Farmers and ranchers have a unique lifestyle that sets them apart from typical office workers who retire in their 60s and enjoy retirement benefits. For farmers and ranchers, retirement is not the norm; they persist in their way of life until their very last breath. But for other professionals like doctors, how do they manage their wealth?
In this captivating podcast episode, Colter engages in a thought-provoking conversation with David, a certified financial advisor with a diverse background in small business deals and land flipping. Together, they delve into the world of finance, specifically addressing the unique financial challenges faced by aging farmers, ranchers, and doctors who have amassed substantial wealth over the years. David candidly shares his own experiences, shedding light on the obstacles he encountered during the tumultuous 2008 financial crisis.
If you're seeking valuable insights into investment opportunities, including stocks, real estate, and bonds, you've landed on the right episode. Join us as we navigate the ever-changing landscape of interest rates on savings and jump into the potential hurdles within the commercial real estate market, such as floating-rate debt and geopolitical uncertainties. Colter also offers intriguing perspectives on how global instability might impact investments in rural real estate.
But that's not all; this episode is brimming with expert knowledge and engaging discussions. Don't miss out on the chance to expand your financial wisdom. Tune in now to explore these insightful topics and gain a deeper understanding of financial strategies.
Farmers and ranchers have a unique lifestyle that sets them apart from typical office workers who retire in their 60s and enjoy retirement benefits. For farmers and ranchers, retirement is not the norm; they persist in their way of life until their very last breath. But for other professionals like doctors, how do they manage their wealth?
In this captivating podcast episode, Colter engages in a thought-provoking conversation with David, a certified financial advisor with a diverse background in small business deals and land flipping. Together, they delve into the world of finance, specifically addressing the unique financial challenges faced by aging farmers, ranchers, and doctors who have amassed substantial wealth over the years. David candidly shares his own experiences, shedding light on the obstacles he encountered during the tumultuous 2008 financial crisis.
If you're seeking valuable insights into investment opportunities, including stocks, real estate, and bonds, you've landed on the right episode. Join us as we navigate the ever-changing landscape of interest rates on savings and jump into the potential hurdles within the commercial real estate market, such as floating-rate debt and geopolitical uncertainties. Colter also offers intriguing perspectives on how global instability might impact investments in rural real estate.
But that's not all; this episode is brimming with expert knowledge and engaging discussions. Don't miss out on the chance to expand your financial wisdom. Tune in now to explore these insightful topics and gain a deeper understanding of financial strategies.
I'm Colter DeVries, owner of Ranch Investor Advisory and Brokerage Services. As a former commercial nag banker, my main reason for doing this podcast is to simply gauge the market's appetite for crowdsourcing investment in a ranch real estate fund.
Speaker 2:The Ranch Investor podcast, curated by subject matter experts to give you immense benefit, because we believe your time is valuable.
Speaker 3:Dave, welcome to the Ranch Investor podcast. Thanks for coming on. Thank you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, glad to be here, my friend.
Speaker 3:I hope you can take up the majority of time telling me about what doctors do with their money, as we also get into retirement, succession planning, estate planning. That's a big issue in farm and ranch right now and what you've seen some of your clients do. You're a certified financial advisor. You do some small business deals on your own outside of your CFA services. You do some land flipping. You've got some experience all around that I'm glad to have you on. You can share that with our audience.
Speaker 3:We do need to get into tax reduction planning, retirement income, some of the family wealth planning and estate planning. As the question comes up quite often, dave, is what do our counterparts in the urban areas do with all their money? What do doctors do with their money? What do lawyers do with their money? And so that, as we have an aging population in farm and ranch, the average farmer and rancher is over 65 years old and they've got immense equity, immense wealth and assets. But there is a big push to educate and I hate using that word because it sounds like pompous when it's like you need to educate yourself, like I'm going to give you an education. I hate using that word but bring information. How about that?
Speaker 3:There's a huge push to bring information to farmers and ranchers when it comes to managing investments, financial advising, estate planning, retirement planning. Launch in, dave. Give me your background and then help me take over from here so I can give this voice arrest.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you bet Colter. Well, I think, as I think, about ranchers and farmers, and we have some of those, those kind of clientele. In my financial planning business we deal with them, and in our land flipping business that we do there, I think about that group and I mean, these people are the salt of the earth, regular folks. They're to me, the ideal person because they have a lot of wealth. But you would never know it if you talk to them, right?
Speaker 4:At least the majority of folks that are in that position, many farmers in particular. Man, you think about going through COVID and what happened. I mean I was like getting smacked in the face right where you were planning on selling all these crops and you have to go let it rot in the fields for a while and you're often land rich and cash poor, and doctors and many of the small business owners, people like that that I often deal with in the financial planning. They're kind of the opposite, right, they tend to be more cash heavy and cash assets, maybe a good deal of real estate, but certainly it's a smaller portion of their net worth than ranchers and farmers and those kinds of people which, what most of us do that are ranchers and farmers. We go out and buy more land, right, because we know it. We understand it, we can, to a degree right, work with it and we know that if we plant corn, plant soybeans, plant wheat, whatever, what that yield might look like, my cash flow might look like not that we're guaranteed it, but at least we have an idea of it.
Speaker 4:And for me, a little bit about my background. So I've been in the financial planning space for 20 plus years now at this particular point. So I'm 42, to give everyone context in terms of who. I am originally from Southern California, although I have roots in the farm world. In Manchester, washington, which is across the water from Seattle. We have an old family farm that was there which has been, over the years, gotten to smaller and smaller and smaller chunks to now it's left to the old Victorian style farmhouse on the water, with a couple acres of land there still on the water, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:So I come from that stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's on Deniston Lane. My last name is Deniston, so the family lane you know is still there and probably point to that and my heritage. Because I look at my family and how I was raised, you know work ethic was incredibly important and and treating people honorably and fairly was important, and the value of real estate was something that I was brought up with. That was incredibly important. My folks are real estate investors. My great aunt and uncle did well in real estate and it's as part of as I've evolved as a person. You know real estate, land farming, those kinds of things have appealed to me more and more and more.
Speaker 4:If someone was to look at this video, I'm wearing a collared shirt right now. You know I don't look the part. I look like a white collar guy, which of course, I have a big chunk of that in me. But I look at how I started out 20 years ago, right, you think about when I started in this industry. You know the Internet was definitely here. We were just getting past dial up and all the good old AOL stuff and cell phones evolved and you know life has been moving so quickly.
Speaker 4:I know many farmers now. Right, I mean, you can do so much more with machines and computers and GPS coordinates and telling tractors and whatnot where to go and how to do it without having to do all the work, and it's so much of a different world out here today. So for me, in my journey, I grew up in California, went to school in Seattle and I've been a small business owner basically since I got out of college. So originally I went in my first year in financial planning and knocked on 2,000 doors to try and get clients in the snow, in the wind, in the rain, in beautiful sunshiney weather and I thought I was a pretty smart guy. But I'll tell you, man, that humbled the heck out of me in going through that process and then-.
Speaker 3:That's hard work. That's hard work like farming and ranch and knocking on doors and building your book right out of college.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, no, it's you. You definitely grow to appreciate an office and growing up, you know, and earning my stripes in the industry, and so ended up working for another guy and got to a point where had my great aunt had passed away, received some money, we had no debt on our house on anything, you know, we owned it all, which is the way I always wanted to live. But then I got to a space in my career where I wanted to make an acquisition and so, just like many farmers and ranchers in this case, I acquired financial planning clients and so, rather than trying to grow it organically right, I grow it and go out and make an acquisition to try and speed up the process. And unfortunately, the closing date of that was August 1st 2008, which was awesome, fantastic timing.
Speaker 3:Oh, that is my listeners. They get tired of me saying it, but I have impeccable timing like that as well, dave. What happened with you, Colter? I timed the cattle market exactly wrong and, yeah, immediately. Much like the 08 financial markets, in real estate, they dropped 40%. So did the cattle market in 2015, which I have a listener who told me he's heard it enough and so I won't go into it any further. Dave, love it man.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we go through this process where I literally had no debt, no, nothing else, and I had all this debt after this acquisition and I'm sure many people listening to this can relate to that as you buy a new piece of land and it didn't work out the way that you thought it would, and I'm now just clawing and scraping to get my way back up and I feel like I earned my inheritance in that time period.
Speaker 4:It was handed to me. I didn't blow it, but I invested it and, man, it was hell to get back through that, but we made it through that time period and I swore at that particular time I was never, ever going to be dependent again on one thing, which is what led me to multiple streams of income and doing different things, including the landflipping that I'm doing today, which kind of brought me back full circle to my family and how the family grew up and I was raised and it's been a beautiful but difficult journey Along the way. By the way had two beautiful children. My wife and I have been married 20 plus years now. My oldest is in college and my youngest is our little miracle girl. She was less than a pound when she was born.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow 12.4 ounces. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 4:Wow. And she was super early 23 weeks justationally, so 17 weeks earlier than she should have been and it's been a journey getting through that and that's part of the reason why I focus on doctors. I'm giving back. So if you ever listen to my podcast, the Freedom Formula for Physicians, that's me just giving back to the physician community. It's been a passion project for the last seven, eight years or so.
Speaker 3:Well, my wife is a, she's a PA and, as many ranchers have joked with me, so I lost my ass ranching once before. The joke is I was a broke rancher. Therefore I had to become a ranch broker. And now they all my friends say well, your wife's a PA, Now you can go back to ranching. Because behind every good rancher is a wife with a town job, and she has an exceptionally good town job, which means I could be a great rancher with her off-arming come.
Speaker 4:Man, because it's so variable, right, I mean it's? You're investing all the time with ranching, whether cows or horses or whatever, and having to decide what stock do you sell? What stock do you buy?
Speaker 3:all that kind of thing. And what? What Freedom? What was the podcast?
Speaker 4:one more time the Freedom Formula for Physicians is the title Freedom.
Speaker 3:Formula for Physicians.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for coming on, because it is I do want to get into. That is one question I had, and I actually want to jump right into a tangent, because you and I have this similar story about not so impeccable timing. Yeah, what are your thoughts on where we're at today? Are we overvalued on real estate and equities? Is there cause to be skeptical right now?
Speaker 4:Well, there's always cause to be skeptical, colter, there's no doubt about it, right? You know I get this question all the time, every year, multiple times of the year, doesn't matter the year. But yes, there are concerns, right? You know? I think with a lot of different things, whether stocks or real estate or bonds. You know there's really, except the money in the bank, you know, now you can actually earn money in the bank for the first time in a decade actually more like 20 years. You know, you could earn 5% on your safe money, which is incredible considering that we were making zero to 1% for like 15 years out of that money. So it's a much different environment than a couple of years ago in terms of paper assets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds. In terms of real estate, I, literally right before we got on this call, I was having a guest on my podcast. We were talking about real estate and, in particular, multifamily and office and self-storage, and we're talking about how so many operators had got floating rate debt in 2019, 2018, 2020, and that floating rate debt might have been locked in for five to seven years. Well, here we are now, right, starting 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, we're gonna start to see. You know who's naked underneath their coat, right? You know it's gonna be really interesting to see how the next couple of years play out.
Speaker 4:Of course, there's all the crazy geopolitical stuff that something always seems to be happening. But this feels a little scarier, right, you got Russia and Putin with their finger on the nuclear devices. That's the threat. That's scary of it. We've got stuff going on in Israel and Palestine and they're that feeling of gosh. Is World War III across the next year coming to us? On the other hand, I would point out, with savings rates, you know now getting nice yields on investments like we're seeing, rates, like I said, we haven't been seeing it 15, 20 years, and there's a lot more of an attraction now to the safer stuff.
Speaker 4:On the other hand, employment you look at the economy. There's been talk of recession ever since COVID started, which we had a little bit of a recession, but then bam, the government throws down helicopters worth the money and things kept chugging along. And here we are today. Job market's still growing. I'm not saying it's easy, but there's still jobs being created every month. That got across all kinds of industries. There's certainly no negative GDP even in sight in terms of gross domestic product the economy right. We're not in a recession, we're not close to a recession. The Fed is now put the brakes on raising rates, or at least pumping the brakes to not be raising by three quarters of a percent, which means all of us for you and me and everyone else, that means our borrowing costs. Okay, we can more know, hey, if we wanna take out some debt to invest in our businesses, we have a better idea of what that's gonna be right. So there's some of these unknowns that have become knowns in the economy. So I'm cautiously optimistic is how I would say it.
Speaker 4:I think you look at this last year, for example, tech stocks oh my God, they have been screaming. If you look at the big tech stocks, they're up like 40 to 50% for this year. Now, if you look at everything else outside of tech like you look at consumer goods companies just think of things you buy at the grocery store laundry, detergent, soda, stuff like that those are down this year. Utilities big publicly traded power companies are down this year. There's a list of about energy, oil companies are down this year by five or 6%. So certain sectors are getting hit harder.
Speaker 4:Well, guess what I'll bet you next year, that whole flight's gonna flip and tech probably won't be doing as well and maybe some of these other things will start doing better. So those are some of the things that I'm looking at I'm talking about. I think a lot of the dividend stocks have gotten hit much better. For dividends, for example, now you have higher yields because interest rates have gotten higher. So I think there's some really attractive stuff out there. But, yes, there are risks. There are things to be concerned with, things to keep an eye on, like commercial real estate, for example, how that impacts banks. You think of a lot of banks that might loan farmers and ranchers money. Well, they might be pulling back and I'd be asking people to put more cash into deals than they used to all that kind of stuff. What are you saying on your end?
Speaker 3:That's right and actually we like to say and I'm gonna try, I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not just putting my sales pin. Everything is spin cycled when you're a salesman, a broker. But the World War III analogy in private conversations, I guess I am gonna blast it and broadcast it right now. But that's good for my business Rural real estate and a stable farmland producing United States, domestic food production, global instability, supply chains, war overseas I don't have the data to support this. I'll flat out say I don't know what the correlation is, but I presume that it's good for my business. World War three is and that's. You know, that's a very Machiavellian thing to say. I'm not, I'm not wanting rockets flying over Israel and Palestine, that's. I don't personally value that and want that, and I don't want that in the Ukraine either.
Speaker 3:So I think the long term outlook yes, there is a lot of uncertainty and skepticism. It's even in these safe quote, unquote safe assets of farmland which banks are. Yes, now you're going to have to come with more equity, more down payment. The debt service coverage ratio doesn't look as good as it used to, especially when commodities we're at a peak. They were very high and volatility High prices means high volatility, means expensive options, because the the probability, the possibility of Of your expected income dropping by half, that probability is now increasing. That's more expensive In the marketplace. All of that, all of that being said, I think land is going to do what it's always done, just slow and steady. Yeah, we've had some bubbles, you know, in Minnesota, north Dakota, you see some record setting farmland prices $19,000 an acre, which is about $10,000 higher than the farmer next door wants it to be if he's buying, but he's also sitting on that same land. That just went up that much. Yeah, it's full of paradoxes.
Speaker 3:What I am, what I'm curious, though, is economics, is the movement of resources from areas of low yielding to high yielding, and I had the listeners can attest that. There was a gentleman who was on my podcast a couple weeks ago who beat me up pretty severely over the annual yield on farmland and ranch land, because apples for apples, farm and ranch especially ranch is lower than farm. Farm is like two and a half 3% gross annual yield, ranch is half of that, and he's like boy. That's. That's horrible colter, that is. He's like I can get commercial real estate with 8%, eight cap annual yield and then a three year IRR of 14% and your three year IRR is 6%. With a one cap, he's like that's just horrible.
Speaker 3:And why would anyone? Why would anyone invest in farm and ranch? And what I tried? I didn't get a chance to say well, it's risk, adjusted it's, it would be considered core real estate. It's not value add, it's not fixed and flip, it's not distressed, it's core real estate and it's about as core as it gets. So that's that's my rebuttal to Adam, coming on here and beating me up the other week. What are your thoughts, though, on core versus value add class C office space? I keep hearing that this is going to, like you said, the variable interest rate, loans and the flight of capital to other areas. We keep waiting for this commercial real estate crash. I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 4:No, but I believe it's probably still another year or two out, if not three. Because what's happening behind the scenes? Everything that I read and people I talk to is right now banks are trying to work out that stuff with the current owners. Right, you know they're, they're trying to make it work. So, whether someone's getting mezzanine loans or some sort of fill in thing to to have it, but at the same time you're getting dropping yields. So your friend who was talking about, hey, buying something with, with cash right, you're coming in, you're doing something with it is so much different than someone that already holds the real estate and they're going to try and hold on as long as possible, right, or they they finish with it and even if they do foreclose or whatever, I mean that's a long process. That is not particularly multi millions of dollars buildings I mean we're not talking about a $500,000 home here, you're talking about millions of dollars, you know, probably let's just say a minimum of two or three in a C type building, you know, but it might be five or 10 or 15 or 20, you know, depending upon the building. But those aren't big buildings here in Minnesota. I mean you have some deals like that, but that have happened. I think, in terms of ranchers and farmers and those types, I think the the main mistake, in my opinion, that they make is putting too many eggs in that one basket, whether it's a certain crop. I think the best farmers right, they're diversified, they'll have greenhouses, they'll have different kinds of crops and things that they have going on and they're testing new things as opposed to someone that they're just in soybean and corn, right, that's, that's not diversified. If corn craters are screwed, you know, so you might be counting on a yield of one or 2%, but it may not be less than that potentially.
Speaker 4:Now we do know that there's been a lot of foreign buying. You hear a lot of Bill Gates and what's happening there. So, just like in office buildings, right, you got C class, b class, a class, I mean, think of ranching and farming the same way. Right, there's different qualities of it. You have a place that has water running by it. That's what Bill Gates has been buying up.
Speaker 4:From what I understand, you probably know better than I do. You know, because he wants the water rights that stuff is probably going to stay at a premium. You have something that's farther away from water? Well then, you know, your land probably isn't worth as much. It could be more volatile because it's not the class A type, in that I think we can all agree. I mean generally, farmland, if you look at the last 20 years, has gone up a ton. Right, I mean it's. It has appreciated significantly because of people like Bill Gates, other billionaires buying ranches and farms, the Chinese coming in trying to acquire different things. It is a volatile asset class, you know, at the end of the day it can go up a lot, it can go down a lot because it depends upon the crops that are being yielded and what you can do with it and all that kind of thing. At least that's my take on it from what I see my off. Base on that or no.
Speaker 3:Well, I want to get your thoughts on this. I think the paradigm shift my my parents generation believed you have to own the land and your goal was to just buy and buy and buy, accumulate more land. You, you farm and ranch what you own and your goal is to own more. I think Gen X might be changing a little more, where where they're going to say, all right, I will own 25%, lease 75% and as land that cash on cash and you'll yield for ranches approaches zero. Essentially, as that happens, I think more people are inclined to say look, I'll separate off the, the land investment entity and I'll transfer that risk to someone else, someone else who needs the portfolio benefits of low risk, low return, like Bill Gates.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to defend Bill Gates, but the initial thesis for him was what can I buy to offset all this Microsoft stock, what is the exact opposite of Microsoft stock? And it was farmland. That's the story. The other people believe there might be all terrier motives there, but so, anyways, you the younger generations I want to say are going to be growing their operating entity at profit margins of 30%. They're going to have the land owning entity. Someone else can can bear that risk and and someone else needs that portfolio diversification.
Speaker 3:So what we're seeing today, talking about your clients, doctors and some of the more urban investors, is because these cap rates, these yields on rural land, farm ranch, are getting so low. Institutions are no longer players for direct ownership. But yet, since financing rates have gone up so high, we're seeing a flip in that you don't want to own land, you want to own the debt on the land, and I'm with them. I would. I would much rather own a five year Loan on a apartment building at 9%, then own the apartment building for the next five years.
Speaker 4:I think that's part of the diversification I was referring to earlier. Right Like, if you look at my land flipping business and what I do there, we do a lot of owner financing Different size properties, different types of properties, and I have all these streams of income that are diverse. I'm not tied to one thing or one person and then on top of that I run some masterminds and stuff for other land investors that are like me. It's another stream of income to add to what I have. The same is true, I think, with farming and ranching, beyond the kind of crops or the kind of livestock that you may have.
Speaker 4:I think playing the debt side to investor money and too, is incredibly important. There are many land investors, or a few land investors out there Now, for example, that teach a lot about subdividing. Maybe you should look at land banking, for example. If you're a rancher or whatever, take some of that asset and start dividing it out. Maybe you could look at owner financing some of it to create streams of income for yourself. There's so many ways but then that vertical to make money and do different things with it. You could still stay tied to land if you want to, but just being a landholder, as you're saying, I think isn't the wisest financial idea. It should be part of it. No doubt that should be a part of what I think a lot of people do Real estate farming, whatever. That should be a part of someone's overall portfolio of having a long term real estate asset. But you should have different streams of income coming in, so if one thing isn't working, hey, you still have this other asset that is working for you.
Speaker 3:And one thing that has affected. You'll probably start seeing this in the news clippings, the headlines. What we're seeing is, yeah, those 5.5% CDs. Right now People would much rather put their money into a CD than a ranch that appreciates that 5.5% annually. People are just saying look the appreciation rate, the risk-free rate, they're equal right now. So I would, given the opportunity for risk-free or appreciation, I would rather go with risk-free and it's more liquid. That's tough for me to compete with right now.
Speaker 4:That's tough, but I think how much would you say ranchers have appreciated by, for example, in the last 15 years, 20 years.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's even so 20 years, even taking into account the craziness of 2021, you're still annualized. Kager is going to be 6% to 9%, 5% to 8%, 6% to 9% right around there, depending on certain areas. Yeah, certainly.
Speaker 4:Different assets, different locations, a lot of kinds.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Well, I think there's no doubt that that's really attractive. Plus, it's liquid. When you have money in the bank and you're able to make 5% to 6% and you have the backing of the US government, which some people might argue isn't great, but most people, I think, would think that that's a good thing. However, at the same token, that ain't going to be guaranteed that way forever, right, that's for right now, this period of time. If you look two years ago, you weren't getting that, you weren't getting anywhere close to that, right? So you're not locked into that rate for five years, 10 years, 15 years. So if you want to get a sustainable, nice rate of return, I would suggest that's not the place for that Short term. Absolutely Next year or two, if there is a recession, guess what? Those rates will drop and then it's not going to look so attractive anymore. Maybe they go up a little bit in between now and then, I don't know. But what I do know is that I wouldn't want to put all my eggs in that basket either, right? I think I have some money there. I have $150,000 sitting in money market right now.
Speaker 4:Me as a financial advisor, landflipper. Of course, I have my stock portfolio. I have other things that are more aggressive. I have my landflipping. It's just all part of the bigger picture. So if someone has, let's say, a net worth of $10 million and you have $500K in safe stuff, I think that's a great idea. If you have $5 million in it, that's probably not such a good idea Right meaning or might even lose to inflation. So you know, it's like being invested in gold Generally it matches inflation, but you don't have the liquidity that you do in bank accounts. So that's my take on it is yes, those rates look extremely attractive, but things like farms, ranches, land, you know, if you're playing the asset in multiple ways, like we're talking about, that's the way to do it. Do the debt side, do the equity side, do subdivides, do owner financing on some lots to generate income for yourself. You know, all that stuff I think is good and strong to do.
Speaker 3:So that would be one. It's kind of like you're being gentle with your client. Right now is what I hear, Rather than saying you need to diversify, get into mini storage and triple net auto zone or a Walgreens property, commercial real estate class C, class A, you know you need to diversify. You're kind of saying well, your comfort zone is obviously farm and ranch, you're highly concentrated. Is there a way to diversify within that asset?
Speaker 4:Right, totally. And the reason I feel strongly about that and I think you know there's advantages in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, the kind of stuff I do as a financial advisor. There's tax benefits that you can get from those kinds of things that you can't get from raw land and farming and whatnot.
Speaker 4:But, on the other hand, I'm not gonna make a leopard be able to change its spots, right. So, and there's the reality is there's a lot of wealth and value in farming and ranching and stuff like that. So there are other advisors that would say, oh, you need to have 50% of your money in stocks. Well, I don't agree with that. You know, if someone got this far and has a portfolio of five to 10 million bucks, who am I to argue with them on where their money should be? They've done well with what they have, you know. Particularly too, I know for me and the reason I got into land flipping is I didn't wanna just hand over my hard earned money to somebody else. I wanted to dig in it, get in it, get my hands dirty and run a business that helped me be able to have some measure of control over where the money's being invested, how it's going, and that's not for everybody.
Speaker 4:There's plenty of people out there that run syndications that, for many busy doctors, they do get into, whether it's the things that you mentioned, self-storage or multifamily or whatever. And here's the reality is many of those things have an incredibly high amount of fees because you're paying someone else for your time right, and so if you can spend some of your own time to do this stuff, then you're making that much more money rather than paying it to someone else and I say this as a financial advisor getting paid by other people to manage their money. And reality is those people that I generally work with they don't understand it. They might read about it some, they might have some degree of understanding, but they don't care about it, they don't.
Speaker 4:I mean, they care about it, but they don't like it, they don't enjoy it, and so I step in to help people save the time and not have to think about it as much, so that way they know, hey, someone's on their side, they can bounce ideas off of me. We talk about taxes, we talk about investments, we talk about all that kind of stuff, but for someone, I think, that has an established portfolio, yes, some diversification is good, but you shouldn't be invested in 30 things, because how are you gonna keep your eye on 30 different things and no one person from another when you've handed your money off to 30 different people that are running syndications and convincing you they're the best things since sliced bread, which, in fact, I think you're gonna see more and more of the emperor walking around with no clothes on.
Speaker 4:Right On some of these people that were highly leveraged and now they have these debts that are coming up where they got to pay a lot more in interest than the cash line gonna be there to support the thing, so Well, you took, you hit on something.
Speaker 3:I'm actually working on a syndication for ranch investing. But one thing that in my research you look, go to bigger pockets forum. Some of these real estate investing communities and, yeah, a lot of those people. They don't like syndications, they don't like crowdfunding platforms. They believe it's too high feed, they don't like investing with someone they don't know. And that's understandable, because actually a lot of these people on these forums are professionals themselves.
Speaker 3:So they have a different opportunity costs. They have a different skill set. They don't need to pay someone else for someone else's time and expertise and experience. And I get that for the average person. I'm happy to pay my financial advisor $4,500 a year or whatever it is, because I think he balances me, I can be impulsive and he's kind of like an insurance policy. He's there to check me before I wreck me. So I think when it comes to syndications, there is, if you don't have the experience and the expertise and the time, yeah, those the high fees, the relationship would be one tough one to get over. But I do want to hear more about your mastermind group in this land flipping. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so basically we have a. The land flipping community is small, I'm sure, in the same way you know ranching. I mean a lot of the people know each other, right? You know the, particularly in certain states or whatever. In this case, nationally and internationally, there's a lot of people that have gotten into buying and selling raw vacant land and I was the kind of person I never wanted to come up with a course because it takes so much time to do it and then you have to maintain it. But there are people that have them.
Speaker 4:I didn't want to do like a high level coaching thing because I know the time and effort that goes into that. You have to usually do what we're doing right here of having another podcast, you know, having funnels, doing ads, all this stuff. That took time, which I love being a financial advisor and I didn't want to give that up on top of doing the land flipping. But I loved meeting with people, so I basically, for free, started getting groups of people together seven to 10, we would meet for two days and really just spend deep time with one another, of hanging out, sharing, breaking bread together, sharing ideas, you know, just having an environment where people know they're not gonna get sold something that were truly all there to help one another, and at the time I wasn't charging for it, so I had no financial incentive to do it. It was all about building relationships. And so finally, this last year I started doing some paid events, which I've been playing with some of the price points and whatnot. But to give you an idea, we had a 50 person event here in May the one for 2024 sold out within a week of that one closing. So I guess we must have been doing something.
Speaker 4:Well, we have one going to Puerto Rico with a group of 10 of us all together in January. Possibly we're doing Italy next October. So we're seeing some cool places and I get to have great relationships, make a little bit of money, but it's nothing compared to my usual businesses. I just do it for the relationships and the passion and really having the opportunity to get to know people. I love talking about business and land and markets and all that stuff, and so it just it feeds my soul and it's been a lot of fun. It's really meant for experienced people, not new people. This is not for someone just wanting to get into the business. There's plenty of other people that have courses and coaching programs. That I certainly don't do that. I'd highly recommend several people out to folks that are interested in getting going. This is really meant for people that are buying and selling land regularly.
Speaker 3:Is there a website for that? I want you to plug your CFA, your financial advising website, as well If you have the mastermind out there, or a community or a group, social media group.
Speaker 4:Yeah, actually, I don't have a social media group specifically for it. I do have a website that, to be honest with you, I can't remember if we took it down or not, because we had our last event and it sold out. Landunconferencecom is the website. I think it's downright this second actually, because we don't have any events already sold out that we have, except the Italy one that's coming up next October.
Speaker 4:But if people want to check it out, one of my partners in that event space is Seth Williams from RE-Tipster. Seth is an amazing, awesome man of God, good guy and very trustworthy dude. He has courses. He doesn't do coaching but he does courses and has a ton of YouTube videos all on the space, including one of the event is on Seth's YouTube channel.
Speaker 3:What is his again, Seth?
Speaker 4:RE-Tipstercom For real estate tipster. Re-tipstercom.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's Seth. Who again? Seth Williams? Seth Williams, okay, are you two at all personalities where there's a LinkedIn or an X thread that people can follow you and get? Your daily update.
Speaker 4:I don't do that stuff but certainly people could go to my website. I do have a Facebook account for Dave Deniston. Cfa is where someone could follow on social media. I don't post stuff daily. I do a lot of family photos and there's some good financial things on there. Certainly, my podcast is a great way to keep up with me, which you can go to drfreedompodcastcom. I usually put out a new podcast every week which I talk about all these different things that we're talking about today, which you can do search for Freedom for more physicians, or drfreedompodcastcom to go check that out.
Speaker 3:Dave, I'm going to be straightforward with you. It's going to be very difficult to get my wife to change from true crime podcasts to the Dr Financial Freedom podcast. She does like those true crime ones.
Speaker 4:Those are better. I'll be honest, my podcast is fun and educational, but it's not as good as true crime.
Speaker 2:I can't compete.
Speaker 4:I can't compete. My wife doesn't even listen to my podcast. I'm not offended, it's all right.
Speaker 3:Yeah no, she'll never hear mine. That's why I can reference her and not take shit at home for it.
Speaker 4:That's right.
Speaker 3:Well, you have a beautiful family in the background and, for anyone who's interested, definitely reach out to Dave on the website DaveDenistoncom the podcast if you'd like to hear more. And is this mastermind group? Is this predominantly your network within Minnesota or is it national?
Speaker 4:No, it's national.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:Literally. People from all over the country, even the world, are kind of part of it mostly US, of course, but there's some people in the Philippines, some people in Italy that are doing land flipping in the United States, that are part of my list, if you will, of other land investors. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, dave, appreciate you coming on the Ranch Investor podcast and bearing with me as I struggle through losing my voice this week. But this has been good man. You've hit on some good things and I think people are going to have questions and I encourage everyone to Whatever platform they're using social media go ahead and shoot us your questions and if they're straight to Dave, I can try to relay them, but we definitely like to hear your feedback. So please give us good, bad, otherwise feedback on any social media or Discord channel we have.
Speaker 4:Love it. Thank you, Colter.
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