How To Lose Money: Business Stories | Life Lessons | Navigating Failure

Terry White is a long-time business owner and investor. He’s a graduate of the University of New Mexico and began his career as the controller for the largest title company in New Mexico. In 1987, he started his first business, First Financial Escrow, Inc. Over the years, his business grew until in 1997 he purchased the real estate contract division from the largest bank in New Mexico. October 2017 marked First Financial’s 30th year in business. In 2004, Terry started Sunwest Trust, Inc. to serve the needs of investors that wanted to invest their individual retirement accounts in investments other than what was widely offered. Sunwest is now one of the leading self-directed IRA custodians in the country with assets under custody exceeding $1.5 billion. Along the way, Terry has invested for himself in many areas of real estate and started several other businesses.

Brian Burke is president and CEO of Praxis Capital, Inc., a vertically integrated real estate private equity investment firm, which he founded in 2001. Brian is also a member of the Praxis Investment Committee. Praxis operates on multiple platforms, currently managing active syndications for the acquisition of single, multifamily and opportunistic residential assets in the U.S. growth markets. As a recognized real estate expert, Brian has been a frequent speaker at real estate forums and conferences, including the Opal Family Office & Private Wealth Management forum, the Keiretsu Forum, and the Institute for Private Investors. He has also served as co-host and real estate expert on the Fox News radio show, “The Best of Investing”. Brian is married and has lived in northern California for over 30 years. An avid aviation enthusiast, he’s a licensed instrument-rated airplane and helicopter pilot.

Lee Kearney is one of the nation’s most active and successful single-family real estate investors, having flipped over 7,000 houses in the last decade, totaling over $500 million in property under his SPIN Real Estate company. Lee is known as the leading expert in understanding and leveraging real estate market cycles. He has been on the front lines of flipping homes, and his passion and expertise come into play as he inspires and educates real estate investors at all levels through his “Flip Your Income” training program.

Ellie Perlman is a real estate investor who owns 2,000 units across the U.S., worth over $250 million. Ellie is the founder and CEO of Blue Lake Capital, a real estate investing firm specializing in multifamily investments. At Blue Lake Capital, Ellie helps investors grow their wealth and get double-digit returns by investing alongside her in large multifamily deals that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Prior to founding Blue Lake Capital, Ellie was a commercial real estate lawyer and a property manager. Ellie is the host of the podcast, “That REllie Happened”, which highlights unbelievable real estate stories. She is an author for Forbes and a writer of a weekly blog you can find at ellieperlman.com.

AJ Osborne has been in real estate since the early 2000s. He created Bitterroot Holdings, a self-storage company that has a $100 million asset holding portfolio. He got his start in insurance running one of the largest brokerage firms in the northwest.

Scott Royal Smith is a real estate investor and asset protection attorney in Austin, Texas. He graduated from Albany Law School and began his career in high-stakes corporate litigation. Scott learned the key secret he now uses to defeat lawsuits, that they are a business. Through his defense work, he targets defeating lawsuits before they are even filed by making sure the business part of a lawsuit no longer makes financial sense for a plaintiff to proceed. Scott founded Royal Legal Solutions to offer tax, business and legal strategies to real estate investors. He spent the past 8 years of his career diving through case law, reading the ever-changing tax code, and analyzing real estate investment so that you don’t have to. His claim to fame as an attorney is his uncanny ability to make his clients judgement-proof.

Joe Fairless is a full-time real estate investor that started buying multi-family properties in 2013 and now controls over $400 million of real estate, with a portfolio of over 4200 units. He’s personally raised over $100 million from private investors for real estate investments. Prior to that, he was the youngest VP at an award-winning advertising agency in New York City. He’s the host of the world’s longest running daily real estate iTunes podcast, “Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever,” where he’s interviewed guests such as Barbara Corcoran, Robert Kiyosaki, Emmitt Smith and Tony Hawk.

Scott Meyers is the nation’s leading expert in self-storage. After becoming a penniless landlord in the single-family rental and apartment business, he began investing in self-storage. He saw the light and quickly sold all of his single-family rentals and apartments to create a small empire of self-storage facilities nationwide. His company’s focus on syndicating self-storage deals and helping others to launch their own self-storage business to enjoy a lifestyle free from toilets, tenants and trash. Scott is the principal in 16 facilities, totaling over 5,000 units and approximately 1 million square feet of storage. He is also the founder and president of selfstorageinvesting.com, a leading self-storage education company that offers courses, live events, mentoring and coaching. His company was started in 2006 for the purpose of acquiring, developing and operating self-storage facilities and has raised over 20 million in syndicates and private equity partnerships to fuel their growth.  

Mike Zlotnik has been a debt and equity investor in real estate since 2000. He started his career and has spent nearly 15 years in the IT field, managing risk, business intelligence and software. Mike’s passion has always been real estate investing because of its predictability and well-understood risks. In 2009, he joined Tempo Funding, LLC (Mortgage Pool Fund), as Vice President. In 2014, he assumed the role of CEO. Mike is the author of the book, How to Choose a Smart Real Estate Investment Fund. He also has a podcast called “Big Mike Fund”.  

Michael Levitt, with Breakfast Leadership and published author of 369 Days: How to Survive a Year of Worst-Case Scenarios, brings people back to life. He’s focused on helping individuals and leaders within corporations learn boundaries in their work and personal life so they can accomplish more by doing less, which will save them and their careers, and possibly their lives.

Ryan McKenna is the founder of McKenna Capital, which is a private equity firm that helps accredited investors invest in recession-resistant real estate assets. He focuses on value-add multifamily, self-storage and manufactured home parts. Since starting McKenna Capital, Ryan has helped investors allocate capital to over 10 deals, which have a combined asset value of more than $250 million. Ryan has worked with some of the most experienced and well-respected operating partners across the U.S.

Kim Snider has spent 20-plus years as an entrepreneur, options trader, investment advisor, financial engineer, author, speaker, educator and financial talk radio host. Her investment firm, Snider Advisors, was on the Inc. list of “Fastest Growing Companies” 2 years in a row, in 2008 and 2009. Kim retired at 47 and sold her investment firm. In 2011, she moved to South Carolina with her husband and dogs, built a polo farm and planned to lived happily ever after. It all was going well, until Crypto came along. Motivated by the cascade of bad advice she saw pouring out all over the internet, Kim unretired to create Sane Crypto and help baby-boomers get properly positioned for what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but not get wrecked if it turns out to be a big “nothing-burger”.

Christian Chasmer empowers entrepreneurs to live their best lives and change the world. At 26 years old, this young entrepreneur has already built 2 successful companies and is now working on his 3rd, which is called Elevate Advisors. Starting in college, Christian built a franchise from 0 to 1.2 million in annual revenue, then he co-founded the real estate development company, CC Solutions, and grew it to 6 million in revenue in under 2 years. He’s also the author of the #1 best-selling book, Lose the Limits: Break Your Limiting Beliefs, Become a More Productive You, Achieve Everything You Want in Life. The secret to his success lies in the systems he uses, both in his personal life and his business. 

In this episode, Victoria Mavis shares the importance of finding the right people to work with. Don't be too trusting, but don't be jaded either. Victoria Mavis is a professional magician and podcast host of the show Pure Mind Magic. She is a published author of two books, has two academic degrees and is a consultant when it comes to mindset work. Now - brand new - she is also teaching you on how to deliver amazing podcast interviews worldwide - being prepared like a magician for a great show! Learn more at: www.victoria-mavis.com.

Oren Klaff is one of the world’s leading experts on sales, raising capital and negotiation, having pitched and closed over $500 million of investor capital in recent years. His first book, Pitch Anything, is required reading throughout Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the Fortune 2000, and has been translated into over 10 languages, with over 1,000,000 copies in circulation worldwide. Today, Oren teaches leaders and organizations his hard-won real world methods. Additionally, Oren has written for Harvard Business Review, INC, Advertising Age, Entrepreneur and hundreds of periodicals, podcasts and blogs. Oren is an investment partner in a $200 million private equity investment fund. He lives in Southern California with his wife and son, and in his spare time is a motorcycle enthusiast.

Mike was laid off after almost 34 years from the high-tech industry at the age of 55. Instead of grieving, he took his 401k and turned it into a "self-directed IRA LLC" and then turned that LLC into a multi-million dollar company in less than 2 years. Now Mike gets to do anything he wants.

Cameron Herold is a top business consultant, best-selling author, and speaker. Named by Forbes Magazine as “the CEO Whisperer”, Cameron has touched thousands of businesses directly and indirectly through his work. By age 35, he had built two $100 million companies, and by 42, he had grown 1-800-GOT-JUNK? from $2 million, to $106 million in revenue in just six years. Cameron has since gone on to help hundreds of companies grow, and exponentially increase revenue. He has earned his reputation by showing his clients how to double their profit in just three years or less—the process of which was the topic of his best-selling book “Double Double”.  His companies have landed over 5,200 media placements, including coverage on Oprah. Cameron is not just a theory guy. He teaches what he knows from experience and is passionate about sharing his expertise with today’s most dynamic business leaders. He is currently channeling this passion through executive business coaching, international speaking events, and his work w

Patrick Donohoe is the President and CEO of Paradigm Life, which he started in 2007 to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families sound financial principles. He is a firm believer that the more someone is educated, the better financial decisions they will make and the more financially free they will be. Patrick created a unique educational process which is conducted virtually, by way of video webinars and a no-cost eLearning program called Infinite 101. Along with founding Paradigm Life in 2007, Patrick also began hosting The Wealth Standard Radio, which continues to broadcast weekly.

Salem is the founder of Naked Capital, a private investment company focused on late cycle recession resistant assets and their underlying mathematics. To date, his company has $10M in assets and is growing rapidly with a target of $20M by the end of 2018. Prior to Naked Capital, Salem worked his way out of a challenging upbringing all the way to Wall street where he was building the math behind ultra-high net worth financial products at one of the world's largest investment banks. He has also consulted numerous global corporations on financial structures and built multiple real estate companies all along the way. Today, he's going to walk through how that math applies to real estate investing and portfolios more broadly.

Dr. David Phelps owned and managed a private practice dental office for over twenty-one years. While still in dental school, he began his investment in real estate by joint-venturing with his father on their first rental property in 1980. Multiple health crises suffered by his daughter, Jenna (leukemia, epilepsy and a liver transplant at age 12), caused David to leave practice so that he could spend time with his daughter. Unfortunately, a divorce and failed practice sale provided additional setbacks that he had to think and work through. Today, David is a nationally recognized speaker on creating freedom, building real businesses and investing in real estate. He also combines his professional and personal experiences to illustrate how the tactical and aspirational work together. David helps other logical, rational professionals become dreamers, then strategically manifest those dreams into freedom. He authors a monthly newsletter, “Path to Freedom” and hosts The Dentist Freedom Blueprint podcast.