00:00
the use of the internet is for sure is going to be a continuing trend for that very same reason you started with your 401k you started with ir you started just with a savings account those are the right place to start the first question that a lot of investment
00:14
advisers the first thing they'll talk to you about is do you have your portfolio properly allocated among all the different asset classes biggest thing that you need to think about is liquidity if you need the cash you can sell immediately one other thing I just wanted to put out there
00:29
something that we talk about a lot is this idea of the democratization of capital which is something that our Securities Law support us on a lot of our clients are using the internet to Market their deals and their investment opportunities then later as you build up
00:44
a certain amount in those accounts you start seeking these alternative Investments with what we're talking about if you invest in an entity that's taxed as a partnership then you may be allocated income that you have to pay real taxes welcome to the executive connect podcast and welcome Roland and
01:05
Sarah oh thanks molissa thanks so much Melissa it's great to be here now I I want to start with just maybe some insights and what inspired you two to team up and how do you see alternative investing evolving in 2025 I can start um I have been practicing here inas Texas for a real
01:31
long time and Sarah joined our firm and was wanting to expand her practice area so we started working together and just found that that we have a lot of overlapping uh complimentary experiences and so we started this uh decided to start this podcast together to talk
01:52
about really the the practice area that that we we you know make make our living from and and it's it's um creating alternative investment opportunities for investors um we wind up working with finance a lot for commercial real estate but we have a couple hedge fund clients
02:11
as well and and we've done private Equity deals as well so um that's just that's kind of from my perspective and Sarah you know you you can you know answer too well I think Roland summarized it well we're we're law partners and so we started working together and that was
02:31
going really well and then Roland had had this idea for alt investing Made Easy for some time and um Melissa as you know podcasting is a serious commitment and you need a team and so he asked me to be on the team and we've worked together on it since then and it's been
02:46
really enjoyable and an opportunity to learn a lot of new things from each other and from uh the people that we interview and at the same time what we're working on is providing legal services for our clients but also providing an outlet for them to assist in their Capital raising so um and also
03:05
our clients who are accredited investors and more investing on the passive side giving them a chance to have access to deals that we happen to know from our own clients are pretty good ones and so I think um all of that's come together and been really uh good to work on and
03:23
um and is something that's also been fun so I really appreciate that I've learned a lot about podcasting I know you we were talking about that before that it's it's a new skill that we all need for the future yeah isn't that the truth if I would have told you 12 years ago I'd be
03:41
working Casino gaming and doing podcasting living in Austin I would probably be laughing because it's something that it's it's such a diff different way of doing things and learning how all the tips and tricks so I'm so excited to talk about this subject with you and I'm curious maybe
03:58
we'll start with you Roland hear how you think alternative Investments are changing you know in 2025 versus how they've been done in the past I think that that the use of the internet is is something that for sure is going to be a continuing Trend and and we work really with some relatively
04:20
small scale deals and so we a lot of our clients are using the internet to Market their deals and their the investment opportunities I'm sure for the larger deals there's still networks of of broker dealers investment Banks you know family offices just uh uh different
04:41
groups you know fund continue to fund things in the way that that they've always been done just through you know informal or formal networks that are built up throughout the financial services industry but you know I think for more and more um the internet is a thing and um one of our clients sort of
05:00
questions you know what's really the value to me of of you know advertising my private Securities deal through the internet and and they're skeptical that somebody's going to click on a link and invest in their deal but the the answer is is just more and more people are
05:17
becoming more and more accustomed to doing everything through the internet and so that's what you know if I were gonna um I would just say that it'll be a continued tool and it's really why why we you know decided to uh create alt investing made easy because it's just a way for us to Market
05:34
our Attorney Services but really to if Sarah use the term I'm going to steal it Sarah but we're attorneys plus plus we're not only your perfect legal secretaries but we're helping our private Securities clients sell their deals which not all attorneys are doing and and they actually can't unless
05:53
they're separately registered as an investment advisor ready to lead smarter and invest Weiser on the executive connect podcast we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence hit the Subscribe button now don't just watch Act Right which by the way Roland
06:13
is registered and and I'm working on it so I totally agree Roland and you know um one other thing I just wanted to put out there something that we talk about a lot Melissa is this idea of the democratization of capital which is something that our Securities Law support us on but that what we're also
06:30
talking about here when because Roland made reference to these formal and informal networks that exist in the existing Financial Services Market those if you're an outsider if you're on the smaller scale or if you're at the beginning of your wealth building Journey accessing those those networks
06:47
is either not possible because you don't have the connections or it's very expensive so something that we can do and one reason it should be you know appealing to uh clients who are um on the lower let's say on the the lower scale of of wealth building um and we're talking about high you know an
07:06
investment banker does deals in the hundreds of millions of dollars so it's um you know everything is relative when it comes to describing wealth but um but our services or services like those that are available through online platforms are affordable for people who have
07:24
certain resources to invest into their marketing and Etc but don't have unlimited purse you you know that like big corporations and big wealthy investors have so um very high high net worth investors have so this um is is a great way I think we can actually serve a segment of the investing community
07:42
that uh needs access to uh marketing their deals but wouldn't be going necessarily to Big investment Banks yeah I love that I want to simplify this a little bit for our listeners I know when I first started my journey as an investor I thought it was just a 401k and an IRA and my savings
08:03
account and as I've grown through my journey of investing there's a lot more to it and there's a lot more ways to create real actual wealth than your 401k and Ira so let's start with just an essential that every investor should know and you know with your experience
08:24
of in law and finance can you maybe share a little bit and maybe simplify it down to our listeners before we get started well Sarah I would my mind went to asset allocation um you know the first question that that I I think a lot of investment advisers or the first thing
08:44
they'll they'll talk to you about is you know do you have your asset Pro your your portfolio prop properly allocated among all the different asset classes and the biggest thing that you need to think about is liquidity and making sure that you're invested in and things that
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if you need the cash you can sell immediately um that's investments in public equities and and things like mutual funds and and public stocks and all the names of the big corporations that everybody knows but there's going to be a smaller portion of your portfolio that you can allocate towards
09:19
more illiquid assets and these are alternative assets these private Securities deals there's you're still investing in shares of stock LLC interests but these are unregistered companies versus a registered companies that have registered stock offerings you know that are trade traded on the the
09:38
public equities markets so so just understanding that what we're talking about with alternative assets are private Securities deals that have much more severe liquidity restrictions than the public equities that most people think about investing in are you a high
09:56
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10:14
while benefiting from tax advantages under laws dating back to the Reagan Era take control of your financial future visit Texas Freedom fund. executive connectp podcast.com right but for that very same reason and just like you said Melissa you started with your 401k you started with Ira you
10:34
started just with the savings account those are the right place to start right that's something that you can digest and understand especially you know if you're early on in your career you're going to be supported by your employer probably and making you know allocations to those
10:48
accounts regardless of whether you can spend the money or not so and I think then later as you build up a certain amount in those accounts you start seeking these alternative Investments with what we're talking about and I think just to give a concrete example you know commercial real estate uh is a
11:05
great uh example of an alternative investment like whether it's you know investing in I guess technically fix and flips which are maybe not exactly commercial real estate but multif Family Apartments those kinds of things those are great places to start because they're very safe because they have
11:23
solid underlying real estate assets then you move on to other kinds of assets which have other risk profiles but at the same time they can be very solid based on their importance and I think oil and gas is one of those and and as we've discussed in other context Melissa
11:38
you're very familiar with oil and gas Investments and and those are really those are also uh a kind of alternative investment and they're really important um because of course being the commodity of oil we all know that that's fundamental to human life as we all know
11:53
it today so I think in the end you know these are the different areas that it makes sense after you reach a certain Point um in your investing career where you have a certain amount of money or you're young enough that if something goes a miss you can recover easily and
12:09
quickly before you're too old probably you know this is alternative Investments is a place where uh you have to do more due diligence you have to do more thinking and understanding of the investment um you don't have the the registration that role and referen and the oversight of regulators that you
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might have uh for public equities but you do have um a lot of opportunities to make solid returns in in in a way that's not even necessarily very risky provided that you make sure you apply yourself to understanding the investment and doing your due diligence yeah I love that I think you
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know as we grow like you were saying in our wealth um it's important to look at these alternative Investments have advisers like you two to help us down that journey I think that's been really key for me and I know one of the reason I've personally looked at alternative
13:02
Investments was because of the tax advantages so initially it wasn't about the money it was more about the tax advantages so Roland I want to get from your work with private investment Partnerships what is one critical tax or compliance component that new investors
13:21
should consider when they're looking at these alternative Investments yeah it's a key disclosure that's in every PPM that we draft and it's it's this that if you invest in an entity that's taxed as a partnership then you may be allocated income that you have to pay real taxes
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on but you may not receive cash from the company to correspond with that income that's just allocated every year you're going to get a K1 that reports the performance the economic performance of The Entity that you're invested in and again we're assuming that the entity's
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tax is a partnership you're going to get a K1 one that allocates income to you and that's you know that should reflect something positive that your you know the entity is profitable but they may not actually send you a check in that year for cash and so you're GNA have to
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come out of pocket to pay the tax liability associated with the investment I think that that can be a little bit of a surprise to people but once once you start investing in this area you'll know that that that that can be a thing and it's not ideal and and they uh a lot of
14:30
Partnerships will manage that by making tax distributions but if if you were going to ask me one thing to really pay attention to with respect to the tax treatment you know that would be the thing that I would uh bring up yeah that's great I know Sarah I was thinking when he was saying that one of
14:48
the things that I in this space there's it's acronym overload and sling overload for me I know working in Casino gaming and technology and cyber security we have a Shalo of acronyms but in this space I know there is been a lot of different words so I want to touch a
15:06
little bit you've have Corporate Finance experience across many different continents and so you really know the the lingo and I want to talk a little bit about what an evergreen strategy is for structuring deals with that really withstands different Market shifts and the changes so can you
15:26
talk a little bit about what an evergreen strategy is um in terms of an evergreen strategy I actually know that in several different contexts so from an investment advisory perspective um I don't really have an answer for you I think a lot of times when I'm hearing these acronyms
15:46
their different strategies versus an you know an accredited investor how like being an accredited investor for example like what does that mean and how would one qualify to become an accredited investor to deploy some of these strategies maybe we can talk a little bit about like what an accredited
16:05
investor is how do people know if they're an accredit investor and how can they leverage some of these strategies um and asset allocation across their portfolios oh okay so for credited investor it's a fairly straight forward definition that you get if you're a business investor if you're investing
16:25
through a corporate entity there are different requirements but if you're an individual um you need to have u a million dollars of net worth independent of your primary residence and you also or you can qualify it as an accredited investor if you have uh $200,000 in personal income
16:42
or $300,000 together with your spouse in personal income per year um and demonstrated by uh documentation in some contexts and also you need to have a reasonable expectation that that in income would continue from year to year so and then there are other ways that you can fall um into the category of
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what's permitted to accredited investors depending on uh sort of your education or your status and your certain accrediations that you might have um so accredited investors are are basically uh defined in the regulations it's it's basically what a wealthy person is it's
17:20
how they're defined for the purposes of participating in alternative assets such as funds uh open-ended or Evergreen funds if we want to call them Evergreen funds or any other kind of fund it doesn't you're not restricted in terms of the kind of alternative asset that you can
17:35
invest in you are restricted on the basis of your uh qualifying for this accredited investor test did you want me to say something Roland well no I was just you're going to add that the accredited investor test it's relevant and a lot of people have heard the term regulation D regd
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offerings and that's all we do is private Securities deals r on regulation D and regulation D is where you have all these accredited investor rules and so these these Investments are are primarily aimed at at wealthier individuals and there are a couple reasons for that one is the ability to
18:16
sustain loss to hire go out and hire attorneys to enforce your rights under a contract um and and also not only the ability to sustain loss but the you don't need the liquidity again and that liquidity is something that is is really key so um you know it it seems unfair I
18:38
think to some people that these are restricted to accredited investors and and which tend to be wealthier investors but a lot of that just has to do with you know courts presuming that a wealthier person is sort of um you know swim at your own risk you know they don't need the lifeguards that less um
18:59
wealthy investors need of and and the Lifeguard in in the sense of having a registered offering where there's a lot of publicly available information about the the thing that you're investing in so essentially just to visit that Melissa if it makes sense um you know just we have these Securities laws
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people have heard of the Securities Act of 1933 there others um and and if you haven't it's also fine regd is part of that and the whole reason that we have Securities laws in the first place is because of the experiences in our over the past centuries of of people really
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losing a lot of money in the stock markets and otherwise in Investments that have been so unregulated that they could be uh there were there was a lot of vulnerability even for wealthy and sophisticated people by the way a lot of wealthy people lost money in the
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1920s you know wasn't just um people who didn't know much so that's kind of the history of our law and the basic idea is that there do need to be some guard rails to provided to all in all of the investing public otherwise we're just too vulnerable as a whole to be defrauded and what is that there's
20:11
certain disclosure requirements there's certain information that has to be required regarding certain kinds of Investments and then of course in reality we can't regulate every single private offering that's unrealistic and it's expensive to become a a publicly traded company uh so the the ceptions
20:29
that we're talking about and the purpose even for having something like an accredited investor versus a non-accredited investor is if you take it from the most restrictive stance which is that every single offering to any investor in the country has to be registered which is not realistic and
20:44
and not is going to have a chilling effect on the economy but for example then you start to stratify and and narrow down and eliminate sort of um requirements that make it too difficult to raise money and until you get to this accredited investor test and the purpose
21:01
of that is to again provide some guard rails because there's less publicly mandated disclosure the way you have for publicly traded companies but then have sort of a cuto off not because if there's any judgment on anybody for having more or less money but just because if you do have a certain amount
21:18
of money then you can also afford to hire attorneys and accountants to help you assess an investment you can you know and again there are exceptions for people that are in the business let's say so there's an acknowledgement that if you have the knowledge necessary and
21:32
you have the certifications to prove it then you can be treated as an accredited investor so it's really obvious in the in the legislation about all of this that the whole purpose is to make sure that people investors are knowledgeable enough either on the basis of their own
21:46
experience and education and certifications or on the basis of information being available and that's why we have an accredited investor standard at all now arguably there's a lot of especially since crypto has come into the play in these past 15 years there's a lot of argument about how um
22:05
you know we don't need that and uh people should be able to make their own choices and you know there's nothing wrong with that kind of an attitude but if you look back to history as to why we even have any regulations at all about the offerings of Securities it's because
22:20
we used to do things that way and it went terribly wrong and a lot of people were really really harmed by it and not just poor people or not just a certain class of people everybody was really really harmed by an unregulated Securities market and or let's call it a distributed or non-regulated or
22:39
unregulated Market which is arguably you know what cryptocurrency is is it's maybe not possible to regulate it in any kind of comprehensive way so the the idea here and this is I think an important point for people to understand especially if you're have a view that
22:55
there shouldn't be very much regulation in our lives the whole point of all of this is the hard experiences that our people had before us that led up to needing some regulation in this area how we argue the boundaries of those regulations is another matter but in the
23:10
end probably the US economy has been really served and investers and wealthy people and people who've built wealth from zero to large amount in this country on the basis of the American economy have been served by these laws over time so this is I think the main reason that when you see the accredit
23:29
investor accredited investor standard if you feel constrained by it as a promoter of an investment or as an investor maybe it would help you to understand that you know you might be fine but as a whole if everybody's not fine that then you have a problem and and the investing economy as a
23:47
whole yeah I love it um I want to shift gears a little bit I know crowd funding is like something that's in my scroll it's really popular it's Making Waves online um with Roland with your focus on real advisors and Sarah with your Telecom experience what's your take on these
24:07
shifts online and all the dialogue that's going on right now well I think again it's just a predominance or or prevalence of the internet you know we go to the Internet for everything nowadays and and um and and that includes Investments you know and in on my online brokerage account
24:27
we're not talking about the things that you can buy typically through your online brokerage account but we're there there are exemptions there are these crowdfunding exemptions that allow for the use of General solicitation and advertising in connection with the sale
24:42
of private Securities and so all the advertising nowadays is on the internet so it's really using the internet to sell Securities and if you believe that the internet will continue to be a thing in the future which I believe personally um you know people will more
25:00
and more invest in private Securities deals through the internet yeah I think that makes a lot of sense and also you know I think what people in Telecom say today is that every telecom's company company now is actually a technology company and arguably maybe you could say te
25:17
telecommunications companies were the original technology companies because they of course you know started with the telegraph which was the breaking technology of that day and came up forward to where we are today so I think it's inevitable that um investing goes online as it should
25:32
there's so many reasons that are good for it and that don't you know just to make an equate equate it to you know that we all are used to signing with docy sign now right so digital signature right but still there are people out there who feel like that wet ink signature is better than a than a
25:51
digital signature even though arguably as you would know I'm sure Melissa the technology behind protecting that digital signature is so much more sophis icated than ink and paper and how easy it is to forge such a thing so it's kind of similar to me now you know in this
26:05
same way is that for an investor whether it's through a crowdfunding pro platform where you've got access to really cool little deals that would be impossible to find otherwise without an online you know ability to research online um or the platforms that consolidate all of
26:20
those potential things you can invest in I think um it's the same kind of idea that you know we can have more security actually through using the internet we can trace things better um if the underlying technology is blockchain for example then it's even more traceable
26:36
right who's owning Securities how it's being transferred from one party to another probably in in and on the positive spin is really just a positive development in terms of um making things you know safer for investors yeah I think it's interesting I I totally agree with what you were
26:55
saying Rand about the internet I know a lot of these alternative invest ments or crowdfunding that I've heard about it's always been word of mouth it's not something that I've seen online or things I can click on but I know you know YouTube and social media and
27:10
different channels there's all this Buzz about crowdfunding and alternative Investments click here to learn more fill out our intake form so I want to get maybe just kind of in closing in this segment I want to get maybe your thoughts and insights about you know moving from Word of Mouth
27:29
on these alternative Investments to seeing more of this online um maybe any insights on what to look for for qualified um you know legit crowdfunding or alternative Investments Sarah I have an answer for that but go for it well you know I just think that this is a perfect example of
27:51
the media that that will be most effective in connection with selling anything because you're you're having a discussion between three people that are presumably knowledgeable about the topic that they're talking about and you get a chance to evaluate we made an intentional decision to use video in
28:10
connection with our podcast rather than you know just Audio Only so that people could look at our faces and they could determine hey can I trust Roland and Sarah that was an intentional decision on our part and I think you know particularly with the raise the the um
28:27
you know increased use of AI I mean everybody knows about that authenticity is going to be the thing that really sells in the future no matter what it is that you're trying to sell but particularly a private Securities deal an investment deal you know I want to know that I can trust that person and
28:43
how can I do that but you know I get a chance to I mean I know it's it's hard to build trust through just watching a video but you can you get a chance to observe the person that you're thinking about and seeing how they're responding how they're projecting how they're
28:59
talking you know am I articulate is he articulate does he seem like an honest person and and so just the use of this media I think could be really effective in in communicating um the videographer that we use for our podcast he has a term it's trust production that's what
29:18
we're in the business of is producing trust and hopefully our the viewers of this podcast of our podcast look at us and they say you know he he's kind of got a you know whatever I make fun of myself all the little things that I'm personally U you know self-conscious
29:37
about you know people people can look at me and think oh you know he's got a blemish or whatever but despite his physical disfigurements I I think that I can trust Roland you know and it just being being having a platform like this and getting up in front of people and
29:54
saying hey here I am this is what I do here please introduce or or please meet my client you know they've got a private Securities deal for you to to consider I just think it's it's a a really powerful tool to to get out in front of people and again project that authenticity and
30:11
and uh you know like like our friend Mark says trust production I have another point just to add to that sorry Melissa no no you definitely well I was just gonna say we we have a client on the law firm side that Roland works with really closely and and one thing I admire about them is
30:27
they put a lot of uh effort into marketing and uh educating through digital media and they have a weekly meeting of one kind or another that's focused on investor education and then they also have a lot of other programs that they do and there are a bunch of people you know later in
30:46
their careers or in their second career after retiring and and and yet they use I think they're very effective with the trust building because it's time intensive and because of that time intensive nature of it and the education aspect which shows what you do and don't
31:01
know really quickly right then it develops that trust because you know if somebody's just going to do all of that for fraudulent purposes or for you know for various misdeeds it's quite a lot to put into something as you know from being a producer of a podcast yourself
31:17
that's quite a lot to get into so something about that that barrier of the video and then the consistency there's a lot behind it and that can kind of lead to sort of upping your trust factor I think yeah I Love Actually I love that you just mentioned that I think that's
31:34
an important uh piece Sarah is for people that are not comfortable and don't know about alternative Investments I I I'm curious from the both of you is there an exercise that you know can people should try to undertake before investing in alternative Investments is
31:52
there any you know exercises they should start with if they've never invested in an alternative investment maybe take us down that Journey for someone wondering you know should I invest this way or can I invest this way maybe just both of your perspectives on that Roland well I think you know just
32:15
general education is the most important and understanding that when you're talking about alternative assets you're talking about generally investments in private Securities so get used to reading the disclosure really carefully and know that you're gonna be investing
32:33
in a smaller company that's run by a fewer number of people than some large public company so getting to know the management team evaluating them on a qualitative basis which means you know other than just the the performance metrics but who they are as people their
32:51
integrity uh is really important so uh education I I would say but but also become a student of of human human nature and being able to to evaluate people you know in terms of is this somebody that I can really trust you know and we we have an episode dedicated to um one of our our
33:17
friends talked about his investment career and evaluating investment managers and he used the term long story and so the long story is say okay put a put aside your pitch deck put aside your performance numbers I want to know who you are as an investment manager as a
33:32
person and and just by listening to people and the way that they talk about themselves and a description of their personal history they can reveal a lot and maybe sometimes reveal things unwittingly that that they wouldn't otherwise reveal to you if you hadn't have taken the time to kind of put them
33:51
on the spot and get them to talk about themselves personally so uh anyway that's a long answer but it's the long story no not really the long story is like two hours but I would just add to that that I think one thing that we try to encourage people because we're on this
34:08
journey of Education right Melissa and we I try to really focus on you know lawyers read a lot of dense legal text and for us it I don't know if it ever becomes easy honestly even after 20 years it's still in labor intensive work however um one thing I think is really
34:25
important to emphasize is that you you as an investor once you start down the path of choosing to be educated about whatever it is you want to be educated whether it's commercial real estate whether it's oil and gas and then you get into the legal structures and the disclosures and all
34:39
this stuff you can actually do that like it's you can develop the ability to understand that documentation to understand that industry there are a lot of resources out there and it's a matter of just having confidence that it's hard at the beginning to get your head around
34:54
all the details and then just being persistent is where you come into being self-educated and with self-education in any way it doesn't mean you can do the legal work or do the investment advising but we think I personally believe that you know the more responsible you are
35:10
for your own understanding of everything and and taking different news sources taking different sources of it you know we we hear all the time oh well my other lawyer told me this great I'm glad your other lawyer told you that I'm not sure if I agree but that means that you're
35:25
seeking a multitude of information sources to kind of try to form your own education about something that's positive so I think alternative Investments fundamentally like Roland said it's about understanding the people more because you're closer to them but it's still about understanding the
35:43
industry and the structure of the investment and again because you're closer to it and and you can ultimately do that even if you were you know a teacher or an engineer or whatever your job was you know and it could be you were in a per profession or just worked in an environment where none of those
36:02
things were reading wasn't part of it at all right but you can understand these things it takes work that's all yeah I love that and I want to again pivot because I know we're coming up on the time here but I we're all really interested in philanthropy I know you
36:18
know we work hard in our careers we have a passion for investing but outside of us is you know people that have jobs and invest um we're all interested in philanthropy so as we kind of wrap up and looking ahead Roland with the merciful Garden Gardener foundation and Sarah with your
36:38
Global Perspective you know I'm curious how does philanthropy and Innovation intersect and maybe just both of your perspectives and on philanthropy and the world today want me to go first roller yeah go ahead okay um well look I've lived around the world and what I can say
36:59
that's common to all of us regardless of superficial differences of appearance and religion and nationality and patriotism and whatever system you're from all of those things underneath it most people are trying to take care of their families build a build a future
37:15
where they feel secure at whatever that means for them and and basically kind of have a happy life right this is the same regardless of all these superficial differences and so what to me is at the core of a lot of that and the place that I'm interested in working there are a
37:31
lot of factors that go into what makes you happy in life um and what capital you have in your life but when it comes to wealth building and just Financial education in the first place personally I'm very passionate about um Financial education as early as possible kids need
37:47
to understand what money is kids need to be responsible for they you know I've known adults from other countries who don't know what credit cards are like they didn't know that they had to pay it back I've encountered kids back here in the United States like this you know
38:01
these kinds of things I think we have to teach kids as early as possible what fin the financial side of life because it gives you an ability to have a lot more happiness because you're not struggling later not because money makes you happy but because you have a stability and a
38:16
security and wealth building is part of that alternative Investments are part of that and so I mean I would love to ultimately be able to teach a class to University students about alternative investing for your own personal wealth building Journey just so you can because
38:31
you can get started in a very small scale very early and this is something that again I think is relevant to everyone in the world it's it has nothing to do with nationality or any other thing I love that I I love that about you Sarah I think the greatest gift we
38:47
can leave to our younger Generations is knowledge and how to do things younger I know some of the stuff I'm learning now in my 40s I wish I had known like you were saying at 18 exactly me too I think I think even you know sitting down with my own children and and giving them a
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bank account and having them you know understand what happens when it goes negative and and and learning what happens when it's positive and how their money is making money so ultimately we have kids that are making their money work for them and not always just
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working for the money and I think that's something that is is a great gift um we all can do for our children and so thank you for sharing that 100% Roland I want to talk a little bit about impact investing to support causes like housing for the poor through your foundation's
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work yeah um we you know this is an idea that that um I think everybody needs to think about and and it's a a part of your you know we talked about um portfolio composition asset allocation and I think everybody that engages with an investment advisor should have a
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conversation with them about charitable giving and we have a regime in the United States where you can set up a a nonprofit corporation and qualify it as a 501c3 a charitable organization and you can be involved in the management of that entity yourself and so this is
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something I would really encourage all of our clients to to think about is form your own 501c3 everybody's got a um I think at some level you know charitable intentions and you can embody that charitable intention in your own entity and you know we wind up working with
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entrepreneurs a lot um so apply those entrepreneurial skills to a 501c3 you know it's it's not for profit you're not making money for the shareholders but you can still apply these good business skills that you've learned to make it successful and achieve its charitable
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purpose merciful arner Foundation just amended its Charter to change its purpose and our purpose now is to alleviate poverty through the expansion of worldwide Consciousness and Consciousness is a really important thing uh for for us to think about just we we hear a lot nowadays people talking
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about being Mindful and and metacognition and thinking about how I think about things and that's skills that I think you know when we talk about financial Literacy for kids you know help helping train them in in the meta cognition being able to to think about how they think about things to be able
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to to evaluate you know what what is mindfulness for kids and um really encourages them to be able to take a step back and and look at um their world as it maybe see it more as it really is rather than just through the lens of of whatever Media or maybe the in inaccurate pictures that they get
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from their parents even um but but uh so that's just a personal vision of mine and and I guess the the other plug that I would make for it is um just as we've been developing as professional Sarah and I I think have really developed this unified kind of idea about how we want
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to implement our practice both through the law firm through the investment advisor firm and and it's really just thinking about Financial capital is being only one type of capital and there are other types of capital as well and this isn't an original idea to us but
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just going on it's it's the Jay Hughes foundation and they talk about five capitals and financial capital is one of them but there's also Human Social spiritual and intellectual and and that's the really inspiring thing to for me to think about is that knowing that that we can develop
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wealth starting today um you know investing in yourself intellectually you know engaging in spiritual practices and your social you know developing a community um there there needs to be a balance there and so um I think that that's something that that I'm really inspired about
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personally is that that we can take these ideas out and I I think Sarah said it before no matter who you are where you come from you know what your stage in life you can think about creating what wealth and and we don't even really have to talk about money necessarily
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that's that's for sure a component of it but there are other types of wealth that that need to be built alongside of that you know particularly when you're talking you know about educating kids but I I need to educate myself now you know I'm still learning I love that attitude always learning always
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evolving I know I spend a lot of time thinking about personally like the Legacy I want to leave what do I want to leave behind how do I want to help people and that's what I love the most about you too is you're already thinking about this not just for your children
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but for other people and their children and so I want to ask just looking back in both your careers and then looking forward it with your legacies what is the one thing and maybe the one piece of wisdom you hope to leave with investors and maybe a key business takeaway as well
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R me you go ahead sir um I think the main thing is and they say this all the time in commercial real estate just start don't worry about having to have a plan don't worry about what you do and do know you'll get to all of that and I think they say this about meditation too
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right or whatever practice you have to help you stay balanced in your life you just have to start and then whatever happens after that is part of your journey whether you fall off or get over this or that even even in the commercial real estate there's a lot of talk about
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how you win some you lose some you have these experiences but you have to start and having that be an intentional moment is really important and on the business side I would say you know um when you're a lifetime learner as you talked about earlier then it's exciting to learn
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about all these different ways of doing business this is the approach I have like I find it so interesting how people go about wealth building running businesses making money not making money whatever it is that they do you know assets all the different kinds of assets
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that are out there it's very very interesting so again there's no reason that you need to have a certain qualification before you start learning about things Roland any thoughts from you yeah I think the the idea of just starting is really crucial and and when I was when you were saying that Sarah I
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think you know the the reason why I don't start things I think is sometimes because I'm afraid you know and and really just not being afraid and and don't don't be afraid to fail we don't hope that we don't make these huge financial mistakes where we lose lots of money but there is an element of just
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starting and and going out and and risking um and and you know understanding that failur sometimes you know you learn more from that than you do from the successes as we all know and um I I think just starting and and believe that that you really can educate yourself about all these matters and and
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a lot of it is um you know it's it can be just common sense so just becoming a better human being you know like Sarah mentioned the meditation um but anyway I mean that that I I think Sarah said it really well sorry I didn't mean to Ste your thunder rolling we talked about it so much it's
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fair to say was that originally your idea or my idea I don't know no for sure I mean that you know there's there's something to be said for that um you know having a spiritual practice having a sense of groundedness of of your orientation outside of um there's a classic uh Business book good to great
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and and the the really great companies are the ones that had some purpose outside of just making money um you know I remember I think it was fiser with vaccines you know and that's kind of a heated topic nowadays but um you know just every I think it applies to everybody that if you if you drive
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meaning from something outside of money I think that'll really help drive your success you know yeah that's really great insight and I love that that you guys share and not only the profession professional side but your beliefs I think that's what makes good partners and I know um
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something I was taught Young by a mentor of mine is to surround myself with the best and Prest people I know and I I know that that about the two of you you both support each other you're very sharp attorneys you're very passionate about helping people not just professionally but personally and
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spiritually and and we're all Lucky to know you and have us as in in community and so in closing I want to get any final thoughts from you guys or anything that we may have missed that you feel compelled to share I'll start with you Sarah I I feel like we had a great
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conversation honestly Melissa it's been wonderful thank you Roland anything we miss that you feel that we want to share no I mean I I think it's just I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of the the underlying values and and um I wasn't really it wasn't on my radar necessarily
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but it really is something that you know that's everybody can can have more success I think the idea of having meaning in our lives um apart from money you know really will help you be more successful you know with with the financial decisions and and so you know that that this idea I'm
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glad we had a chance to bring it up the five capitals and and financial wealth is just one type of capital and that I would really I think that's the most important uh concept that I would want to leave you know everybody with yeah and I think you know one thing that was coming to mind is we're we're
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real I've noticed we're becoming a transactional uh country we're becoming transactional people um and we are showing up in in work in our lives you know I need this from you give me this um without um you know providing necessarily value or relationship first so I love that you both kind of mention
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different things because how you show up is not transactional you show up let me get to know you let's you know get to understand each other and then let's see if there's Synergy between us and I think that is a really important nugget to share is having community and
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relationship with people first and understanding if it makes sense to partner I know we talked a little bit about about that at the beginning but um thank you both for being here and sharing your knowledge and your hearts with our listeners and that's the executive connect podcast