0363 | Stephanie Walter

Hi, my name is Stephanie Walter with Airbay Wealth. My website is www.erbewealth.com and you're listening.

To EA Interviews, EA Interviews, episode 363, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority effect interview. Expert Authority World. Have you ever thought about what to do with all the profits that you're making? Have you been thinking long term? You know, it's one thing to have a successful company and have the profits, but what about wealth? What about your net wealth? What about long term? What about the future generations? This is a topic that's near and dear to me and it's why I'm excited to have Stephanie Walters, CEO of Urbay wealth on the show today. And she's going to be sharing with us the financial and investing secrets the wealthiest 1% use. And I got some questions I'm excited to ask her right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA Publishing Method Book.

Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Stephanie Walters. Stephanie, how are you feeling today?

I'm doing great, thank you so much.

I'm excited to have you on because a lot of people talk about business and success, marketing, sales, yada yada, profits, and I'm one of them because it's like every, all the time, I'm talking about all these, but far and few in between, people are thinking long term. And I shouldn't say that there's a lot of people who think long term, but I think just as a society, people are talking about wealth, network wealth and net worth and just long term investing less. Why do you think that is?

I think that people at this time are just, they're scared of the unknown and there just seems to be a lot of uncertainty right now. What's going on? I do get that from a lot of investors I work with. I try to target investors that are kind of new to the alternative investment space and there's just a lot of caution, a lot of just like what's it going to do if we have a crash? You know, just lots of questions and uncertainty about inflation and all of these things that a lot of us haven't seen.

So how would you answer Them if someone's saying, I don't know what to expect over the next two years, the next five years, whatever the case may be, how do you respond to that? And also, no matter what's going on in the world, because it, in my experience growing up, it seems like there's always something, regardless of what it is. It might be bigger, smaller, you know.

I'm trying to think of the word here because it's like there's. In a hundred years, there hasn't been anything like the pandemic. But at the same time, you, you know, I'm thinking back to the economic s curves and every seven to ten years things are shifting around the recession in 2008, it always seems like there's something going on. So how do you teach people to prepare for the future without knowing what it's going to be, I guess is what I'm asking.

Well, I mean, I, my background is in and what I have people investing in are syndications, which are real estate, largely for us, their apartment complexes located in very good markets across the country. And if you look historically, syndications have been around forever, you know, hundreds of years. But let's just look at the last few recessions and how they perform. I think that's a huge, great indicator to know that these particular asset classes do really well through recessions for lots of reasons. But yeah, I tried to tell people to, you know, just to go back again, like what you're saying. Historically there have been recessions, you know, and so look at what, what you're wanting to invest in and see how it's done, you know, how, how it has done through, you know, whatever turbulent period we're in. I think a lot of, there's a lot of misinformation out there too, which, you know, it's hard in this day and age to try to sor what's true and what isn't. But I mean, Covid for multifamily, if you located those properties in the right markets, they've all done incredibly well. And I'm not sure that that's really a message that people would hear.

Listening to the regular news or. Okay, like that.

So tell us about the 1031 exchange. Why is that a good thing?

Oh, the 1031 exchange is, you know, if you own a rental property or business, it allows you to sell that business or property and you can roll the money over tax deferred into a syndication.

And. But there are also lots of different tax solutions that the very wealthy use and they really shouldn't be just reserved for the very wealthy. But like in our syndications, there's something that we use quite often which is called cost segregation. And really that is just, you know, you speed along depreciation. So rather than take your depreciation over 28 or 39 years, we speed it up by getting these studies done up to one, five and seven years. So when you're buying a 10 or $20 million asset, those cost savings are very significant for the investors. But whether it's the 10, 31 or cost segregation, I think what I noticed from working with very wealthy investors is they are constantly aware of what they're taxed, you know, with every investment, of what they do, what the tax ramifications will be. And they're always planning ahead to reduce those as much as possible.

How far ahead generally?

Well, if they purchase into a syndication, they're wanting to know kind of the exit strategy. So if they're in the property from three to five years, they have it all usually planned out pretty well before they get into it.

What would you say to someone who has never gotten into real estate before? They're a little.

Afraid of doing it, you know, because with every successful industry, there's always those stories like, well, you know, I used to do that, but. And then yada, yada, whatever, they had a bad experience with it. Why would you. Why do you firmly believe in it so much?

Well, I think you just like you look historically again at who are the types of people that have invested in syndications. And largely, I really think since the beginning of the Internet, before that, it was largely taken up by the very wealthy. Insurance companies and banks is our people that really took up this. And then I think as more information became more readily available on the Internet, this is something that's become available to more and more people. But I was just listening to an Economist Today talk. It was really, really interesting. Actually. I learned quite a lot just about inflation and what they're predicting and what he said is.

The best. One of the best places to be is in tangible assets. Now those can be. And that's honestly what I see a lot of the wealthy being involved in. So the number one tangible asset is real estate. Investment, real estate. But also, you know, there's art, there's, you know, just things, businesses.

Rather than being in the stock market, which there really isn't a tangible asset that you have there. And the real estate, they said historically through inflations, is one of the best places to be.

Now, I saw something on your one sheet when we were going through approvals to have people on the show, which really caught my attention. I want you to share with expert Authority World here how you were able to retire at such a young age. And congratulations because I see that you've done that recently.

Yeah, I don't know how. Not that young, but yeah, I actually retired. I just sold my agency in July of this year. I was an insurance agent before I did this and.

I actually just got into syndications and raising money for syndications, just a few in 2016 is when I started doing that. Before then I had invested in single family homes and things like that. But really I had a long term strategy which is to hold on to these, you know, houses until, you know, they were all paid off in 20 or 30 years. And then I could retire with the cash flow, hopefully, is what the idea was. So with syndications.

I was able to, you know, start raising money for some of these. And by doing that, I was working with a lot of wealthy investors and I really noticed that they look at their money a lot differently than I did or most people I know in the sense that they're using their money. They're not just accumulating it and letting it sit in a bank or 401k or even an investment property. They're constantly letting their money work for them at all times. And by working for them, I'm saying cash flow. And once I really started focusing on that cash flow and you know, having that work for me, having my money work for me in different ways, then that it was a. It didn't take long, you know, for me to, to get to this point where I'm able to retire.

It's so inspiring because I think that's everyone's ultimate goal. And some people think of retirement as like sitting on the porch looking at the lawn. I don't see it that way. I see it more as you have a point where you have more income than you need, necessarily that's not even it because you can always use more to do good things with, I believe. But a lot of people think you need age to retire when really you just need the income. I think what I'm trying to say is when your income exceeds the expenses you have and you no longer tied to it, that's really the goal. So congratulations on that again. And I think it's great that you're helping people move forward down that road, you know, to get there quicker. For someone who's listening and doesn't know how would you describe a syndication?

A real estate syndication is just A fancy word for a group of people that buy a commercial property. And in our case, of investors. Yep, a group of. Group of people. Now those are split up into the management group, which in my case would be myself and my partner. And then once we look at hundreds and hundreds of deals before we find one that really makes sense for us to bring investors in and to close on it. So when we do all the due diligence, we run the numbers, we examine the market very thoroughly and know that this is going to work, then we go ahead and go out to our investor base and bring our investors in as passive investors. So people are like, okay, passive. Yeah. What does that mean exactly? Passive in this case is truly passive. You are. You bring your money in, into the deal, and you are paid a percentage of a preferred return as long as we hold the property. And in our cases, you know, we're on our eighth deal together, and we routinely are returning our investors over 20% annualized returns. So.

Yeah, so it's a, it's a different kind of structure. But essentially you, you as a group and through an llc, are buying a property. And then the professional team of myself and my partner and our employees are running the property while our investors do passively invest. And then they get reports sent to them on a monthly basis on, you know, what's going on and the property as well as. Then they get that monthly cash flow check. So it's a way of investing in real estate where you don't really truly have to do anything.

It sounds fantastic because I know with traditional real estate, for people who rent places out for that monthly cash flow or flip them or whatever the case is, no matter what, someone has to maintain the property, someone has to upkeep it, and then you're dealing with a property manager that may or may not. You know, it sounds like you have the whole, the whole thing encompassed and taken care of. So what is the range of an investment for the syndication.

As far as the amount of the investment is usually between. I mean, we have. Most of our properties are 100,000, but we do have spots for people with 50,000.

And then it kind of goes up from there, but the minimum is 50 to 100,000. And then we hold the properties usually from three to five years. And so the money is, you know, technically in that investment for three to five years, but the investor is paid every month with cash flow while we hold the property. And each property we sort of have a plan for, like a business plan plan. Like this is what our plan is for. This property. So it's very clear what our intentions are and what we're planning to do with the property.

So are you saying the house is. The houses are typically 100,000. So you could get two people in at 50, one in at 100.

That I might have, I might have misspoke there. So no, our properties are usually, I mean we closed on a property last week for 10 million and then we're closing on another property before the end of year for 18 million. Now we go out and secure the financing at 75%. So then that remaining 25% is what we raised from our investors. So for the property for 3 million or for 10 million, I was raising about 3 million for that property. And for this one for 18 million, I'll be raising about 6 million. And that 6 million can be, you know.

Investments as little as 50,000 all the way up to. I've had someone invest 2 million at once, but those are the investment amounts.

So someone could put in half a mil or a mill. But you're saying the minimum is 50 or 100,000, correct?

Yeah.

So if you need to raise 3 million, you could have 30 people at 160 at 50 or you could have 3 people at a mill, Correct?

Yep. And so our investments are usually pretty small. The one we just closed on for 10 million we had, there's about 20 investors in that one. So it's a, it's a nice group of. It's not, you know, with some syndications you can get involved in there, they're pretty large. But ours usually, you know, we're between 30 and 50 investors now.

What happens to the property after the three to five years? Do you sell it and liquidate or do you keep it or can anyone buy it if they want to?

Yep, that's usually. It kind of depends on the property. We have some properties that we know clearly that we want to sell after, you know, we achieve our goal really is pretty simple in that we want to double our clients money within the hold period of that three to five years. So we do have a couple properties in Tallahassee, Florida. Florida is our huge market. That's. We love Florida. That's where we invest. But we have a couple that are pretty small down in Tallahassee and we have already within three years doubled our clients money. They're very small properties there, I think 34 units and 32 units. And we're going to sell those and then move on to larger properties. But it is very likely with some of the properties we've been buying this year that they're more like legacy properties. And so when it would get to that, you know, time where we've doubled our, our clients money, we would go back to them and ask if they want to continue to invest, you know, get their money out and get their returns out and if they want to continue to invest in that particular asset, if they want to invest in a different one, or if they just want to take their and, and, and do something else with it.

So on the 100 grand, they'd be looking at 10 or 20 grand profit. On a mill, you're looking at 100 to 200,000 profit.

If they invest $100,000 in our deal, they're going to. Right. Get there, but they will get their investment back or their initial investment back of 100,000 and then they'll get, you know, just. Yeah, the roughly 20%, they'll get another hundred thousand. It's usually more than that, but yes.

Okay, so you're saying the ones you doubled that you were saying it's 20% at least you've been averaging, but some of them you're doubling.

Yep. But it's 20% a year. So we're within that three to five year period. We're looking to have doubled their money. Yep. So that 20% for five years would be 100%.

So that's even better than I was thinking. So it's not 20%, it's 20% a year. That's an annual, correct?

Yep.

Excellent. So do you have a target of how many. I was going to say houses, but it's not, it sounds like commercial buildings, correct?

Yep.

Do you have a target of how many you're looking for over the next five years? Ten years?

I think.

My partner has a very clear idea on that. I mean for, for me, and this is the way it's been since the beginning of us working together is just finding properties that make sense. And some people in this industry go out and try to take down a 200 or 300 unit building. And for us, we just wanted to make our investors happy so that we would have a long term relationship with our investors, which they're our number one priority. So we started more in like you know, 20 units and then got up to 30. This year or a couple years ago we were at 50 and 60 units. This year we're going to be closing on one for 160 units. So we don't, congratulations have like we know we want to get bigger, but we want to get bigger with, with an asset that makes sense. Something that.

Yeah, you don't want to just get a 500 unit place for the sake of saying you have a 500 unit place.

Exactly.

And correct me if I'm wrong, this would be the assets under management.

Yes. Yep.

Excellent. Well, it sounds like it's going exceptionally well. I'm happy for you. I do want to ask you, though, out of everyone you've invested with, who would you say? Everyone who's invested with you in the buildings and all the deals you've done, what would you say or who would you say is your biggest success story?

My biggest success story.

For me, it's because I have a lot of wealthy investors. And really I spend my time now, like I was telling you earlier, you know, I go on probably two podcasts a week to try to let people know about this type of investing. So my always my, you know, happiest, you know, person that I've. That I've worked with and most satisfied is the person that wasn't sure that this, like, didn't understand it, kind of understood it, but was like, I'll give it a whirl. I'll try, you know, to invest that $50,000. And then they kind of see it all play out. They get their tax, you know, that, that huge tax liability, their first year owning the property, which is usually a great surprise to them, and then they invest again and again. So I have a person that started investing 20. He was very early on with us when we accepted 25,000, and he is going to be investing in his fifth deal with us, and he has just put in 400,000 into that. Into that investment. And he has been investing with us since 2016 and has doubled his money in each investment between three and five years to each investment. So, yeah, so he's, he's, he, you know, that makes me happy because that has changed his life and his family's life to where he was in a very busy profession and he's able to just have a lot more freedom now to work when he wants to.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds good to me, too. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to double their money. And also in a relatively short period of time, I mean, I think there's so many people out there going, oh, we're going to do all this stuff overnight. And it's kind of like, really? And if you do, is it legit? But also, you know, I would never put anyone down who's taken 10 or 20 years to do it because it's still faster than I Mean, it's really not that long in the grand scheme of life. But I think three to five is a nice sweet spot where it's, you know, you're doing it, you're doing it in a systematic way where you can keep replicating it. That's, that's the thing. I mean, there's plenty of people can do something one time, but, you know, I like to align myself with people who, you know, they're doing it for real and consistently, regardless of how long it takes, because frankly, doesn't matter. But I'm talking business in general now. It's like.

But yeah, three to five years really isn't that long. So I have one more question. Well, two more. I've been correcting myself the last couple dozen episodes. So I used to say I have one more question for you before we thank our sponsor, but it's really two because the first one is yellow or black.

Is. The first question is what yellow or black? Okay. Black.

Oh, thank you. You changed it up. I feel like the last dozen people were all yellow. Oh.

And it doesn't make any difference on the question which one it is, because if you look, you see your question spinning there.

I see it.

Okay, that's going. So this spin was going so well, I thought it would take five minutes to stop. So black, here we go. So my question for you is, after retirement, starting this new, Having the success with it, where would you like to travel that you haven't been.

And would you buy something there?

Yeah, I would love to travel. And that was actually I had a big birthday this year and was hoping to go to Iceland and had the trip all planned and everything. And then we just were unsure with COVID how to do that, so we ended up going to Alaska instead, which was amazing in itself, but yes, for sure. Want to go back? Want to go to Iceland? I've never been, always have wanted to go. And there's a lot of places on my list, but that's the first one.

Excellent. Both sound nice to me. And I'm sure it's beautiful. You can't go wrong with the snow and ice.

Yeah.

All right. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action run. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishing method book.com, so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to.

Go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario. Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Stephanie, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Yes.

I have three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path to the cash is having a plan and seeking out somebody who has done it before you.

To show you how to get there as quick as possible.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

The biggest problem I think, is the paralysis of analysis. I see a lot of people that won't jump into the deal and then it's full and they miss it and then the same thing happens maybe a couple times and they just sort of give up. So I think you got to, you know, if you think it's a good idea, just, you know, when you do your due diligence that you gotta, you gotta jump at some point.

I love that And I agree 100%. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

For me, I actually, I mean, I was an insurance agent for 16 years before, but in this particular field that I'm in now with investors, I'm amazed at just how much just the little things mean to my investors, which is, I Pick up the phone. Every time my. My phone rings and it's one of my investors, I. If they need something, I get it answered. You know, the goal is within the day. If I can't, then I definitely communicate that to them. You know, send them a happy birthday note with a little, you know, something. And it's just. For me, it's really amazing how those little personal touches really mean a lot in this world. And even just like picking up the phone and being able to talk to me, you know, at any time is just. It means the world to them. And so it really. Unfortunately, the bar isn't set super high. But, you know, knowing your investors and, you know, knowing what's important to them and providing really great customer service, really, it lasts. You know, you will have a client forever if you do those things.

Great answers, great answers. I. With all the books I publish for entrepreneurs and successful people like yourself, I always like to ask what books have impacted your business? What would you say to that?

Oversubscribed is the name of the book, and I. I don't have the author, but I'm sure if you look it up, you can find it. I love that book because it talks a lot about just how important, you know, content is and. And really creating a small group of people. It doesn't even have to be a big group of people that become, you know, your raving fan and how valu is and really how to do that. And then the second one is Killing Sacred Cows. And I always bring that one up because I think it's a great book for people to. For people our age, any age, really, to examine how they feel about money and why they do. And the Killing Sacred Cows just references these ideas that really need to be killed. And we need to challenge some ideas to get to the wealthy place we want to be.

And who's the author of Killing Sacred Cows?

That's Garrett Gunderson.

That's what. That's what I thought. And I. I gotta admit, I typically don't do this, but I've seen more and more shows do it recently, and I'm getting really comfortable after hundreds of episodes. I tried to stare at the camera the whole time, but I do have multiple monitors. Is over subscribed. Daniel Priestley.

Yes, that's it.

How to get people lining up to do business with you. Yeah, that looks awesome. Correct and expert authority world. I want to know what you think. Are you offended that I looked away? Are you happy that we narrowed it down? So I literally have never really done that. I try to, but you, you piqued my interest and I was like, I wonder who it really is.

No, not at all. That, that, that's fine. That, you know, I should, I should have that written down myself. So. But is, it has been a life changing.

There's so many good books out there. I think, you know, because I do a fair amount of interviewing also and it's like, you know, there's so many of them. It's. I don't really expect everyone to know every last little one. And there's people I've had on, they have a bookshelf behind them and they're still like, I'm like, I can see the name. Can you?

So it's a lot of fun. Where would you like people to learn more?

You can go to my website. That's the best place. It's www.erbewealth.com and we just uploaded an investment report there that talks about the five reasons that this type of investing might be for you. But other than that, I have tons of content that just really educates people into this type of investing and why it might be a good fit for you to look into.

Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing with us. It's been a pleasure. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have.

Yes, it's been great. Thank you so much.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethod book.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned and more. Have a blessed day, and I'll see you on the next one.