Experience Matters Podcast

Talking Trusts with Greg Herlean at Horizon Trust Company

Written by Chris Clothier | May 11, 2020 9:47:27 PM

 

 


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Get experienced-based insights into the world of passive, turnkey real estate investing with host Chris Clothier and special guests that will share their successes, failures, and processes to make you a smarter investor.

Hey, everybody. Chris Clothier here. Back with another session of ‘Experience Matters’ podcast. And today I'm joined by a very, I would say a special guest  — well, I think everybody's a special guest that joins me on here. 

This is Greg Herlean, a longtime friend of our family. Somebody that has worked very closely with Kent over at Real Estate Worldwide. He's worked with us in the past as kind of an adviser to us on how we use our self-directed IRAs. He's worked with many of our clients already many of you are gonna know who he is, but for some of the listeners this will be the first time. So, Greg is fixing to join me here live. 

Before I get him on I want to say one thing. Now look, when I bring somebody like this on here like this: this is not legal advice. This is not investing advice. This is not advice on how to use your IRA. Make sure that you consult with an attorney, a CPA, all of the licensed professionals, a financial adviser that you need to consult with. Make sure you're getting good, sound advice. What we're sharing here is my own personal experiences. 

Any of my guests that are on that are licensed like Greg or own a company like this — they're gonna be sharing their personal experiences. He will be talking about, you know, kind of his experiences within his company. But again, for you guys, the listener, make sure that you do seek out a professional before you make a move, because this is not to be misconstrued as legal or financial or any other type of advice. This is the experience, alright, and as we all know: experience matters. 

So, guys I'm gonna go ahead and grab Greg on here and we'll get started with today's recording.

[Music]

Chris: Hi, Greg. How are you doing, man?

Greg Herlean: Good, Chris. Thanks.

Chris: Thank you for joining us here, today. I just introduced you to our audience but there's no way I did it justice. So why don’t you just share with our audience here real quick a little bit about yourself and how you got started in the custodian, the self-directed IRA kind of arena.

Greg: Yeah, no problem. Well, look. I never thought I would be in the trust company in business. Frankly, it sounded really boring to me when I first learned about it. So, I was surprised that I'm so much in love with it now and it's thriving and it's just to me it's one of the most unique things out there. So, really, I first started in real estate. I was flipping deals. I flipped probably about 60 deals when I was between 23- and 25-years-old. Was getting into the real estate world, was looking for money, you know. I was trying to find, you know, banks weren't lending me the money I wanted. I was looking for any kind of money I could in real estate: buying, flipping, residential, commercial. And I just was getting pretty good at real estate. But, my main focus was finding money and I quickly learned that there was an asset out there that I could use to help fund my deals which was IRAs. And, so, I kept doing more and more deals with other people's IRAs. I'd either partner with their IRAs or they would lend me their money with their IRA. 

Someone had taught me this concept and I jumped all over it. And the concept, just real quick for those of you who might not understand is: an individual can have a retirement plan, specifically an IRA or an old 401k or SEP or Roth IRA, and move their IRA account over to a trust company like mine - Horizon Trust Company. You can move it over to a trust company and then invest it in kind of whatever you want, for the most part. Which was the crazy part for me when I first learned about it. 

So, of course, you can invest in the typical markets, you know, this market, and an S&P indexes, equities, etc. but I learned that you can invest in individual deals. And, so, that was what was so unique, and so as I did that and I taught people that. The more I taught people that, the more interest people had in giving me more and more of their money or other people referrals in investing in my real estate deals. And, so, I just got really good at explaining it to people, and lo and behold, you know, I started using that other trust companies — not going to mention their names, because I want to make them look bad. But they just were terrible. Their service was terrible. I was trying to close on the deal and I tried to get the money rolled over to their company to fund my deal and they missed the deadlines. The customer service lines were long and so I was like: I'm gonna start a trust company, and, purely, for selfish reasons. I want to start a trust company for my own deals.

Chris: Yeah.

Greg: I probably got into the trust company business about 15 years ago — that’s not true, 14 years ago. It was about three or four years after doing real estate. And ever since then, I started doing less and less real estate and more and more of the trust company. And now to this day, I do a handful of my own deals, probably between two and five deals a year, typically commercial deals. But, primarily all I do is focus on our trust company — we've got a big staff. So, anyways, that's how I kinda backwards fell into the trust company business.

Chris: I'm gonna come back to those deals in a second, but I just wanna talk two things real quick. So, you started investing in real estate 23-, 25-years-old, as a young 20-year-old buying, fixing, flipping. Is that what you were doing?

Greg: I did, yeah. 

Chris: Wow, I got an 18-year-old, he's graduating high school today. He wants to be a pilot — he's got to be a pilot, but he's got some interest in real estate. He and I've been talking, I've been sharing with him stories that, you know, about people in their young 20s and here it is, right here, you know, I'm having a conversation with somebody that started figuring out how to buy, fix, and sell real estate at that age. Because, it's really not — there's no secret to doing real estate transactions. It's really not, right?

Greg: You know, you just gotta work. It takes work. Everyone thinks they can just read a book or something and then, you know, they Google stuff online. But it just takes a lot. It just takes work.

Chris: Yeah, there's a lot more to it than walking up in-front of a house with a sold sign or a for sale and buying it, putting paint on it, and selling it, right.

Greg: Yep, yep.

Chris: So, the other thing that I heard that I thought was kind of fascinating there — we'll touch on just for a second, because that's a major pain-point. I mean, all of us who have ever had to deal with a self-directed IRA company. Yeah, again: no names and we don’t have  to mention names. A major pain-point has been: how to get the process to flow. I mean, how do you — because so few that have their accounts actually understand how it works. And then, so often the way it's explained is supposed to work breaks down. I mean, it's just, you know what I mean? How do you get money out? How do you get money in? How do you get it transferred? How do you get things funded?

It feels almost like grinding your teeth together at times. That's been my experience, you know, of the last 10 to 15 years. But with you guys, it's just different. But I find that fascinating, because - for us - customer service was everything. We always tell people that we're not a real estate company, we're a customer service company.

How do you kind of describe you guys at Horizon?

Greg: Well, not to steal it from you, but I mean precisely what you said. And let me explain a little bit further.

Chris: Yeah.

Greg: All trust companies can do pretty much the same thing. My license is the same as everyone else's. Now there's not very many of us, frankly. There's about 15 legitimate, good trust companies in the country. That's not very many, but we all have the same license. Really what it comes down to, in my opinion, what separates us from our competitors is we are still boutique-like. Where, actually, someone could Facebook message me or send me an email, I got some big relationships where they'll even text me and like, “Hey, look. I got a client working through.” And I can quickly — we're nimble, you know, we got 30 employees. We get about 10,000 accounts, we're nimble, we're quick, we're boutique-like where you're not going to wait for a very long time to get something processed. And time is money for us. And, so, even though we're all licensed the same way, if you're trying to close on a transaction and let's say that transaction is gonna make you a 10 or 12 percent annual rate of return once it’s all said and done - call it 12 because it's easy. And the transaction that takes place for you to get your money to us and then get the money deployed at closing to close on the property, let's say that the whole process takes you four to six weeks, which is pretty - at four to eight weeks is typical industry standards. Four to eight weeks is one to two percent of interest that you gave up, okay? So let's say, on a hundred thousand dollar investment that's two thousand dollars just because a trust company kind of sucks what they do.

So ,what we do is, and I'm proud of this, our process time of getting an account set-up is between 12 days and 21 days. And the only reason why it goes 21 days is if the client is not responding to our emails and our phone calls.

Chris: Sure, yeah.

Greg: So, on average I'd say we're about two weeks. And so really we're saving you one month maybe more. So that one percent on a 50 thousand dollar account - that's $500 you're saving. One hundred thousand dollar accounts: $1,000 interest. So time is money. And, so, we are, you know, we all can do the same kind of thing. The way we help you fill up the forms, the way we help you the process, and answering questions as you get into these unique alternative assets; we're really good at that. And, so, that's all. We're just better at service. I wouldn't say we're, you know, like -obviously- flawless. I like to say that we do what we say we're gonna do. And not much more just to be honest. But, most companies can't even do that!

Chris: Well, let me ask you a question. So for us we found that part of the - we'll just call it the “secret” was the systems that we put in place the processes and then kind of the training of our team. Is that, I mean, is that what you would point it down to? Just the way your team has a process and system in place to follow. And, I mean, because it's…

Greg: Yeah, for sure. I mean the process is one for sure but I would say the other thing that's important—

Chris: Yeah.

Greg: —is the ownership and leadership all have been in in alternative asset space like myself and real estate. I know what you're trying to accomplish. When we talk about real estate, I know it. I'm not a guy who just understands IRAs. In fact, I've hired those people that are really good at all the rules and guidelines of how IRAs work. To me, I'm talking to the end user and the company's thereof. So, for example: like you and your team, I know what you're trying to accomplish so it makes it much easier. When you tell me what you're doing real quickly, I can go to my team and say, “Okay, here's the kind of assets they're buying and selling and their investors are, and so, this is what we need to help them with in the process.” So, that's what helps is our experience.

Chris: Yeah. So, you know our family. You know the background with us. I know you've done a lot of work with Kent over at Real Estate Worldwide and all his clients. So, but you know what we're built on. I mean, we're all built on: if a company cannot meet our standards of service, if they're not able — and you know we do this thing when we survey every single closing. Every closing gets a survey when we go back and we ask the client — and even, we do this on the resident side, but this pertains to the client, you know. We ask them to rate each of the services that they used. 

And, I'll be direct with you, man. It's been since probably 2011 maybe 2012 - in the last eight or nine years, we haven't done anything like this with a custodian. We haven't done anything like this with any service provider in this self-directed IRA world, because - to be frank, you know - before we started working with you guys at Horizon, we hadn't found anybody that we wanted to to tell anybody about. We would work with, obviously, whoever somebody was working with but, man. And again, I'm not knocking anybody that's out there. This isn't a knock on any other companies. Everybody is who they are and what they do. 

It's just, you know, we care a lot about our reputation and where we stand. And the way somebody experiences that company - it matters. It matters. You know, going back to the name of the podcast, man. Experience matters. What kind of experience is that person gonna have? So, I see where you’re coming from.

Greg: Well, hold on there a second. There's Clothier in you. So, I know you don't mind once in a while knocking it up a little bit, because I know the Clothier in you has some of that in you. 

It's really too bad, because a lot of these companies, in general, the reason why you haven't probably worked with, you know, directly like with too closely with trust companies like mine or other vendors is because, if they don't provide the same services you do, they are reflections of you. I understand that. That's why I got in this business, because I was like, when other trust companies I referred them business to roll into my deals, when the client would fill out the paperwork and had a bad experience; they thought my investment was bad.

Chris: Right.

Greg: Nothing to do with me.

Chris: Right.

Greg: So, that's what's happening - I think - probably you and a lot of other people as well.

Chris: Yeah. And let me tell you: you nailed something early on. I knew that you invested in real estate and I want to ask you about some of the deals that you do right now, but I didn't know that you had started as an investor. Maybe that's even something that I knew, but it makes perfect sense now. And even though real estate’s not the only thing you can do with a self-directed IRA, I think it's really important to point that out. 

You said that, earlier, you can invest in almost anything - and we'll touch on that in a second - but, you know, for real estate investors themselves it takes somebody that's been there. It takes somebody that understands the pain-points and as you just said the 1% loss over a 30-day period is massive. And, so, let's talk real quick, man, because I know that you're doing some big stuff now. Is that right?

Greg: I mean, yeah, I mean. I think I don't really reflect enough on what I'm doing. I feel like I do it now every day. So, it doesn't feel as gritty anymore. But, yeah. We've done a lot. Right now, we're doing a couple big developments, but, you know, I've done— I flipped 18 hotels, you know. I never thought I would do hotels and ...

Chris: That’s small, that's only 18, I mean, I don’t know.

Greg: We do apartment complexes, we do some real estate development, as well, where we go in and buy the land. And we, you know, we get pads ready and sell it to end-users and things like that. So, it just depends. I prefer doing a little bigger deal. There's obviously more opportunity and there's the same amount of work as there is in a big deal as a small deal, so. But, yeah. But we still do— I still do some flips once in a while. Not a lot, I'd say I do, you know, a couple flips. We do some buy and holds on commercial. I know you guys do a lot of buying holds on residential, we do more — I say “we”, I mean me my partner's do a lot more buy and holds commercial.

Chris: So, let's talk real quick about residential real estate with the, you know, again, with where we focus. I guess my point in asking that is that you've got experience with scale. You understand numbers, you understand be able to use leverage to help get deals done. So, let's talk a little about a self-directed IRA and some of the things that can be done and cannot be done with — and let's bring it back to residential. So, somebody can own outright a piece of real estate inside their trust account, correct?

Greg: Yeah. You can buy real estate in your IRA - any kind of IRA, by the way - the only IRA that we really can't roll over to our trust company is a current 401k, meaning: if you are still employed at, you know, somewhere and you have a 401k, you can't roll that over to us. Any other kind of IRA, you can roll over to us and then you can invest in real estate. But, to answer your question more specifically, you can't invest in a vacation property. You can't invest in a property — when I say vacation property, one for you to use. If it's for like a VRBO, it's an investment property. You can actually invest in that. Or you you cannot invest in your own personal property, either. Those are two specific things you for sure cannot invest in. But most people will invest in, you know, investment properties or loans notes.

Chris: Can you borrow against your account to own a piece of real estate? So, if an investor had - again, round numbers - a hundred thousand in their trust account, are they able to purchase a $200,000 piece of property?

Greg: Yes. So, you can borrow money with a purchase as well when your IRA purchases. So, let's again, let use your example: someone can buy a $200,000 home, there IRA would be the owner of it, purchaser of it, and then the lender would be lending to the IRA the funds on that property. That's important. I said it the way I did because the lender cannot invest to the individual. You can't have a loan in your name: Chris clothier and then your IRA owns it. That would be a conflict. 

Typically lending on an IRA, typical lenders will lend between 50 and 60 percent maybe 65 percent. And the reason why they typically lend less is because an IRA cannot be a guarantor. So, the IRA cannot personally guarantee that loan. So, the loan that's being given is purely based upon the asset in its value. And, so, there are companies that lend on the asset and are not really concerned if it's boned by an IRA or not an IRA, and don't need a personal guarantee either. 

Chris: Okay, and then, I get asked a lot of questions especially from investors that are in - we'll just call them ‘pricier markets’, higher priced markets, where they own a piece of real estate. They own in their trust they want to use but they want to sell it and then purchase more real estate. Is there ever a mechanism to use a 1031-exchange or is it even needed with a trust account?

Greg: Yeah. You don't need it with a trusted account. So it acts like a 1031 but it's not a 1031. So, when you sell the property, let's say you buy that home for $200,000 and you then sell it and you sell for $300,000. There are some taxes that you'll pay on any dollars that like. For example: if you borrowed a hundred thousand of the $200,000 there is a small tax you got to pay because you borrowed some funds, but you don't pay taxes on all the gains of the hundred thousand dollars equity that you put in the property. So, say you sell it for $300,000 at a hundred thousand dollar profit, after you sell it you would pay a small portion of taxes on that $100,000 gain, but just towards a pro-rata percentage of the loan amount that you used. This sounds a little bit technical and it is a little bit technical but we would help you walk through this. The most important thing here to understand though is, basically, a majority of your profit on that hundred thousand dollar profit is going to then go back to your IRA. Zero taxes on it. And you can then use that money to go and buy your next property. And it can continue to grow tax-free if it's inside your IRA. Now, if you do it inside of a Roth IRA, obviously, it grows tax-free and comes out tax-free which is the most ideal scenario. But, if it is inside of your, you know, traditional IRA with us at Horizon Trust Company, a majority of those gains all go into your IRA account and you pay no tax on those because it's still IRA, and then just go buy your next asset.

Chris: Excellent. Where are you guys located at, Greg?

Greg: We have two offices. We're in Albuquerque, New Mexico and then a lot of our sales and marketing is in Las Vegas. That's where I started my career and there's — surprise, surprise — a lot of events that come through Vegas. So, we like to have people there - not recently! Hopefully, it turns back on. But, yeah, we're in those - both those offices…

Chris: Not to sidetrack us but I'm gonna stop it for a second: are you excited about the Raiders? I mean are you — about coming to Vegas? Are you an NFL fan at all?

Greg: I am so excited! We got a suite so we're super excited about that. I'm excited, because I'm sure whenever they play the Cowboys, we’ll have some Clothiers in the suite and hopefully beat them, but we'll see!

Chris: I think it's gonna be awhile before that happens - not the game where y'all beat us but that's alright! We’d love to come out there. So, to get out of that rabbit hole - hang on, I go back. So, you guys, the majority of your offices are in Las Vegas. You also have a second office in Albuquerque, but regardless of where of course the investor lives or the property owner lives they can use your company on transactions in all 50 states, right?

Greg: Yeah.

Chris: I'm really dumbing it down for myself, even, because I know I've always had so many questions and they may seem trivial but they're really important for a lot of investors just to, you know, to feel confident in what they're doing, who they're working with. 

Greg: So, look, anyone in the United States that has a social security number can open up a retirement account and or move their retirement account to our company. You do not have to live in the state that we're licensed - in New Mexico.

So, first, I'll say look, anyone can do it. Secondly, everyone should be doing it if they haven't already, and more importantly right now. The time is truly now. We're in the middle of the pandemic that's just happened and happening, and the stock market’s crazy. There's no stability there. The real estate market is going to be exciting in the next 12 months. I am excited actually. I'm probably doing more deals, I think, in 2021 than I probably ever have. I feel like there's going to be great opportunities. And, if you're looking to take advantage of today's opportunities in the market and specifically collateral - I love that our trust company was based upon real estate, because it's what I understood and understand still today. And, so I just I foresee just a huge opportunity in general in the real estate market now.

Chris: Let's talk about that for a second, because I want to define opportunity for anybody that's watching right now the way that I define it or at least help people understand the way I define it. I really see the opportunity in the next let's just call it 12 months - in this short period of time as - I don't foresee, based on everything that I've got out there in front of me and of course the markets were in, I don't foresee this opportunity being defined by price necessarily being that prices are gonna fall. I see it being defined by: there are fewer and fewer investors that are gonna have the ability, the wherewithal, or even the desire to invest in real estate right now. Many people are gonna be frozen by fear - that's fine. I mean, they're just not gonna be able to overcome that. Many people are gonna put their plans on hold, but there's a lot of real estate investors whose plan, I mean the pandemic doesn't change it, because it hasn't fundamentally changed the real estate market. 

It's still all the same basics of: how you find a good deal, how you invest in a deal, how you define a good deal. It remains the same. So, I don't think there's going to be massive opportunity in the sudden glut of properties that drives the price down, but I do think that there's gonna be fewer buyers. So, it may, you know, bring the price down a little bit. There's just less competition, that's what I perceive.

Greg: I don't disagree at all, I mean, that's why IRA money is one of the most critical places you can go to take advantage of this opportunity. People that do have money - even though a lot people have been using their savings through this pandemic, right and have lost jobs, etc. - if they haven't used their money for the most part, think about in your own circumstance. If you have half a million dollars, whatever the dollar amount, $100,000, $10,000 of income right now, do you think, if you found a real estate deal right now considering what's going on the market, you’re just gonna jump on it? 

Most people, including myself are going to — I want to be cash heavy, because when things are crazy like now I want to hold my cash. But for people like us that have retirement accounts, I'm taking advantage of that. I'm using my retirement money to go buy and take advantage of today's market. And a lot of people sixty-five, seventy percent of Americans don't really have a retirement plan, and so they're not gonna take advantage of this real estate opportunity.

So, there is less money in the streets. I totally agree with that, and there's going to be a lot of opportunity - ton of opportunity. 

Chris: So, let's do this here for everyone that's watching out there today: how easy is it to, let's say they already have an IRA account, because - correct me if I'm wrong - universally, in the United States, there's a lot of money that is in accounts today that's not being utilized right. It's safe, but it's not being used. It's not earning any type of return. Am I correct in that? I mean, I've heard some crazy numbers in the past.

Greg: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of idle money, as you said, making no money or not a lot, yes. 

Chris: It's safe but it's not being used at all. 

Greg: It's not keeping up with inflation.

Chris: Yeah, good point. Call it safe as you want it, it's being eaten away one way or another. All right, so, how easy is it for somebody to be able, because that's another big question. So many people look at this as like, “God, it's just such a hassle. If I wanted to do business with Horizon, I've got an account that I haven't used but - I was smart to get it set up, I just haven't anything with it. And I want to get with somebody that I feel like has a better grasp on: Who I am as an investor. Somebody that understands real estate, understands customer service, is going to give me the good kind of service I'm looking for.” How easy is it to transfer over? Is that a painful process?

Greg: Well, it's easy, because we make it easy. Our competitors make it really difficult. So, basically it takes a 10 to 15 minute conversation. So, what we like to do, if someone says, “Hey, I want to learn more about what Chris was talking about.” You know, they'll email us or call us to set up an appointment 10 to 15 minutes long. Ask them kind of what they plan on doing with their retirement accounts, you know. What kind of assets are you looking at? We'll talk about what's the best kind of IRA for them and then we will ask them the 10 or 15 pieces of information: name, address - you know, the simple things, because we will pre-populate out those documents, because the documents themselves can be daunting. If not most companies will say, “Fill out the application - ten pages.” It's a little bit confusing: which boxes do I check? 

We help check all those things, then we email it out to you so you can just review it, sign it, and send it back to us. Once you get it back, we then help get your account funded; meaning: if your retirement account, let's say at Schwab or Fidelity or Equity or somewhere, we'll then send those documents and call that company and let them know that you've requested those funds to be sent to us. And, so, we are actively calling to get the monies to arrive over to us rather than just sending out the forms and waiting for them to when they get - on their time schedule - get back to us and send the money over on your behalf. And, so, we're all over the money process. That's one of the things that we’re really, really good at besides filling out the form. 

Chris: I just heard something interesting, and it just a fact of this process. If somebody currently has an account elsewhere, you make the process easy, but there's still a third party involved that has to take an action to get the money transferred over. Is that right?

Greg: Yeah, so they have to release the money and send it to us. So, we may - again - we make that process as simple too. Some of those listening to this might be like, “Look, well that's my friend or my buddy is my financial guy.” So, what's nice about it is: we handle all that. We send out a form and then we call all the right numbers to call. So, if you're at fidelity, we don't call your Fidelity regional office, we have their main office. We have a desk that we call and we get the things transferred very quickly. A lot of times, we'll get a transfer within three to four days - unheard of for a lot of different trust companies.

Chris: That's awesome. So, this is gonna be hosted on of course the ‘Experience Matters’ Podcast page, this is gonna be hosted on our blog, and we're gonna share it through a lot of different places. I'm gonna put this out there, I know that you guys have some other information. Some of our listeners here, they may want to read a little bit more about the self-directed IRA process. Some that may not have an IRA already, others may just want to do kind of some of their own research. So, we're gonna share all of that with them on our page, okay, on how they can come to - and, Greg, and I don’t think we've said the name yet. Have we? 

Greg: I think I might have slipped and said it once or maybe twice, but it’s Horizon Trust, yeah.

Chris: Alright, Greg Herlean with Horizon Trust. I'm gonna share all that information on our page and I know that you and I have talked. Of course, you host some of our accounts and I know you've done a lot of work with Kent over at Real Estate Worldwide and for some of his clients, and you have mentioned in the past - and I don't want to use this as any type of sales draw, nothing along that - but you've mentioned the past that for REI Nation clients, those that are, you know, as you just said, they know the paperwork is daunting. Maybe they're not a hundred percent sure how or what they can use, what they can't use, and they want to get connected to a good service, you know, Trust Company. Somebody that focuses and values relationships. You've mentioned maybe doing something for them, because they're REI Nation clients, is that right?

Greg: That's right, yeah. Well for your clients, REI Nation clients, we've got something, I think, that's good. Just for your clients that would be pretty — it'll be worth everyone's time to kind of get going quickly. 

Chris: Yeah, and so, what I'm gonna do is: I'm gonna send out an email to all of our clients, just letting them know that, again, this is a company that we've done business with. All our clients know that whether it's an attorney that we recommend, it's an insurance company that we recommend, it's a title company - everything down the line, I mean, we are focused on service. We're focused on the experience that our clients have and, as I mentioned earlier, we always come behind and ask: how was that experience? So, again, in this case, I'm gonna send something out to all of our clients telling them that if they are interested, if this is something that they want to do and they would like to get with a with a high-level, customer service Trust Company like yourself, I'll give them, you know, kind of the the path they take on how to get that done. Okay, and I will tell them what the, you know, again, you made a generous offer. You and I have talked a little bit about trying to assist them and be able to get that done quickly and easily. So, I'll send it out to all of our clients if that's good with you. 

Greg: Okay, look - and I just want to kind of end with something. I want to say: what's awesome about this is, this is your retirement account. No one cares more about your retirement account than you do. I don't even care as much about your — and I guarantee your financial adviser doesn't care much about your plan or your account either. When's the last time your guy called and said, “Hey, I got this great stock, this great equity, this great investment,” you know? All he does - typically - or she does is call and says, “Do you want to invest more money? Let's look at these numbers.” And you watch it go up and you watch it go down. You have no control ever. Since I took control of my retirement accounts, because I learned about it so many years ago, I get to choose what I invest in. And I think there was one year, because I do have somebody that's a financial advisor, and one year out of the last 16 he beat me. Every other year I beat him. It's because I care more about it. I get to pick it. I understand it. Real estate is so much more - is so much easier to understand. So, be it real estate or anything else you wanna invest in, you get to pick and choose what you invest in, which is what's exciting.

Chris: I agree, I agree. That's great stuff, man. Well, look. Thanks for joining us for the ‘Experience Matters’ podcast. I wish we had more time but what we'll do is we'll come back and we'll talk again here soon, because we try to keep these, yeah, about this time; try and let everybody have short little quick snippets. But this was excellent, man. Great to connect with you and talk a little bit about this.

So, the truth of the matter is, there's just so much we can talk about when it comes to a self-directed IRA. We can get down, you know, buried in the minutiae of the details and some of our listeners are gonna want that. So, maybe we'll come back and do that another time but this is just fantastic, man. I really appreciate you taking time from your house there.

Greg: All right. 

Chris: All right, Greg, I appreciate it, man. Have a great day, bud. 

Greg: All right. thank you. 

Chris: Thanks.