know you talked about that very early on with, you know, the victor and kind of, you know, what you do to stay so disciplined. So for people listening to the show, you know, what kind of practices could they put into action now? Because look, you've laid out a great plan. But one of my mentors, Rod Santomassimo, wrote a book called Knowing Isn't Doing, right? So, you know, you can teach what it takes, but you still have to be willing to take action. So maybe talk a little bit about advice in helping people you know, maybe it's pursuing that first deal or taking the next step.

You know, it's funny, I just had dinner with my oldest son up in Los Angeles, and the foundation of the conversation we had was about fear, negotiations, doing deals, believing in yourself. And someone asked me this question— I get this asked on a lot of TV shows and podcasts— is What would you have done different as a young man? I would work on myself. I got into personal development about 12, 13 years ago. And if I would have known what I know now, back then, you know, you hear that saying, it's true. I would work on myself. The last chapter of my book is about mindset. And I did that on purpose because I wanted to wrap this thing in a bow and say, well, you have to work on yourself because You're going to be challenged in this business or building a hard-ass empire. You know, you're going to have friends of yours that fall off. You're going to have family members you might have to disassociate with. You're going to have a lot of decisions in your life that are going to impact you mentally. How are you going to deal with it? We're going to go through different cycles and some hard times. You're going to go through deals that don't work out as well. You're going to be criticized. You're going to be put down. You're going to be told you're not good enough. You're going to hear all this as you build success and you build your empire. And it's how are you going to deal with your mind while you're going through it? So I started working on myself because when I was younger, I had to develop this hard shell over me to protect myself. And when I got into my 40s, I realized I don't need this hard shell. I could open up, I could be myself. I can be who I want to be, and I don't have to be this tough, gruff businessman in order to do deals. And it was growth. And so I tell people, you have to continue to grow every day. Every day I work on myself constantly. I have different mentors, I have different people. I invest so much money into myself, and I do it because I want to show up as best I can, because I'm constantly going through drama and chaos and meeting different people and taking on different energy of people that I have to deal with. And so I meditate in the morning, something I do. I'll meditate at 5 o'clock if I need to. I try to clear my mind, uh, and I've learned all these different tricks and tools from some of the best people in the world. And so for me, mindset's everything. You're— this business is not for the faint of heart. It's tough. And how you show up emotionally and how you deal with your emotions and your energy is so important in this business. My staff knows, they're like, you know, they know when I'm stressed, they know when I'm calm, and they know it's like, hey, give them a break and give them gaps. So I have my own personal assistant. I've had her for years now. I've been through a few of them, and they give me space in my day to breathe and to think. You know, in this business you have to do a lot of thinking. So I give myself space. I might sit at my desk for an hour Like yesterday on Sunday, I was working. I would say half the time besides doing business work, I was thinking, writing notes. What do I need to do for this month? Where issues— what are employee reviews, all the different things. So you have to give yourself space. And one of the things I teach people is that when you can slow down, everything else will accelerate. People think, I gotta rush and I gotta write this proposal, I can write this LOI. And we're constantly moving at the lightest speed, especially with technology. Slow down, because when you can do things efficiently, okay, and methodically, you end up speeding up a lot of things, and deals get sped up. And by the way, you end up building great relationships. So I tell people, work on yourself, get involved in personal development, learn how to control your emotions. You are going to be torn in different directions in this business. Things aren't going to work out. Someone's maybe not going to act with integrity. You're going to see everything when you're in this business long enough, and how you control your emotions and how you rise to a certain level, that's where you're going to have your competitive advantage. And so that's why that chapter in my book, I was adamant that that's going to be the last chapter, because it's going to wrap everything around saying You need to be persistent and resilient, and you better be damn sure who's in your green room and who's surrounding you, because they're going to pour stuff into your head that you're going to have to deal with. So relationships are important. Be careful who you surround yourself with. And when you do all that, you will see you'll have a higher chance and happy life and more success in commercial real estate.

Then I can say this on behalf of me and James Nelson both, but we're both looking forward to reading your book, uh, first of all. But this has been such a holistic conversation, everything from taking the leap of faith to starting your own business, to building wealth for your investors and different fund structures, to medical office and veterinary office and having the right mindset. So thank you so much for your time. It's been such a pleasure having you on.

All right, guys, thanks again for having me and, uh, look forward to hearing from you soon.

Wonderful. And thank you to all of our listeners, those who join us on our live stream, as well as whether you are listening to this on your favorite podcast, uh, channel, or if you're watching this on YouTube, the best thing you can do that we say is share this episode with a friend. Ben just gave so much actionable, inspirational advice. So please share this, and that, that will help us to continue to grow the show. So until next week, thank you again for joining.